The Top 500 Poems: 300-201

DWill · Mon Aug 30, 2010 6:57 am

Saffron wrote:


	DWill wrote: Here are a couple of shorties. The second one, "My heart Leaps Up," gets us to no. 250 (skyrockets bursting and cannons firing). 251. "Dirce," by Walter Savage Landor. STAND close around, ye Stygian set, With Dirce in one boat convey'd! Or Charon, seeing, may forget That he is old and she a shade.

Hey, host of the Top 500, care to give us a guided tour of this little poem. I think I get the gist, but can't quite follow the meaning of each line.

Um, let's see what might sound plausible. Dirce may be a beautiful babe. She, having died, is being ferried across the River Styx by Charon, and the poet exhorts her Stygian attendants to stand close around her so Charon won't see her and forget who he and she are. Is that close to what you get from it?

oblivion · Mon Aug 30, 2010 9:11 am

The poetry Foundation offers a rather lengthy blurb on Landor :

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive ... l?id=81391

and from this I have : "He was a seriously emulative classicist and wrote a significant proportion of his poetry in Latin, which was also the original language of some of the long and short poems that he published in English. Indeed, he was deterred from making it his chief medium only by the example of John Milton and the advice of Robert Southey and William Wordsworth, and as an old man he remarked, "I am sometimes at a loss for an English word, for a Latin never."
Perhaps something got lost in translation?

Saffron · Mon Aug 30, 2010 9:28 am

DWill wrote:

Saffron wrote:


	DWill wrote: Here are a couple of shorties. The second one, "My heart Leaps Up," gets us to no. 250 (skyrockets bursting and cannons firing). 251. "Dirce," by Walter Savage Landor. STAND close around, ye Stygian set, With Dirce in one boat convey'd! Or Charon, seeing, may forget That he is old and she a shade.

Hey, host of the Top 500, care to give us a guided tour of this little poem. I think I get the gist, but can't quite follow the meaning of each line.

Um, let's see what might sound plausible. Dirce may be a beautiful babe. She, having died, is being ferried across the River Styx by Charon, and the poet exhorts her Stygian attendants to stand close around her so Charon won't see her and forget who he and she are. Is that close to what you get from it?

Ha, I was not even close!!! I will not dare to say what I'd thought. Thanks for illuminating the poem for me.

DWill · Mon Aug 30, 2010 11:37 am


	Saffron wrote: Hey, host of the Top 500, care to give us a guided tour of this little poem. I think I get the gist, but can't quite follow the meaning of each line.


	DWill wrote: Um, let's see what might sound plausible. Dirce may be a beautiful babe. She, having died, is being ferried across the River Styx by Charon, and the poet exhorts her Stygian attendants to stand close around her so Charon won't see her and forget who he and she are. Is that close to what you get from it?


	Saffron wrote: ]Ha, I was not even close!!! I will not dare to say what I'd thought. Thanks for illuminating the poem for me.

Not saying I'm right about it, though. I do admire how you seem to "find the time." Maybe your supervisor should be informed? :mrgreen:

Saffron · Mon Aug 30, 2010 5:43 pm


	DWill wrote: Not saying I'm right about it, though. I do admire how you seem to "find the time." Maybe your supervisor should be informed?

You wouldn't dare. Just remember, I happen to know a few things that your supervisor might want to know.

DWill · Tue Aug 31, 2010 12:29 pm

Saffron wrote:


	DWill wrote: Not saying I'm right about it, though. I do admire how you seem to "find the time." Maybe your supervisor should be informed?

You wouldn't dare. Just remember, I happen to know a few things that your supervisor might want to know.

Well this is getting quite personal, and anyone else watching must be wondering! Let's get back to the business at hand, which is whittling down to size this poetic woodpile. We've now burned half of it.

249. "Hear the Voice of the Bard," by William Blake. Blake placed this invocation at the beginning of Songs of Experience. Such a role for the poet seems grandiose today, and might have been a little so around 1800, but Blake was not deterred. This copy of the poem has quotation marks around the last two stanzas; Harmon's lacks them.

Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who present, past, and future sees;
Whose ears have heard
The Holy Word,
That walked among the ancient trees,

Calling the lapsed soul,
And weeping in the evening dew;
That might control
The starry pole,
And fallen, fallen, light renew!

"O Earth, O Earth, return!
Arise from out the dewy grass;
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumberous mass.

"Turn away no more;
Why wilt thou turn away?
The starry floor,
The watery shore,
Is given thee till the break of day."

froglipz · Tue Aug 31, 2010 2:55 pm

usually when half the woodpile is burned, tis time to go cut, split and stack some more....not my favorite chore.

Blake is not my favorite, too lofty and full of himself. I would say more, but none of it is nice, and my mom told me if I couldn't say anything nice.....

DWill · Tue Aug 31, 2010 4:59 pm


	froglipz wrote: usually when half the woodpile is burned, tis time to go cut, split and stack some more....not my favorite chore. Blake is not my favorite, too lofty and full of himself. I would say more, but none of it is nice, and my mom told me if I couldn't say anything nice.....

We could in fact be stacking up new poems. I think you've had a great idea. As this pile goes down, another could go up, so to speak. It would involve the poetry forum getting into anthologizing. Might be a crazy idea because of the time consumption, but as a group we could probably come up with a Top ____ that we'd be better satisfied with! And you talk have to don't talk nice about Billy Blake.

DWill · Thu Sep 02, 2010 4:55 am

248. "Exequy on His Wife," by Henry King, Bishop of Chichester (1592-1669). Exequy: formal funeral rites; obsequies. Harmon says that these lines were admired by Edgar Allan Poe and T. S. Eliot.

ACCEPT, thou shrine of my dead saint,
Instead of dirges this complaint;
And for sweet flowers to crown thy herse
Receive a strew of weeping verse
From thy grieved friend, whom thou might'st see
Quite melted into tears for thee.
Dear loss! since thy untimely fate,
My task hath been to meditate
On thee, on thee! Thou art the book,
The library whereon I look,
Tho' almost blind. For thee, loved clay,
I languish out, not live, the day....
Thou hast benighted me; thy set
This eve of blackness did beget,
Who wast my day (tho' overcast
Before thou hadst thy noontide past):
And I remember must in tears
Thou scarce hadst seen so many years
As day tells hours. By thy clear sun
My love and fortune first did run;
But thou wilt never more appear
Folded within my hemisphere,
Since both thy light and motion,
Like a fled star, is fall'n and gone,
And 'twixt me and my soul's dear wish
The earth now interposed is....
I could allow thee for a time
To darken me and my sad clime;
Were it a month, a year, or ten,
I would thy exile live till then,
And all that space my mirth adjourn—
So thou wouldst promise to return,
And putting off thy ashy shroud
At length disperse this sorrow's cloud.
But woe is me! the longest date
Too narrow is to calculate
These empty hopes: never shall I
Be so much blest as to descry
A glimpse of thee, till that day come
Which shall the earth to cinders doom,
And a fierce fever must calcine
The body of this world—like thine,
My little world! That fit of fire
Once off, our bodies shall aspire
To our souls' bliss: then we shall rise
And view ourselves with clearer eyes
In that calm region where no night
Can hide us from each other's sight.
Meantime thou hast her, earth: much good
May my harm do thee! Since it stood
With Heaven's will I might not call
Her longer mine, I give thee all
My short-lived right and interest
In her whom living I loved best.
Be kind to her, and prithee look
Thou write into thy Doomsday book
Each parcel of this rarity
Which in thy casket shrined doth lie,
As thou wilt answer Him that lent—
Not gave—thee my dear monument.
So close the ground, and 'bout her shade
Black curtains draw: my bride is laid.
Sleep on, my Love, in thy cold bed
Never to be disquieted!
My last good-night! Thou wilt not wake
Till I thy fate shall overtake:
Till age, or grief, or sickness must
Marry my body to that dust
It so much loves; and fill the room
My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.
Stay for me there: I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
And think not much of my delay:
I am already on the way,
And follow thee with all the speed
Desire can make, or sorrows breed.
Each minute is a short degree
And every hour a step towards thee....
'Tis true—with shame and grief I yield—
Thou, like the van, first took'st the field;
And gotten hast the victory
In thus adventuring to die
Before me, whose more years might crave
A just precedence in the grave.
But hark! my pulse, like a soft drum,
Beats my approach, tells thee I come;
And slow howe'er my marches be
I shall at last sit down by thee.
The thought of this bids me go on
And wait my dissolution
With hope and comfort. Dear—forgive
The crime—I am content to live
Divided, with but half a heart,
Till we shall meet and never part.

Saffron · Fri Sep 03, 2010 7:47 am

I find myself wanting to understand this poem. What I mean is, as I read it it is hard to understand why it is in the book. I think if I understood the references I might understand more about this poem. After reading through twice I am still not sure how he felt about his wife. Is this a poem for a beloved wife, a statement about religion (I even sense something of science in this poem) or a formal piece produced for the funeral.

While trying to find something out about this poem or some information that I could use to guide me toward a better understanding, I did find that King was close friends with Ben Jonson and John Donne.


	DWill wrote: 248. "Exequy on His Wife," by Henry King, Bishop of Chichester (1592-1669). Exequy: formal funeral rites; obsequies. Harmon says that these lines were admired by Edgar Allan Poe and T. S. Eliot.

On thee, on thee! Thou art the book,
The library whereon I look,
Tho' almost blind. For thee, loved clay,
I languish out, not live, the day....

Of course, I loved the lines above.

And here are the ones that caused me some confusion.

The thought of this bids me go on
And wait my dissolution
With hope and comfort. Dear—forgive
The crime—I am content to live
Divided, with but half a heart,
Till we shall meet and never part.

It sounds to me that he is saying to the dead wife, "Sorry honey about your being dead and I feel bad, but forgive me, I'd rather be alive and sad than dead too."

Saffron · Fri Sep 03, 2010 7:52 am

DW, I hope you will not mind I am posting the next poem, #247. It is another poem written for a death. I am thinking that reading other poems written at a death it may help me understand the previous poem and I like Ben Jonson.

An Epitaph on S.P.by Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson
A Child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel

Weep with me, all you that read
This little story:
And know, for whom a tear you shed
Death's self is sorry.
'Twas a child, that so did thrive
In grace and feature,
As heaven and nature seem'd to strive
Which own'd the creature.
Years he number'd scarce thirteen
When fates turn'd cruel,
Yet three fill'd zodiacs had he been
The stage's jewel;
And did act (what now we moan)
Old men so duly,
As, sooth, the Parcæ thought him one,
He play'd so truly.
So, by error, to his fate
They all consented;
But viewing him since (alas, too late)
They have repented;
And have sought (to give new birth)
In baths to steep him;
But being so much too good for earth,
Heaven vows to keep him.

froglipz · Fri Sep 03, 2010 11:01 am


	Saffron wrote: And here are the ones that caused me some confusion. The thought of this bids me go on And wait my dissolution With hope and comfort. Dear—forgive The crime—I am content to live Divided, with but half a heart, Till we shall meet and never part. It sounds to me that he is saying to the dead wife, "Sorry honey about your being dead and I feel bad, but forgive me, I'd rather be alive and sad than dead too."

That is what he is saying. I think that you can add the fact that knowing that he will ultimately join her helps him remain content to live a while yet. He mentions earlier that he is the older one, and maybe should have wanted to go first I don't know how much older, she was in her twenties though so it was an untimely death.

Romantic poets like the theme of being unable to live without that one true love, perhaps he is explaining why he won't be joining her ala "Romeo and Juliet"

oblivion · Fri Sep 03, 2010 12:46 pm

I could relate more to the elegant style of Johnson. And I think Frog has made a good and valid point about Romantics needing suffering in order to create.

Saffron · Fri Sep 03, 2010 7:24 pm


	oblivion wrote: I could relate more to the elegant style of Johnson.

Me too.

DWill · Fri Sep 03, 2010 9:15 pm

Thanks so very much, Saffron, for carrying on with the posting, and I'm really glad and impressed that you three caught on with King's poem in a way. There's a little science in it because science--or at least astrology/astronomy and alchemy--were favorite sources of metaphor for those metaphysicals. I, too, agree about Jonson's dignified, stately reserve. I can't resist posting a short eulogy (or is it elegy, I can't decide) that he wrote about his daughter. I guess I wouldn't like it so much without the the last two lines.

On My First Daughter
Here lies, to each her parents' ruth,
Mary, the daughter of their youth;
Yet all heaven's gifts being heaven's due,
It makes the father less to rue.
At six months' end she parted hence
With safety of her innocence;
Whose soul heaven's queen, whose name she bears,
In comfort of her mother's tears,
Hath placed amongst her virgin-train:
Where, while that severed doth remain,
This grave partakes the fleshly birth;
Which cover lightly, gentle earth!

It can be hard to imagine an environment in which death of younger people was so common. It had to have the effect of sending people more toward piety.

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