Poets and Poetry
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Poets and Poetry’
A little fable about a cat, a chicken and some wasted words.
Russian fabulist Ivan Andreyevich Krylov published his first collection of tales in 1809. More fables followed, and he became something of a celebrity, who was friendly with Emperor Nicholas I. Krylov was one of a handful of literary figures honoured with a place on the Millennium of Russia monument in Veliky Novgorod, unveiled in 1862.
If he is going to drop him, the embattled poet would prefer his friend to get on with it.
Sonnet 90 finds the narrator expecting that ‘the fair youth’, a rather worthless young man whom he nevertheless idolises, is going to drop the acquaintance. His only concern is to make his thoughtless friend understand that, given the other pressures the poet is under right now, if it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.
There is plenty of work in the garden of England for everyone, whether he has a green thumb or not.
A School History of England (1911) was a collaboration between C. R. L. Fletcher, an Oxford historian, and Rudyard Kipling, who wrote this closing poem as a call to citizenship. The citizen he admired wasn’t the one who shouted noisily for the flag or paraded in some highly-paid profession, but the one who was quietly busy keeping the garden of England beautiful.
During a severe sickness, John Donne, Dean of St Paul’s, asked of God three boons.
John Donne had been a soldier and assistant to prominent lawyer Sir Thomas Egerton; but James I encouraged him to be ordained in the Church of England, and in 1621 he was appointed Dean of St Paul’s in London. A life-threatening bout of illness in 1623 caused him to reflect deeply and not a little anxiously on where he stood with God.
In time of crisis, so the legend goes, Sir Francis Drake will come to our aid again, as once he did against the Spanish Armada.
Drake’s Drum is a snare drum painted with the arms of Sir Francis Drake, which went with him on his historic voyage around the world in 1577-80. It is said that before his death, he instructed his heirs to keep it safe at Buckland Abbey, his family home in Devon, and promised that if ever England were under threat the people should beat the drum, and he would return. The drum survives to this day.
Juliet complains that the man she loves has the wrong name, and the man she loves hears her doing it.
One night, Romeo Montague slips into a masked ball at the Capulet residence in Verona — chasing a girl as usual. There he meets Juliet, and Rosaline is forgotten. When he learns that Juliet is the daughter of his father’s sworn enemy, he rushes from the dance, and soon afterwards we find him in the garden, thinking furiously. Suddenly he sees a light at a window above: it seems Juliet has been thinking too.