#30002
06/11/2001 7:45 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
As long as we're on the subject of summer, there's this contribution from Shakespeare:
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
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#30003
06/12/2001 2:14 AM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Thanks, Bob--this one's mine.  Hi, lusy!
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#30004
06/20/2001 7:48 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
Have we run out of poetry, friends? I've been thinking about something to express my condolences to Max and lady on the loss of their grandmothers and today something in another thread (about sea changes) recalled this poem which was recited by the minister at the funeral of my maternal grandmother, who was one of the great influences of my life, and a devout Christian lady. So Max, this is for you, with sincere condolences:
CROSSING THE BAR
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
This has been set to a beautiful tune and can be found in the Methodist Hymnal.
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#30005
06/20/2001 8:40 PM
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409 |
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#30006
06/21/2001 11:49 AM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
CROSSING THE BAR
Thank you, Bob. It is a lovely song. I had not known it had been put to music until I heard it on the radio one day, not too long after my friend's body had given up. I sat there transfixed, with tears streaming. I first heard of the poem in one of the Anne of Green Gables series, maybe the fifth one.
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#30007
06/21/2001 1:48 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 427
addict
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addict
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 427 |
Here is a Spanish contribution to "sonnets about sonnets". I would adventure that no Spanish schoolchild ever memorises what are the metric rules for a sonnet. It is much easier to memorise this one, and then to work them out from there...  The sonnet is by Lope de Vega, a sixteenth century Spanish poet. This is a translation done by Alix Ingber, a professor of Spanish at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. They are found at http://sonnets.spanish.sbc.edu/Vega_Repente.html Soneto de repente Un soneto me manda hacer Violante, que en mi vida me he visto en tal aprieto; catorce versos dicen que es soneto, burla burlando van los tres delante. Yo pensé que no hallara consonante y estoy a la mitad de otro cuarteto, mas si me veo en el primer terceto, no hay cosa en los cuartetos que me espante. Por el primer terceto voy entrando, y parece que entré con pie derecho pues fin con este verso le voy dando. Ya estoy en el segundo y aun sospecho que voy los trece versos acabando: contad si son catorce y está hecho. Instant Sonnet A sonnet Violante bids me write, such grief I hope never again to see; they say a sonnet's made of fourteen lines: lo and behold, before this line go three. I thought that I could never get this far, and now I'm halfway into quatrain two; but if at the first tercet I arrive, I'll have no fear: there's nothing I can't do! The tercets I have just begun to pen; I know I must be headed the right way, for with this line I finish number one. Now I am in the second, and suspect that I have written nearly thirteen lines: count them, that makes fourteen, and look -- it's done. (©Alix Ingber, 1995)  Marianna
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#30008
06/21/2001 3:36 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819 |
Candy is dandy,
But liquor is quicker.
Odgen Nash
Actually, one of my favorite poem's is John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," but I don't have the text with me here at work.
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#30009
06/21/2001 3:53 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 771
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 771 |
Can do, Alex... I'm partial to this one too - A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning As virtuous men passe mildly away, And whisper to their soules, to goe, Whilst some of their sad friends doe say, The breath goes now, and some say, no: So let us melt, and make no noise, No teare-floods, nor sigh-tempests move, T'were prophanation of our joyes To tell the layetie our love. Moving of th'earth brings harmes and feares, Men reckon what it did and meant, But trepidation of the spheares, Though greater farre, is innocent. Dull sublunary lovers love (Whose soule is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it. But we by a love, so much refin'd. That our selves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind, Care lesse, eyes, lips, and hands to misse. Our two soules therefore, which are one, Though I must goe, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to ayery thinnesse beate. If they be two, they are two so As stiffe twin compasses are two, Thy soule the fixt foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the'other doe. And though it in the center sit, Yet when the other far doth rome, It leanes, and hearkens after it, And growes erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to mee, who must Like th'other foot, obliquely runne; Thy firmnes drawes my circle just, And makes me end, where I begunne. My favorite is probably The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, but it's even longer, so I won't post it here... go to http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/eliot.html if you'd like to be reminded of Eliot's sweetness. Later edit > Whoa! I just scrolled through that page, rereading the poem, and somehow I associated a completely different tone with it - or maybe it just means something different to me now that I'm older... anyhow, I don't think sweetness is really what I meant. Still love the poem, but.
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#30010
06/21/2001 4:04 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
The vocal transcription of John Cage's Four Minutes and Thirty-three Seconds which I include below in its entirety.
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#30011
06/21/2001 4:12 PM
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757 |
Even richer in sonorous majesty is the transcription for barbershop quartet. Such honey-sweet harmonies have you never heard!
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#30012
06/21/2001 4:58 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear Faldage: Is brevity synonymous with nullity?
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#30013
06/21/2001 6:08 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819 |
Perhaps you could say that vocal part is "nulutative" :)
(see tsuwm's thread on Q&A page)
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#30014
06/22/2001 2:13 AM
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189 |
and for anyone who is dealing, or has dealt, with the pain of loss, and the ensuing process of "healing,"...And with thoughts to my best friend, John, who we lost a year ago this month:
ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT
by Walt Whitman
On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.
Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.
From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.
Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in
apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the
Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall
shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they
endure,
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons
shall again shine.
Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?
Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter,
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.
--Walt Whitman 1871
"Leaves of Grass" (from "Sea Drift")
Warmly,
David
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#30015
06/26/2001 8:54 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 275
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 275 |
Marianna,
What a lovely, lighthearted addition to the thread that started out as just sonnets and ended up as sonnets on sonnets. I hope this continues. I hope there are other hidden treasures being unearthed by somebody somewhere.
chronist
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