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    The Mysterious Visitor
    by Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky


    Spirit, lovely guest, who are you?
    Whence have you flown down to us?
    Taciturn and without a sound
    Why have you abandoned us?
    Where are you? Where is your dwelling?
    What are you, where did you go?
    Why did you appear,
    Heavenly, upon the Earth?

    Mayhap you are youthful Hope,
    Who arrives from time to time
    Cloaked in magic
    From a land unknown?
    Merciless as Hope,
    Sweetest joy you show us
    For a moment, then
    Take it back and fly away.

    Was it Love that you enacted
    For us all in mystery? . . .
    Days of love, when one beloved
    Rendered this world beautiful
    Ah! then, sighted through the veil
    Earth did seem unearthly...
    Now the veil has lifted; Love is gone;
    Life is empty, joy - a dream.

    Was it Thought, enchanting
    You embodied for us here?
    Far removed from every worry,
    With a dreamy finger pointing
    To her lips, she sallies forth
    Just like you, from time to time,
    Ushers us without a sound
    Back to bygone days.

    Or within you dwells the sacred spirit
    Of Dame Poetry? . . .
    Just like you, she came from Heaven
    Veiling us twofold:
    Using azure for the skies,
    And clear white for earth;
    What lies near is lovely through her;
    All that's distant - known.

    Or perhaps 'twas premonition
    That descended in your guise
    And to us with clarity described
    All that's sacred and divine?
    Thus it often happens in this life:
    Something brilliant flies to meet us,
    Raises up the veil
    And then beckons us beyond.
    *******************************
    *******************************

    Vasily Zhukovsky


    Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky (February 1783 – April 1852) was the foremost Russian poet of the 1800s. He is credited with introducing the Romantic Movement to Russian literature. Romanticism in Russia would produce the likes of Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov among others. The main body of Zhukovsky's literary output consists of free translations covering an impressively wide range of poets from Ferdowsi to Friedrich Schiller. Quite a few of his translations proved to be more competently-written and enduring works than their originals.

    Early life

    Zhukovsky was the illegitimate son of a Russian landowner, Nikolai Bunin and a Turkish slave. He was given his godfather's surname. In his youth, he lived and studied at the Moscow University Noblemen's Pension, where he was heavily influenced by Freemasonry, English Sentimentalism, and the German Sturm und Drang movement. He also frequented the house of Nikolay Karamzin, the preeminent Russian man of letters and the founding editor of The European Messenger (also known in English as The Herald of Europe). In 1802, Zhukovsky published a free translation of Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard" in The Messenger. The translation introduced Russian readers to his trademark sentimental-melancholy style and instantly made him a household name. Today it is conventionally cited as the starting point of Russian Romanticism.

    In 1808, Karamzin asked Zhukovsky to take over the editorship of the Messenger. The young poet used this position to explore Romantic themes, motifs, and genres. He was also among the first Russian writers to cultivate the mystique of the Romantic poet. He dedicated much of his best poetic work to his half-niece Masha Protasova; his unrequited love for her clouded his personal life for years. His passionate but futile affair with Masha became an indelible part of his poetic personality.
    Mature works

    As Vladimir Nabokov noted, Zhukovsky belonged to the class of poets who incidentally verge on greatness but never quite attain that glory. His main contribution was as a stylistic and formal innovator who borrowed liberally from European literature in order to provide models in Russian that could inspire "original" works. Zhukovsky was particularly admired for his first-rate melodious translations of German and English ballads. Among these, Ludmila (1808) and its companion piece Svetlana (1813) are considered landmarks in the Russian poetic tradition. Both were free translations of Gottfried August Burger's well-known German ballad Lenore—although each interpreted the original in a different way. Zhukovsky characteristically translated Lenore yet a third time as part of his efforts to develop a natural-sounding Russian dactylic hexameter. His many translations of Schiller—including lyrics, ballads, and the drama Jungfrau von Orleans (about Joan of Arc)—became classic works in Russian that many consider to be of equal if not higher quality than their originals. They were remarkable for their psychological depth and greatly impressed and influenced Fyodor Dostoevsky, among many others. Zhukovsky's life's work as an interpreter of European literature probably constitutes the most important body of literary hermeneutics in the Russian language.

    When French Emporer Napoleon I invaded Russia in 1812, Zhukovsky joined the Russian general staff under Field Marshal Kutuzov. There he wrote much patriotic verse, including the original poem "A Bard in the Camp of the Russian Warriors," which helped to establish his reputation at the imperial court. He also composed the lyrics for the national anthem of Imperial Russia, "God Save the Tsar!" After the war, he became a courtier in St. Petersburg, where he founded the jocular Arzamas literary society in order to promote Karamzin's European-oriented, anti-classicist aesthetics. Members of the Arzamas included the teenage Alexander Pushkin, who was rapidly emerging as Zhukovsky's heir-apparent. The two became life-long friends, and although Pushkin eventually outgrew the older poet's literary influence, he increasingly relied on his protection and patronage.
    Later life and works

    In later life, Zhukovsky made a second great contribution to Russian culture as an educator and a patron of the arts. In 1826, he was appointed tutor to the tsarevich, the future Tsar Alexander II. His progressive program of education had such a powerful influence on Alexander that the liberal reforms of the 1860s are sometimes attributed to it. The poet also used his high station at court to take up the cudgels for such free-thinking writers as Mikhail Lermontov, Alexander Herzen, Taras Shevchenko, and the Decembrists. On Pushkin's untimely death in 1837, Zhukovsky stepped in as his literary executor, not only rescuing his work (including several unpublished masterpieces) from a hostile censorship, but also diligently collecting and preparing it for publication. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, he nurtured the genius and promoted the career of the great satirist, Nikolai Gogol, another close personal friend. In this sense, he acted behind-the-scenes as a kind of impresario for the Romantic Movement that he founded.

    Following the example of his mentor Karamzin, Zhukovsky travelled extensively in Europe throughout his life, meeting and corresponding with world-class cultural figures like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or the landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich. One of his early acquaintances was the popular German writer Friedrich de LaMotte-Fouquet, whose prose novella Undine was a European best-seller. In the late 1830s, Zhukovsky published a highly-original verse translation of Undine that re-established his place in the poetic avant-garde. Written in a waltzing hexameter, the work became the basis for a classic Russian ballet.

    In 1841, Zhukovsky retired from court and settled in Germany, where he married the 18 year old Elizabeth Reitern, the daughter of an artist friend. The couple had two children. He devoted much of his remaining life to a hexameter translation of Homer's Odyssey, which he finally published in 1849. Although the translation was far from accurate, it became a classic in its own right and occupies a notable place in the history of Russian poetry. Some scholars argue that both his Odyssey and Undina—as long narrative works—made an important, though oblique contribution to the development of the Russian novel. Zhukovsky died in Germany in 1852 and is buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, St. Petersburg.
    References

    Rydel, Christine A., ed. Russian literature in the age of Pushkin and Gogol. Poetry and drama. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. ISBN 0787630993
    Semenko, Irina M. Vasily Zhukovsky. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976. ISBN 080572995X
    Terras, Victor. A History of Russian Literature. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-300-05934-5

    Credits

    New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

    Vasily_Zhukovsky history
    Just found information on this important and great Russian poet...
    Will review and perhaps post more of his fine poetry at a future date..-Tyr
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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  3. #17
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    About- Anna Laetitia Barbauld

    Anna Barbauld (nee Aikin) was born in 1743, daughter of a nonconformist minister and schoolmaster, who taught her to read English before she was three and to master French, Italian, Latin and Greek while still a child. Her book of poems, published in 1773, was an astonishing success and established her at the time as a celebrated and widely read poet.

    Soon afterwards, she married a French priest, Rochemont Barbauld, and moved to Suffolk where they together founded and ran a school for boys. Without children of their own, they adopted one of her brother’s sons, and it was for him that she first began her innovative works for young people, for the first time treating them as children rather than as small adults.

    Unfortunately Barbauld’s marriage was unhappy: Rochemount was mentally unstable, with symptoms including obsessive washing; when Anna tried to intervene or help him, he attacked her. In 1808 he committed suicide.

    'The Rights of Women' is a response to Mary Wollstonecraft’s famous work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Barbauld’s poem is not entirely straightforward, seeming both to celebrate and question Wollstonecraft’s views on the need to liberate women from the injustices and restrictions they faced. Similarly, 'To the Poor' at first sight seems to endorse the notion that the poor must wait patiently until they are repaid in heaven for their suffering on earth. This complacency is then overturned by a simmering anger at the way things are but should not be; rewards for the poor in the afterlife are simply not good enough to justify the cruelty of the rich and powerful.

    Like her younger contemporaries, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Barbauld responded joyously to events in France and the example they gave of the possibility of violent change through revolution. She was a vigorous critic of the slave trade, and in 1812 wrote 'Eighteen Hundred and Eleven', a violent attack in heroic couplets on the folly of continuing the war against France, and on Britain’s decline. For this she was widely criticised for lack of patriotism in a time of national emergency, and afterwards she wrote little. She died in 1824.

    Though sometimes regarded as an early Romantic poet, and an important influence on Wordsworth and Coleridge (on one occasion Coleridge walked forty miles to meet her), her reputation declined after those writers turned against her. She offended Coleridge by criticising The Rime of the Ancient Mariner because it had no moral, and during the years after her death she was mainly remembered for her books for children and her fifty-volume edition of English novelists. However, feminist readers in the late twentieth century rediscovered the power and range of her verse; she is once again recognised as one of the important poets of her time.

    Anna Letitia Barbauld: Selected Poetry and Prose (...
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    Biography of Anna Laetitia Barbauld
    Anna Laetitia Barbauld poet

    Anna Laetitia Barbauld was a prominent English Romantic poet, essayist, and children's author.

    A "woman of letters" who published in multiple genres, Barbauld had a successful writing career at a time when female professional writers were rare. She was a noted teacher at the Palgrave Academy and an innovative children's writer; her primers provided a model for pedagogy for more than a century. Her essays demonstrated that it was possible for a woman to be publicly engaged in politics, and other women authors emulated her.Even more important, her poetry was foundational to the development of Romanticism in England. Barbauld was also a literary critic, and her anthology of 18th-century British novels helped establish the canon as known today.

    Barbauld's literary career ended abruptly in 1812 with the publication of her poem Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, which criticized Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars. Vicious reviews shocked Barbauld and she published nothing else during her lifetime. Her reputation was further damaged when many of the Romantic poets she had inspired in the heyday of the French Revolution turned against her in their later, more conservative, years. Barbauld was remembered only as a pedantic children's writer during the 19th century, and largely forgotten during the 20th century, but the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1980s renewed interest in her works and restored her place in literary history.

    Sources

    Much of what is known about Barbauld's life comes from two memoirs, the first published in 1825 and written by her niece Lucy Aikin, the second published in 1874 and written by her great-niece Anna Letitia Le Breton. Some letters from Barbauld to others also exist. However, a great many Barbauld family documents were lost in a fire that was the result of the London blitz in 1940.

    Early life

    Barbauld was born on 20 June 1743 at Kibworth Harcourt in Leicestershire to Jane and John Aikin. She was named after her maternal grandmother and referred to as "Nancy" (an 18th-century nickname for Anna). She was baptized by her mother's brother, John Jennings, in Huntingdonshire two weeks after her birth. Barbauld's father was headmaster of the Dissenting academy in Kibworth Harcourt and minister at a nearby Presbyterian church. She spent her childhood in what Barbauld scholar William McCarthy describes as "one of the best houses in Kibworth and in the very middle of the village square"; she was much in the public eye, as the house was also a boys' school. The family had a comfortable standard of living. McCarthy suggests they may have ranked with large freeholders, well-to-do tradesmen, and manufacturers. At his death in 1780, Barbauld's father's estate was valued at more than £2,500.

    Barbauld commented to her husband in 1773 that "For the early part of my life I conversed little with my own Sex. In the Village where I was, there was none to converse with." Barbauld was surrounded by boys as a child and adopted their high spirits. Her mother attempted to quash these, which would have been viewed as unseemly in a woman; according to Lucy Aikin's memoir, what resulted was "a double portion of bashfulness and maidenly reserve" in Barbauld's character. Barbauld was never quite comfortable with her identity as a woman and always believed that she failed to live up to the ideal of womanhood; much of her writing would center around issues central to women and her "outsider" perspective allowed her to question many of the traditional assumptions about femininity during the 18th century.

    Barbauld demanded that her father teach her the classics and after much pestering, he did. Thus she had the opportunity to learn Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and many other subjects generally deemed unsuitable for women at the time. Barbauld's penchant for study worried her mother, who expected her to end up a spinster because of her intellectualism; the two were never as close as Barbauld and her father. Yet Barbauld's mother was proud of her accomplishments and in later years wrote of her daughter: "I once indeed knew a little girl who was as eager to learn as her instructors could be to teach her, and who at two years old could read sentences and little stories in her wise book, roundly, without spelling; and in half a year more could read as well as most women; but I never knew such another, and I believe never shall."

    Barbauld's brother, John Aikin, described their father as "the best parent, the wisest counsellor, the most affectionate friend, every thing that could command love and veneration". Barbauld's father prompted many such tributes, although Lucy Aikin described him as excessively modest and reserved. Barbauld developed a strong bond with her brother during childhood, standing in as a mother figure to him; they eventually became literary partners. In 1817, Joanna Baillie commented of their relationship "How few brothers and sisters have been to one another what they have been through so long a course of years!"

    In 1758, the family moved to Warrington Academy, in Warrington, where Barbauld's father had been offered a teaching position. It drew many luminaries of the day, such as the natural philosopher and Unitarian theologian Joseph Priestley, and came to be known as "the Athens of the North" for its stimulating intellectual atmosphere. One other luminary may have been the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat; school records suggest he was a "French master" there in the 1770s. He may also have been a suitor to Barbauld; he allegedly wrote to John Aikin declaring his intention to become an English citizen and to marry her. Archibald Hamilton Rowan also fell in love with Barbauld and described her as, "possessed of great beauty, distinct traces of which she retained to the latest of her life. Her person was slender, her complexion exquisitely fair with the bloom of perfect health; her features regular and elegant, and her dark blue eyes beamed with the light of wit and fancy." Despite her mother's anxiety, Barbauld received many offers of marriage around this time—all of which she declined.

    First literary successes and marriage

    Joseph Priestley (c. 1763): "Mrs. Barbauld has told me that it was the perusal of some verses of mine that first induced her to write any thing in verse."

    In 1773, Barbauld brought out her first book of poems, after her friends had praised them and convinced her to publish. The collection, entitled simply Poems, went through four editions in just one year and surprised Barbauld by its success. Barbauld became a respected literary figure in England on the reputation of Poems alone. The same year she and her brother, John Aikin, jointly published Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, which was also well-received. The essays in it (most of which were by Barbauld) were favorably compared to Samuel Johnson's.

    In May 1774, despite some "misgivings", Barbauld married Rochemont Barbauld, the grandson of a French Huguenot and a former pupil at Warrington. According to Barbauld's niece, Lucy Aikin:

    [H]er attachment to Mr. Barbauld was the illusion of a romantic fancy—not of a tender heart. Had her true affections been early called forth by a more genial home atmosphere, she would never have allowed herself to be caught by crazy demonstrations of amorous rapture, set off with theatrical French manners, or have conceived of such exaggerated passion as a safe foundation on which to raise the sober structure of domestic happiness. My father ascribed that ill-starred union in great part to the baleful influence of [Jean-Jacques Rousseau's] 'Nouvelle Heloise,' Mr. B. impersonating St. Preux. [Barbauld] was informed by a true friend that he had experienced one attack of insanity, and was urged to break off the engagement on that account.—'Then' answered she, 'if I were now to disappoint him, he would certainly go mad.' To this there could be no reply; and with a kind of desperate generosity she rushed upon her melancholy destiny.

    After the wedding, the couple moved to Suffolk, near where Rochemont had been offered a congregation and a school for boys. Barbauld took this time and rewrote some of the psalms, a common pastime in the 18th century, publishing them as Devotional Pieces Compiled from the Psalms and the Book of Job. Attached to this work is her essay "Thoughts on the Devotional Taste, on Sects and on Establishments", which explains her theory of religious feeling and the problems inherent in the institutionalization of religion.

    It seems that Barbauld and her husband were concerned that they would never have a child of their own and in 1775, after only a year of marriage, Barbauld suggested to her brother that they adopt one of his children:

    I am sensible it is not a small thing we ask; nor can it be easy for a parent to part with a child. This I would say, from a number, one may more easily be spared. Though it makes a very material difference in happiness whether a person has children or no children, it makes, I apprehend, little or none whether he has three, or four; five, or six; because four or five are enow [sic] to exercise all his whole stock of care and affection. We should gain, but you would not lose.

    Eventually her brother conceded and the couple adopted Charles; it was for him that Barbauld wrote her most famous books: Lessons for Children (1778–9) and Hymns in Prose for Children (1781).

    Palgrave Academy

    Barbauld and her husband spent eleven years teaching at Palgrave Academy in Suffolk. Early on, Barbauld was not only responsible for running her own household but also the school's—she was accountant, maid, and housekeeper. The school opened with only eight boys but when the Barbaulds left in 1785, around forty were enrolled, a testament to the excellent reputation the school had acquired. The Barbaulds' educational philosophy attracted Dissenters as well as Anglicans. Palgrave replaced the strict discipline of traditional schools such as Eton, which often used corporal punishment, with a system of "fines and jobations" and even, it seems likely, "juvenile trials," that is, trials run by and for the students themselves. Moreover, instead of the traditional classical studies, the school offered a practical curriculum that stressed science and the modern languages. Barbauld herself taught the foundational subjects of reading and religion to the youngest boys and geography, history, composition and rhetoric, and science to higher grade levels. She was a dedicated teacher, producing a "weekly chronicle" for the school and writing theatrical pieces for the students to perform. Barbauld had a profound effect on many of her students; one who went on to great success, William Taylor, a preeminent scholar of German literature, referred to Barbauld as "the mother of his mind."

    Political involvement and Hampstead

    In September 1785, the Barbaulds left Palgrave for a tour of France; Rochemont's mental health had been deteriorating and he was no longer able to carry out his teaching duties. In 1787, they moved to Hampstead where Rochemont was asked to head a Presbyterian chapel. It was here that Barbauld became close friends with Joanna Baillie, the playwright. Although no longer in charge of a school, the Barbaulds did not abandon their commitment to education; they often had one or two pupils living with them, who had been recommended by personal friends.

    It was during this time, the heyday of the French Revolution, that Barbauld published her most radical political pieces. From 1787 to 1790, Charles James Fox attempted to convince the House of Commons to pass a law granting Dissenters full citizenship rights. When this bill was defeated for the third time, Barbauld wrote one of her most passionate pamphlets, An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts. Readers were shocked to discover that such a well-reasoned argument should come from a woman. In 1791, after William Wilberforce's attempt to outlaw the slave trade failed, Barbauld published her Epistle to William Wilberforce Esq. On the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade, which not only lamented the fate of the slaves but also warned of the cultural and social degeneration the British could expect if they did not abandon slavery. In 1792, she continued this theme of national responsibility in an anti-war sermon entitled Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation which argued that each individual is responsible for the actions of the nation: "We are called upon to repent of national sins, because we can help them, and because we ought to help them."

    Stoke Newington and the end of a literary career

    In 1802, the Barbaulds moved to Stoke Newington where Rochemont took over the pastoral duties of the Chapel at Newington Green. Barbauld herself was happy to be nearer her brother, John, because her husband's mind was rapidly failing. Rochemont developed a "violent antipathy to his wife and he was liable to fits of insane fury directed against her. One day at dinner he seized a knife and chased her round the table so that she only saved herself by jumping out of the window." Such scenes repeated themselves to Barbauld's great sadness and real danger, but she refused to leave him. Rochemont drowned himself in the nearby New River in 1808 and Barbauld was overcome with grief. When Barbauld returned to writing, she produced the radical poem Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812) that depicted England as a ruin. It was reviewed so viciously that Barbauld never published another work within her lifetime, although it is now often viewed by scholars as her greatest poetic achievement. Barbauld died in 1825, a renowned writer, and was buried in the family vault in St Mary's, Stoke Newington. After Barbauld's death, a marble tablet was erected in the Newington Green Chapel with the following inscription:

    In Memory of
    ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD,
    Daughter of John Aikin, D.D.
    And Wife of
    The Rev. Rochemont Barbauld,
    Formerly the Respected Minister of this Congregation.
    She was born at Kibworth in Leicestershire, 20th June, 1743,
    and died at Stoke Newington, 9th March, 1825.
    Endowed by the Giver of all Good
    With Wit, Genius, Poetic Talent, and a Vigorous Understanding
    She Employed these High Gifts
    in Promoting the Cause of Humanity, Peace, and Justice,
    of Civil and Religious Liberty,
    of Pure, Ardent, and Affectionate Devotion.
    Let the Young, Nurtured by her Writings in the Pure Spirit
    of Christian Morality;
    Let those of Maturer Years, Capable of Appreciating
    the Acuteness, the Brilliant Fancy, and Sound Reasoning
    of her Literary Compositions;
    Let the Surviving few who shared her Delightful
    and Instructive Conversation,
    Bear Witness
    That this Monument Records
    No Exaggerated Praise.

    Legacy

    At her death, Barbauld was lauded in the Newcastle Magazine as "unquestionably the first [i.e., best] of our female poets, and one of the most eloquent and powerful of our prose writers" and the Imperial Magazine declared "so long as letters shall be cultivated in Britain, or wherever the English language shall be known, so long will the name of this lady be respected." She was favorably compared to both Joseph Addison and Samuel Johnson, no mean feat for a woman writer in the 18th century. But by 1925 she was remembered only as a moralizing writer for children, if that. It was not until the advent of feminist literary criticism within the academy in the 1970s and 1980s that Barbauld finally began to be included in literary history.

    Barbauld's remarkable disappearance from the literary landscape took place for a number of reasons. One of the most important was the disdain heaped upon her by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, poets who in their youthful, radical days had looked to her poetry for inspiration, but in their later, conservative years dismissed her work. Once these poets had become canonized, their opinions held sway. Moreover, the intellectual ferment that Barbauld was an important part of—particularly at the Dissenting academies—had, by the end of the 19th century, come to be associated with the "philistine" middle class, as Matthew Arnold put it. The reformist 18th-century middle class was later held responsible for the excesses and abuses of the industrial age. Finally, the Victorians viewed Barbauld as "an icon of sentimental saintliness" and "erased her political courage, her tough mindedness, [and] her talent for humor and irony", a literary figure that modernists despised.

    As literary studies developed into a discipline at the end of the 19th century, the story of the origins of Romanticism in England emerged along with it; according to this version of literary history, Coleridge and Wordsworth were the dominant poets of the age. This view held sway for almost a century. Even with the advent of feminist criticism in the 1970s, Barbauld still did not receive her due. As Margaret Ezell explains, feminist critics wanted to resurrect a particular kind of woman—one who was angry, one who resisted the gender roles of her time, and one who attempted to create a sisterhood with other women. Barbauld did not easily fit into these categories and it was not until Romanticism and its canon began to be reexamined through a deep reassessment of feminism itself that a picture emerged of the vibrant voice Barbauld had been.

    Barbauld's works fell out of print and no full-length scholarly biography of her was written until William McCarthy's Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment in 2009.

    Poetry

    Barbauld's poetry, which addresses a wide range of topics, has been read primarily by feminist literary critics interested in recovering women writers who were important in their own time but who have been forgotten by literary history. Isobel Armstrong's work represents one way to do such scholarship; she argues that Barbauld, like other Romantic women poets:

    "The Mouse's Petition" from Barbauld's Poems (1772)

    ... neither consented to the idea of a special feminine discourse nor accepted an account of themselves as belonging to the realm of the nonrational. They engaged with two strategies to deal with the problem of affective discourse. First, they used the customary 'feminine' forms and languages, but they turned them to analytical account and used them to think with. Second, they challenged the male philosophical traditions that led to a demeaning discourse of feminine experience and remade those traditions.

    In her subsequent analysis of "Inscription for an Ice-House" she points to Barbauld's challenge of Edmund Burke's characterization of the sublime and the beautiful and Adam Smith's economic theories in the Wealth of Nations as evidence for this interpretation.

    The work of Marlon Ross and Anne K. Mellor represents a second way to apply the insights of feminist theory to the recovery of women writers. They argue that Barbauld and other Romantic women poets carved out a distinctive feminine voice in the literary sphere. As a woman and a Dissenter, Barbauld had a unique perspective on society, according to Ross, and it was this specific position that "obligated" her to publish social commentary. But, Ross points out, women were in a double bind: "they could choose to speak politics in nonpolitical modes, and thus risk greatly diminishing the clarity and pointedness of their political passion, or they could choose literary modes that were overtly political while trying to infuse them with a recognizable 'feminine' decorum, again risking a softening of their political agenda." Therefore Barbauld and other Romantic women poets often wrote "occasional poems". These poems had traditionally commented, often satirically, on national events, but by the end of the 18th century they were increasingly serious and personal. Women wrote sentimental poems, a style then much in vogue, on personal occasions such as the birth of a child and argued that in commenting on the small occurrences of daily life, they would establish a moral foundation for the nation. Scholars such as Ross and Mellor maintain that this adaptation of existing styles and genres is one way that female poets created a feminine Romanticism.

    Political essays and poems

    Barbauld's most significant political texts are: An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (1790), Epistle to William Wilberforce on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade (1791), Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation (1793), and Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812). As Harriet Guest explains, "the theme Barbauld's essays of the 1790s repeatedly return to is that of the constitution of the public as a religious, civic, and national body, and she is always concerned to emphasize the continuity between the rights of private individuals and those of the public defined in capaciously inclusive terms."

    For three years, from 1787 to 1790, Dissenters had been attempting to convince Parliament to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts which limited the civil rights of Dissenters. After the repeal was voted down for the third time, Barbauld burst onto the public stage after "nine years of silence." Her highly charged pamphlet is written in a biting and sarcastic tone; it opens, "we thank you for the compliment paid the Dissenters, when you suppose that the moment they are eligible to places of power and profit, all such places will at once be filled with them." She argues that Dissenters deserve the same rights as any other men: "We claim it as men, we claim it as citizens, we claim it as good subjects." Moreover, she contends that it is precisely the isolation forced on Dissenters by others that marks them out, not anything inherent in their form of worship. Finally, appealing to British patriotism, she maintains that the French cannot be allowed to outstrip the English in liberty.

    In the following year, 1791, after one of William Wilberforce's many efforts to suppress the slave trade failed to pass Parliament, Barbauld wrote her Epistle to William Wilberforce on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade. In it, she calls Britain to account for the sin of slavery; in harsh tones, she condemns the "Avarice" of a country which is content to allow its wealth and prosperity to be supported by the labor of enslaved human beings. Moreover, she draws a picture of the plantation mistress and master that reveals all of the failings of the "colonial enterprise: [an] indolent, voluptuous, monstrous woman" and a "degenerate, enfeebled man."

    In 1793, when the British government called on the nation to fast in honor of the war, anti-war Dissenters such as Barbauld were left with a moral quandary: "obey the order and violate their consciences by praying for success in a war they disapproved? observe the Fast, but preach against the war? defy the Proclamation and refuse to take any part in the Fast?" Barbauld took this opportunity to write a sermon, Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation, on the moral responsibility of the individual; for her, each individual is responsible for the actions of the nation because he or she constitutes part of the nation. The essay attempts to determine what the proper role of the individual is in the state and while she argues that "insubordination" can undermine a government, she does admit that there are lines of "conscience" that one cannot cross in obeying a government. The text is a classic consideration of the idea of an "unjust war."

    In Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812), written after Britain had been at war with France for a decade and was on the brink of losing the Napoleonic Wars, Barbauld presented her readers with a shocking Juvenalian satire; she argued that the British empire was waning and the American empire was waxing. It is to America that Britain's wealth and fame will now go, she contended, and Britain will become nothing but an empty ruin. She tied this decline directly to Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars:

    And think'st thou, Britain, still to sit at ease,
    An island Queen amidst thy subject seas,
    While the vext billows, in their distant roar,
    But soothe thy slumbers, and but kiss thy shore?
    To sport in wars, while danger keeps aloof,
    Thy grassy turf unbruised by hostile hoof?
    So sing thy flatterers; but, Britain, know,
    Thou who hast shared the guilt must share the woe.
    Nor distant is the hour; low murmurs spread,
    And whispered fears, creating what they dread;
    Ruin, as with an earthquake shock, is here

    This pessimistic view of the future was, not surprisingly, poorly received; "reviews, whether in liberal or conservative magazines, ranged from cautious to patronizingly negative to outrageously abusive." Barbauld, stunned by the reaction, retreated from the public eye. Even when Britain was on the verge of winning the war, Barbauld could not be joyous. She wrote to a friend: "I do not know how to rejoice at this victory, splendid as it is, over Buonaparte, when I consider the horrible waste of life, the mass of misery, which such gigantic combats must occasion."

    Children's literature

    Barbauld's Lessons for Children and Hymns in Prose for Children were a revolution in children's literature. For the first time, the needs of the child reader were seriously considered. Barbauld demanded that her books be printed in large type with wide margins so that children could easily read them and, even more important, she developed a style of "informal dialogue between parent and child" that would dominate children's literature for a generation. In Lessons for Children, a four-volume, age-adapted reading primer, Barbauld employs the concept of a mother teaching her son. More than likely, many of the events in these stories were inspired by Barbauld's experience of teaching her own son, Charles. But this series is far more than a way to acquire literacy—it also introduces the reader to "elements of society's symbol-systems and conceptual structures, inculcates an ethics, and encourages him to develop a certain kind of sensibility." Moreover, it exposes the child to the principles of "botany, zoology, numbers, change of state in chemistry ... the money system, the calendar, geography, meteorology, agriculture, political economy, geology, [and] astronomy." The series was relatively popular and Maria Edgeworth commented in the educational treatise that she co-authored with her father, Practical Education (1798), that it is "one of the best books for young people from seven to ten years old, that has yet appeared."

    Lessons for Children and Hymns in Prose had, for children's books, an unprecedented impact; not only did they influence the poetry of William Blake and William Wordsworth, they were also used to teach several generations of school children. Children's literature scholar William McCarthy states, "Elizabeth Barrett Browning could still quote the opening lines of Lessons for Children at age thirty-nine." Although both Samuel Johnson and Charles James Fox ridiculed Barbauld's children's books and believed that she was wasting her talents, Barbauld herself believed that such writing was noble and she encouraged others to follow in her footsteps. As Betsy Rodgers, her biographer explains, "she gave prestige to the writing of juvenile literature, and by not lowering her standard of writing for children, she inspired others to write on a similar high standard." In fact, because of Barbauld, Sarah Trimmer and Hannah More were inspired to write for poor children as well as organize a large-scale Sunday School movement, Ellenor Fenn wrote and designed a series of readers and games for middle-class children and Richard Lovell Edgeworth began one of the first systematic studies of childhood development which would culminate in not only an educational treatise authored by Maria Edgeworth and himself but also in a large body of children's stories by Maria herself.

    Barbauld also collaborated with her brother John Aikin on the six-volume series Evenings at Home (1793). It is a miscellany of stories, fables, dramas, poems, and dialogues. In many ways this series encapsulates the ideals of an Enlightenment education: "curiosity, observation, and reasoning." For example, the stories encourage learning science through hands-on activities; in "A Tea Lecture" the child learns that tea-making is "properly an operation of chemistry" and lessons on evaporation, and condensation follow. The text also emphasizes rationality; in "Things by Their Right Names," a child demands that his father tell him a story about "a bloody murder." The father does so, using some of the fictional tropes of fairy tales such as "once upon a time" but confounding his son with details such as the murderers all "had steel caps on." At the end, the child realizes his father has told him the story of a battle and his father comments "I do not know of any murders half so bloody." Both the tactic of defamiliarizing the world in order to force the reader to think about it rationally and the anti-war message of this tale are prevalent throughout Evenings at Home. In fact, Michelle Levy, a scholar of the period, has argued that the series encouraged readers to "become critical observers of and, where necessary, vocal resisters to authority." This resistance is learned and practiced in the home; according to Levy, "Evenings at Home ... makes the claim that social and political reform must begin in the family." It is families that are responsible for the nation's progress or regress.

    According to Lucy Aikin, Barbauld's niece, Barbauld's contributions to Evenings at Home consisted of the following pieces: "The Young Mouse," "The Wasp and Bee," "Alfred, a drama," "Animals and Countries," "Canute's Reproof," "The Masque of Nature," "Things by their right Names," "The Goose and Horse," "On Manufactures," "The Flying-fish," "A Lesson in the Art of Distinguishing," "The Phoenix and Dove," "The Manufacture of Paper," "The Four Sisters," and "Live Dolls."

    Editorial work

    Barbauld edited several major works towards the end of her life, all of which helped to shape the canon as known today. First, in 1804 she edited Samuel Richardson's correspondence and wrote an extensive biographical introduction of the man who was perhaps the most influential novelist of the 18th century. Her "212-page essay on his life and works [was] the first substantial Richardson biography." The following year she edited Selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder, with a Preliminary Essay, a volume of essays emphasizing "wit," "manners" and "taste." In 1811, she assembled The Female Speaker, an anthology of literature chosen specifically for young girls. Because, according to Barbauld's philosophy, what one reads when one is young is formative, she carefully considered the "delicacy" of her female readers and "direct[ed] her choice to subjects more particularly appropriate to the duties, the employments, and the dispositions of the softer sex." The anthology is subdivided into sections such as "moral and didactic pieces" and "descriptive and pathetic pieces."

    But it was Barbauld's fifty-volume series of The British Novelists published in 1810 with her large introductory essay on the history of the novel that allowed her to place her mark on literary history. It was "the first English edition to make comprehensive critical and historical claims" and was in every respect "a canon-making enterprise."In her insightful essay, Barbauld legitimizes the novel, then still a controversial genre, by connecting it to ancient Persian and Greek literature. For her, a good novel is "an epic in prose, with more of character and less (indeed in modern novels nothing) of the supernatural machinery." Barbauld maintains that novel-reading has a multiplicity of benefits; not only is it a "domestic pleasure" but it is also a way to "infus[e] principles and moral feelings" into the population Barbauld also provided introductions to each of the fifty authors included in the series.

    Anna Laetitia Barbauld's Works:

    Corsica: An Ode (1768)
    Poems (1773)
    Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose (1773)
    Devotional Pieces, Compiled from the Psalms and the Book of the Job (1775)
    Lessons for Children of Two to Three Years Old (1778)
    Lessons for Children of Three Years Old (1778)
    Lessons for Children from Three to Four Years Old (1779)
    Hymns in Prose for Children (1781)
    Lessons for Children, Part Three (1787)
    Lessons for Children, Part Four (1788)
    An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (1790)
    An Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq. on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade (1791)
    Civic Sermons to the People (1792)
    Poems. A new edition, corrected. To which is added, An Epistle to William Wilberforce (1792)
    Remarks on Mr. Gilbert Wakefield's Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship (1792)
    Evenings at Home, or The Juvenile Budget Opened (1792-1796)
    Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation (1793)
    Reasons for National Penitence Recommended for the Fast Appointed on February 28, 1794 (1794)
    Odes, by George Dyer, M. Robinson, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, J. Ogilvie, &c. (1800)
    The Arts of Life (with John Aikin, 1802)
    Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812)
    The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1825)
    A Legacy for Young Ladies, Consisting of Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Verse (1826)

    This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia Anna Laetitia Barbauld; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA.


    In Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812), written after Britain had been at war with France for a decade and was on the brink of losing the Napoleonic Wars, Barbauld presented her readers with a shocking Juvenalian satire; she argued that the British empire was waning and the American empire was waxing. It is to America that Britain's wealth and fame will now go, she contended, and Britain will become nothing but an empty ruin. She tied this decline directly to Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars:

    And think'st thou, Britain, still to sit at ease,
    An island Queen amidst thy subject seas,
    While the vext billows, in their distant roar,
    But soothe thy slumbers, and but kiss thy shore?
    To sport in wars, while danger keeps aloof,
    Thy grassy turf unbruised by hostile hoof?
    So sing thy flatterers; but, Britain, know,
    Thou who hast shared the guilt must share the woe.
    Nor distant is the hour; low murmurs spread,
    And whispered fears, creating what they dread;
    Ruin, as with an earthquake shock, is here


    This pessimistic view of the future was, not surprisingly, poorly received; "reviews, whether in liberal or conservative magazines, ranged from cautious to patronizingly negative to outrageously abusive." Barbauld, stunned by the reaction, retreated from the public eye. Even when Britain was on the verge of winning the war, Barbauld could not be joyous. She wrote to a friend: "I do not know how to rejoice at this victory, splendid as it is, over Buonaparte, when I consider the horrible waste of life, the mass of misery, which such gigantic combats must occasion.
    Simply amazing person. She stood fast at a time when it was a great rarity for any woman--to stand on personal moral principles against the world or any nation that was ruled by a King...
    For such either ruined the person financially, got them imprisoned or even executed...Tyr
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    The Horses of Achilles The Canon

    When they saw Patroklos dead
    —so brave and strong, so young—
    the horses of Achilles began to weep;
    their immortal nature was upset deeply
    by this work of death they had to look at.
    They reared their heads, tossed their long manes,
    beat the ground with their hooves, and mourned
    Patroklos, seeing him lifeless, destroyed,
    now mere flesh only, his spirit gone,
    defenseless, without breath,
    turned back from life to the great Nothingness.

    Zeus saw the tears of those immortal horses and felt sorry.
    “At the wedding of Peleus,” he said,
    “I should not have acted so thoughtlessly.
    Better if we hadn’t given you as a gift,
    my unhappy horses. What business did you have down there,
    among pathetic human beings, the toys of fate.
    You are free of death, you will not get old,
    yet ephemeral disasters torment you.
    Men have caught you up in their misery.”
    But it was for the eternal disaster of death
    that those two gallant horses shed their tears.

    Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

    (C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992)

    - Original Greek Poem

    - Translation by John Cavafy
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    I Am!
    ----------By John Clare
    I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
    My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
    I am the self-consumer of my woes—
    They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
    Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
    And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed

    Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
    Into the living sea of waking dreams,
    Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
    But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
    Even the dearest that I loved the best
    Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

    I long for scenes where man hath never trod
    A place where woman never smiled or wept
    There to abide with my Creator, God,
    And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
    Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
    The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------
    ----------------------------------------------------------------



    John Clare
    Poet Details
    1793–1864
    John Clare was born into a peasant family in Helpston, England. Although he was the son of illiterate parents, Clare received some formal schooling. While earning money through such manual labor as ploughing and threshing, he published several volumes of poetry, including Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery. After suffering from delusions, Clare was admitted to an insane asylum where he spent the final 20 years of his life.



    Poems, Articles & More
    Discover this poet's context and related poetry, articles, and media.
    Poems by John Clare

    Autumn
    The Dying Child
    First Love
    I Am!
    I Hid my Love

    More poems by John Clare
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Song
    -------by Christina Rossetti

    When I am dead, my dearest,
    Sing no sad songs for me;
    Plant thou no roses at my head,
    Nor shady cypress tree:

    Be the green grass above me
    With showers and dewdrops wet;
    And if thou wilt, remember,
    And if thou wilt, forget.

    I shall not see the shadows,
    I shall not feel the rain;
    I shall not hear the nightingale
    Sing on, as if in pain:

    And dreaming through the twilight
    That doth not rise nor set,
    Haply I may remember,
    And haply may forget.

    ----------------------------------------------


    Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894)

    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Christina Rossetti
    Christina Rossetti 3.jpg
    Born Christina Georgina Rossetti
    5 December 1830
    London, England
    Died 29 December 1894 (aged 64)
    London, England
    Occupation Poet
    Language English
    Nationality British
    Literary movement Pre-Raphaelite
    Relatives Gaetano Polidori (maternal grandfather), Gabriele Rossetti (father), Frances Polidori (mother), John William Polidori (maternal uncle), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (brother), Maria Francesca Rossetti (sister), William Michael Rossetti (brother)

    Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems. She is famous for writing Goblin Market and Remember, and the words of the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter.

    Early life and education

    Christina Rossetti was born in Charlotte Street (now 105 Hallam Street), London, to Gabriele Rossetti, a poet and a political exile from Vasto, Abruzzo, and Frances Polidori, the sister of Lord Byron's friend and physician, John William Polidori.[1] She had two brothers and a sister: Dante Gabriel became an influential artist and poet, and William Michael and Maria both became writers.[1] Christina, the youngest, was a lively child. She dictated her first story to her mother before she had learned to write.[2]

    Rossetti was educated at home by her mother and father, who had her study religious works, classics, fairy tales and novels. Rossetti delighted in the works of Keats, Scott, Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis.[3] The influence of the work of Dante Alighieri, Petrarch and other Italian writers filled the home and would have a deep impact on Rossetti's later writing. Their home was open to visiting Italian scholars, artists and revolutionaries.[4] The family homes in Bloomsbury at 38 and later 50 Charlotte Street were within easy reach of Madam Tussauds, London Zoo and the newly opened Regent's Park, which she visited regularly; in contrast to her parents, Rossetti was very much a London child, and, it seems, a happy one.[3][4]
    Portrait of Christina Rossetti, by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti

    In the 1840s, her family faced severe financial difficulties due to the deterioration of her father's physical and mental health. In 1843, he was diagnosed with persistent bronchitis, possibly tuberculosis, and faced losing his sight. He gave up his teaching post at King's College and though he lived another 11 years, he suffered from depression and was never physically well again. Rossetti's mother began teaching to keep the family out of poverty and Maria became a live-in governess, a prospect that Christina Rossetti dreaded. At this time her brother William was working for the Excise Office and Gabriel was at art school, leaving Christina's life at home to become one of increasing isolation.[5] When she was 14, Rossetti suffered a nervous breakdown and left school. Bouts of depression and related illness followed. During this period she, her mother, and her sister became deeply interested in the Anglo-Catholic movement that developed in the Church of England. Religious devotion came to play a major role in Rossetti's life.

    In her late teens, Rossetti became engaged to the painter James Collinson, the first of three suitors. He was, like her brothers Dante and William, one of the founding members of the avant-garde artistic group, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (founded 1848).[6] The engagement was broken in 1850 when he reverted to Catholicism. Later she became involved with the linguist Charles Cayley, but declined to marry him, also for religious reasons.[6] The third offer came from the painter John Brett, whom she also refused.[4]

    Rossetti sat for several of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's most famous paintings. In 1848, she was the model for the Virgin Mary in his first completed oil painting, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, which was the first work to be inscribed with the initials 'PRB', later revealed to signify the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.[7] The following year she modelled again for his depiction of the Annunciation, Ecce Ancilla Domini. A line from her poem "Who shall deliver me?" inspired the famous painting by Fernand Khnopff called "I lock my door upon myself". In 1849 she became seriously ill again, suffering from depression and sometime around 1857 had a major religious crisis.[4]
    Career
    Illustration for the cover of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti

    Rossetti began writing down and dating her poems from 1842, mostly imitating her favoured poets. From 1847 she began experimenting with verse forms such as sonnets, hymns and ballads; drawing narratives from the Bible, folk tales and the lives of the saints. Her early pieces often feature meditations on death and loss, in the Romantic tradition.[3] She published her first two poems ("Death's Chill Between" and "Heart's Chill Between"), which appeared in the Athenaeum, in 1848 when she was 18.[8][9] Under the pen-name "Ellen Alleyne", she contributed to the literary magazine, The Germ, published by the Pre-Raphaelites from January – April 1850 and edited by her brother William.[1] This marked the beginning of her public career.[10]

    Her most famous collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems, appeared in 1862, when she was 31. It received widespread critical praise, establishing her as the foremost female poet of the time. Hopkins, Swinburne and Tennyson lauded her work.[1][10] and with the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1861 Rossetti was hailed as her natural successor.[10] The title poem is one of Rossetti's best known works. Although it is ostensibly about two sisters' misadventures with goblins, critics have interpreted the piece in a variety of ways: seeing it as an allegory about temptation and salvation; a commentary on Victorian gender roles and female agency; and a work about erotic desire and social redemption. Rossetti was a volunteer worker from 1859 to 1870 at the St. Mary Magdalene "house of charity" in Highgate, a refuge for former prostitutes and it is suggested Goblin Market may have been inspired by the "fallen women" she came to know.[11] There are parallels with Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner given both poems' religious themes of temptation, sin and redemption by vicarious suffering.[12] Swinburne in 1883 dedicated his collection A Century of Roundels to Rossetti as she had adopted his roundel form in a number of poems, as exampled by her Wife to Husband.[13] She was ambivalent about women's suffrage, but many scholars have identified feminist themes in her poetry.[14] She was opposed to slavery (in the American South), cruelty to animals (in the prevalent practice of animal experimentation), and the exploitation of girls in under-age prostitution.[15]

    Song

    When I am dead, my dearest,
    Sing no sad songs for me;
    Plant thou no roses at my head,
    Nor shady cypress tree:
    Be the green grass above me
    With showers and dewdrops wet:
    And if thou wilt, remember,
    And if thou wilt, forget.

    I shall not see the shadows,
    I shall not feel the rain;
    I shall not hear the nightingale
    Sing on as if in pain:
    And dreaming through the twilight
    That doth not rise nor set,
    Haply I may remember,
    And haply may forget.


    1862[16]

    Rossetti maintained a very large circle of friends and correspondents and continued to write and publish for the rest of her life, primarily focusing on devotional writing and children's poetry. In 1892, Rossetti wrote The Face of the Deep, a book of devotional prose, and oversaw the production of a new and enlarged edition of Sing-Song, published in 1893.[17]

    In the later decades of her life, Rossetti suffered from Graves' Disease, diagnosed in 1872 suffering a nearly fatal attack in the early 1870s.[1][4] In 1893, she developed breast cancer and though the tumour was removed, she suffered a recurrence in September 1894. She died in Bloomsbury on 29 December 1894 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery.[17] The place where she died, in Torrington Square, is marked with a stone tablet.[18]
    Recognition
    Christina Rossetti
    Feast 27 April[19][20]

    Although Rossetti's popularity during her lifetime did not approach that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, her standing remained strong after her death. In the early 20th century Rossetti's popularity faded in the wake of Modernism. Scholars began to explore Freudian themes in her work, such as religious and sexual repression, reaching for personal, biographical interpretations of her poetry.[4] In the 1970s academics began to critique her work again, looking beyond the lyrical Romantic sweetness to her mastery of prosody and versification. Feminists held her as symbol of constrained female genius, placed as a leader of 19th-century poets.[1][4] Her work strongly influenced the work of such writers as Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Elizabeth Jennings, and Philip Larkin. Critic Basil de Selincourt stated that she was "all but our greatest woman poet … incomparably our greatest craftswoman … probably in the first twelve of the masters of English verse".[4][21]

    Rossetti's Christmas poem "In the Bleak Midwinter" became widely known after her death when set as a Christmas carol first by Gustav Holst, and then by Harold Darke.[22] Her poem "Love Came Down at Christmas" (1885) has also been widely arranged as a carol.[23] Rossetti is honoured with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Anglican Church on 27 April.[19][20][24]

    In 1918, John Ireland set eight of her poems from Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book to music in his song cycle Mother and Child.

    The title of J.K. Rowling's novel The Cuckoo's Calling is based on a line in Rossetti's poem A Dirge.[citation needed]
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    A Gravestone
    - Poem by William Allingham


    Far from the churchyard dig his grave,
    On some green mound beside the wave;
    To westward, sea and sky alone,
    And sunsets. Put a mossy stone,
    With mortal name and date, a harp
    And bunch of wild flowers, carven sharp;
    Then leave it free to winds that blow,
    And patient mosses creeping; slow,
    And wandering wings, and footsteps rare
    Of human creature pausing there.
    William Allingham

    --------------------------------------------------------

    The Fairies
    ------------ - Poem by William Allingham


    Up the airy mountain,
    Down the rushy glen,
    We daren't go a-hunting
    For fear of little men;
    Wee folk, good folk,
    Trooping all together;
    Green jacket, red cap,
    And white owl's feather!

    Down along the rocky shore
    Some make their home,
    They live on crispy pancakes
    Of yellow tide-foam;
    Some in the reeds
    Of the black mountain lake,
    With frogs for their watch-dogs,
    All night awake.

    High on the hill-top
    The old King sits;
    He is now so old and gray
    He's nigh lost his wits.
    With a bridge of white mist
    Columbkill he crosses,
    On his stately journeys
    From Slieveleague to Rosses;
    Or going up with music
    On cold starry nights
    To sup with the Queen
    Of the gay Northern Lights.

    They stole little Bridget
    For seven years long;
    When she came down again
    Her friends were all gone.
    They took her lightly back,
    Between the night and morrow,
    They thought that she was fast asleep,
    But she was dead with sorrow.
    They have kept her ever since
    Deep within the lake,
    On a bed of flag-leaves,
    Watching till she wake.

    By the craggy hill-side,
    Through the mosses bare,
    They have planted thorn-trees
    For pleasure here and there.
    If any man so daring
    As dig them up in spite,
    He shall find their sharpest thorns
    In his bed at night.

    Up the airy mountain,
    Down the rushy glen,
    We daren't go a-hunting
    For fear of little men;
    Wee folk, good folk,
    Trooping all together;
    Green jacket, red cap,
    And white owl's feather!
    William Allingham



    ************************************************** ****************
    A Burial-place
    ---------------William Allingham

    WHERE those green mounds o’erlook the mingling Erne

    And salt Atlantic, clay that walked as Man

    A thousand years ago, Oster or Kerne,

    May still repose: and thither, if ye can,

    I pray ye, friends, to see my ashes borne

    When I have measured out this mortal span;

    After so many centuries have rolled,

    Adding one brother to the sleepers old.



    The silver salmon shooting up the fall,

    Itself at once the arrow and the bow;

    The shadow of the old quay’s weedy wall

    Cast on the shining turbulence below;

    The water-voice which ever seemed to call

    Far off out of my childhood’s long-ago;

    The gentle washing of the harbor wave;—

    Be these the sounds and sights around my grave.



    Soothed also with thy friendly beck, my town,

    And near the square gray tower, within whose shade

    I might not with my fathers lay me down:

    Whilst, by the wide heavens changefully arrayed,

    The purple mountains its horizon crown;

    And westward ’tween low hummocks is displayed

    In lightsome hours, the level pale blue sea,

    With sails upon it, creeping silently:



    Or, other time, beyond that tawny sand,

    And ocean glooming underneath the shroud

    Drawn thick athwart it by tempestuous hand;

    When like a mighty fire the bar roars loud,

    As though the whole sea came to whelm the land,—

    The gull flies white against the stormy cloud,

    And in the weather-gleam the breakers mark

    A ghastly line upon the waters dark.



    A green, unfading quilt above be spread,

    And freely round let all the breezes blow;

    May children play beside the breathless bed,

    Holiday lasses by the cliff-edge go;

    And manly sports upon the sward be sped,

    And cheerful boats beneath the headland row.

    And be the thought, if any rise, of me,

    What happy soul might choose that thought to be.





    ************************************************** ************************************************** *

    William Allingham


    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    William Allingham
    William Allingham Photo.jpg
    Born 19 March 1824
    Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland
    Died 18 November 1889 (aged 65)
    Hampstead, London
    Nationality Irish[a]
    Occupation poet, scholar
    Spouse(s) Helen Paterson Allingham (1874–1889)

    William Allingham (19 March 1824 – 18 November 1889) was an Irish poet, diarist and editor. He wrote several volumes of lyric verse, and his poem 'The Faeries' was much anthologised; but he is better known for his posthumously published Diary,[1] in which he records his lively encounters with Tennyson, Carlyle and other writers and artists. His wife, Helen Allingham, was a well-known water-colorist and illustrator.[2]

    Contents

    1 Biography
    2 Assessment and influence
    3 See also
    4 Notes
    5 References
    6 Further reading
    7 External links

    Biography

    William Allingham was born on 19 March 1824 in the little port of Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland, United Kingdom, and was the son of the manager of a local bank who was of English descent.[3] His younger brothers and sisters were Catherine (b. 1826), John (b. 1827), Jane (b. 1829), Edward (b. 1831; who lived only a few months) and a still-born brother (b. 1833). During his childhood his parents moved twice within the town, where the boy enjoyed the country sights and gardens, learned to paint and listened to his mother's piano-playing. When he was nine, his mother died.[4]

    He obtained a post in the custom-house of his native town, and held several similar posts in Ireland and England until 1870. During this period were published his Poems (1850; which included his well-known poem, 'The Fairies') and Day and Night Songs (1855; illustrated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others). (Rossetti's Letters to Allingham (1854–1870), edited by Dr. Birkbeck Hill, would be published in 1897.) Lawrence Bloomfield in Ireland, his most ambitious, though not his most successful work, a narrative poem illustrative of Irish social questions, appeared in 1864. He also edited The Ballad Book for the Golden Treasury series in 1864, and Fifty Modern Poems in 1865.

    In April 1870 Allingham retired from the customs service, moved to London and became sub-editor of Fraser's Magazine, eventually becoming editor in succession to James Froude in June 1874 – a post he would hold till 1879.[5] On 22 August 1874 he married the illustrator, Helen Paterson, who was twenty-four years younger than he. His wife gave up her work as an illustrator and would become well known under her married name as a water-colour painter. At first the couple lived in London, at 12 Trafalgar Square, Chelsea, near Allingham's friend, Thomas Carlyle, and it was there that they had their first two children – Gerald Carlyle (b. 1875 November) and Eva Margaret (b. 1877 February). In 1877 appeared Allingham's Songs, Poems and Ballads. In 1881, after the death of Carlyle, the Allinghams moved to Sandhills near Witley in Surrey, where their third child, Henry William, was born in 1882. At this period Allingham published Evil May Day (1883), Blackberries (1884) and Irish Songs and Poems (1887).

    In 1888, because of William's declining health, they moved back to the capital, to the heights of Hampstead village. But in 1889, on 18 November, William died at Hampstead. According to his wishes he was cremated. His ashes are interred at St. Anne's church in his native Ballyshannon.

    Posthumously Allingham's Varieties in Prose was published in 1893. William Allingham A Diary, edited by Mrs Helen Allingham and D. Radford, was published in 1907. It contains Allingham's reminiscences of Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle and other writers and artists.
    Assessment and influence

    Working on an un-ostentatious scale, Allingham produced much lyrical and descriptive poetry, and the best of his pieces are thoroughly national in spirit and local colouring. His verse is clear, fresh, and graceful. His best-known poem remains his early work, "The Faeries".[6]

    Allingham had a substantial influence on W. B. Yeats;[7] while the Ulster poet John Hewitt felt Allingham's impact keenly, and attempted to revive his reputation by editing, and writing an introduction to, The Poems of William Allingham (Oxford University Press/ Dolmen Press, 1967). Allingham's wide-ranging anthology of poetry, Nightingale Valley (1862) was to be the inspiration for the 1923 collection Come Hither by Walter de la Mare.[8]

    We daren't go a-hunting/For fear of little men... was quoted by the character of The Tinker near the beginning of the movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, as well as in Mike Mignola's comic book short story Hellboy: The Corpse, plus the 1973 horror film Don't Look in the Basement. Several lines of the poem are quoted by Henry Flyte, a character in issue No. 65 of the Supergirl comic book, August 2011. This same poem was quoted in Andre Norton's 1990 science fiction novel Dare To Go A-Hunting (ISBN 0-812-54712-8).

    Up the Airy Mountain is the title of a short story by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald; while the working title of Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men was "For Fear of Little Men".

    The Allingham Arms Hotel in Bundoran, Co. Donegal is named after him.[9]
    See also

    Celtic Revival
    Leigh Hunt
    Thomas Moore

    Notes

    Ireland, was within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland during his lifespan.

    References

    William Allingham: a Diary; edited by H. Allingham and D. Radford (1907 and reprints)
    I. Ousby ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (1995) p. 18
    D. Daiches ed., The Penguin Companion to Literature 1 (1971) p. 19
    William Allingham A Diary Edited by H. Allingham and D. Radford (1907)
    I. Ousby ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (1995) p. 18
    The Fairies, multimedia eBook.
    D. Daiches ed., The Penguin Companion to Literature 1 (1971) p. 19
    T Whistler, Imagination of the Heart (1993) p. 322

    "Allingham Arms Hotel | Bundoran". Allinghamarmshotel.ie. 2013-11-21. Retrieved 2014-04-01.

    This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Allingham, William". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

    Further reading

    M. McClure, 'Biographical Note: the Allinghams of Ballyshannon', in Donegal Annual; 52 (2000), p. 87–89
    M. S. Lasner, 'William Allingham. Some Uncollected Authors LVI Part 1 (2)', in Book Collector; 39 (1991 summer, autumn), p. 174–204 and 321–349
    S. A. Husni, William Allingham An Annotated Bibliography (1989)
    A. Warner, 'William Allingham Bibliographical Survey', in Irish Book Lore; 2 (1976), p. 303–307
    P. M. England, 'The Poetry of William Allingham' [M.A. thesis, Birmingham University] (1976)
    A. Warner, William Allingham (1975)
    H. Shields, 'William Allingham and folk song', in Hermathena; 117 (1974), p. 23–36
    A. Warner, William Allingham An Introduction (1971)
    W.I.P. McDonough, 'The Life and Work of William Allingham' [PhD thesis, Trinity College, Dublin] (1952)
    P.S. O'Hegarty, 'A Bibliography of William Allingham', in Dublin Magazine (1945 Jan–Mar and July–September)
    J. L. Donaghy, 'William Allingham', in Dublin Magazine; 20:2 (1945), p. 34–38
    H. Knopf, 'William Allingham und seine Dichtung im Lichte der irischen Freheitsbewegung' [Dissertation] (1928. Biel)
    Letters to William Allingham, ed. H. Allingham (1911)
    William Allingham, William Allingham A Diary, ed. H. Allingham and D. Radford (1907)
    D. G. Rossetti, The Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham 1854–1870, ed. G.B.N. Hill (1897)

    External links
    Wikisource has original works written by or about:
    William Allingham
    Wikiquote has quotations related to: William Allingham

    "Archival material relating to William Allingham". UK National Archives.
    Works by William Allingham at Project Gutenberg
    Works by or about William Allingham at Internet Archive
    Works by William Allingham at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
    William Allingham at University of Toronto Libraries
    William Allingham at Library of Congress Authorities, with 41 catalogue records
    Last edited by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot; 02-13-2017 at 11:30 PM.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Song: Go and catch a falling star
    -------------------------------By John Donne
    Go and catch a falling star,
    Get with child a mandrake root,
    Tell me where all past years are,
    Or who cleft the devil's foot,
    Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
    Or to keep off envy's stinging,
    And find
    What wind
    Serves to advance an honest mind.

    If thou be'st born to strange sights,
    Things invisible to see,
    Ride ten thousand days and nights,
    Till age snow white hairs on thee,
    Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
    All strange wonders that befell thee,
    And swear,
    No where
    Lives a woman true, and fair.

    If thou find'st one, let me know,
    Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
    Yet do not, I would not go,
    Though at next door we might meet;
    Though she were true, when you met her,
    And last, till you write your letter,
    Yet she
    Will be
    False, ere I come, to two, or three.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    A Night-Piece On Death
    -------------------by Thomas Parnell


    By the blue taper's trembling light,
    No more I waste the wakeful night,
    Intent with endless view to pore
    The schoolmen and the sages o'er:
    Their books from wisdom widely stray,
    Or point at best the longest way.
    I'll seek a readier path, and go
    Where wisdom's surely taught below.

    How deep yon azure dyes the sky!
    Where orbs of gold unnumber'd lie,
    While through their ranks in silver pride
    The nether crescent seems to glide!
    The slumb'ring breeze forgets to breathe,
    The lake is smooth and clear beneath,
    Where once again the spangled show
    Descends to meet our eyes below.
    The grounds which on the right aspire,
    In dimness from the view retire:
    The left presents a place of graves,
    Whose wall the silent water laves.
    That steeple guides thy doubtful sight
    Among the livid gleams of night.
    There pass with melancholy state,
    By all the solemn heaps of fate,
    And think, as softly-sad you tread
    Above the venerable dead,
    "Time was, like thee they life possest,
    And time shall be, that thou shalt rest."

    Those graves, with bending osier bound,
    That nameless heave the crumpled ground,
    Quick to the glancing thought disclose,
    Where toil and poverty repose.

    The flat smooth stones that bear a name,
    The chisel's slender help to fame,
    (Which ere our set of friends decay
    Their frequent steps may wear away,)
    A middle race of mortals own,
    Men, half ambitious, all unknown.

    The marble tombs that rise on high,
    Whose dead in vaulted arches lie,
    Whose pillars swell with sculptur'd stones,
    Arms, angels, epitaphs, and bones,
    These (all the poor remains of state)
    Adorn the rich, or praise the great;
    Who, while on earth in fame they live,
    Are senseless of the fame they give.

    Ha! while I gaze, pale Cynthia fades,
    The bursting earth unveils the shades!
    All slow, and wan, and wrapp'd with shrouds
    They rise in visionary crowds,
    And all with sober accent cry,
    "Think, mortal, what it is to die."

    Now from yon black and fun'ral yew,
    That bathes the charnel-house with dew,
    Methinks I hear a voice begin;
    (Ye ravens, cease your croaking din;
    Ye tolling clocks, no time resound
    O'er the long lake and midnight ground)
    It sends a peal of hollow groans,
    Thus speaking from among the bones.

    "When men my scythe and darts supply,
    How great a king of fears am I!
    They view me like the last of things:
    They make, and then they dread, my stings.
    Fools! if you less provok'd your fears,
    No more my spectre form appears.
    Death's but a path that must be trod,
    If man would ever pass to God;
    A port of calms, a state of ease
    From the rough rage of swelling seas.

    "Why then thy flowing sable stoles,
    Deep pendant cypress, mourning poles,
    Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds,
    Long palls, drawn hearses, cover'd steeds,
    And plumes of black, that, as they tread,
    Nod o'er the scutcheons of the dead?

    "Nor can the parted body know,
    Nor wants the soul, these forms of woe.
    As men who long in prison dwell,
    With lamps that glimmer round the cell,
    Whene'er their suff'ring years are run,
    Spring forth to greet the glitt'ring sun:
    Such joy though far transcending sense,
    Have pious souls at parting hence.
    On earth, and in the body plac'd,
    A few, and evil years they waste;
    But when their chains are cast aside,
    See the glad scene unfolding wide,
    Clap the glad wing, and tow'r away,
    And mingle with the blaze of day."

    Thomas Parnell

    ----------------------------------------------------------
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Thomas Parnell
    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    This article is about the poet. For the scientist, see Thomas Parnell (scientist).
    Thomas Parnell

    Thomas Parnell (11 September 1679 – 24 October 1718) was an Anglo-Irish poet and clergyman who was a friend of both Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift.

    He was the son of Thomas Parnell of Maryborough, Queen's County (now Port Laoise, County Laoise), a prosperous landowner who had been a loyal supporter of Cromwell during the English Civil War and moved to Ireland after the restoration of the monarchy. Thomas was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and collated archdeacon of Clogher in 1705.[1]

    He however spent much of his time in London, where he participated with Pope, Swift and others in the Scriblerus Club, contributing to The Spectator and aiding Pope in his translation of The Iliad. He was also one of the so-called "Graveyard poets": his 'A Night-Piece on Death,' widely considered the first "Graveyard School" poem, was published posthumously in Poems on Several Occasions, collected and edited by Alexander Pope and is thought by some scholars to have been published in December 1721 (although dated in 1722 on its title page, the year accepted by The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature;[2] see 1721 in poetry, 1722 in poetry). It is said of his poetry 'it was in keeping with his character, easy and pleasing, enunciating the common places with felicity and grace.[3]

    He died in Chester in 1718 on his way home to Ireland. His wife and children having died, his Laoise estate passed to his brother John, a judge and MP in the Irish House of Commons and the ancestor of Charles Stewart Parnell.[1]

    Oliver Goldsmith wrote a biography of Parnell [4] which often accompanied later editions of Parnell's works.
    Works

    Essay on the Different Stiles of Poetry (1713)
    Battle of the Frogs and Mice (1717 translation in heroic couplets of a comic epic then attributed to Homer)

    An example of his poetry is the opening stanza of his poem The Hermit [1]

    Far in the wild, unknown to public view,
    From youth to age a revered hermit grew.
    The moss his bed, the cave his humble cell,
    His food the fruits, his drink the crystal well.
    Remote from man with God he passed his days
    Prayer all his business, all his pleasure, praise.

    References

    "Anglo-Irish Families". Irish Midlands Ancestry. Retrieved 10 October 2013.
    Cox, Michael, editor, The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature, Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-860634-6
    Gilfillan, George , dissertation in The Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray and Smollet 1855, kindle ebook 1855 ASIN B004TQHGGE

    Goldsmith, Oliver The Life of Thomas Parnell ISBN 978-1-171-10588-6

    R. Woodman, Thomas Parnell (1985). ISBN 978-0-8057-6883-1
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    When I Was Thine

    "Ricordati da me quand 'ero teco." Tuscan Rispetto.

    THE sullen rain breaks on the convent window,
    The distant chanting dies upon mine ears.
    —Soon comes the morn for which my soul hath languished,
    For which my soul hath yearned these many years;
    Forget of me this life which I resign,
    Think of me in the days when I was thine.

    Forget the paths my weary feet have travelled,
    The thorns and stones that pierced them as I went;
    These later days of prayer and scourge and penance,
    These hours of anguish now so nearly spent.
    Forget I left thy life for life divine,
    Think of me in the days when I was thine.

    Forget the rigid brow as thou wilt see it,
    The folded eyelids, and the quiet mouth.
    Think how my eyes grew brighter at thy coming,
    Think of those fervid noontides in the South.
    Think when my kisses made life half divine,
    Think of me in the days when I was thine.

    Forget this nearer past, I do adjure thee,
    Remember only what was long ago.
    Think when our love was fire unquenched by ashes,
    Think of our Spring, and not this Winter's snow.
    Forget me as I lie, past speech or sign.
    Think of me in the days when I was thine

    Anne Reeve Aldrich (1866-1892)

    -------------------------------------
    -------------------------------------
    Anne Reeve Aldrich: American Sappho

    Anne Reeve Aldrich was an American poet and novelist. She was born April 25, 1866, in New York and died June 22, 1892, also in New York. Her books include The Rose of Flame (1889), The Feet of Love (1890), Nadine and Other Poems (1893), A Village Ophelia and Other Stories (1899) and Songs about Life, Love, and Death (1892). She wrote a number of poems in which she seemed to prophesy an early death for herself, then died at the tender age of 26. According to the preface of Songs about Life, Love, and Death, which was published posthumously, at the time of her death she was so weak that she couldn’t lift her pen, and thus had to dictate her last poem, “Death at Daybreak.” Her grand-uncle was the poet James Aldrich. She published her first volume of poetry, The Rose of Flame in 1889; it was not well received (critics cited its "unrestrained expression"). She was also said to have written “erotic” poems. But she persevered, publishing a novel, The Feet of Love, in 1890, and it seems she was working on her final volume of poems even on her deathbed.

    SONGS ABOUT LIFE, LOVE, AND DEATH: “Passion and agony, the one because of the other, are the keys of Anne Reeve Aldric
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    I have now found a rival to the magnificent talent of Emily Dickinson...
    Anne Reeve Aldrich, simply floors me with her magnificence imagry, flow and depth in her beautiful poems.. ...-Tyr



    Anne Reeve Aldrich: American Sappho

    Anne Reeve Aldrich was an American poet and novelist. She was born April 25, 1866, in New York and died June 22, 1892, also in New York. Her books include The Rose of Flame (1889), The Feet of Love (1890), Nadine and Other Poems (1893), A Village Ophelia and Other Stories (1899) and Songs about Life, Love, and Death (1892). She wrote a number of poems in which she seemed to prophesy an early death for herself, then died at the tender age of 26. According to the preface of Songs about Life, Love, and Death, which was published posthumously, at the time of her death she was so weak that she couldn’t lift her pen, and thus had to dictate her last poem, “Death at Daybreak.” Her grand-uncle was the poet James Aldrich. She published her first volume of poetry, The Rose of Flame in 1889; it was not well received (critics cited its "unrestrained expression"). She was also said to have written “erotic” poems. But she persevered, publishing a novel, The Feet of Love, in 1890, and it seems she was working on her final volume of poems even on her deathbed.

    SONGS ABOUT LIFE, LOVE, AND DEATH: “Passion and agony, the one because of the other, are the keys of Anne Reeve Aldrich's nature and verse. This woman is of the few who nearest share the moods of Sappho and her talents.”—Springfield Republican, circa 1892, as quoted in The Book Buyer, volume X, no. 3, April, 1893





    Souvenirs

    Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

    Where is the glove that I gave to him,
    Perfumed and warm from my arm that night?
    And where is the rose that another stole
    When the land was flooded with June moonlight,
    And the satin slipper I wore?—Alack,
    Some one had that—it was wrong, I fear.
    Where are these souvenirs today?
    But where are the snows of yesteryear?

    The glove was burned at his next love's prayer,
    And the rose was lost in the mire of the street;
    And the satin slipper he tossed away,
    For his jealous bride had not fairy feet.
    Give what you will, but know, mesdames,
    For a day alone are your favors dear.
    Be sure for the next fair woman's sake
    They will go—like the snows of yesteryear.



    A Little Parable

    I made the cross myself whose weight
    Was later laid on me.
    This thought is torture as I toil
    Up life’s steep Calvary.

    To think mine own hands drove the nails!
    I sang a merry song,
    And chose the heaviest wood I had
    To build it firm and strong.

    If I had guessed—if I had dreamed
    Its weight was meant for me,
    I should have made a lighter cross
    To bear up Calvary!



    My Guerdon

    I stood where gifts were showered on men from Heaven,
    And some had honors and the joy thereof;
    And some received with solemn, radiant faces
    The gift of love.

    The green I saw of bay-leaves, and of laurel,
    Of gold the gleam.
    A voice spoke to me, standing empty-handed,
    "For thee a dream."

    Forbear to pity, ye who richly laden
    Forth from the place of Heaven s bounty went;
    Who marvel that I smile, my hands still empty
    I am content.

    Ye cannot guess how dowered beyond the measure
    Of your receiving to myself I seem.
    Lonely and cold, I yet pass on enraptured—
    I have my dream.



    The Prayer of Dolores

    Madrid, 1888

    Beneath the grass, I hear them say,
    Live loathsome things that hate the day,—
    Strange crawling shapes with blinded eyes,
    Whose very image terrifies.
    I dread not these: make deep my bed
    With good black mold round heart and head.
    But oh! the fear a Thought may creep
    Down from the world to where I sleep,
    Pierce through the earth to heart and brain
    And coil there, in its home again!
    Father, thou hast the good God’s ear, —
    And when priests speak He bends to hear,—
    Say, " Lord, this woman of Madrid
    Begs, when herself in earth is hid,
    Her soul s guilt paid for, grain by grain,
    In throes of purgatorial pain,
    That Thou her soul wouldst clean destroy;
    She hath no wish for heavenly joy,

    But just to be dissolved to Naught,
    Beyond the reach of any thought.
    Some sinners dare to beg for bliss,
    I know my place, and ask but this:
    That He, who made will then unmake
    My soul, for His sweet mercy s sake!"



    Fraternity

    I ask not how thy suffering came,
    Or if by sin, or if by shame,
    Or if by Fate’s capricious rulings:
    To my large pity all’s the same.

    Come close and lean against a heart
    Eaten by pain and stung by smart;
    It is enough if thou hast suffered,—
    Brother or sister then thou art.

    We will not speak of what we know,
    Rehearse the pang, nor count the throe,
    Nor ask what agony admitted
    Thee to the Brotherhood of Woe.

    But in our anguish-darkened land
    Let us draw close, and clasp the hand;
    Our whispered password holds assuagement,—
    The solemn “Yea, I understand!”



    Separation

    If it were land, oh, weary feet could travel,
    If it were sea, a ship might cleave the wave,
    If it were Death, sad Love could look to heaven.
    And see through tears the sunlight on the grave.
    Not land, or sea. or death keeps us apart
    But only thou, oh unforgiving Heart.

    If it were land, through piercing thorns I'd travel.
    If it were sea, I'd cross to thee, or die.
    If it were Death, I'd tear Life's veil asunder
    That I might see thee with a clearer eye.
    Ah none of these could keep our souls apart —
    Forget, forgive, oh unforgiving Heart.



    The End

    Do you recall that little room
    Close blinded from the searching sun,
    So dim, my blossoms dreamed of dusk?
    And shut their petals one by one.
    And then a certain crimson eve,
    The death of day upon the tide;
    How all its blood spread on the waves,
    And stained the waters far and wide.
    Ah, you forget;
    But I remember yet.

    When I awake in middle night,
    And stretch warm hands to touch your face,
    There is no chance that I shall find
    Aught but your chill and empty place.
    I have no bitter word to say,
    The Past is worth this anguish sore,
    —But mouth to mouth, and heart to heart,
    No more on earth, O God, no more!
    For Love is dead;
    Would 't were I, instead.



    In Extremis

    The sacred tapers flickered fair,
    The priest has gone with Host and prayer;
    I heard the "Nunc Dimittis" said,
    Not with the heart, but with the head.

    Though I, the while, lay dying near,
    This was all my heart could hear:
    "I love thee, lay thy lips on mine,
    Thy kisses turn my head like wine."

    And this was all my heart could see,
    Instead of the cross held out to me,
    That well-known small and scented room,
    Made sweetly dusk by curtain's gloom.

    And this was all my heart could feel,
    Spite of these pains like stabbing steel,
    The throbbing pulses of thy breast,
    Where, weary, I was wont to rest.

    O what shall come to me, alas!
    Whose soul so soon in death must pass
    The soul too wholly thine to dwell
    On hope of heaven, or dread of hell.

    If heaven, that awful glassy sea,
    May still reflect some memory.
    If hell, not all eternal fire,
    Can quite burn out the old desire.

    Instead of name of pitying saint
    Breathed as the passing soul's last plaint,
    Thy name will be my latest breath.
    Who wast my life, who art my death.



    Love, the Destroyer

    Love is a Fire;
    Nor Shame, nor Pride can well withstand Desire.
    "For what are they," we cry, "that they should dare
    To keep, O Love, the haughty look they wear?
    Nay, burn the victims, O thou sacred Fire,
    That with their death thou mayst but flame the higher.
    Let them feel once the fierceness of thy breath,
    And make thee still more beauteous with their death."

    Love is a Fire;
    But ah, how short-lived is the flame Desire!
    Love, having burnt whatever once we cherished,
    And blackened all things else, itself hath perished.
    And now alone in gathering night we stand,
    Ashes and ruin stretch on either hand.
    Yet while we mourn, our sad hearts whisper low:
    "We served the mightiest God that man can know."



    Outer Darkness

    Where shall I look for help? Our gracious God
    Pities all those who weep for sin ingrain,
    And potent is the Kingly Victim's blood
    To wash repented guilt, and leave no stain.

    But ah, what hope for me in Heaven above,
    What consolation left beneath the sun,
    In those black hours when my lost soul laments
    Because it left that one sweet sin undone?



    A Return to the Valley

    Behold me at thy feet. Alone I climbed
    And wandered through the mountain land of Art
    Amid God's awful snows; the keen thin air
    Pierced through my brain, and chilled me at the heart.

    Behold me at thy feet. A famished heart
    Does ill to travel by such paths as these.
    Better for me to seek this vale once more,
    Better for me to crouch here at thy knees.

    Behold me at thy feet. And thou dost stretch
    No tender hand to raise me to thy breast.
    Ah, 't is a foolish bird that hopes to find
    Untouched, in leafless hedge, its last year's nest.

    I will depart, and seek again the heights,
    Above hot love, or wholesome hate of foes.
    But from this day my pilgrim feet must leave
    A track of blood across the awful snows.



    A Song About Singing

    O nightingale, the poet's bird,
    A kinsman dear thou art,
    Who never sings so well as when
    The rose-thorns bruise his heart.

    But since thy agony can make
    A listening world so blest,
    Be sure it cares but little for
    Thy wounded, bleeding breast!



    April—and Dying

    Green blood fresh pulsing through the trees,
    Blacks buds, that sun and shower distend;
    All other things begin anew,
    But I must end.

    Warm sunlight on faint-colored sward,
    Warm fragrance in the breezes’ breath;
    For other things art heat and life,
    For me is death.



    Death at Daybreak

    I shall go out when the light comes in—
    There lie my cast-off form and face;
    I shall pass Dawn on her way to earth,
    As I seek for a path through space.

    I shall go out when the light comes in;
    Would I might take one ray with me!
    It is blackest night between the worlds,
    And how is a soul to see?



    In Conclusion

    O Love, take these my songs, made for thy joy,
    And speak one tender word of them to me.
    And other praise or blame that word will drown
    As voice of brook is drowned by sounding sea.

    Like all my joys and woes, my garnered verse
    To lay at thy dear feet I haste to bring.
    Be gracious. Love, remembering that the mouth
    Touched by thine own, could scarcely fail to sing!



    A Draught

    A bitter cup you offer me,
    Though roses hide its brim with red.
    Yet since your strong hand proffers it,
    I shall not spurn, but drink instead.

    And when the draught has done its work.
    And I lie low, who now stand high.
    You, who encompassed this, will pass
    With loathing and averted eye.

    Yet none the less I humbly bow.
    And drain the cup on bended knee.
    That holds within its hollow gold
    Your pleasure, and your scorn of me.



    Recollection

    How can it be that I forget
    The way he phrased my doom,
    When I recall the arabesques
    That carpeted the room?

    How can it be that I forget
    His look and mein that hour,
    When I recall I wore a rose,
    And still can smell the flower?

    How can it be that I forget
    Those words that were his last,
    When I recall the tune a man
    Was whistling as he passed?

    These things are what we keep from life's
    Supremest joy or pain;
    For memory locks her chaff in bins
    And throws away the grain.



    Suppose

    How sad if, by some strange new law,
    All kisses scarred!
    For she who is most beautiful
    Would be most marred.

    And we might be surprised to see
    Some lovely wife
    Smooth-visaged, while a seeming prude
    Was marked for life.



    In November

    Brown earth-line meets gray heaven,
    And all the land looks sad;
    But Love’s the little leaven
    That works the whole world glad.
    Sigh, bitter win; lower, frore clouds of gray:
    My Love and I are living now in May!



    Love's Change

    I went to dig a grave for Love,
    But the earth was so stiff and cold
    That, though I stove through the bitter night,
    I could not break the mould.

    And I said: 'Must he lie in my house in state,
    And stay in his wonted place?
    Must I have him with me another day,
    With that awful change in his face?'



    Music Of Hungary

    My body answers you, my blood
    Leaps at your maddening, piercing call
    The fierce notes startle, and the veil
    Of this dull present seems to fall.
    My soul responds to that long cry;
    It wants its country, Hungary!
    Not mine by birth. Yet have I not
    Some strain of that old Magyar race?
    Else why the secret stir of sense
    At sight of swarthy Tzigane face,
    That warns me: 'Lo, thy kinsmen nigh.'
    All's dear that tastes of Hungary.

    Once more, O let me hear once more
    The passion and barbaric rage!
    Let me forget my exile here
    In this mild land, in this mild age;
    Once more that unrestrained wild cry
    That takes me to my Hungary!

    They listen with approving smile,
    But I, O God, I want my home!
    I want the Tzigane tongue, the dance,
    The nights in tents, the days to roam,
    O music, O fierce life and free
    God made my soul for Hungary!



    The Rose of Flame

    Look at this tangled snare of undergrowth,
    These low-branched trees that darken all below;
    Drink in the hot scent of this noontide air,
    And hear, far off, some distant river flow,
    Lamenting ever till it finds the sea.
    New Life, new World, what's Shame to thee and me ?

    Let us slay Shame; we shall forget his grave
    Locked in the rapture of our lone embrace.
    Yet what if there should rise, as once of old,
    New wonder of this new, yet ancient place:
    An angel, with a whirling sword of flame,
    To drive us forth forever in God's name!



    A Wanderer

    The snows lie thick around his door,
    That door made fast by bar and lock.
    He will not heed thee, trembling, chilled;
    He will not hear thy piteous knock.

    Poor wandering Heart, canst thou not see
    There is no welcome here for thee?
    The air is numb with frost and night.
    O wait no longer in the snow,

    For lo, from yonder latticed pane
    Faint music and the fire-light's glow;
    He hath another guest in state,
    And thou, poor Heart, thou art too late!



    Lent

    Ah, the road is a weary road
    That leads one on to God,
    And all too swift the eager race
    To suit a lagging pace,
    And far, far distant looks the goal
    To the most patient soul.
    So I forsook the sharp set road,
    And walked where pleasant herbs were sowed.
    I flung the sandals from tired feet,
    And strayed where honeyed flowers grew sweet,
    Nor strained tense nerves, nor onward pressed,
    But made the goal his breast.
    His circling arms my Heaven I made,
    And, save to him, no more I prayed.
    So for my sin I paid the price
    Of endless joys of Paradise.
    Good fellow-pilgrims, go your way.
    For me 't is all in vain to pray.
    I weep, when o'er the windy track
    Your victors' hymns float echoing back,
    But still I know, with eyelids wet,
    I could return, but not forget.



    Dreams

    So still I lay within his arms
    He dreamed I was asleep,
    Across my lips I felt his breath
    Like burning breezes creep.

    I felt his watchful, searching gaze
    Though closed eyes cannot see;
    I felt his warm and tender grasp
    More closely prison me.

    The waking dream was all too sweet
    For me to wish to sleep.
    I was too far beyond Earth's woes
    To speak, or smile, or weep.

    How after this, could I endure
    The troublous times of Age and Tears,
    To sit and wait for Death to dawn
    Across the midnight of my years!

    Love will not stay, though we entreat;
    Death will not come at call.
    Ah, to return to life and grief!
    Ah, having risen to fall!

    I felt his mouth burn on my own;
    I raised my eyes to his eyes' deep.
    He thought his kiss had wakened me,
    —He dreamed I was asleep!



    Under the Rose

    He moved with trembling fingers
    From my throat, the band of red,
    And a band of burning kisses
    His lips set there instead.

    Then he tied again the ribbon.
    "I will hide them, Love," said he,
    "And the secret of thy necklace
    None shall know, save thee and me."

    It was just a foolish fancy,
    But from that day to this,
    I wore the crimson ribbon
    To hide my lover's kiss.

    He has gone, and love is over,
    But this blade within my hand,
    Still shall hide our secret kisses
    With another crimson band.



    Immolation

    Take her, and lay her head upon thy breast,
    And be thou blest beyond thy heart's desire;
    And as the star that ushers in the dawn
    Fades from the sight in morning's glow and fire,

    So, having heralded thy break of day,
    'T is Nature's law that I no longer stay.
    A path was I that led thee to thy goal;
    Forget the path, since now the goal is won.

    That was its proper place in all the land,
    And it was made to set thy feet upon.
    Its blessing is that all its course did tend
    To bring thee to thy journey's happy end.



    Arcadia

    Sunlight on us, Love;
    Not a shadow comes between.
    Midway of the field we stand,
    Heart in heart and hand in hand
    And all the land is green.

    Look around thee, Love,
    Naught but meadows shining fair,
    Save, as far as eye can see,
    Long, low hills, clothed tenderly
    By the veils of mist they wear.

    But below us, Love,
    Hidden by the meadow's rise,
    Whispers brokenly a stream
    Like a voice heard in a dream;
    Clear its current as thine eyes.

    Thou must linger, Love,
    For a little on this side;
    Both its banks are soft with moss.
    Grieve not, Dear, that I shall cross,
    For but shallow is its tide.

    Canst not see it, Love?
    Nay, Heart's Dearest, nor can I;
    But in pauses to mine ear
    Comes the sound thou canst not hear,
    Filling silence with a sigh.

    Smile again, dear Love,
    Brighter day was never seen.
    Pull these blossoms for thy hair;
    Spring-time's joy is in the air,
    And all the land is green.



    Two Partings

    He said good-bye with laughing eyes,
    Too careless of me to be wise
    And see I grieved, since he must go.
    With weary tears, through night and day,
    In thought, I follow on his way,
    For he must go, and I must stay.
    —I dread the bitter winds that blow.

    Now time, at last, brings near a day
    When I must go, and he must stay,
    And I, like him, shall smile to go.
    And when he says good-bye to me,
    Although he weep, I shall not see,
    But if in thoughts he follow me,
    —He need not dread the winds that blow.



    Rose Song

    Plant, above my lifeless heart
    Crimson roses, red as blood.
    As if the love, pent there so long
    Were pouring forth its flood.

    Then, through them, my heart may tell,
    Its Past of Love and Grief,
    And I shall feel them grow from it,
    And know a vague relief.

    Through rotting shroud shall feel their roots,
    And unto them myself shall grow,
    And when I blossom at her feet,
    She, on that day, shall know!



    A New Year

    THY bride is waiting in the kirk,
    The wedding wine waits in thy hall.
    Adieu.
    For me, the stream's cold tide to drink,
    Where once we lingered at its brink,
    The kirk-yard waits thy Summer's work.
    Adieu.

    For her, the sweetest flowers that grow,
    For me, the faded Autumn grass,
    Adieu.
    For me, the dead leaves' tarnished gold.
    Ah, linger not, for once of old,
    Love, thou did'st stay when I said "Go!"
    Adieu.

    For her, the pearl wrought marriage-dress,
    The choir, the Mass, the ring of gold.
    Adieu.
    For me, the chants that night-birds sing.
    My hand in thine, I asked no ring,
    Nor blessed by love, the Church to bless.
    Adieu.

    For her, the wedding sheets are spread,
    For her, the cup of Love and Life.
    Adieu.
    For me, the cup of Love and Death.
    Then earth to earth, as the priest saith,
    My bed of love, and my last bed.
    Adieu.



    A Fete-Day

    They brought me snowy roses,
    A picture of my Saint,
    A little dove, whose tender note
    Was like a virgin's plaint.

    But you? You brought fierce kisses
    That caught my heart in snare,
    They crushed the snowy roses,
    That decked my throat and hair.

    The pictured Saint, in anguish,
    Gazed down from carven frame,
    And prayed, perhaps in heaven,
    For her who bears her name.

    The frightened dove moaned softly,
    With ruffled wing and crest.
    And never since will nestle
    As once, within my breast!


    In Exculpation

    You seared both eyes with kisses,
    And then bade me, blinded, go.
    Nor leave betraying foot-prints
    Upon your life's pure snow.

    Ah, Love, you should remember
    Ere you set blind captives free
    They cannot find the by-paths
    Who can no longer see!

    Ah, Love, 't was your cruel folly
    That set me journeying so,
    And hoped to find, thereafter,
    No foot-prints on the snow.



    The Rose of Flame

    God-like ignorance have they
    Who the voyage dare undertake.
    Yet men venture every day
    For the mystic Blossom's sake.
    Smile and weep for such as they,
    If perchance ye know the way.
    Smile for foe, and weep for friend,
    Strange the journey, sure its end.

    Through wide, twilight seas the course.
    He may start from any port.
    Fate alone stands at the helm,
    Be the sailing long or short.
    Night or day or weary week,
    Still she guides, and does not speak.
    No wild gale, or tempest's wrath
    Dares to cross his vessel's path.

    And what place of dreams is this,
    Where the keel slides in the sand?
    Never mortal's eyes but once
    Gaze on such a magic strand.
    The shore is veiled by mists of Shame
    Where grows the luring Rose of Flame.
    Bare sand, without a shrub or tree,
    And vapor white, and whispering sea.

    And now Fate holds him by the hand,
    And leads him inland, till no more
    The mist of Shame cleaves to the sand,
    And distant grows the sea and shore.
    Out of the desert, stretching bare,
    Come dizzy scents that load the air.
    Blindly and unfatigued he goes;
    He breathes the perfume of the Rose.

    Nearer—he feels the burning heat.
    Can desert hold a flower like this?
    He sees, is blinded by its glow;
    The scent is like a clinging kiss.
    The perfume deepens to a pang,
    And in his brain strange music sang,
    Such as lost Spirits sing in Hell.
    Then,—days,—or years; he best can tell.

    Withered, sere, and scorched at heart,
    He must seek the world once more.
    Never shall he sail again
    Through such seas, to touch such shore,
    And the memory of that strand
    Makes him loathe all other land,
    And no flower seems worth the name,
    Since he saw the Rose of Flame.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Isaac Rosenberg

    Isaac Rosenberg was born in 1890 in Bristol, the son of Lithuanian Jews who had moved to Britain a few years earlier. As a child, his teachers noticed his talent for drawing and writing poetry, but his parents couldn’t afford to keep him at school, and so he was apprenticed to an engraver’s company in 1905. In spite of this, Rosenberg attending evening classes in painting and drawing, and in the early 1910s a wealthy Jewish woman offered to pay his fees to attend art school. Before the war started he published two volumes of poems, one called Night and Day, and another Youth. Despite being resolutely pacifist, he enlisted for the war in 1915 – and wrote many poems while he was in the fighting until his death in 1918.


    In perhaps his best-known poem, ‘Returning, we hear the larks’, Rosenberg plays with the idea that the dread, foreboding and ultimate violent destruction of war has poisoned all of nature. The innocent song of larks in the dark is a pure, beautiful and strange comfort – but it is everywhere underlain with the threat that bullets, gas, and death might rain out of the night and onto the soldiers. The images of weightlessness and insubstantiality that pervade the final stanza: ‘a blind man’s dreams’ dropped on the sand by a violent sea, or the hair of a girl, are ultimately reversed, replaced in the final line by an image of a kiss that seems soft and light but conceals the poison of a snake:

    Returning, We Hear The Larks


    Sombre the night is.
    And though we have our lives, we know
    What sinister threat lurks there.

    Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
    This poison-blasted track opens on our camp—
    On a little safe sleep.

    But hark! joy—joy—strange joy.
    Lo! heights of night ringing with unseen larks.
    Music showering on our upturned list’ning faces.

    Death could drop from the dark
    As easily as song—
    But song only dropped,
    Like a blind man’s dreams on the sand
    By dangerous tides,
    Like a girl’s dark hair for she dreams no ruin lies there,
    Or her kisses where a serpent hides.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    St. Patrick’s Day: With an Irish Shamrock

    ----------------------By Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
    From the region of zephyrs, the Emerald isle,
    The land of thy birth, in my freshness I come,
    To waken this long-cherished morn with a smile,
    And breathe o’er thy spirit the whispers of home.
    O welcome the stranger from Erin’s green sod;
    I sprang where the bones of thy fathers repose,
    I grew where thy free step in infancy trod,
    Ere the world threw around thee its wiles and its woes.
    But sprightlier themes
    Enliven the dreams,
    My dew-dropping leaflets unfold to impart:
    To loftiest emotion
    Of patriot devotion,
    I wake the full chord of an Irishman’s heart.

    The rose is expanding her petals of pride,
    And points to the laurels o’erarching her tree;
    And the hardy Bur-thistle stands rooted beside,
    And sternly demands;—Who dare meddle wi’ me?
    And bright are the garlands they jointly display,
    In death-fields of victory gallantly got;
    But let the fair sisters their trophies array,
    And show us the wreath where the shamrock is not!
    By sea and by land,
    With bullet and brand,
    My sons have directed the stormbolt of war;
    The banners ye boast,
    Ne’er waved o’er our host,
    Unfanned by the accents of Erin-go-bragh!

    Erin mavourneen! dark is thy night;
    Deep thy forebodings and gloomy thy fears;
    And O, there are bosoms with savage delight
    Who laugh at thy plainings and scoff at thy tears!
    But, Erin mavourneen, bright are the names
    Who twine with the heart-vein thy fate in their breast;
    And scorned be the lot of the dastard, who shames
    To plant, as a trophy, this leaf on his crest!
    Thrice trebled disgrace
    His honours deface,
    Who shrinks from proclaiming the isle of his birth!
    Though lowly its stem,
    This emerald gem
    Mates with the proudest that shadow the earth!

    Sandhurst, March 17, 1827

    ************************************************** *******************************
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    Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
    Poet Details
    1790–1846
    Protestant evangelical activist, journalist, editor, novelist, children’s author, and poet Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna was born in Norwich, England. The daughter of an Anglican priest, she lost her hearing permanently at age ten and became a pioneer of deaf education. She married twice, to George Phelan and Lewis Hippolytus Joseph Tonna, taking their names in turn, though she published under the name, Charlotte Elizabeth.

    Elizabeth published dozens of books and tracts, including the once-banned children’s book The Simple Flower (1826), the novel Judah’s Lion (1843), Izram: A Mexican Tale; and Other Poems (1826), and Posthumous and other poems (1847); she also penned an autobiography, Personal Recollections (1841). Her nonfiction account of the working conditions English seamstresses faced, The Wrongs of Woman (1844), helped establish worker safety laws. Starting in 1834, she edited the Christian Lady’s Magazine, and from 1841 onward, she also edited The Protestant Magazine.

    Tonna died at the age of 55 in Ramsgate, England, where she is buried.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Invictus
    ---------- by William Ernest Henley


    Out of the night that covers me,
    Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
    I thank whatever gods may be
    For my unconquerable soul.

    In the fell clutch of circumstance
    I have not winced nor cried aloud.
    Under the bludgeonings of chance
    My head is bloody, but unbowed.

    Beyond this place of wrath and tears
    Looms but the Horror of the shade,
    And yet the menace of the years
    Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

    It matters not how strait the gate,
    How charged with punishments the scroll.
    I am the master of my fate:
    I am the captain of my soul.

    William Ernest Henley

    ---------------------------
    ---------------------------

    Biography

    William Ernest Henley
    Poet Details
    1849–1903

    Born in Gloucester, England, poet, editor, and critic William Ernest Henley was educated at Crypt Grammar School, where he studied with the poet T.E. Brown, and the University of St. Andrews. His father was a struggling bookseller who died when Henley was a teenager. At age 12 Henley was diagnosed with tubercular arthritis that necessitated the amputation of one of his legs just below the knee; the other foot was saved only through a radical surgery performed by Joseph Lister. As he healed in the infirmary, Henley began to write poems, including “Invictus,” which concludes with the oft-referenced lines “I am the master of my fate; / I am the captain of my soul.” Henley’s poems often engage themes of inner strength and perseverance. His numerous collections of poetry include A Book of Verses (1888), London Voluntaries (1893), and Hawthorn and Lavender (1899).

    Henley edited the Scots Observer (which later became the National Observer), through which he befriended writer Rudyard Kipling, and the Magazine of Art, in which he lauded the work of emerging artists James McNeill Whistler and Auguste Rodin. Henley was a close friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, who reportedly based his Long John Silver character in Treasure Island in part on Henley.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Not exactly a poem, but this one's for tyr .... Old Man by Neil Young.
    “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” Edumnd Burke

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gunny View Post
    Not exactly a poem, but this one's for tyr .... Old Man by Neil Young.
    THANKS AMIGO...
    I know that song like I know the back of my hand my friend. Neil Young is one of my favorite singers.
    That song with me comes in second after his, 1. Heart of Gold song,
    WITH HIS SONG, 3. The Needle And The Damage Done ,coming in as third..

    And true, he is without any doubt a true and great poet..
    Songs the way he writes them are actually, lyrical poetry!--Tyr


    NEIL YOUNG LYRICS

    "Old Man"

    Old man look at my life,
    I'm a lot like you were.
    Old man look at my life,
    I'm a lot like you were.

    Old man look at my life,
    Twenty four
    and there's so much more
    Live alone in a paradise
    That makes me think of two.

    Love lost, such a cost,
    Give me things
    that don't get lost.
    Like a coin that won't get tossed
    Rolling home to you.

    Old man take a look at my life
    I'm a lot like you
    I need someone to love me
    the whole day through
    Ah, one look in my eyes
    and you can tell that's true.

    Lullabies, look in your eyes,
    Run around the same old town.
    Doesn't mean that much to me
    To mean that much to you.

    I've been first and last
    Look at how the time goes past.
    But I'm all alone at last.
    Rolling home to you.

    Old man take a look at my life
    I'm a lot like you
    I need someone to love me
    the whole day through
    Ah, one look in my eyes
    and you can tell that's true.

    Old man look at my life,
    I'm a lot like you were.
    Old man look at my life,
    I'm a lot like you were.

    --------------------------------------
    --------------------------------------


    "Harvest" Album Lyrics


    Neil Young
    Tracklist
    01 Out On The Weekend lyrics
    02 Harvest lyrics
    03 A Man Needs A Maid lyrics
    04
    4.9/5
    Heart Of Gold lyrics
    05 Are You Ready For The Country lyrics
    06
    4,915 4.9/5
    Old Man lyrics
    07 There's A World lyrics
    08 Alabama lyrics
    09
    4.7/5
    The Needle And The Damage Done lyrics
    10 Words lyrics
    This album was submitted on September 13th, 2005 and last modified on February 9th, 2013.
    Album Details
    Released : 1972-00-00
    Discs : 1
    Genre : Rock, Ethnic/Folk, Christian, Classical
    Record label :
    Rank : 785 (−673)
    Rate :
    4.3/5 from 7 users
    Charts : − view all »
    Referring urls : view all »

    --------------------------------------

    NEIL YOUNG LYRICS
    "Heart Of Gold"

    I want to live,
    I want to give
    I've been a miner for a heart of gold.
    It's these expressions
    I never give
    That keep me searching for a heart of gold.

    And I'm getting old.
    Keep me searching for a heart of gold
    And I'm getting old.

    I've been to Hollywood
    I've been to Redwood
    I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold.
    I've been in my mind,
    It's such a fine line
    That keeps me searching for a heart of gold.

    And I'm getting old.
    Keeps me searching for a heart of gold
    And I'm getting old.

    Keep me searching for a heart of gold.
    You keep me searching and I'm growing old.
    Keep me searching for a heart of gold
    I've been a miner for a heart of gold.

    ------------------------------------

    NEIL YOUNG LYRICS
    "Needle And The Damage Done"

    I caught you knockin'
    at my cellar door
    I love you, baby,
    can I have some more
    Ooh, ooh, the damage done.

    I hit the city and
    I lost my band
    I watched the needle
    take another man
    Gone, gone, the damage done.

    I sing the song
    because I love the man
    I know that some
    of you don't understand
    Milk-blood
    to keep from running out.

    I've seen the needle
    and the damage done
    A little part of it in everyone
    But every junkie's
    like a settin' sun.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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