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1. Why metaphor matters

By: Sara Pinotti, on 8/3/2014
Blog: OUPblog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Books, Philosophy, Language, comparisons, venice, Gerard Manley Hopkins, metaphors, Plato, metaphor, Rhetoric, Humanities, Editor's Picks, *Featured, ruskin’s, john ruskin, Rhetoric & Quotations, critical imaginaiton, james grant, The Critical Imagination, the stones of venice, breezes, ducal, inexpressible, Add a tag

By James Grant

Plato famously said that there is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry. But with respect to one aspect of poetry, namely metaphor, many contemporary philosophers have made peace with the poets. In their view, we need metaphor. Without it, many truths would be inexpressible and unknowable. For example, we cannot describe feelings and sensations adequately without it. Take Gerard Manley Hopkins’s exceptionally powerful metaphor of despair:

selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless,
thoughts against thoughts in groans grind.

How else could precisely this kind of mood be expressed? Describing how things appear to our senses is also thought to require metaphor, as when we speak of the silken sound of a harp, the warm colours of a Titian, and the bold or jolly flavour of a wine. Science advances by the use of metaphors – of the mind as a computer, of electricity as a current, or of the atom as a solar system. And metaphysical and religious truths are often thought to be inexpressible in literal language. Plato condemned poets for claiming to provide knowledge they did not have. But if these philosophers are right, there is at least one poetic use of language that is needed for the communication of many truths.

In my view, however, this is the wrong way to defend the value of metaphor. Comparisons may well be indispensable for communication in many situations. We convey the unfamiliar by likening it to the familiar. But many hold that it is specifically metaphor – and no other kind of comparison – that is indispensable. Metaphor tells us things the words ‘like’ or ‘as’ never could. If true, this would be fascinating. It would reveal the limits of what is expressible in literal language. But no one has come close to giving a good argument for it. And in any case, metaphor does not have to be an indispensable means to knowledge in order to be as valuable as we take it to be.

Metaphor may not tell us anything that couldn’t be expressed by other means. But good metaphors have many other effects on readers than making them grasp some bit of information, and these are often precisely the effects the metaphor-user wants to have. There is far more to the effective use of language than transmitting information. My particular interest is in how art critics use metaphor to help us appreciate paintings, architecture, music, and other artworks. There are many reasons why metaphor matters, but art criticism reveals two reasons of particular importance.

735px-Hermann_Herzog_-_Venetian_canal

Take this passage from John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice. Ruskin describes arriving in Venice by boat and seeing ‘the long ranges of columned palaces,—each with its black boat moored at the portal,—each with its image cast down, beneath its feet, upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation’, and observing how ‘the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation’.

One thing Ruskin’s metaphors do is describe the waters of Venice and the Ducal palace at an extraordinary level of specificity. There are many ways water looks when breezes blow across its surface. There are fewer ways it looks when breezes blow across its surface and make it look like something broken into many pieces. And there are still fewer ways it looks when breezes blow across its surface and make it look like something broken into pieces forming a rich mosaic with the colours of Venetian palaces and a greenish tint. Ruskin’s metaphor communicates that the waters of Venice look like that. The metaphor of the Ducal palace as ‘flushed with its sanguine veins’ likewise narrows the possible appearances considerably. Characterizing appearances very specifically is of particular use to art critics, as they often want to articulate the specific appearance an artwork presents.

A second thing metaphors like Ruskin’s do is cause readers to imagine seeing what he describes. We naturally tend to picture the palace or the water on hearing Ruskin’s metaphor. This function of metaphor has often been noted: George Orwell, for instance, writes that ‘a newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image’.

Why do novel metaphors evoke images? Precisely because they are novel uses of words. To understand them, we cannot rely on our knowledge of the literal meanings of the words alone. We often have to employ imagination. To understand Ruskin’s metaphor, we try to imagine seeing water that looks like a broken mosaic. If we manage this, we know the kind of look that he is attributing to the water.

Imagining a thing is often needed to appreciate that thing. Knowing facts about it is often not enough by itself. Accurately imagining Hopkins’s despondency, or the experience of arriving in Venice by boat, gives us some appreciation of these experiences. By enabling us to imagine accurately and specifically, metaphor is exceptionally well suited to enhancing our appreciation of what it describes.

James Grant is a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at Exeter College, Oxford. He is the author of The Critical Imagination.

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Image credit: Hermann Herzog: Venetian canal, by Bonhams. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Why metaphor matters appeared first on OUPblog.

I admit I know little about poetry, and probably even less about Victorian poets. When I started discussing the possibility of a Victorian Poets event at Bryant Park with Justin Tackett, I realized that one of my favorite poets was actually a Victorian poet. Below Justin gives a little taste of what he’ll discuss in Bryant Park on July 19^th, 12:30pm in the Reading Room (see details below). –Purdy, @purdyoxford

Some thoughts on poetry, prosody, and Gerard Manley Hopkins

By Justin Tackett
Magdalen College, Oxford University
and Stanford University

“One distinction of Victorian poetry is the degree to which serious work and popular culture converged, as evidenced by snippets of poems now proverbial,” Linda K. Hughes notes in her recent introduction to the topic in the Cambridge Introduction to Victorian Poetry. Indeed,

Alfred Tennyson’s “‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all,”
Robert Browning’s “God’s in his heaven — / All’s right with the world!” and
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”

remain part of our colloquial repertoire. But Hughes adds another observation that seems to speak more deeply to our current age.

“The best Victorian poetry is complex, challenging, and experimental,” Hughes says, and it enjoyed a wide readership as part of “the first era of mass media.” As literacy increased and printing technology advanced, the Victorians witnessed a media explosion during which more books, journals, magazines, and newspapers were published and read than ever before. The Victorian period, in this sense, was a forerunner to the Information Age, and much of the excitement, empowerment, bewilderment, and concern they felt as a result of revolutions in communication resembles our own.

Poetry, as ever, had its part to play in transforming how people communicated and expressed themselves. Victorian poets explored the political, social, and technological aspects of their rapidly changing environs. More specifically, poets experimented with elements of prosody, among other pursuits, as a means both of entrenching themselves in the past and moving beyond it. They deployed diverse forms of meter, rhythm, rhyme, and sonic patterning, and explored the classical, Anglo-Saxon, gendered, local and national aspects of their culture and language as they viewed and understood them.

Victorian prosody (and prosody in general) can and should be seen as situated in time and space — as historical — just as the content of poetry often is. As Meredith Martin, a professor of Victorian and modernist poetry at Princeton, and Yisrael Levin put it in “Victorian Prosody: Measuring the Field,” “[W]e might describe historical prosody as an awareness that forms might mean different things at different historical moments.” Many nineteenth-century poets were particularly engaged in speaking to and through prosody as an historical discourse.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Catholic convert and priest, was one such poet. Hopkins managed to publis

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3. Poetry Friday Roundup is Here!

By: Mary Lee, on 3/24/2011
Blog: A Year of Reading (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Poetry Friday, Gerard Manley Hopkins, roundup, Add a tag

Wild Atrocity

by Mary Lee Hahn

Glory be to God for silly things --

For running-dives all in a pile of musky autumn leaves;

For rollercoaster rides in the first car alone;

Wet late-March snowball fights; frisbee flings;

Junk food caloric and sweet -- pizza, french fries, sundaes;

And all jokers, their plots and puns and funny bones.

All things humorous, playful, joking, tickly;

Whatever is unplanned, spontaneous (who knows why?)

With smile, grin; laugh, shout; giggle, groan;

They maintain sanity whose beauty is past lunacy:

PRAISE THEM!

Last week I shared PIED BEAUTY by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Above is my take on his classic (last shared May 2008). I'm thinking I might try a new version for Poetry Month...

...Speaking of Poetry Month, I'm cooking up an idea that involves, of course, poetry (writing or finding), along with a little bit of "tag, you're it," and a little bit of treasure hunt...using QR codes. If you're interested in playing along, let me know in the comments or via our blog email (see sidebar).

Now let's get on with the roundup for this week! Leave your link in the comments, and I'll round them up throughout the day. Happy Friday!

44 Comments on Poetry Friday Roundup is Here!, last added: 3/27/2011

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Heidi Mordhorst said, on 3/24/2011 6:32:00 PM

"Me first, me first!" I'm in this week with my favorite YouTube of the week,"What Teachers Make," by Taylor Mali.

Thanks for hosting, Mary Lee. Your manly reinterpretation of Gerard's poem is grand!

Charles Ghigna (Father Goose) said, on 3/24/2011 8:27:00 PM

Thanks, Mary Lee.

With all the turmoil going on in the world right now, I thought your readers might enjoy "Be Still in the World" at The FATHER GOOSE Blog

B.C. said, on 3/24/2011 8:45:00 PM

I missed out on Poetry Friday last week and am sad now that I didn't get to read Pied Beauty...but your wonderful poem makes up for it. Thanks for sharing and thanks for hosting.

This week my Women's History Month Poetry Countdown continues with #4...

http://thesmallnouns.blogspot.com/2011/03/poetry-friday-womens-history-month_24.html

Ben @ The Small Nouns

tmsteach said, on 3/24/2011 9:17:00 PM

Thanks for hosting, Mary Lee!
My contribution is in remembrance of the young women who perished at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory one hundred years ago today:http://tmsteach.blogspot.com/2011/03/poetry-fridayslice-of-life-march.html

April Halprin Wayland said, on 3/24/2011 11:51:00 PM

Wow, Mary Lee--loved Pied Beauty and your faithful take on it. Thanks for hosting this week!

Over at TeachingAuthors I've included a poem thanking a school(and one woman there) for giving me the most amazingly wonderful school visit thank you gift I've ever been given.
www.TeachingAuthors.com

Amy LV said, on 3/25/2011 2:09:00 AM

Mary Lee, Thank you for hosting! "They maintain sanity whose beauty is past lunacy..." Yes! Your words remind me happily of John Agard's poem "Prayer to Laughter."

With eating words on the brain, today I am in with #11 of my book poem series - "Eating Reading."

http://poemfarm.blogspot.com/2011/03/poetry-friday-eating-books-in-poem-359.html

Tabatha said, on 3/25/2011 2:24:00 AM

What a fun poem, Mary Lee! It's not every day you read a poem with a tribute to junk food in it :-) And all the comments above me look great, too. I've got The Sun Grows In Your Smile: http://tabathayeatts.blogspot.com/2011/03/sun-grows-in-your-smile.html

Marjorie said, on 3/25/2011 2:42:00 AM

Wow, this is looking like a great Poetry Friday already and I can see I'm going to be very distracted by everyone's post. At the end of a long week of not qute getting there (just had a "You forgot..." phonecall from Little Brother's School) your poem is a joy and shall be implemented this week-end :-)

My post this week is a call for haiku from artist Laurie Halsey Brown who is taking an exhibition to Japan in October...

Thank you for hosting.

Anonymous said, on 3/25/2011 3:15:00 AM

Thanks for hosting. At 100 Scope Notes I have a new book spine poem: http://100scopenotes.com/2011/03/25/poetry-friday-hardy-boys/

Blythe Woolston said, on 3/25/2011 3:31:00 AM

Thank you so much Mary Lee. I think you have caught Hopkins music and turned it to bright use. I was feeling gloomy and bedraggled, but that was the perfect antidote.

"At the Storm Door" is what I offer today

http://blythewoolston.blogspot.com/2011/03/at-storm-door.html

Ruth said, on 3/25/2011 3:36:00 AM

How fun is THAT? Thank you for sharing it!

Here's my post for today. It's "Sutra," by Marilyn Krysl.

Toby Speed said, on 3/25/2011 3:40:00 AM

Thanks for hosting, Mary Lee, and for treating us to your fun remake of Pied Beauty. I have an original poem about late snow (ugh) at The Writer's Armchair today.

Diane Mayr said, on 3/25/2011 3:55:00 AM

Hi Mary Lee! Thanks for your poem--I need a little silliness this morning.

I would love to participate in your April project, too.

Today I share a poem called "The Little Ships" at Random Noodling

Kurious Kitty has a poem by Jakushitsu, "Wild Geese Among the Reeds. " Kurious K's Kwotes' P.F. quote is by Jakushitsu.

And, at The Write Sisters I have a little Emily Dickinson spring poem, despite the fact that it is in the 20's right now. Brrrrr.

Author Amok said, on 3/25/2011 4:30:00 AM

Hi, everyone! I'm back after a long break (busy editing).

To celebrate spring, I'm sharing "The Greener Forest." It's the title poem of fantasy author Vonnie Winslow Crist's just-published book. You'll want to run outside, put your toes in the grass and hunt for faery rings after reading this poem.

http://authoramok.blogspot.com/2011/03/poetry-friday-make-believe.html

david elzey said, on 3/25/2011 4:35:00 AM

thanks for hosting! i've got an original poem this week, a list full of silly trees whose lunacy i hope is praiseworthy.

http://fomagrams.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/poetryfriday-the-fruits-of-trees-no-god-created/

Pentimento said, on 3/25/2011 4:42:00 AM

A haiku by Issa on the impermanence of things:
http://pentiment.blogspot.com/2011/03/poetry-friday-this-dewdrop-world.html

Carol said, on 3/25/2011 4:45:00 AM

I'm in with a David Whyte poem. Apparently he is really well known, but I didn't know his work at all.

Love your poem-- I need some of this silliness in my life right now!

laurasalas said, on 3/25/2011 4:50:00 AM

Hi Mary Lee--I've missed PF the past few weeks. Too much chaos at my end! Happy to be back today with "Memory" from Tracie Vaughn Zimmer's new Cousins of Clouds: Elephant Poems at http://laurasalas.livejournal.com/267962.html

And 15 Words or Less are up at http://laurasalas.livejournal.com/267758.html

Thanks for hosting!

Sara said, on 3/25/2011 4:57:00 AM

Ha! If you saw my "frisbee flings" you would think them silly indeed---they tend to bounce on the ground. I LOVE your take on this, and will praise three silly things in your honor today. :)

My Poetry Friday contribution is "I Used To Know Her Name," a poem I drafted last week in response to Laura Purdie Salas and Susan Taylor Brown's new online weekly poetry book club.

jama said, on 3/25/2011 4:59:00 AM

I LOVE "Wild Atrocity!" So glad you shared it again.

This week I'm doing a little Spring cleaning in anticipation of my Poetry Potluck in April with a poem by Marilyn Annucci:

http://jamarattigan.livejournal.com/523631.html.

Smile and say, "Cheese!"

Thanks for hosting!!

debbiediller said, on 3/25/2011 5:03:00 AM

Good morning! I have Lullaby by Christina Rosetti on my blog this morning.

Linda said, on 3/25/2011 5:04:00 AM

Hi, Mary Lee, thanks for hosting. I'm in today with a review of J Patrick Lewis' new easy reader series.
Have a great weekend!

Stenhouse said, on 3/25/2011 5:04:00 AM

Happy Poetry Friday! On The Stenhouse Blog we have April by Alicia Ostriker. Enjoy!

Katie said, on 3/25/2011 5:25:00 AM

Happy Friday! Here's my poetry Friday post: http://sharingsoda.blogspot.com/2011/03/poetry-friday-2-review-tree-that-time.html

Thanks for hosting!

asuen said, on 3/25/2011 5:42:00 AM

Thanks for hosting today! I'm in with Won Ton: A Cat Tale Told in Haiku by Lee Wardlaw (Author) and Eugene Yelchin (Illustrator)http://wp.me/pWySC-bm

Andromeda Jazmon said, on 3/25/2011 6:02:00 AM

Thanks for rounding us up Mary Lee! I love your poem. I need to remember those things when I am getting exasperated by business and rushing. You have given me some joy! Hopkins is a favorite of mine, too.

I want to be part of your Poetry tag game in April! I am learning what fun QR codes can be so that sounds wonderful!

I have some Basho cherry blossom haiku for today.

kellyrfineman said, on 3/25/2011 6:07:00 AM

Thanks for hosting, Mary Lee!

I am in with my translation of Das Erste Veilchen by Karl Egon Ebert. http://kellyrfineman.livejournal.com/687647.html.

Rasco from RIF said, on 3/25/2011 6:10:00 AM

Thank you for hosting on this glorious spring day here in northern Virginia! I have shared a haiku by a Washington Post reader which is featured on the cover of the Weekend magazine that has a "guide to all things cherry blossom" today.

http://bit.ly/fYEfCy

Elaine Magliaro said, on 3/25/2011 6:28:00 AM

Thanks for the "Wild Atrocity" poem. I LOVE silly things. In fact--I AM a silly thing!

At Wild Rose Reader, I have Crocus Poems: Variations on a Theme. It includes three original poems that I posted before--along with rough drafts of two new porms that I wrote this morning.
http://wildrosereader.blogspot.com/2011/03/crocus-poems-variations-on-theme.html

Jeannine Atkins said, on 3/25/2011 6:40:00 AM

Mary Lee, thank you for Wild Atrocity, and making me smile.

I wrote about a new verse novel set mostly in Japan, called Orchards by Holly Thompson at
http://jeannineatkins.livejournal.com/157330.html

Can't wait to see more of you in April!

Elaine Magliaro said, on 3/25/2011 7:37:00 AM

At Blue Rose Girls, I have Silkworm Cocoon & Pupa Poems: Variations on a Theme. (They are all original poems.)

http://bluerosegirls.blogspot.com/2011/03/silkworm-cocoon-pupa-poems-variations.html

Karen E. said, on 3/25/2011 7:54:00 AM

(Oops -- mistyped my link ....)

Thanks for hosting, Mary Lee. Enjoyed your giddy take on GMH. :)

I'm in this week with a Mark Jarman poem, and it's here.

Kerry Aradhya said, on 3/25/2011 8:16:00 AM

Thanks for hosting and for sharing such a fun poem..although I have to admit I'm not wishing for any late-March snowball fights over here :)

My post today features the rhyming picture book My Many Colored Days...just in time to still celebrate the birthday month of Dr. Seuss.

http://kerryaradhya.blogspot.com/2011/03/poetry-friday-what-color-day-are-you.html

Janet S. said, on 3/25/2011 8:46:00 AM

Thanks for hosting.

My selection is "Where Is Spring?" This poem was written by Taiwanese poet Yang Huan (1930-1954). He wrote only twenty poems in his lifetime, but is considered by many scholars to be one of the main influences on modern Chinese children's poetry. The book is illustrated by H.Y. Huang and A. Yang.

Jennie said, on 3/25/2011 8:57:00 AM

I'm in with an original haiku about cherry blossoms.

Thanks for hosting!

http://www.jenrothschild.com/2011/03/poetry-friday_25.html

marthacalderaro said, on 3/25/2011 10:54:00 AM

Yes, praise all silly things! Thanks for your wonderful poem and for hosting, Mary Lee. I have Steve Kowit's "The Grammar Lesson" over at my blog today. Happy Poetry Friday!
http://marthacalderaro.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/poetry-friday-6/

Carlie said, on 3/25/2011 12:00:00 PM

Thank you for your work as host. What a great take on Hopkins genius. :) You made me smile.

I am sharing a post today with an original tanka about the noise of spring.

http://twinklingalong.blogspot.com/2011/03/poetry-friday-spring-tanka.html

Jone said, on 3/25/2011 12:06:00 PM

Well, I'm late to the party but here I am!!
I have another sneak peak with student pomes for National Poetry Month.

Joyce Ray said, on 3/25/2011 12:08:00 PM

Mary Lee,your take on Hopkins' Pied Beauty is chock full of fun images. Japan is still on my mind, so I offer an original Haiku at my Musings blog.

http://[email protected]

I look forward to meandering through all the wonderful poems offered up today!

booksdogsandfrogs said, on 3/25/2011 3:32:00 PM

I'm late, but better late then never! Here's my post http://booksdogsandfrogs.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/the-duck-and-the-kangaroo/ with some Edward Lear for a nonsensical day.
Sarah

Sherry said, on 3/25/2011 4:10:00 PM

Sorry so late. Today I'm featuring John Donne and his poetry and poetic sermons: http://www.semicolonblog.com/?p=4688

Nicole Marie Schreiber said, on 3/25/2011 5:23:00 PM

My poem this week is WANDERERS by Walter de la Mare, in honor of my WIP-- middle grade historical fiction (set in 1548 Bruges and Brussels) where the main character is the daughter of an astronomer. "Wanderers" are what the planets were called in the night sky during the middle ages and renaissance. Enjoy!

http://nicolemarieschreiber.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/poetry-friday-wanderers-the-planets/

-Nicole Marie Schreiber

deowriter said, on 3/26/2011 7:50:00 AM

I forgot to add how much I liked "Wild Atrocity". I think I need that in from of me this coming week. The last week before spring break.

bookgetaway said, on 3/26/2011 11:53:00 PM

I'm hoping I can still get in! My contribution is a beautiful poem by the Irish Eavan Boland, White Hawthorn in the West of Ireland. Beautiful images!
http://happycatholic.wordpress.com/2011/03/26/poetry-friday-white-hawthorn-in-the-west-of-ireland/

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4. Abundant Words - Dianne Hofmeyr

By: Dianne Hofmeyr, on 4/11/2010
Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Dianne Hofmeyr, naming of cattle, inscape, Marguerite Poland, Nguni skins, cattle byres, Leigh Voight, instress, Pied Beauty, dappled, Nguni cattle names, Abundant Herds, poetry, Add a tag

I’m contemplating the patterns under my feet on an Nguni skin next to my bed, thinking about the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem:

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 …

I love the words: dappled, brindled, stippled, studded, mottled, spattered, freckled and I wonder what Hopkins would have made of this pattern.

I own five Nguni. In Zulu terms if they were flesh and blood, this would make me a very wealthy woman. Each Nguni is differently and distinctly patterned. I know the name of each of them thanks to Marquerite Poland’s evocative book The Abundant Herds celebrating Zulu cattle naming, brilliantly illustrated by Leigh Voight.

The Nguni beside my bed is Stones in the river – a creamy beast with dark round patches circled by lighter rings like the tide-mark on boulders in an African river that is slowly drying.

The beauty of an oral language lies not only in its lyrical and tonal qualities but in the slight nuances, the imaginative combination of words, the rich metaphor, exaggeration, paradox, imagery, allusion and truth. It’s the language of young herdsmen who have spent their days in the veldt with nothing but wide open spaces and the stone-like palisades of ancient cow byres and nights next to flickering fires under huge star-strewn skies, to feed their imagination and idea of story – each herdsman knowing his beasts so well that every single one is praised by name and sung to as it enters the byre for milking - the names giving credit to human creativity, playfulness and story telling.

My four other Nguni are named:
Gaps between the branches of the tree silhouetted against the sky. A huge cream beast with black shapes that seem like trees in silhouette against a pale sky.

Flies in the buttermilk. A creamy animal stippled with small black dots that resemble flies swimming in a bucket of buttermilk.

6 Comments on Abundant Words - Dianne Hofmeyr, last added: 4/15/2010

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5. Poetry Friday - 11

By: Michele, on 5/16/2008
Blog: Scholar's Blog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Poetry Friday, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Add a tag

We had our summer last weekend, now we're back to having Spring (by which I mean rain interspersed with sunshine), so this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins sprang (ho, ho !) to mind:

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.-Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

GMH's poetry always seems to soothe my ear as well as my mind - the rhythms and the word choices focus my mind beautifully...

This week's Poetry Friday round-up is over at Two Writing Teachers.