You can never have enough Keats ;):D
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This is superb.
Eternal Lovers
Witter Bynner
Somewhere beyond a mountain lies
A lake the color of your eyes--
And I am mirrored like a flight
Of swallows in that evening-light.
Lovers eternal, side by side,
Closed in the elemental tide,
Nurture the root of every land--
So is my hand within your hand.
Somewhere beyond an island ships
Bear on their sails, as on your lips
You bear and tend it from the sun,
The blossom of oblivion.
Eternal lovers, in whom death
And reaching rains have mingled breath,
Are drawn by the same draught apart--
So is my heart upon your heart.
Somewhere beyond a desert rolls
An ocean that is both our souls--
Where we shall come, whatever be,
I unto you, you unto me.
Beloved, let us once more praise the rain
Beloved, let us once more praise the rain.
Let us discover some new alphabet,
For this, the often praised; and be ourselves,
The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf,
The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone,
And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,—
Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion,
Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done.
There is an oriole who, upside down,
Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,—
Under a tree as dead and still as lead;
There is a single leaf, in all this heaven
Of leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig:
The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caught
Upon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs;
There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroom
Which catches three drops from the stooping cloud.
The timid bee goes back to the hive; the fly
Under the broad leaf of the hollyhock
Perpends stupid with cold; the raindark snail
Surveys the wet world from a watery stone...
And still the syllables of water whisper:
The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait
In the dark room; and in your heart I find
One silver raindrop,—on a hawthorn leaf,—
Orion in a cobweb, and the World.
Conrad Aiken
That's a good analysis Hes. Its a powerful poem whatever meaning you read into it I think.
I always thought it was about bodily love versus romantic love where just the physical act eventually displaces any romantic meaning in the love between two people.
However I have Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience and Blake liked to illustrate his poems which gave people reading them a few more clues. In the back of the book is a paragraph which interprets the poem and the picture together:
"The poem is usually interpreted as an image of the troubles of earthly love. The symbolism of a red rose for corporeal love and of the worm (or the flesh) for the source of sickness is plain. The illustration shows a worm entering the rose extruding the joy. The "howling storm" is a symbol of materialism. The illustration also has a caterpillar eating away at the leaves of the rose. Blake often equated the caterpillar to the priesthood who lay their curses on the fairest joys. The thorns on the rose emphasize the pains of love on earth. "
So I read it now as the steady erosion of the initial joy in love by materialism and the influence of surrounding society. So your "eating away" is spot on really :D
Now sleeps the crimson petal
Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font;
The firefly wakens, waken thou with me.
Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts, in me.
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake.
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.
Alfred Lord Tennyson </B>
Loved the Tennyson Freckle :D
Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flies!
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sack'd;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
O, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appear'd to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour!
Christopher Marlowe (from Dr Faustus)
Alf that was cool...............................:cool:
and now for something completely different...i love this guy....
I'm in love
she's young, she said,
but look at me,
I have pretty ankles,
and look at my wrists, I have pretty
wrists
o my god,
I thought it was all working,
and now it's her again,
every time she phones you go crazy,
you told me it was over
you told me it was finished,
listen, I've lived long enough to become a
good woman,
why do you need a bad woman?
you need to be tortured, don't you?
you think life is rotten if somebody treats you
rotten it all fits,
doesn't it?
tell me, is that it? do you want to be treated like a
piece of shit?
and my son, my son was going to meet you.
I told my son
and I dropped all my lovers.
I stood up in a cafe and screamed
I'M IN LOVE,
and now you've made a fool of me. . .
I'm sorry, I said, I'm really sorry.
hold me, she said, will you please hold me?
I've never been in one of these things before, I said,
these traingles. . .
she got up and lit a cigarette, she was trembling all
over.she paced up and down,wild and crazy.she had
a small body.her arms were thin,very thin and when
she screamed and started beating me I held her
wrists and then I got it through the eyes:hatred,
centuries deep and true.I was wrong and graceless and
sick.all the things I had learned had been wasted.
there was no creature living as foul as I
and all my poems were
false.
Charles Bukowski
Romance.
Love's a joke i've got no time for it,
Makes right minded people talk such sh1t,
A construct devised to make you spend money,
With the debt that we have it just aint funny.
My love is like a blooming rose,
Go away this crap gets up my nose,
All you petrol station romeos take my rebuke,
A card some flowers for a f**k you make me puke.
So if you want someone tell them straight,
Cut the crap save time avoid the wait,
You can get straight to it instead of standing still,
It will save you from running up your credit card bill.
By Herakles.