Sequel poems

DWill · Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 7:28 am Post subject: Sequel poems

I'll start with the pair that we already have. Please add your own. Maybe we can include unintentional pairs, but let's make the parallel obvious.

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of th purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

--Christopher Marlowe

The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
by Sir Walter Ralegh [/b]

If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every Shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move,
To live with thee, and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When Rivers rage and Rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb,
The rest complains of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields,
To wayward winter reckoning yields,
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of Roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten:
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

Thy belt of straw and Ivy buds,
The Coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.

But could youth last, and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee, and be thy love.

Saffron · Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2008 7:18 pm Post subject:

Ok, here is half -- stay tuned for the 2nd half.

Answer To A Beautiful Poem, Written By Montgomery, Author Of “The Wanderer Of Switzerland,” Etc., Entitled “The Common Lot.”
George Gordon Lord Byron

Montgomery! true, the common lot
Of mortals lies in Lethe’s wave;
Yet some shall never be forgot,
Some shall exist beyond the grave.

“Unknown the region of his birth,”
The hero rolls the tide of war;
Yet not unknown his martial worth,
Which glares a meteor from afar.

His joy or grief, his weal or woe,
Perchance may ’scape the page of fame;
Yet nations, now unborn, will know
The record of his deathless name.

The Patriot’s and the Poet’s frame
Must share the common tomb of all:
Their glory will not sleep the same;
‘That’ will arise, though Empires fall.

The lustre of a Beauty’s eye
Assumes the ghastly stare of death;
The fair, the brave, the good must die,
And sink the yawning grave beneath.

Once more, the speaking eye revives,
Still beaming through the lover’s strain;
For Petrarch’s Laura still survives:
She died, but ne’er will die again.

The rolling seasons pass away,
And Time, untiring, waves his wing;
Whilst honour’s laurels ne’er decay,
But bloom in fresh, unfading spring.

All, all must sleep in grim repose,
Collected in the silent tomb;
The old, the young, with friends and foes,
Fest’ring alike in shrouds, consume.

The mouldering marble lasts its day,
Yet falls at length an useless fane;
To Ruin’s ruthless fangs a prey,
The wrecks of pillar’d Pride remain.

What, though the sculpture be destroy’d,
From dark Oblivion meant to guard;
A bright renown shall be enjoy’d,
By those, whose virtues claim reward.

Then do not say the common lot
Of all lies deep in Lethe’s wave;
Some few who ne’er will be forgot
Shall burst the bondage of the grave.

Saffron · Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2008 9:55 pm Post subject: The Common Lot

THE COMMON LOT
by James Montgomery

ONCE in the flight of ages past,
There lived a man : — and WHO was He ? —
Mortal ! howe'er thy lot be cast,
That Man resembled Thee.

Unknown the region of his birth,
The land in which he died unknown :
His name has perish'd from the earth,
This truth survives alone : —

That joy and grief, and hope and fear,
Alternate triumph'd in his breast ;
His bliss and woe, — a smile, a tear ! —
Oblivion hides the rest.

There is more to this poem. I will try to get the whole thing posted.

DWill · Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 9:55 am Post subject:

Hi Saffron. Are you going to post the rest of this? It is the poem that Byron answered, is that right?

In the meantime, here is a pair from Wordsworth. he answered himself, which is convenient.

EXPOSTULATION AND REPLY by William Wordsworth.

"Why, William, on that old grey stone,
Thus for the length of half a day,
Why, William, sit you thus alone,
And dream your time away?

"Where are your books?--that light bequeathed
To Beings else forlorn and blind!
Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed
From dead men to their kind.

"You look round on your Mother Earth,
As if she for no purpose bore you;
As if you were her first-born birth,
And none had lived before you!"

One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,
When life was sweet, I knew not why,
To me my good friend Matthew spake,
And thus I made reply:

"The eye--it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.

"Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.

"Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?

"--Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,
Conversing as I may,
I sit upon this old grey stone,
And dream my time away."

This poem has two of my favorite phrases from Wordsworth: "a wise passiveness" and "all this mighty sum/Of things." It also is a capsule of his philosophy of mind, that the mind actively creates the meaning of the world, that it is not just acted upon as some 18th Century philosophers said.

The companion poem:

The Tables Turned

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless--
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:--
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

-- William Wordsworth

Of course, Wordworth doesn't do a very good job of giving the other side equal time! The speaker of this poem is the person (William) who was harrangued in the first poem and then took up the whole rest with his reply. This one contains famous words, too: "Our meddling intellect/Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things;--/"We murder to dissect." It's interesting that I associate these words with the practice of minutely analyzing poems. Taking them apart can seem to kill them.

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Saffron · Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 10:01 am Post subject:

realiz · Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 7:37 pm Post subject:

I don't know if these two count as a pair or not. The second one was written I think twelve years after the first.

Reluctance
By Robert Frost

OUT through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Acceptance
Robert Frost

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.'

DWill · Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 11:52 pm Post subject:

If not intended as a pair by Frost, what a great juxtaposition just the same that you've come up with--beautiful. Doesn't it perfectly capture what we feel about our predicament as conscious beings, although Frost does give some consciousness to the bird that I don't really find it hard to believe in.

Saffron · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 9:32 am Post subject:

These two poems are not a set of sequel poems, but rather written by the same poet as a set to compliment each other.

The Tiger
By William Blake
1757-1827

TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The Lamb

Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed,
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

Little Lamb, I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee.
He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and He is mild;
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Little Lamb, God bless thee!

DWill · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 10:00 am Post subject:

I'll cheat a little, just to be able to post another by Blake. This is a "self-contained sequel" (how's that for gibberish).

The Clod and the Pebble

"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a heaven in hell's despair."

So sung a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:

"Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven's despite."

Saffron · Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 10:07 pm Post subject:

Hey,
Blake's The Clod and the Pebble puts me in mind of two quotes by other poets.

John Milton:
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

Hilda Doolittle:
Sing
and your hell is heaven,
your heaven less hell.

What do you think, are they a reference to The Clod and the Pebble?


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