The Hot 100

[lady of shallot]

We Americans who speak English are at a disadvantage that our English friends do not share. Since we are such a large country and aside from Mexico, do not abut another country that does not speak English it is unusual for us to learn another one. Well that is for most of us who do not travel much. Even in beautiful Quebec where they do speak French they also speak English. My grandkids did study French starting at a young age but my granddaughter took a course this year (her first in college) taught in French and she really struggled and ended up saying she hated French and does not want to study it anymore! I used to be very impressed with people who spoke three or more languages but then I realized that it is much easier when you live in or near Europe! Heck we picked up some words last fall spending only hours in each country!

One thing I notice (to my annoyance) is that the decorating channel I watch seems to think that some one with an English accent or an Australian accent is superior to a host/hostess who speaks American English. We have a lovely young woman named Sophie Allsop who hosts a show (think actually it is out of Canada) she has the accent but man she butchers the language on occasion!

[Penelope]

LofS wrote:

My grandkids did study French starting at a young age but my granddaughter took a course this year (her first in college) taught in French and she really struggled and ended up saying she hated French and does not want to study it anymore!

Well we learned, French, Latin and German in our first years at secondary school, but after a couple of years you could drop two and just learn one second language. Most choose French.

But do tell your poor granddaughter that I understand her sentiments absolutely. I learned French for four years at school, but because I never 'used' it....it was just meaningless. It is actually going to the Country and 'using' the language that makes it stick in your brain and become part of your personal vocabulary. When I first went to France and used my schoolgirl French...I was amazed that they understood what I was saying....even if they did look a trifle pained at my mangling of their lovely language.

[Penelope]

Kubla Khan has the most exceptionally bold and satisfying opening lines......I don't think I like any others as much.....but then it all goes downhill from there, imo.

I didn't know the Robert Frost poem....never heard it before. So no familiarity.....

I do like it....but don't honestly understand how it came to be so high up on the list.

Of course....Rudyard Kipling's 'If'....came top in this Country a couple of years ago.

IF

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

It is a very good poem, but top of the list? Well, there is no accouting for taste.

[DWill]

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I wonder if Frost set himself a challenge to use as few elements as possible in a poem that would succeed. He has four rhymes in 16 lines, uses mostly monosyllables, and even repeats an entire line. He's so clever in his simplicity, though, making the unrhymed third line of each stanza pick up the rhyme of the next stanza. He flirts with a doggerel rhythm in the first couplet of the stanzas, but then rescues the cadence with the second unrhymed couplet. In the final stanza the variation that interests us is actually the more thorough use of repetition--the same terminal sound and the repeated lines that work so brilliantly. He was a cagey poet.

Now for 5, "Pied Beauty," by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It's a keeper.

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; 5
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: 10
Praise him.

[Penelope]

Pied Beauty - Oh I do love it and I am so glad it is up in the top few.

Some things do make your heart sing......and praise a God whose existence one might doubt......

I remember a year or two ago saying to Chris O'Connor - 'Look at these Shire Horses we saw at the Cheshire Agricultural Show......see, if there are Shire Horses, there must be a God'. And Chris had to agree with me on this one occasion.

[Saffron]

Now for 5, "Pied Beauty," by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It's a keeper.

A keeper indeed. As many dings as the peanut gallery will allow. I seem to be the only one left giving dings. This poem is in my top 10. Now at #5 I wonder what will happen next week on the poetry thread when we are out of numbers. Any ideas? DW, any plans? My only plan is to comb through the Top 500 to figure out what were the most favorite poems and make a list of the Top 10.

[Robert Tulip]

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast

... It would have been the furthest thing from my mind (of all the thoughts one may have in the presence of such beauty) to think that one was a comparison of superiority over the other. Would one not have to think then, that the rising sun which visits France first, is showing a blessing upon France from mother nature? Also isn't the poem speaking of the cliffs being glimmering and vast? Not the country?

But Arnold did not choose to write about the dawn, he wrote about evening in Dover, the point where Britain engages with the rest of the world, a place that for that reason alone is redolent with symbolic intensity. He chose to contrast the failing light of France (negative) with the glimmering and vast (positive) symbol of England. Just because it would have been far from your mind does not necessarily mean it would not occur to Arnold, whose poem is full of parables about time, faith and identity. The White Cliffs of Dover are a symbol of England, what with bluebirds etc. The rolling waves are a symbol of eternity. This is the sort of poem that is fair game for interpretation.

..this is rubbish,.....the French treat us with equal contempt......

I would expect Penelope to stick up for the fair-minded perfection of the old dart, but her 'rubbish' comment is biased. It is the Profumo defence - she would say that, wouldn't she. And 'equal contempt' is quite compatible with Arnold taking a swipe at the frogs. He is after all English, so from Penelope's comment we could find it hardly surprising that he regards the French also with the 'equal contempt' of the British superiority complex. Arnold did say "France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme."

[lady of shallot]

Penelope:

I didn't know the Robert Frost poem....never heard it before. So no familiarity....

.

In this part of the world the Frost poem is all but a cliche. Thus no admiration, nay reverence here!

Robert Tulip:

But Arnold did not choose to write about the dawn, he wrote about evening in Dover, the point where Britain engages with the rest of the world,

To be fair, I do not know the back story (as they say now!) of the Arnold poem. But as a new reader couldn't one say the sun setting on something means its demise?

[Penelope]

Robert the not Bruce wrote:

But Arnold did not choose to write about the dawn, he wrote about evening in Dover, the point where Britain engages with the rest of the world, a place that for that reason alone is redolent with symbolic intensity.

No, wait a minute, ROBERT, Dover is the place where Britain engages with Europe. We also engage with Iceland, Denmark and Scandanavia....over the North Sea. And with Ireland and America over the Irish Sea.......

Robert Tulip, the Boffin, wrote to Penelope the Anglo Saxon Peasant Housewife:

I would expect Penelope to stick up for the fair-minded perfection of the old dart, but her 'rubbish' comment is biased. It is the Profumo defence - she would say that, wouldn't she. And 'equal contempt' is quite compatible with Arnold taking a swipe at the frogs. He is after all English, so from Penelope's comment we could find it hardly surprising that he regards the French also with the 'equal contempt' of the British superiority complex. Arnold did say "France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme."

That was Mandy Rice Davies who said that (well, he would wouldn't he?).....In the Christine Keeler affair....they were prostitutes......but I liked them!!!

Well, this house,(where I live), like and admire the French.....We don't think we are superior......

We think we might be a little bit superior to the Australians....who have about as much culture as a Yoghurt......

No...Robert....you are just winding me up...which is very good for me....so thank you......

I know you love me really.....

[DWill]

Now for 5, "Pied Beauty," by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It's a keeper.

A keeper indeed. As many dings as the peanut gallery will allow. I seem to be the only one left giving dings. This poem is in my top 10. Now at #5 I wonder what will happen next week on the poetry thread when we are out of numbers. Any ideas? DW, any plans? My only plan is to comb through the Top 500 to figure out what were the most favorite poems and make a list of the Top 10.

What to do? I don't know. It's spring, and the poetic thing to do would be to be to wander lonely as a cloud, see the cherry hung with snow, etc. etc. Just loaf, in other words. That's probably the goal I'll have. I have been silently giving almost all the top 15 poems four dings. Exception: the John Donne.

I never could have imagined the discussion that "Dover Beach" caused!