Okay, I trust you've "got" the Milton, whether from under your pillow or through the eyes. I'm sure someone can re-do "Lycidas" as a rap song.

91. "The Sun Rising," by John Donne. I like the poem, especially the first stanza. In the next two he starts to spin a bit too much metaphysical thread. I suppose there is a need to say something truly different in the way of a love poem, though, so I have to give Donne credit for the way he uses his intellect to do that. 2 dings. Note: Donne's line arrangement is much better for the poem, compared to how it looks here.

BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou think ?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

She's all states, and all princes I ;
Nothing else is ;
Princes do but play us ; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus ;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,

Fancy saying this to the Sun!!

Now thats what I call Iconoclasm!!

2 Dings to John Donne - I like it.

I liked the Donne! Sorry to disappoint you, but the Milton underneath the pillow only managed to conjure up a dream of boats, shrimp, 12 twin dogs, purple palms trees and goats. I wouldn't like to turn this one over to Freud.
Donne will stay nicely away from my pillow.

Oblivion wrote:

Sorry to disappoint you, but the Milton underneath the pillow only managed to conjure up a dream of boats, shrimp, 12 twin dogs, purple palms trees and goats. I wouldn't like to turn this one over to Freud.
Donne will stay nicely away from my pillow.

What interesting dreams you do have. I only dream that I must get up and go to the bathroom....where the laundry basket talks at me......long lectures...on existentialism.

.....and you think I have interesting dreams!?!?!?!?

BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?

Boy, how cheeky!
But I feel this way sometimes, when morning comes to soon...

I am enjoying the hot 100. Ulysses is such a big character, and source for the myth of the hero. One of my favourite Ulysses poems is the song by Eric Clapton and Cream, written by Martin Sharp, Tales of Brave Ulysses

DWill wrote:95. "Ulysses," by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife,

her name is Penelope...

I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

The suitors are the depraved and corrupt who defy the hero

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea:

life to the lees, ie the bottom of the cup, a beautiful phrase. The Hyades are the stars of the prominent constellation of Taurus, forming the head of the bull, around the bright star Aldebaran.

I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;

'Become a name' indicates how Ulysses is the archetype of the hero, embedded in the world itself

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!

no retirement for heroes

As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

the 'three suns' seems like an allusion to Christ's three days in hell between death and resurrection

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

Yes, it is condescending to Telemachus. The hero has no time for 'slow prudence' and 'common duties'

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas.

To gloom is an interesting verb

My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

I thought all his mariners died and Ulysses returned to Ithaca alone

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

to strive with gods is the essence of heroism

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

I feel Tennyson is claiming a continuity between the modern British Empire of his day and ancient Greece, with the true Britons showing their descent from Troy by sailing beyond the baths of the western stars.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Again, the subtext is the continuity of Britain and Greece. The voice is contemporary to Victorian times, with an imperial call to find again the heroic hearts that move heaven and earth.

DWill wrote:94. "The Sick Rose," By William Blake.

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

The discographyfor this poem has about 100 settings. It immediately made me remember Benjamin Britten who set it in his Serenade for Tenor Horn and Strings.

The rose seems to be a metaphor for England.

Robert wrote:

DWill wrote:
95. "Ulysses," by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife,


her name is Penelope...

Yes, the weaver - I know. Well, I suppose I am an aged wife! She was a good lass though!!

Robert wrote:

DWill wrote:
94. "The Sick Rose," By William Blake.

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.





The discographyfor this poem has about 100 settings. It immediately made me remember Benjamin Britten who set it in his Serenade for Tenor Horn and Strings.

The rose seems to be a metaphor for England.

In August 1803 Blake removed John Scofield, a drunk soldier, from his garden in Felpham. Scofield afterwards claimed that Blake "damned the King and said that soldiers were all slaves". On Scofield's testimony, Blake was charged with high treason and put on trial at Chichester. After Blake was acquitted of high treason he moved back to London.

This happened after the poem was first published, so it can't have lead to Blake having written it. But it does show that he was unhappy at the plight of England....and of course the symbol for England is the Rose.

So perhaps the rose is meant to be England....I hadn't thought of it before.

Sometimes a buy a cabbage and forget about it. When I find it in the cellar, weeks later, it looks like a decomposing head. I do try not to liken it to anything.