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Yesterday's post was "The First Violet" by Karl Egon Ebert, which was completely evocative of Spring. And here in the mountains of New Hampshire, Spring is just now starting to spring: the forsythia, tulips and daffodils are out, the trees are in bud, the snowmelt is racing in the stream outside my window. And so it was that I came to today's poem choice:

Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

On the surface, this is a poem about spring, and early growth of plants and leaves, when the first yellow greens appear on the trees. In the fifth line, the leaves are just leaves, but use of the word "subsides" shows a settling or falling sort of motion. And then the sixth line is the "turn," where Frost gets to his real topic. The subsidance of leaves reminds him of the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. Dawn is lost, but day remains. And then that last, killer line with a fatalistic ring to it, decrees that "Nothing gold can stay."

It can be taken to mean that nothing can stay gold, but I think it means that nothing can stay young. For me, the poem is about the transient nature of youth, with a hint of loss. And in my mind today, remembering this poem (I don't yet have it committed to memory, but I sure remembered the leaf references), I thought that "Nothing gold can stay" suited the brilliant-gold of the autumn leaves quite well. And so, evidently, did Robert Frost. Here are the last three lines of this poem from an earlier draft, at a time when the poem was called "Nothing Golden Stays":

In autumn she achieves
A still more golden blaze
But nothing golden stays.

Today's poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay," was first published in 1923, in The Yale Review. But Frost played around with it for several years, and several earlier versions of it exist. The earliest of these other versions was sent to a friend in 1920, and ended as you see above.

Frost's initial focus was on the evanescent quality of new growth. Buds are golden before green. Leaves appear to be flowers before they unfold and "subside" to be leaves. Trees burst forth in color again in the fall, then the leaves subside once and for all to earth. In later revisions, he decided to universalize the poem more. By introducing the idea of Eden, Frost injects a human element into the poem without spelling it out. The sinking of Eden is a reference to the "fall of man," but it echoes the idea of transience: Eden was short-lived, but the rest of man's time on earth has been much longer. Dawn, usually the time when the sun rises, is describes in falling terms as well, but dawn "goes down" to the bright light of day. Is that really a decline, or an improvement? Again, dawn is transient and over quickly, but day lasts far longer. Perhaps, then, Eden was transient, and the longer time spent after the fall is to be preferred? Is our preference for "gold" really such a good thing? Is not the long day better than the short dawn? Is not the summer longer and more durable than the budding spring? Is it not worth our while to recognize that youth's a stuff will not endure* and to appreciate our adulthood?

The poem concludes strongly, for a number of reasons:

"Nothing gold can stay."

Why does that line pack such a wallop?

Well, first, looking at metre, it is different than all the rest. The first seven lines are essentially iambic (a two-syllable poetic foot in which an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable, ta-TUM), although the first line has an oddball because "nature" is usually read NAture, not naTURE. The first seven lines each have six syllables to them. That last line has only five. And it's trochaic, with a truncated ending. (Don't panic - it means that it has two-syllable feet that are trochees, in which a stressed syllable is followed by an unstressed syllable, TUM-ta, but that the last foot only has one syllable, which is accented, so the line reads TUM-ta TUM ta TUM.)

It's written in rhymed couplets. Not just any rhymed couplets, either: but end-stopped rhymed couplets (which is to say that each line logically pauses at the end, where the commas and periods and semicolon can be found). This could easily become sing-songy in the wrong hands, yet Frost manages his images well enough that I find myself not truly noticing the rhyminess of it on a conscious level. Particularly if I read it aloud (as one should), where the pause after a comma is not as long as that created by a semicolon or a period. Especially since the lines "So Eden sank to grief,/So dawn goes down to day" form a single sentence, and don't rhyme with one another. Instead, they create a break before that last line, which stands alone.

Second, looking at word choice, the line begins with a negative: "Nothing." While there have been hints at loss and falling and evanescence throughout the poem, creating a vaguely melancholy tone, this word is aggressively negative. Also, as written that last line can be read as a command, rather than as a commentary on loss. It is a far broader statement than any that comes before it, generalized as it is to all things (in the negative). Gold cannot stay.

A possible stretch: While folks don't usually interpret the poem this way, one could stretch so far as to say that gold in that last line might not refer to the "just-Spring" qualities in the poem (with a nod to e.e. cummings), but could refer as well to money, which one cannot, after all, take with them.

For some other commentaries on the poem, check out these essays over at Modern American Poetry. The second one, analyzing it from a linguistic point of view, is fascinating to me, although I'm sure most people don't have the patience for it.

I should note that this poem is well-known to a lot of readers of the S.E. Hinton novel, The Outsiders, which both M and S read in middle school.

"That's a sad poem," said S. "It was used in The Outsiders. Have you ever read that book?"

The answer is that I haven't. In the time and town where I grew up, once you were done with children's books, you moved on to grown-up titles. S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, first published in 1967 (when I was three), was clearly around when I was a teen, but I never heard of it until S read it in middle school. But the poem plays a key role in the book in the relationship between the characters Ponyboy and Johnny. Johnny says that the poem's about the importance of appreciating the things you loved in youth, and about staying "golden", or young. And because S so strongly associates the poem with the characters in the book, she finds it sad. And really, it is sad, or at least fatalistic.

What think you?

* The quote "Youth's a stuff will not endure" is the closing line of "O Mistress Mine" by William Shakespeare. It was a song sung by the character Feste in Twelfth Night.

Where can one go from Sara Teasdale's poem, "The Look", with its mention of so many men by name? Well, I chose to focus on the last two lines of Teasdale's poem:

But the kiss in Colin's eyes
  Haunts me night and day.

Where to focus - on the kiss, or on the eyes? No need to choose when you go with Ben Jonson's lovely "Song: To Celia", a poem later set to music by an unknown composer:

Song: To Celia
by Ben Jonson

Drink to me, only, with thine eyes,
  And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
  And I'll not look for wine.
The thirst, that from the soul doth rise,
  Doth ask a drink divine:
But might I of Jove's Nectar sup,
  I would not change for thine.

I sent thee, late, a rosy wreath,
  Not so much honoring thee,
As giving it a hope, that there
  It could not withered be.
But thou thereon did'st only breath,
  And sent'st it back to me:
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
  Not of it self, but thee.


Analysis of the poem:
The poem is written in two eight-line stanzas, each rhymed ABCBABCB DEFEDEFE, with alternating lines of iambic tetrameter (four iambic feet, taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM) and iambic trimeter (three iambic feet, taDUM taDUM taDUM). It's easy to hear how all the short lines of each stanza rhyme with one another; the cross-rhyming of the longer lines is more subtle, but adds an extra coherence to the poem without feeling quite as formulaic as it might have had he used an ABABCBCB rhyme or something similar.

History:

The poem was written by Ben Jonson, who lived from 1572 to 1637. Jonson was a well-educated man who wrote poetry and plays beginning in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, rather like one of the young actors in his 1598 play Every Man in His Humour: William Shakespeare, the author of yesterday's bonus poem. See how well everything is tying together for my National Poetry Month festival?

Jonson led a rather dramatic life. He was a soldier with Francis Verre in the Netherlands for a while, then a (bad) actor and (good) playwright. He married a woman whom he described as "a shrew, but honest". After cowriting a play called The Isle of Dogs with Thomas Nashe, Jonson was put in prison for "lewd and mutinous behavior" (the Elizabethan spellings are more fun: "leude and mutynous"). A year later he was back in jail for having killed an actor in a duel. He pleaded guilty, but was later released under "benefit of clergy", for which he gave up all his goods and chattels, was branded on his left thumb and had to recite a short Bible verse in Latin. All of this was before he began to achieve success with Every Man in His Humour. Jonson became more successful still under James I.

A recording of this song:
When I first posted this poem in February of this year, I included a video of a young voice major. Today, I offer you a recording of Richard Tauber. Although the audio is a little scratchy, the tempo and feel is much more what I like in a performance of this song, which is why it's here for you today:

Today is the anniversary of Shakespeare's death (and quite possibly of his birth as well - he was baptised on April 26th, but his date of birth is unknown). In honor of the 393rd anniversary of his death on April 23, 1616, a bonus poem - one of my favorite of his sonnets:

Sonnet 116
by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
  If this be error and upon me proved,
  I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Analysis and discussion

This particular Shakespearian sonnet shows Shakespeare at his finest. While it's written in iambic pentameter like the others, and the rhyme scheme is the same as other Shakespearian sonnets: ABABCDCDEFEFGG, this one makes quite a lot of use of enjambment, a technique where one is expected not to pause or stop at the end of each line, but only where punctuation exists. Thus, the first part of the poem when recited aloud would read as follows:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.
Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no!
It is an ever-fixèd mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken;

In honor of Earth Day, a "bonus" poem for this month's ongoing celebration of National Poetry Month, and one that many folks I know can recite in whole or in part from memory, particularly the first two lines:

Trees
by Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Analysis of the poem: The poem is written in iambic tetrameter (four iambic feet per line, taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM) in rhymed couplets. Its apparent simplicity has led to quite a number of parodies over the year, including one by Ogden Nash bemoaning the abundance of billboards along the road. Despite its simple form and somewhat sentimental nature, I cannot help but love this poem, so here it is.

About Joyce Kilmer: He was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1886. He taught Latin for a while, then worked for Funk and Wagnalls defining words for their dictionary (5 cents per word defined). He published his first book of verse in 1911, and in 1913, his poem "Trees" appeared in Poetry Magazine, leading to nearly immediate popularity as a poet. In 1917, Kilmer enlisted in the military and headed off to war. He died in 1918 on a scouting mission to locate a German machine gun. He's buried in France, with a memorial and a Turnpike rest area dedicated to him in New Jersey, along with a number of schools in New Jersey and elsewhere, a park in the Bronx, and a forest in North Carolina.

Yesterday's poem was the most famous rondeau of the English language, In Flanders Fields by John McCrae. Today's poem was selected because of its title:

Rondeau
by James Henry Leigh Hunt

Jenny kissed me when we met,
  Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
  Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
  Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
  Jenny kissed me.

The official title of the poem is "Rondeau", although it is often called "Jenny Kissed Me" as well. Unlike an actual rondeau, this poem is a single stanza of eight lines, with a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCD. It is written using trochaic feet (DUMta DUMta DUMta) in a form of hymn meter, with the following syllable counts: 7-8-7-8-7-8-7-4. What it shares with yesterday's rondeau (in addition to calling itself by that form's name) is the use of the first three words (or first four syllables, if you prefer) as its "refrain", with the poem beginning and ending with those same three words.

The poem is semi-autobiographical. Leigh Hunt had been seriously ill with influenza; upon visiting his friends Thomas Carlyle and his wife, Jane Welsh Carlyle (nicknamed "Jenny"), she jumped up and kissed him. Leigh Hunt wrote the poem as a tribute.

Although I think this poem reads like something from the first half of the 20th century, it was in fact written nearly a century earlier, during early Victorian times. James Henry Leigh Hunt was born in England in 1784, and lived until 1859. He was a good friend of both Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats, and introduced Keats to Italian poetry as well as personally introducing Keats to Shelley. Leigh Hunt was also an essayist and newspaper writer. He was also the person on whom Charles Dickens based the character of Skimpole in Bleak House.

How on earth to follow a poem like The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, particularly after providing you with performances by Christopher Walken and Vincent Price? Well, certainly not with something in the same vein. Rather than focusing on the words or themes of the poem, I decided to focus on a little something in its form: the repetition of a shorter ending line in all the stanzas, all of which end with the word "more", the most famous iteration being, of course, "nevermore."

And so it was that I got to thinking about a form called the rondeau, which involves a short, chorus-like line from time to time. And that is how I came to share with you the best-known rondeau in the English language:

In Flanders Fields
by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Discussion of the poem:
As mentioned at the start of the poem, it's a rondeau. The "chorus" line of the poem is, in this case, derived from the first three words of the poem: "In Flanders fields". Apart from that line, the poem is written in iambic tetrameter (four iambic feet per line, taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM), with end-rhyme options of "I" or "O". The first stanza has five lines, the second four, and the last stanza has six lines. The rhyme scheme is: AABBA AABX AABBAX (with X representing the shorter refrain "In Flanders fields", which is not rhymed to any other line).

This is one of the most famous of the War Poems from the First World War. It is frequently misprinted (including at The Academy of American Poets) using "grow" in the first line, but "blow" is actually correct. Flanders is, for those who aren't aware, an older name for what is now called Belgium.

About John McCrae: McCrae was a Canadian who trained as a doctor. He trained two of the first female doctors in Canada prior to enlisting in the military. He served in battle, and was none-too-happy when he was diverted from the field and sent to organize a medical unit. In fact, he is quoted as having said, "[A]ll the goddamn doctors in the world will not win this bloody war: what we need is more and more fighting men." His poem, "In Flanders Field", became internationally famous during his lifetime, and he regarded its success with detached amusement, although he was pleased that it was used to remind young men "where their duty lay". The first stanza of the poem is on the reverse side of the Canadian $10 bill. Because so many folks substitute "grow" for "blow" in the first line (in error), rumors abounded that the Bank of Canada got it wrong and was recalling the $10 bills. As Snopes.com pointed out, the first stanza of the poem is, in fact, correct, and any rumors of a recall are false.

McCrae died of pneumonia while working at a war hospital in Boulogne, and is buried in France. Below is an image of the poem in his own writing after it was published in Punch in 1915. (McCrae initially threw it out, but a fellow soldier named Edward Morrison salvaged it and submit it to Punch magazine. It initially appeared anonymously, but was rapidly identified as McCrae's work.)

So, yesterday's poetry post gave you a two-for-the-price-of-one sort of deal, with "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe and "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" by Sir Walter Raleigh. Rather than seizing on the idea of poetic conversation, I decided to go back to the poems and look at what they're talking about: passionate love, and whether or not it can be trusted. And that notion of theme put me in mind of a dark, dark tale in the form of a poetic monologue penned by Robert Browning.

Porphyria's Lover
by Robert Browning

The rain set early in tonight,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me — she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavor,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me forever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could tonight's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshiped me: surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propped her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!

Analysis: The poem is 60 lines long, and is written as a single, long stanza although it is, in fact, 12 5-line stanzas if one judges by the rhyme scheme: ABABB CDCDD (etc.) The poem is written in iambic tetrameter (four iambic feet per line: taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM), and it is a first-person narrative sharing a horrific story, indeed.

The speaker, who is madly in love with Porphyria, tells the tale of a rainy night, when his lady love came to his cottage, kindled his fire (actual and otherwise), then told him she loved him. Realizing that he does not actually deserve her (due to financial inequities - she comes from money, you see, and he lives in a cottage, and therefore does not), and perhaps concerned that the world will intervene, the speaker throttles Porphyria with her own hair, then sits there, embracing her, for quite some time later.

This poem was written just before the start of Queen Victoria's rule, as societal standards were shifting towards repressiveness (and particularly towards repression with respect to female sexuality) but not in the heydey of Victorian principles, which didn't occur until much later in the century. Porphyria is the disease which is believed to have caused the madness of King George III and of Vincent Van Gogh — symptoms include hallucination, paranoia, depression and more — and yet, Browning would have known none of that when he crafted his poem about a man in love with with a woman named Porphyria, which manages to equate love and madness.

As with Browning's later poem, "My Last Duchess", about which I put up a pretty great post once, if I do say so myself, one might question where Browning's thoughts lay on the matter of sexual repression in general, and fear of feminine sexuality in particular. I don't know the answer, but it's pretty clear that this poem, like "My Last Duchess", is intensely psychological. Where "My Last Duchess" depicts the Duke's efforts to control his wife and what can be viewed as her sexual conduct (or, if the Duke is to be believed — and it seems as if he is not — her sexual misconduct), even if only smiles and blushes are mentioned, "Porphyria's Lover" tackles similar themes of feeling threatened by a woman and trying to control her. The speaker in this poem is threatened by her position in society, perhaps, or maybe he's just operating out of a place of personal insecurity; his strangulation of his beloved to ensure her "eternal love" is decidedly controlling (in a crazy-ass way, but still).

I should note that some folks hold the theory that Porphyria is not actually dead, but has merely participated in erotic asphyxiation; that particular interpretation makes the poem kinky instead of creepy, but my money's on creepy, particularly in light of the later poem, "My Last Duchess", which definitely involved craziness and murder.

Yesterday's song/poem, "O Mistress Mine" by William Shakespeare, probably falls within the carpe diem sensibilities of last week's "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell or the other week's "To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time" by Robert Herrick. It's also a bit romantic, I think, albeit in a light-hearted vein. The idea of music and making the most of love put me in mind of a different poem from Elizabethan times, written by an alleged rival of Shakespeare's, Christopher Marlowe.

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
by Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.

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

There will I make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the 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.

Thy silver dishes for thy meat
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
Prepared each day for thee and me.

The shepherd 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.

The skinny on Marlowe and this poem

Christopher Marlowe was a famous poet and playwright in the time of Shakespeare. He was also a drunkard with an anger management issue, a homosexual, and quite possibly a spy.

Christened in early 1564, Marlowe was presumably born in late 1563 or early 1564 to a tradesman and a clergyman's daughter. Marlowe was one of the first (if not the first) playwright's to use blank verse in his work. He led a life shrouded in mystery, including some sort of secret "services to the Queen" which may have included spying on the House of Stuart. Based on an analysis of his works and widespread consensus in the writings of his contemporaries at the time, Marlowe is believed to have been gay. He was killed in a tavern by means of a dagger through the eye, allegedly over a dispute involving the tab, although the men with him at the time were all secret service (and in some cases, loan sharks as well). To say nothing of his murder occurring within a few days of his arrest for heresy. But perhaps I digress.

Analysis of the poem: Based on Marlowe's knowledge of much older Greek poems in which older men wrote in this sort of fashion to seduce younger men, this one can be read (if one chooses) as a love poem to a male, although it's usually read as a love poem from a man to a woman. The poem is constructed in four-line stanzas written in rhymed couplets, and using iambic tetrameter (four iambic feet per line: taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM). In some cases, there are nine syllables in a line owing to Marlowe's decision to conclude with a "feminine" ending (taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUMta), but that does not alter the analysis of the metre employed. Savvy?

Now, sometimes poets engage in dialogue. One could argue, for instance, that T.S. Eliot's incorporation within The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock of specific references to Marvell's To His Coy Mistress is a form of dialogue. But sometimes, the dialogue is far more direct. And far more personal.

And so it was that Sir Walter Raleigh (founder of Roanoke, courtier to the Queen, played by Clive Owen (yum!) in Elizabeth: The Golden Age) felt the need to mock or one-up or put down (hard to know for certain) Marlowe for his poem, crafting a poem in direct response that borrows both the rhyme and metre and the conceit of the poem, and adding a title that made clear what he was up to for good measure:

The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd
by Sir Walter Raleigh

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.

But Time drives 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,
Thy 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.

More on Raleigh and his writing

Raleigh was about 12 years older than Marlowe, inasmuch as he is believed to have been born in 1552. He engaged in Court-sanctioned piracy (known as "privateering") against Spain on England's behalf, and was richly rewarded for it. He not only planted English settlers in what is now Virginia, but also in parts of Ireland. He became a particular favorite of Queen Elizabeth I. He also struck up a romance with one of the Queen's ladies in waiting, whom he married on the sly when she was already pregnant. Upon the Queen's dicovery of the "unauthorized" marriage, she threw Raleigh in jail and dismissed his wife, Bess, from her service. He eventually came back into the Queen's good graces, but upon her death was thrown into the Tower of London for 13 years because he'd (allegedly) plotted to overthrow King James. Released from prison to lead an expedition to South America, he returned to England only to be beheaded at the request of a Spanish ambassador. But again, I digress.

Raleigh, an older and, to his own mind, wiser poet than Marlowe, wrote a response to Marlowe's Passionate Shepherd poem which can only be read as a put-down. On the surface, the response is based on the "love's" belief in the transience of life, but really, it was intended as a criticism of Marlowe's youth and naiveté. Although it would appear that Raleigh (apparently) gave Marlowe credit for intending the poem for a female, not that that's dispositive.

Interestingly, both of these poems come from the 1590s. I use the word "interestingly" because it seems to me that the first one, while a bit courtly, reads extremely well in the present day and because, moreover, it seems to me that Raleigh's reply reads as if it could have been written now (apart from the "thees" and "thous").

What to pick on the heels of yesterday's poem, "The Lobster Quadrille" by Lewis Carroll? Were it not still under copyright, I'd go with "Bagpipe Music" by Louis MacNeice, a poem that fairly dances across the page and off the tongue. Seeing the words England and France in the poem, I considered going with that old poem by Anonymous:

I see London, I see France
I see (your name)'s underpants.

But that seems an awfully short selection for the day, and I thought perhaps something other than nonsense verse would better suit my mood. I thought "O body swayed to music, o brightening glance,/How can we know the dancer from the dance?" but, alas, Yeats's "Among School Children" is still under copyright. And thus it was that I looked past the dance to the music, and came to William Shakespeare and one of the songs from Twelfth Night of which I am enamored.

O Mistress Mine
by William Shakespeare
from Twelfth Night, Act I, sc. 3

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'Tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty,
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty;
Youth's a stuff will not endure.

Discussion and analysis:

The structure of the song is as follows: It is rhymed AABCCB DDEFFE, and it uses a mix of meters. The first two lines of each stanza are in iambic tetrameter (although in the first stanza, there's an extra "feminine" ending resulting in nine syllables in a line that has 4 iambic feet: taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM(ta)). The third and sixth lines of each stanza are trochaic trimeter (with an extra stressed syllable at the end of the line: DUMta DUMta DUMta DUM), for a total of seven syllables per line. And the fourth and fifth lines of each stanza are in trochaic tetramter (four trochaic feet per line: DUMta DUMta DUMta DUMta).

Of course, when I sing this to myself (which is far more often than most of you would guess), I sing the alto part to a choral setting that I cannot find on YouTube. Alas. I can share with you this clip from the 1996 movie version of Twelfth Night, with Sir Ben Kingsley as Feste, which includes a nice performance (interrupted by some dialogue between Viola and Orsino):

I promised you, when I began my month of poetry posts, that I'd be moving from poem to poem, and that the poems would somehow be interrelated. And I grant you that the relationship between T.S. Eliot and Lewis Carroll is tenuous, and that the connection between "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Lobster Quadrille" is not immediately apparent. But allow me to explain myself. See, when I was looking at "Prufrock" again, trying to sort out what lines or themes really spoke to me, a few things popped out. Not the usual favorites ("the mermaids singing, each to each", the yellow fog in its cat-like state, or "I grow old . . . I grow old . . . /I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled"), but the oft-repeated line, "Let us go then, you and I". And I got to thinking about that line, and suddenly, in my head, popped the chorus of "The Lobster Quadrille", which sums up much of what poor Prufrock is going on about: "Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?" Et voilà.

The Lobster Quadrille
by Lewis Carroll

"Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail.
"There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle - will you come and join the dance?
    Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
    Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?

"You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!"
But the snail replied "Too far, too far!" and gave a look askance -
Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance.
  Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.
  Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.

"What matters it how far we go?" his scaly friend replied.
"There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
The further off from England the nearer is to France -
Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.
  Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
  Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?"


I promise you faithfully that I did not re-read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland all that many times, yet the poems and songs from it (and from Through the Looking Glass) turn up again and again. I am convinced that this is because Carroll is such a master when it comes to wordplay and to metre. His poems tend to stick the way music sticks, in part because of his clever use of repetition, rhythm and rhyme.

As for "The Lobster Quadrille", some say it's a parody of "The Spider and the Fly" by Mary Howitt, which begins "'Will you come into my parlor?' said the spider to the fly." It's not actually a parody, although it borrows the metre, and the first lines are related. Why? There was a well-known tune at the time for "The Spider and the Fly", and it was a cue to folks who knew the tune to sing "The Lobster Quadrille" to the same tune, which would have made the Quadrille catchier still. (You can find a version of "The Spider and the Fly" sung by Robin Hendrix at various internet sources, and can hear snippets of what that song sounded like.)

The lines of the stanzas for the verse are written in fourteeners (although in the first stanza, there's an additional beat in the first two lines), each line having four stressed syllables (which would fall on the beat in 4/4 or "common" time, and each line beginning with a pickup of either an 8th note (1 beat) or 2 16th notes (2 syllables)). The poem is exceptionally musical, and is written in rhymed couplets. Each verse includes a chorus, with a variant of the chorus for the middle stanza.