From my most recent poetry blog......

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

For, A Look Into Lesser Known Poets, A Series, (3rd.) Poet, Christina Rossetti
Blog Posted:3/21/2020 3:59:00 PM


For, A Look Into Lesser Known Poets, A Series, (3rd.) Poet, Christina Rossetti

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...stina-rossetti


Christina Rossetti
1830–1894
Image of Christina Rossetti.
Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library / Alamy Stock Photo
Poet Christina Rossetti was born in 1830, the youngest child in an extraordinarily gifted family. Her father, the Italian poet and political exile Gabriele Rossetti, immigrated to England in 1824 and established a career as a Dante scholar and teacher of Italian in London. He married the half-English, half-Italian Frances Polidori in 1826, and they had four children in quick succession: Maria Francesca in 1827, Gabriel Charles Dante (famous under the name Dante Gabriel but always called Gabriel by family members) in 1828, William Michael in 1829, and Christina Georgina on 5 December 1830. In 1831 Gabriele Rossetti was appointed to the chair of Italian at the newly opened King’s College. The children received their earliest education, and Maria and Christina all of theirs, from their mother, who had been trained as a governess and was committed to cultivating intellectual excellence in her family. Certainly this ambition was satisfied: Maria was the author of a respected study of Dante, as well as books on religious instruction and Italian grammar and translation; Dante Gabriel distinguished himself as one of the foremost poets and painters of his era; and William was a prolific art and literary critic, editor, and memoirist of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Christina became one of the Victorian age’s finest poets. She was the author of numerous books of poetry, including Goblin Market and other Poems (1862), The Prince’s Progress (1866), A Pageant (1881), and The Face of the Deep (1882).

Rossetti’s poetry has never disappeared from view. Critical interest in Rossetti’s poetry swelled in the final decades of the twentieth century, a resurgence largely impelled by the emergence of feminist criticism; much of this commentary focuses on gender issues in her poetry and on Rossetti as a woman poet. In Rossetti’s lifetime opinion was divided over whether she or Elizabeth Barrett Browning was the greatest female poet of the era; in any case, after Browning’s death in 1861 readers and critics saw Rossetti as the older poet’s rightful successor. The two poets achieved different kinds of excellence, as is evident in Dante Gabriel Rossetti‘s comment on his sister, quoted by William Sharp in The Atlantic Monthly (June 1895): “She is the finest woman-poet since Mrs. Browning, by a long way; and in artless art, if not in intellectual impulse, is greatly Mrs. Browning’s superior.” Readers have generally considered Rossetti’s poetry less intellectual, less political, and less varied than Browning’s; conversely, they have acknowledged Rossetti as having the greater lyric gift, with her poetry displaying a perfection of diction, tone, and form under the guise of utter simplicity.

Rossetti’s childhood was exceptionally happy, characterized by affectionate parental care and the creative companionship of older siblings. In temperament she was most like her brother Dante Gabriel: their father called the pair the “two storms” of the family in comparison to the “two calms,” Maria and William. Christina was given to tantrums and fractious behavior, and she fought hard to subdue this passionate temper. Years later, counseling a niece subject to similar outbursts, the mature Christina looked back on the fire now stifled: “You must not imagine, my dear girl, that your Aunt was always the calm and sedate person you now behold. I, too, had a very passionate temper; but I learnt to control it. On one occasion, being rebuked by my dear Mother for some fault, I seized upon a pair of scissors, and ripped up my arm to vent my wrath. I have learnt since to control my feelings—and no doubt you will!” Self-control was, indeed, achieved—perhaps too much so. In his posthumous memoir of his sister that prefaces The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti (1904) William laments the thwarting of her high spirits: “In innate character she was vivacious, and open to pleasurable impressions; and, during her girlhood, one might readily have supposed that she would develop into a woman of expansive heart, fond of society and diversions, and taking a part in them of more than average brilliancy. What came to pass was of course quite the contrary.” As an adult Christina Rossetti was considered by many to be overscrupulous and excessively restrained.pleasures, renunciation, individual unworthiness, and the perfection of >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.....

much, much more at link given above...(RJL)
Three examples of her poetry given below...(RJL)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~
https://allpoetry.com/A-Better-Ressurection

(1.)

A Better Resurrection
BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm'd with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish'd thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.
© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

(2.)
An Echo from Willowood
“Oh Ye, All Ye That Walk in Willowwood”


Two gaz’d into a pool, he gaz’d and she,
Not hand in hand, yet heart in heart, I think,
Pale and reluctant on the water’s brink
AS on the brink of parting which must be.
Each eyed the other’s aspect, she and he,
Each felt one hungering heart leap up and sink,
Each tasted bitterness which both must drink,
There on the brink of life’s dividing sea.
Lilies upon the surface, deep below
Two wistful faces craving each for each,
Resolute and reluctant without speech:—
A sudden ripple made the faces flow
One moment join’d, to vanish out of reach:
So these hearts join’d, and ah! were parted so.
© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

(3.)

Echo
BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
Remember
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3rd link on , CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

https://poets.org/poet/christina-rossetti

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I That Once Rose To Greet Dawn's Sweetest Voice

I that once rose to greet dawn's sweetest voice
and with joy of life, make loving my choice
as in searching for romance and its gems
fiery rites of passion, open rose stems.

Moonlit skies, quenching heavy gasping aches
Always searching, playing for higher stakes!

I that saw not blindness within my soul
felt only glory, saw not hurt's great toll
prisoner, bound by my unbreakable chains
as a ghost, denying my lonely pains.

Moonlit skies, quenching heavy gasping aches
Always searching, playing for higher stakes!

I that walked long crooked path with glee
did not admit harm done they or to me
yes a young rascal, seeking ever more
thus merciless as bloody holes I tore.

Moonlit skies, quenching heavy gasping aches
Always searching, playing for higher stakes!

I that thought life only for pleasure found
shut out truth's light and any crying sounds
lost soul, racing into that coming wrath
playing wicked odds, failing at math.

Moonlit skies, quenching heavy gasping aches
Always searching, playing for higher stakes!

I that finally paid my costly dues
was imprisoned in dark, hard hitting blues
victim of my own making, blinded sight
cast into darkest fields of blackest blight.

No longer skies, of heavy gasping aches
No more searching, playing for higher stakes!

Robert J. Lindley, 3-21-2020
Rhyme, ( How Oft Life Teaches Us Those Much Needed Lessons )
Tribute poem composed for third poet, ( Christina Rossetti )
in my, -- "Lesser Known Poets Series".

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

For, A Look Into Lesser Known Poets, A Series, ( 4th.) Poet, Elinor Wylie
Blog Posted:3/27/2020 7:35:00 AM
For, A Look Into Lesser Known Poets, A Series, ( 4th.) Poet, Elinor Wylie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Wylie

Elinor Wylie
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Elinor Wylie
Born Elinor Morton Hoyt
September 7, 1885
Somerville, New Jersey, U.S.
Died December 16, 1928 (aged 43)
New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation Writer, editor
Language English
Notable works Nets to Catch the Wind, Black Armor, Angels and Earthly Creatures
Notable awards Julia Ellsworth Ford Prize
Spouse Philip Simmons Hichborn
(m. 1906; died 1912)
Horace Wylie
(m. 1916–19??)
William Rose Benet
(m. 1923; died 1950)
Children Philip Simmons Hichborn, Jr.
Elinor Morton Wylie (September 7, 1885 – December 16, 1928) was an American poet and novelist popular in the 1920s and 1930s. "She was famous during her life almost as much for her ethereal beauty and personality as for her melodious, sensuous poetry."[1]

Life
Family and childhood
Elinor Wylie was born Elinor Morton Hoyt in Somerville, New Jersey, into a socially prominent family. Her grandfather, Henry M. Hoyt, was a governor of Pennsylvania. Her aunt was Helen Hoyt, a poet.[2] Her parents were Henry Martyn Hoyt, Jr., who would be United States Solicitor General from 1903 to 1909; and Anne Morton McMichael (born July 31, 1861 in Pa.). Their other children were:

Henry Martyn Hoyt (May 8, 1887, in Pa. – August 25, 1920 in New York City) who married Alice Gordon Parker (1885–1951)
Constance A. Hoyt (May 20, 1889, in Pa. – 1923 in Bavaria, Germany) who married Ferdinand von Stumm-Halberg on March 30, 1910, in Washington, D.C.
Morton McMichael Hoyt (April 4, 1899, in Washington, D.C. - August 21, 1949, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), three times married and divorced Eugenia Bankhead, known as "Sister" and sister of Tallulah Bankhead
Nancy McMichael Hoyt (born October 1, 1902, in Washington, D.C. - 1949) romance novelist who wrote Elinor Wylie: The Portrait of an Unknown Woman (1935). She married Edward Davison Curtis; they divorced in 1932.
Because of her father's political aspirations, Elinor spent much of her youth in Washington, DC.[3] She was educated at Miss Baldwin's School (1893–97), Mrs. Flint's School (1897–1901), and finally Holton-Arms School (1901–04).[4][failed verification] In particular, from age 12 to 20, she lived in Washington again where she made her debut in the midst of the "city's most prominent social élite,"[3] being "trained for the life of a debutante and a society wife".[5]

"As a girl she was already bookish—not in the languid or inactive sense but girded, embraced by books, between whose covers lay the word-perfect world she sought. She grew into a tall, dark beauty in the classic 1920s style. Some who knew her claimed she was the most striking woman they ever met."[6]

Marriages and scandal

After Elinor eloped with Horace Wylie, Philip Simmons Hichborn committed suicide in this building.
The future Elinor Wylie became notorious, during her lifetime, for her multiple affairs and marriages. On the rebound from an earlier romance she met her first husband, Harvard graduate Philip Simmons Hichborn[5] (1882–1912), the son of a rear-admiral. She eloped with him and they were married on December 13, 1906, when she was 20. She had a son by him, Philip Simmons Hichborn, Jr., born September 22, 1907 in Washington, D.C. However, "Hichborn, a would-be poet, was emotionally unstable",[5] and Elinor found herself in an unhappy marriage.

She also found herself being stalked by Horace Wylie, "a Washington lawyer with a wife and three children", who "was 17 years older than Elinor. He stalked her for years, appearing wherever she was."[7]

Following the death in November 1910 of Elinor's father, and unable to secure a divorce from Hichborn,[3] she left her husband and son, and eloped with Wylie.

"After being ostracized by their families and friends and mistreated in the press, the couple moved to England"[8] where they lived "under the assumed name of Waring; this event caused a scandal in the Washington, D.C., social circles Elinor Wylie had frequented".[5] Philip Simmons Hichborn Sr. committed suicide in 1912.

With Horace Wylie's encouragement, in 1912 Elinor anonymously published Incidental Number, a small book of poems she had written in the previous decade.[5]

Between 1914 and 1916, Elinor tried to have a second child, but "suffered several miscarriages ... as well as a stillbirth and ... a premature child who died after one week."[5]

After Horace Wylie's wife agreed to a divorce, the couple returned to the United States and lived in three different states "under the stress of social ostracism and Elinor's illness." Elinor and Horace Wylie officially married in 1916, after Elinor's first husband had committed suicide and Horace's first wife had divorced him. By then, however, the couple were drawing apart."[5]

Elinor began spending time in literary circles in New York City—"her friends there numbered John Peale Bishop, Edmund Wilson, John Dos Passos, Sinclair Lewis, Carl Van Vechten, and ... William Rose Benét."[5]

Her last marriage (in 1923)[9] was to William Rose Benét (February 2, 1886 – May 4, 1950), who was part of her literary circle and brother of Stephen Vincent Benét. By the time Wylie's third book of poetry, Trivial Breath in 1928 appeared, her marriage with Benét was also in trouble, and they had agreed to live apart. She moved to England and fell in love with the husband of a friend, Henry de Clifford Woodhouse, to whom she wrote a series of 19 sonnets which she published privately in 1928 as Angels and Earthly Creatures (also included in her 1929 book of the same name).[8]

Career

Vanity Fair magazine (cover by John Held, Jr.), where Wylie worked 1923-1925
Elinor Wylie's literary friends encouraged her to submit her verse to Poetry magazine. Poetry published four of her poems, including what became "her most widely anthologized poem, 'Velvet Shoes'", in May 1920. With Benét now acting as her informal literary agent,[5] "Wylie left her second husband and moved to New York in 1921".[8] The Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB) says: "She captivated the literary world with her slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and technical virtuosity."[5]

In 1921, Wylie's first commercial book of poetry, Nets to Catch the Wind, was published. The book, "which many critics still consider to contain her best poems," was an immediate success. Edna St. Vincent Millay and Louis Untermeyer praised the work.[5] The Poetry Society awarded her its Julia Ellsworth Ford Prize.[4]

In 1923 she published Black Armor, which was "another successful volume of verse".[5] The New York Times enthused: "There is not a misplaced word or cadence in it. There is not an extra syllable."[10]

1923 also saw the publication of Wylie's first novel, Jennifer Lorn, to considerable fanfare. Van Vechten "organized a torchlight parade through Manhattan to celebrate its publication".[5] She would write "four historical novels widely admired when first published, although interest in them diminished in the masculine era of the 1940s and 50s".[6]

According to Carl Van Doren, Wylie had "as sure and strong an intelligence" as he has ever known. Her novels were "flowers with roots reaching down into unguessed deeps of erudition."[3]

She worked as the poetry editor of Vanity Fair magazine between 1923 and 1925. She was an editor of Literary Guild, and a contributing editor of The New Republic, from 1926 through 1928.[5]

Wylie was an "admirer of the British Romantic poets, and particularly of Shelley, to a degree that some critics have seen as abnormal".[5] "A friend claimed she was 'positively dotty' about Shelley, not just making him her model in art and life but on occasion actually 'seeing' the dead poet."[6] She wrote a 1926 novel, The Orphan Angel, in which "the great young poet is rescued from drowning off an Italian cape and travels to America, where he encounters the dangers of the frontier."[5]

By the time of Wylie's third book of poetry, Trivial Breath in 1928, her marriage with Benét was also in trouble, and they had agreed to live apart. She moved to England and fell in love with the husband of a friend, Henry de Clifford Woodhouse, to whom she wrote a series of 19 sonnets which she published privately in 1928 as Angels and Earthly Creatures (also included in her 1929 book of the same name).[8]

Elinor Wylie's literary output is impressive, given that her writing career lasted just eight years. In that brief period, she crowded four volumes of poems, four novels, and enough magazine articles to "make up an additional volume."[3]

Death
Wylie suffered from very high blood pressure all her adult life. As a result, she was prone to unbearable migraines and died of a stroke at Benét's New York apartment at the age of forty-three. At the time, they were both preparing for publication her Angels and Earthly Creatures.[5]


https://www.poemhunter.com/elinor-morton-wylie/poems/

Elinor Morton Wylie
Five Poems by Elinor Morton Wylie

(1.)
Escape

When foxes eat the last gold grape,
And the last white antelope is killed,
I shall stop fighting and escape
Into a little house I'll build.

But first I'll shrink to fairy size,
With a whisper no one understands,
Making blind moons of all your eyes,
And muddy roads of all your hands.

And you may grope for me in vain
In hollows under the mangrove root,
Or where, in apple-scented rain,
The silver wasp-nests hang like fruit.
Elinor Morton Wylie

(2.)
Fire And Sleet And Candlelight'

For this you've striven
Daring, to fail:
Your sky is riven
Like a tearing veil.

For this, you've wasted
Wings of your youth;
Divined, and tasted
Bitter springs of truth.

From sand unslakèd
Twisted strong cords,
And wandering naked
Among trysted swords.

There's a word unspoken,
A knot untied.
Whatever is broken
The earth may hide.

The road was jagged
Over sharp stones:
Your body's too ragged
To cover your bones.

The wind scatters
Tears upon dust;
Your soul's in tatters
Where the spears thrust.
Elinor Morton Wylie


(3.)
Incantation

A white well
In a black cave;
A bright shell
In a dark wave.

A white rose
Black brambles hood;
Smooth bright snows
In a dark wood.

A flung white glove
In a dark fight;
A white dove
On a wild black night.

A white door
In a dark lane;
A bright core
To bitter black pain.

A white hand
Waved from dark walls;
In a burnt black land
Bright waterfalls.

A bright spark
Where black ashes are;
In the smothering dark
One white star.
Elinor Morton Wylie

(4.)
Les Lauriers Sont Coupée

Ah, love, within the shadow of the wood
The laurels are cut down; some other brows
May bear the classic wreath which Fame allows
And find the burden honorable and good.
Have we not passed the laurels as they stood--
Soft in the veil with which Spring endows
The wintry glitter of their woven boughs--
Nor stopped to break the branches while we could?

Ah, love, for other brows they are cut down.
Thornless and scentless are their stems and flowers,
And cold as death their twisted coronal.
Sweeter to us the sharpness of this crown;
Sweeter the wildest roses which are ours;
Sweeter the petals, even when they fall.
Elinor Morton Wylie

(5.)
Little Joke - Poem by Elinor Morton Wylie

Stripping an almond tree in flower
The wise apothecary's skill
A single drop of lethal power
From perfect sweetness can distill

From bitterness in efflorescence,
With murderous poisons packed therein;
The poet draws pellucid essence
Pure as a drop of metheglin.
Elinor Morton Wylie

********************
These two poems composed to honor this truly great poet....

(1.)
Heaven Smiles And Its Light Awaits

Icy winds have died, winter fled
Hope has sung, Spring has sprung
Love and promise have wed
new life's radiant glow has brung
music to wake the dead.

Faded are snows that graced the trees
white colors that adorned
forest glens far from seas
Nature's gifts, its dear christened born
cast from Love's seeded pleas.

Icy winds have died, winter fled
Hope has sung, Spring has sprung
Love and promise have wed
new life's radiant glow has brung
music to wake the dead.

As Life and Love, partner with Fate.
Heaven smiles and its Light awaits.

Robert J. Lindley, 3-27-2020
Rhyme, Lin 86686 form
( Wherein Life And Spring This Dark Racing World Renews )
Syllables Per Line:8 6 6 8 6 0 8 6 6 8 6 0 8 6 6 8 6 0 8 8
Total # Syllables::118
Total # Words::::::96

Note- Tribute poem composed for fourth poet, ( Elinor Wylie )
in my, -- "Lesser Known Poets Series".
See my new blog on this majestically talented and amazing poet.....

(2.)
From Within Earth's Red Blooms Love Quickly Flew

Of those sweet tender kisses-- I recall
Images that set fiery flames a'leaping
Warming hearts in truest love did swiftly fall
While Cupid through keyhole was a'peeping
From within earth's red blooms love quickly flew
As both yellow moon, twinkling stars did glow
Our eager hearts and eyes meeting we knew
Chained in golden paradise sent to grow,
In romance wedded to be great treasure
Nights of bliss to be our glittering gems
Time setting pure joy well beyond measure
We to become intertwining rose stems,
Flowers shining in garden of true love
Two cast into one, by Heavens above.

Robert J. Lindley, 3-27-2020
Sonnet, ( Depths Of Love Those So Truly Blessed Know )
Syllables Per Line:10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
Total # Syllables::140
Total # Words::::::100

Note-
Tribute poem composed for fourth poet, ( Elinor Wylie )
in my, -- "Lesser Known Poets Series".
See my new blog on this majestically talented and amazing poet...

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Blog on - Elysium, Greek mythology- AJAX - Robert Lindley's Blog
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Blog on - Elysium, Greek mythology- AJAX
Blog Posted:8/18/2020 4:53:00 AM
Elysium
Greek mythology
WRITTEN BY The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
See Article History
Alternative Titles: Elysian Fields, Elysian Plain
Elysium, also called Elysian Fields or Elysian Plain, in Greek mythology, originally the paradise to which heroes on whom the gods conferred immortality were sent. It probably was retained from Minoan religion. In Homer’s writings the Elysian Plain was a land of perfect happiness at the end of the Earth, on the banks of the Oceanus. A similar description was given by Hesiod of the Isles of the Blessed. In the earlier authors, only those specially favoured by the gods entered Elysium and were made immortal. By the time of Hesiod, however, Elysium was a place for the blessed dead, and, from Pindar on, entrance was gained by a righteous life. Later writers made it a particular part of Hades, as in Virgil, Aeneid, Book VI.


************************************************** ********
My Tribute poem

With Promise Of Entry, Elysium

Childhood, seeing from afar, candle burning bright
with courage, imagination seeing life through
always and forever the promise, heard each night-
walk a brave path, receive entry, as is your due,
heaven searching, whispers of two stars gazing back
honor true, never shall a God's power you lack.

Elysium- open gates, paradise awaits.
on battlefields- glory, set by "Hands of the Fates".

Ajax, blessed child and great warrior born to be
father- war god, mother a nymph of the blue seas
as a child roaming forests, with sword and long spear
a hero born and one totally without fear,
star gazing- seeing death would come, Elysian fields
his destiny, gifting all of its golden yields.

Elysium- open gates, paradise awaits.
On battlefields- glory, set by "Hands of the Fates".

Ajax, scarred and toughened, many battles fought
never surrendering, ever giving his all
a warrior true, there within Olympic feuds caught
steady and ever mindful of his final fall,
sky hunting, watching universe's resplendent glow
as decreed by the Gods- set to put on a show.

Elysium- open gates, paradise awaits.
On battlefields- glory, set by "Hands of the Fates".

Ajax, courageous warrior of Greek legend's fame
gifted with prowess of strength and courage to match
of Homer's Troy, that Greek hero, one and the same
always fated, for a Trojan war death to catch,
there on bloody soil, as Olympus had decreed
death claimed he, born of true and heroic Greek seed.

Elysium- open gates, paradise awaits.
On battlefields- glory, set by "Hands of the Fates".

R.J. Lindley, original version, May 9th, 1972
Rhyme, ( On Homer, Greek Mythology, Greek Warriors )
edited, and updated with link.. 8-18-2020

Syllables Per Line:
12 12 12 12 12 12 0 12 12
12 12 12 12 12 12 0 12 12
12 12 12 12 12 12 0 12 12
12 12 12 12 12 12 0 12 12
Total # Syllables:384
Total # Words:256
Notes:

1. Elysium

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ely...reek-mythology

Elysium
Greek mythology
WRITTEN BY
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
See Article History
Alternative Titles: Elysian Fields, Elysian Plain
Elysium, also called Elysian Fields or Elysian Plain, in Greek mythology, originally the paradise to which heroes on whom the gods conferred immortality were sent. It probably was retained from Minoan religion. In Homer’s writings the Elysian Plain was a land of perfect happiness at the end of the Earth, on the banks of the Oceanus. A similar description was given by Hesiod of the Isles of the Blessed. In the earlier authors, only those specially favoured by the gods entered Elysium and were made immortal. By the time of Hesiod, however, Elysium was a place for the blessed dead, and, from Pindar on, entrance was gained by a righteous life. Later writers made it a particular part of Hades, as in Virgil, Aeneid, Book VI.

2. Ajax

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_the_Great


Ajax the Great
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ajax (/'e?d?æks/) or Aias (/'a?.?s/; Ancient Greek: Α?ας, romanized: Aías [aí?.a?s], gen. Α?αντος Aíantos; archaic ΑΣ?Α? [aí?.wa?s])[a] is a Greek mythological hero, the son of King Telamon and Periboea, and the half-brother of Teucer.[1] He plays an important role, and is portrayed as a towering figure and a warrior of great courage in Homer's Iliad and in the Epic Cycle, a series of epic poems about the Trojan War. He is also referred to as "Telamonian Ajax" (Α?ας ? Τελαμ?νιος, in Etruscan recorded as Aivas Tlamunus), "Greater Ajax", or "Ajax the Great", which distinguishes him from Ajax, son of Oileus (Ajax the Lesser).
Ajax is the son of Telamon, who was the son of Aeacus and grandson of Zeus, and his first wife Periboea. He is the cousin of Achilles, and is the elder half-brother of Teucer. His given name is derived from the root of α??ζω "to lament", translating to "one who laments; mourner". Hesiod, however, includes a story in "The Great Eoiae" that indicates Ajax received his name when Heracles prayed to Zeus that a son might be born to Telemon and Eriboea. Zeus sent an eagle (aietos - αετ?ς) as a sign. Heracles then bade the parents call their son Ajax after the eagle. Many illustrious Athenians, including Cimon, Miltiades, Alcibiades and the historian Thucydides, traced their descent from Ajax. On an Etruscan tomb dedicated to Racvi Satlnei in Bologna (5th century BC) there is an inscription that says aivastelmunsl, which means "[family] of Telamonian Ajax".[2]

Description

The Belvedere Torso, a marble sculpture carved in the first Century BC depicting Ajax.
In Homer's Iliad he is described as of great stature, colossal frame and strongest of all the Achaeans. Known as the "bulwark of the Achaeans",[3] he was trained by the centaur Chiron (who had trained Ajax's father Telamon and Achilles's father Peleus and would later die of an accidental wound inflicted by Heracles, whom he was at the time training) at the same time as Achilles. He was described as fearless, strong and powerful but also with a very high level of combat intelligence. Ajax commands his army wielding a huge shield made of seven cow-hides with a layer of bronze. Most notably, Ajax is not wounded in any of the battles described in the Iliad, and he is the only principal character on either side who does not receive substantial assistance from any of the gods (except for Agamemnon) who take part in the battles, although, in book 13, Poseidon strikes Ajax with his staff, renewing his strength. Unlike Diomedes, Agamemnon, and Achilles, Ajax appears as a mainly defensive warrior, instrumental in the defense of the Greek camp and ships and that of Patroclus' body. When the Trojans are on the offensive, he is often seen covering the retreat of the Achaeans. Significantly, while one of the deadliest heroes in the whole poem, Ajax has no aristeia depicting him on the offensive.


3. Olympus
(A.)
https://mythology.net/greek/greek-co...0mount%20often.


What Is Mount Olympus?
Mount Olympus is the mythical home of the gods in Greek mythology. According to authors, the mountain was created after the Titanomachy, the epic battle between the young gods, the Olympians and the older gods, the Titans. As a result of this battle, the Olympian victors created their new majestic home – Mount Olympus. It was shrouded from human eyes by clouds which constantly obscured its peaks. In Greece, you will also find a Mount Olympus, the tallest mountain in the country.

Description
The sacred mount was believed to have a temperate climate all year round, and mountain gorges lush with forests. The gods did not always reside in their paradise, however, and would depart or return from there via a gate of clouds guarded by the Horae, the goddesses of the seasons. Authors claim the tables in Zeus’ palace on Olympus were made of gold and were actually automatons, created by Hephaestus! They moved in and out of the rooms as required by the gods. Zeus’ throne was situated in the Pantheon, the meeting hall of the gods. It was also designed by Hephaestus and was constructed from black marble, inlaid with gold. Each of the gods had their own palace on the mountain, usually constructed of gold and marble, and situated in a gorge in the mountain peaks.

Inhabitants
All 12 Olympian gods resided at Mount Olympus: Zeus and his wife Hera, Athena, Poseidon, Artemis, Apollo, Demeter, Hester, Aphrodite, Hermes, Hephaestus and Ares. Since Hades resided in the underworld, he was not considered an Olympian god and did not visit the great mount often.

The nine muses, the daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, resided at the foot of the mountain. According to some sources, the goddesses were water nymphs and were responsible for the following: Clio – history; Calliope – epic poetry; Thalia – comedy; Euterpe – lyric poetry; Terpsichore – dance; Melpomene – tragedy; Erato – love poetry; Urania – astronomy; and Polyhymnia – sacred poetry.

The Olympians ruled Olympus until the monster Typhon attacked their stronghold. Typhon was allegedly a 100-headed fire-breathing dragon. When he attacked Olympus, the majority of the gods chose to flee, except for Zeus, Athena and Dionysus. Zeus was able to eventually defeat the giant monster with 100 lightning bolts, and banished him to Tartarus.

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(B.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Olympus

Name and mythological associations

Muses' Plateau, with Stefani (the throne of Zeus) in the background
The origin of the name ?λυμπος Olumpos is unknown and usually considered of "pre-Greek" origin. In Homeric Greek (Odyssey 6.42), the variant Ο?λυμπος Oulumpos occurs, conceived of as the seat of the gods (and not identified with any specific peak). Homer (Iliad 5.754, Odyssey 20.103) also appears to be using ο?λυμπος as a common noun, as a synonym of ο?ραν?ς ouranos "sky". Mount Olympus was historically also known as Mount Belus, after Iliad 1.591, where the seat of the gods is referred to as βηλ[?ς] θεσπεσ?ο[ς] "heavenly threshold".[a]

In Ancient Greek religion and mythology, "Olympus" was the name of the home of the Twelve Olympian gods.[11] This was conceived of as a lofty mountaintop, and in all regions settled by Greek tribes, the highest local elevation tended to be so named; among the numerous peaks called Olumpos in antiquity are mountains in Mysia, Laconia, Lycia, Cyprus, Attica, Euboea, Ionia and Lesbos, and others. Thessalian Olympus is the highest peak in any territory with Greek settlement and came to be seen as the "Pan-Hellenic" representative of the mythological seat of the gods, by at least the 5th century BC, as Herodotus (1.56) identifies Olympus as the peak in Thessaly.

In Pieria, at Olympus's northern foot, the mythological tradition had placed the nine Muses, patrons of the Fine Arts, daughters of Zeus and the Titanide Mnemosyne.[12]

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Blog on: Mythology and Humanity, Literature Once Read In High School

(1.)

Of Mythology And The Tales Of The Seven Sisters



Man that walks beneath winds of searching doom

Ever seeking treasured filled rooms

Therein lusting for all and all the more

Drinking in war and its murderous roar.



From words of a wizen sage- what is Life

But a zagged cut from a rusty knife?



From the dregs of a poisoned chalice,

Whispers uttered in the king's palace

Seeds of pain laced with life-moans of dread

Within deep agonies of Hades' dead



From words of a wizen sage- what is Life

But a zagged cut from a rusty knife?



Forbidden, wretched agonies of Hades

Wondrous, bright glimmerings of the Pleiades

Asterope weeping in night skies above

Innocence ravaged, forcing her love.



From words of a wizen sage- what is Life

But a zagged cut from a rusty knife?



Stars and tales of damaged gods of old

Mankind believing such as it was told

Yet existing upon this floating speck

In greed's name, savaging earth, creating wrecks.



From words of a wizen sage- what is Life

But a zagged cut from a rusty knife?



Zeus striding across towering mountains

Commander of all life giving fountains

Once a wrathful god but now just a myth

Even He, Death cut with its mighty scythe.



From words of a wizen sage- what is Life

But a zagged cut from a rusty knife?


Robert J. Lindley, 3-12-2021

Rhyme, ( Wondrous Tales From The School Literature Of My Youth )

Of Mythology and Humanity…

(With Tribute given to Homer) , ( "The Iliad And The Odyssey")

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

(2.)

As Destiny And Fate, The Olympic Gods Destroyed



As time plays its ancient dirge

Did not Zeus fly down to sate his deep urge

Not as a fallen god among mere men

But ravenous pillager of women

In such depraved deeds man still gave way

Gathering in temples to his name pray

And blindness held its grip on mortal souls

Seen, fallacy mythology extols.



Ancient Greeks believed in such Olympic truths

As a model to mode their warrior youth

Praising the gods for their powerful might

Blinded to the truth denying true light

In Nature's beauty they saw god faces

Honoring such by Olympic races

Man raced forward and its folly found

Set about to Prometheus unbound.



The gods so angered swift were their wraths

Futile their standing in man's raging paths

O' pity the tale of Olympic fall

And Fate and Death's sad final curtain call

For mankind saw they were not truly gods

Left them to die as he stalwartly plods.



Wherein mankind found yet another way.

Leaving gods in temples bound to decay.



Robert J. Lindley, 3-12-2021

Rhyme, ( Wondrous Tales From The School Literature Of My Youth )

Of Mythology And Humanity…

(With Tribute given to Homer) , ( "The Iliad And The Odyssey")

Note:

Pleiades, in Greek mythology, the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas and the Oceanid Pleione: Maia, Electra, Taygete, Celaeno, Alcyone, Sterope, and Merope. They all had children by gods (except Merope, who married Sisyphus).

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https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ple...reek-mythology

Pleiades

Greek mythology

WRITTEN BY

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

Haiphong cyclone | tropical cyclone, Pacific Ocean [1881]

Pleiades, in Greek mythology, the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas and the Oceanid Pleione: Maia, Electra, Taygete, Celaeno, Alcyone, Sterope, and Merope. They all had children by gods (except Merope, who married Sisyphus).

mythology. Greek. Hermes. (Roman Mercury)

BRITANNICA QUIZ

A Study of Greek and Roman Mythology

Who led the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece? Who is the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Ares? From fruits to winged sandals, test your knowledge in this study of Greek and Roman mythology.

The Pleiades eventually formed a constellation. One myth recounts that they all killed themselves out of grief over the death of their sisters, the Hyades. Another explains that after seven years of being pursued by Orion, a Boeotian giant, they were turned into stars by Zeus. Orion became a constellation, too, and continued to pursue the sisters across the sky. The faintest star of the Pleiades was thought to be either Merope, who was ashamed of loving a mortal, or Electra, grieving for Troy, the city of Dardanus, her son with Zeus.

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

https://www.naic.edu/~gibson/pleiade...ades_myth.html

Pleiades Mythology

The mythology associated with the Pleiades cluster is extensive; Burnham alone devotes eight pages to the subject, and Allen more than twice that number (see references). Here only Greek legends are presented. Even so, these are manifold and often contradictory, being patched together from many different cultures over a long period of time. Further uncertainty is added by most Pleiads sharing names with otherwise unrelated mythological characters. So enjoy, but please do not consider this information to be infallible.

Possible Name Derivations

plein, `to sail', making Pleione `sailing queen' and her daughters `sailing ones.' The cluster's conjunction with the sun in spring and opposition in fall marked the start and end of the summer sailing season in ancient Greece.

pleos, `full', of which the plural is `many', appropriate for a star cluster.

peleiades, `flock of doves', consistent with the sisters' mythological transformation.

Genealogy

The Pleiad(e)s were the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione, and half-sisters of the Hyades, whose mother was Æthra (`bright sky'; a different Æthra than the mother of Theseus). They were perhaps also half-sisters of the Hesperides, who were daughters of either Night alone, or Atlas and Hesperis (`evening'), or Ceto and Phorcys. Both Pleione and Æthra were Oceanids, daughters of Oceanus and Tethys, the titans who ruled the outer seas before being replaced by Poseidon. Atlas (`he who dares' or `suffers'; from the Indo-European tel-, tla-, `to lift, support, bear'), another titan, led their war against the gods, and was afterward condemned by Zeus to hold up the heavens on his shoulders. The Pleiades were also nymphs in the train of Artemis, and together with the seven Hyades (`rainmakers' or `piglets'; individual Hyad names are not fully agreed upon) were called the Atlantides, Dodonides, or Nysiades, nursemaids and teachers to the infant Bacchus. The Hesperides (`nymphs of the west'), apparently not counted in this, were only three, and dwelled in an orchard of Hera's, from which Heracles fetched golden apples in his eleventh labor.

Individual Sisters

For each, a name translation is given first, followed by available biographical information, and parallel stories of like-named characters.

Alcyone or Halcyone - `queen who wards off evil [storms]' -

Seduced by Poseidon and gave birth to either Hyrieus (the name of Orion's father, but perhaps not the same Hyrieus) or Anthas, founder of Anthæa, Hyperea, and Halicarnassus.



Another Alcyone, daughter of Æolus (guardian of the winds) and Ægiale, married Ceyx of Trachis; the two jokingly called each other Hera and Zeus, vexing those gods, who drowned Ceyx in a storm at sea; Alcyone threw herself into the sea at the news, and was transformed into a halcyon (kingfisher). Legend has it the halcyon hen buries her dead mate in the winter before laying her eggs in a compact nest and setting it adrift on the sea; Æolus forbids the nest to be disturbed, so the water is calm for 14 days centered on the winter solstice, called the Halcyon Days. The actual bird does not build nests however; instead the story probably derives from an old pagan observance of the turning season, with the moon-goddess conveying a dead symbolic king of the old year to his resting place. Though this Alcyone and the Pleiad Alcyone appear to be separate individuals, they may be related: in 2000 BC, a vigorous period of ancient astronomy, the Pleiades rose nearly four hours earlier than they do today for the same time of year, and were overhead at nightfall on the winter solstice, when the Halcyon supposedly nested; their conjunction with the sun during spring equinoxes at that time may have something to do with the association of the cluster with birds, which are often used as symbols of life and renewal.



Asterope or Sterope - `lightning', `twinkling', `sun-face', `stubborn-face' (Indo-European ster-, `star', `stellar', `asterisk', etc.) -

In some accounts, ravished by Ares and gave birth to Oenomaus, king of Pisa. In others, Oenomaus was her husband, and they had a beautiful daughter, Hippodaima, and three sons, Leucippus, Hippodamus, and Dysponteus, founder of Dyspontium; or, Oenomaus may instead have had these children with Euarete, daughter of Acrisius.



Another Asterope was daughter of the river Cebren.



Still another was daughter of Porthaön, and may have been the mother of the Sirens, who lured sailors to their deaths with their enchanting singing.



A possible alternate name is Asterië (`of the starry sky' or `of the sun'), which may also be a name for the creatrix of the universe, Eurynome, in the Pelasgian myth. Graves mentions her as a Pleiad only in passing, with no other mention in the other references. Perhaps she was at one time a Pleiad when different names were used, or an earlier version of Sterope, whose name is similar; or perhaps Graves is incorrect. He also in passing calls the titan or oak-goddess Dione a Pleiad, without explanation or corroboration. Does the term have a broader meaning in some contexts?



Celæno - `swarthy' -

Had sons Lycus (``wolf'') and Chimærus (``he-goat'') by Prometheus. No other data.



Electra or Eleckra - `amber', `shining', `bright' (Indo-European wleik-, `to flow, run', as a liquid); electrum is an alloy of silver and gold, and means amber in Latin, as does the Greek elektron; Thales of Miletus noted in 600 BC that a rubbed piece of amber will attract bits of straw, a manifestation of the effects of static electricity (outer charge stripping via friction), and perhaps the origin of the modern term -

Wife of Corythus; seduced by Zeus and gave birth to Dardanus, founder of Troy, ancestor of Priam and his house. Called Atlantis by Ovid, personifying the family. May also, by Thaumas, be the mother of the Harpies, foul bird-women who lived in a Cretan cave and harried criminals, but this could be a different ocean-nymph of the same name.



Another Electra was a daughter of Oedipus, though this may not be the same Oedipus who killed his father and married his mother. She is said to be mother of Dardanus and Iason.



Yet another Electra was a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytæmnestra, with an alternate name of Laodice, and with brother Orestes and sisters Chrysothemis and Iphigeneia (or Iphianassa), though the latter sister may have been Clytæmnestra's niece, adopted from Theseus and Helen. Agamemnon was king of Mycenæ and led the Greeks against Troy; he was murdered at his return by Clytæmnestra and her lover Ægisthus, both of whom Orestes and Electra killed in revenge, whence the psychological term `Electra complex'. This Electra was also wife to the peasant Pylades, and bore him Medon and Strophius the Second.



Maia - `grandmother', `mother', `nurse'; `the great one' (Latin) -

Eldest and most beautiful of the sisters; a mountain nymph in Arcadia. Seduced by Zeus and gave birth to Hermes. Later became foster-mother to Arcas, son of Zeus and Callisto, during the period while Callisto was a bear, and before she and Arcas were placed in the heavens by Zeus (she as Ursa Major, he as either Boötes or Ursa Minor).



Another Maia was the Roman goddess of spring, daughter of Faunus and wife of Vulcan (his Greek counterpart, Hephæstus, married Aphrodite instead). Farmers were cautioned not to sow grain before the time of her setting, or conjunction with the sun. The month of May is named after her, and is coincidentally(?) the month in which the solar conjunction happens. By our modern calendar, the conjunction occurred in April in early Roman times, with the shift since then due to the precession of the Earth's axis; but calendars too have changed over time, especially before the time of Julius Caesar, so the month and the cluster's solar conjunction may have lined up then as well.

Merope - `eloquent', `bee-eater', `mortal' -

Married Sisyphus (se-sophos, `very wise'), son of Æolus, grandson of Deucalion (the Greek Noah), and great-grandson of Prometheus. She bore Sisyphus sons Glaucus, Ornytion, and Sinon; she is sometimes also said to be mother of Dædalus, though others in the running are Alcippe and Iphinoë. Sisyphus founded the city of Ephyre (Corinth) and later revealed Zeus's rape of Ægina to her father Asopus (a river), for which Zeus condemned Sisyphus to roll a huge stone up a hill in Hades, only to have it roll back down each time the task was nearly done. Glaucus (or Glaukos) was father of Bellerophon, and in one story was killed by horses maddened by Aphrodite because he would not let them breed. He also led Lycian troops in the Trojan War, and in the Iliad was tricked by the Greek hero Diomedes into exchanging his gold armor for Diomedes' brass, the origin of the term `Diomedian swap'. Another Glaucus was a fisherman of Boeotia who became a sea-god gifted with prophecy and instructed Apollo in soothsaying. Still another Glaucus was a son of Minos who drowned in a vat of honey and was revived by the seer Polyidos, who instructed Glaucus in divination, but, angry at being made a prisoner, caused the boy to forget everything when Polyidos finally left Crete. The word glaukos means gleaming, bluish green or gray, perhaps describing the appearance of a blind eye if glaucoma (cataract) derives from it. Is the name Glaucus a reference to sight, or blindness, physical or otherwise? It is also curious that meropia is a condition of partial blindness.

Another Merope was daughter of Dionysus's son Oenopion, king of Chios; Orion fell in love with her, and Oenopion refused to give her up, instead having him blinded. Orion regained his sight and sought vengeance, but was killed by Artemis, or by a scorpion, or by some other means (many versions).

Yet another Merope and her sister Cleothera (with alternate names of Cameiro and Clytië for the two of them) were orphaned daughters of Pandareus.

Still another was mother of Æpytus by Cresphontes, king of Messenia. Her husband was murdered by Polyphontes, who claimed both her and the throne, but was later killed by Æpytus to avenge his father's death.



One last, more often known as Periboea, was wife of Polybus, king of Corinth. The two of them adopted the infant Oedipus after his father Laius left him to die, heeding a prophecy that his son would kill him, which, of course, he eventually did.



Taygete or Taygeta - ? tanygennetos, `long-necked' -

Seduced by Zeus and gave birth to Lacedæmon, founder of Sparta, to which she was thus an important goddess. In some versions of the story, she was unwilling to yield to Zeus, and was disguised by Artemis as a hind (female red deer) to elude him; but he eventually caught her and begot on her Lacedæmon, whereupon she hanged herself.



Another Taygete was niece to the first. She married Lacedæmon and bore Himerus, who drowned himself in a river after Aphrodite caused him to deflower his sister Cleodice. One of the Taygetes may have been mother to Tantalus, who was tormented in Hades with thirst and hunger for offending the gods; however his parentage is uncertain; his mother may instead be Pluto (not the Roman version of Hades), daughter of either Cronus and Rhea or Oceanus and Tethys, and his father Zeus or Tmolus.



Astromorphosis

One day the great hunter Orion saw the Pleiads (perhaps with their mother, or perhaps just one of them; see Merope above) as they walked through the Boeotian countryside, and fancied them. He pursued them for seven years, until Zeus answered their prayers for delivery and transformed them into birds (doves or pidgeons), placing them among the stars. Later on, when Orion was killed (many conflicting stories as to how), he was placed in the heavens behind the Pleiades, immortalizing the chase.

Lost Pleiad

The `lost Pleiad' legend came about to explain why only six are easily visible to the unaided eye (I have my own thoughts on this). This sister is variously said to be Electra, who veiled her face at the burning of Troy, appearing to mortals afterwards only as a comet; or Merope, who was shamed for marrying a mortal; or Celæno, who was struck by a thunderbolt. Missing Pleiad myths also appear in other cultures, prompting Burnham to speculate stellar variability (Pleione?) as a physical basis. It is difficult to know if the modern naming pays attention to any of this. Celæno is the faintest at present, but the "star" Asterope is actually two stars, each of which is fainter than Celæno if considered separately.

References

The information above was taken from:

Burnham's Celestial Handbook, Revised & Enlarged Edition, Robert Burnham Jr., 1976, Dover Publications Inc.

Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, Richard Hinckley Allen, 1899, 1963, Dover reprint (Note: Allen's text on individual Pleiades stars can be found at Alcyone Systems.)

Star Lore of All Ages, William Tyler Olcott, 1911, 1931, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York

Star Tales, Ian Ridpath, 1988, Universe Books

The Age of Fable, Thomas Bullfinch, 1942, Heritage Press

The Greek Myths, Robert Graves, 1960, Pelican Books

The Reader's Encyclopedia 2/e, William Rose Benet, 1965, Thomas Y. Crowell Company

American Heritage Dictionary, 1965

Fundamentals of Physics 2/e, David Halliday and Robert Resnick, 1986, John Wiley & Sons, New York

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epic_poems

List of epic poems

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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This list can be compared with two others, national epic and list of world folk-epics.[1]

This is a list of epic poems.

Ancient epics (to 500)

Before the 8th century BC

Epic of Gilgamesh (Mesopotamian mythology)

Epic of Lugalbanda (including Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave and Lugalbanda and the Anzud Bird, Mesopotamian mythology)

Epic of Enmerkar (including Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta and Enmerkar and En-suhgir-ana, Mesopotamian mythology)

Atrahasis (Mesopotamian mythology)

Enuma Elish (Babylonian mythology)

The Descent of Inanna into the Underworld (Mesopotamian mythology)

Legend of Keret (Ugaritic mythology)

Cycle of Kumarbi (Hurrian mythology)

8th to 6th century BC

Iliad, ascribed to Homer (Greek mythology)

Odyssey, ascribed to Homer (Greek mythology)

Works and Days, ascribed to Hesiod (Greek mythology)

Theogony, ascribed to Hesiod (Greek mythology)

Shield of Heracles, ascribed to Hesiod (Greek mythology)

Catalogue of Women, ascribed to Hesiod (Greek mythology; only fragments survive)

Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Iliupersis, Nostoi and Telegony, forming the so-called Epic Cycle (only fragments survive)

Oedipodea, Thebaid, Epigoni and Alcmeonis, forming the so-called Theban Cycle (only fragments survive)

A series of poems ascribed to Hesiod during antiquity (of which only fragments survive): Aegimius (alternatively ascribed to Cercops of Miletus), Astronomia, Descent of Perithous, Idaean Dactyls (almost completely lost), Megala Erga, Megalai Ehoiai, Melampodia and Wedding of Ceyx

Capture of Oechalia, ascribed to Homer or Creophylus of Samos during antiquity (only fragment survives)

Phocais, ascribed to Homer during antiquity (only fragment survives)

Titanomachy ascribed to Eumelus of Corinth (only fragment survives)

Danais (written by one of the cyclic poets and from which the Danaid tetralogy of Aeschylus draws its material), Minyas and Naupactia, almost completely lost

5th to 4th century BC

Heracleia, tells of the labors of Heracles, almost completely lost, written by Panyassis (Greek mythology)

Mahabharata, ascribed to Veda Vyasa (Indian mythology)

Ramayana, ascribed to Valmiki (Indian mythology)

3rd century BC

Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes (Greek mythology)

2nd century BC

Annales by Ennius (Roman history; only fragments survive)

1st century BC

De rerum natura by Lucretius (natural philosophy)

Georgics by Virgil (didactic poem)

Aeneid by Virgil (Roman mythology)

1st century AD

Metamorphoses by Ovid (Greek and Roman mythology)

Pharsalia by Lucan (Roman history; unfinished)

Argonautica by Gaius Valerius Flaccus (Roman poet, Greek mythology; incomplete)

Punica by Silius Italicus (Roman history)

Thebaid and Achilleid by Statius (Roman poet, Greek mythology; latter poem incomplete)

[LongTermGuy]

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Great images my friend...
One for each night of the week...
If a mere mortal could last that long.--Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Blog on poetic- form Haiku- Imagery, Imagination, Color And Inspiration - Robert Lindley's Blog

Blog on poetic- form Haiku- Imagery, Imagination, Color And Inspiration
Blog Posted:6/29/2021 5:48:00 AM
Blog on poetic- form Haiku-
Imagery, Imagination, Color And Inspiration

____________________________________



(1.)

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/lea...-terms/imagery

Imagery

Elements of a poem that invoke any of the five senses to create a set of mental images. Specifically, using vivid or figurative language to represent ideas, objects, or actions. Poems that use rich imagery include T.S. Eliot’s “Preludes,” Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind,” Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” and Mary Oliver’s “At Black River.”

(2.)

https://poetryarchive.org/glossary/imagery/

About Imagery

Imagery is the name given to the elements in a poem that spark off the senses. Despite "image" being a synonym for "picture", images need not be only visual; any of the five senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell) can respond to what a poet writes. Examples of non-visual imagery can be found in Ken Smith's 'In Praise of Vodka', where he describes the drink as having "the taste of air, of wind on fields, / the wind through the long wet forest", and James Berry's 'Seashell', which puts the "ocean sighs" right in a listener's ear.



A poet could simply state, say, "I see a tree", but it is possible to conjure up much more specific images using techniques such as simile ("a tree like a spiky rocket"), metaphor ("a green cloud riding a pole") or synechdoche ("bare, black branches") - each of these suggests a different kind of tree. Techniques, such as these, that can be used to create powerful images are called figurative language, and can also include onomatopoeia, metonymy and personification.



One of the great pleasures of poetry is discovering a particularly powerful image; the Imagists of the early 20th century felt it was the most important aspect, so were devoted to finding strong images and presenting them in the clearest language possible. Of course, not every poem is an Imagist poem, but making images is something that nearly every poem in the Archive does.



An interesting contrast in imagery can be found by comparing Alison Croggon's 'The Elwood Organic Fruit and Vegetable Shop' with Allen Ginsberg's 'A Supermarket in California'; although both poets seem to like the shops they write about, Ginsberg's shop is full of hard, bright things, corralled into aisles, featuring neon, tins and freezers, while the organic shop is full of images of soft, natural things rubbing against one another in sunlight. Without it being said explicitly, the imagery makes it clear that the supermarket is big, boxy, and tidy, unlike the cosy Elwood's. This is partly done with the visual images that are drawn, and in part with Croggon's images that mix the senses (this is called synaesthesia), such as the strawberries with their "klaxons of sweetness" or the gardens with "well-groomed scents", having the way the imagery is made correspond with what the imagery shows.



Fleur Adcock's poem, 'Leaving the Tate', uses imagery of picture-making to build up the overlap between art and sight at the centre of the poem.

3.)

https://literarydevices.net/examples...ery-in-poetry/

Examples of Imagery in Poetry

Imagery is one of the literary devices that engage the human senses; sight, hearing, taste, and touch. Imagery is as important as metaphor and simile and can be written without using any figurative language at all. It represents object, action, and idea which appeal our senses. Sometimes it becomes more complex than just a picture. There are five main types of imagery, each related to one of the human senses:



Visual imagery (sight)

Auditory Imagery (hearing)

Olfactory imagery (smell)

Gustatory imagery (taste)

Tactile imagery ( touch)

A writer can use single or multiple imageries in his writings. Imagery can be literal. They also allow the readers to directly sympathize with the character and narrator. Through imagery, the reader imagines a similar sensory experience. It helps to build compelling poetry, convincing narratives, clear plays, well-designed film sets, and heart touching descriptive songs. It involves imagination. Hence, writing without imagery would be dull and dry, and writing with imagery can be gripping and vibrant. The necessary sensory detail can allow the reader to understand the character and minute details of writing which a writer wants to communicate. Imagery can be symbolic, which deepens the impact of the text. For more explanation refer to this article: //literarydevices.net/figurative-language/. Here are a few examples of imagery in a poetry:

After Apple picking- Robert Frost



I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin

The rumbling sound

Of load on load of apples coming in.



These lines have powerful imagery. We can feel the swaying ladder, see the bending boughs and hear the rumbling sound of apples going in the cellar bin. These lines are literal. Every word means what it typically means. The entire poem is imagery that conveys deep feelings of contemplation and subtle remorse for things left undone to the reader.



Romeo and Juliet –W. Shakespeare

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night,

Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear



Here Romeo is comparing the beauty of Juliet. He says that she looks more radiant than brightly lit torches in the hall. Further, he says that her face glows like a precious bright jewel against the dark skin of an African in the night. Here he uses the contrasting images of light and dark to portray her beauty. The imagery also involves the use of figurative language; he uses the simile to enhance the imagery.



To Autumn – John Keats



Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.



Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep



To Autumn is rich in imagery, evoking the perception of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. The above lines are primarily visual imagery. The tactile imagery (touch) is seen in the warmth of the day, the clammy cells, the soft lifted hair.

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

The Image, The Inner Reaches Of The Mind

sandy land, windswept

oasis, wet evergreen

silent cat leapt

Robert J. Lindley, 6-29-2021

Haiku

*****

On A Glowing Bright Summer Day

bright morn, wooden fence

young colt, wide open meadow

boy, red bicycle

Robert J. Lindley, 6-26-2021

Haiku

*****

Glimmering, Shimmering And Flaming Sweet

her eyes, shining pools

her kissing lips luscious red

desert at high noon

Robert J. Lindley, 6-24-2021

Haiku

*****

Beneath Expanse, Glorious Earthen Skies

cold pavement, late night

moonlit trees, Heavenly glows

old owl, frighten mouse

Robert J. Lindley, 6-23-2021

Haiku


*****

The Season And The Old Farm

old garden, bare ground

frost on the fallen mailbox

breakfast, eggs, bacon

Robert J. Lindley, 6-21-2021

Haiku

*****

Dawn, A New Day And A Wonderful Start

table, broken spoon

breakfast on a sunny morn

coffee, hot and black

Robert J. Lindley, 6-16-2021

Haiku

*****

The Visit

white stone, sad morning

fresh mowed grass twixt the rows

bright sun, soft cool breeze

Robert J. Lindley, 6-10-2021

Haiku

*****

The Frozen Ground

crunch, crunch, icy glaze

trees, limbs weighted to the ground

crisp morn, soft new gloves

Robert J. Lindley, 6-07-2021

Haiku

*****

The Ancient Forest

dark, deep canopy

autumn colors vibrant reds

sunken stone markers

Robert J. Lindley, 6-04-2021

Haiku

*****

The Cool Clear Stream

rushing waters, smooth stones

rocky walls, bright meadow's glow

sky, reflection- hope

Robert J. Lindley, 6-01-2021

Haiku

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

Although there have been various haiku poets throughout time, we can notably refer to Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, Kobayashi Issa and Masaoka Shiki for revolutionizing what we see of our modern haiku.
Famous Japanese Haiku Poets

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Third Creation- A Poet's Blog - On Life, Love, Living, Death, Earth And Eternity
Blog Posted:6/19/2021 6:45:00 PM
Third Creation- A Poet's Blog - On Life, Love, Living, Death, Earth And Eternity



*****

(1.)

Ancient Trees Wept For Me, Autumn Leaves Crying



I remember when I was dead and dying

Ancient trees wept for me, Autumn leaves crying

Hey, hey, hey - I was another lost fellow

No longer cool, damn sure no longer mellow

Awake there listening to life's sad bellows!



I recall wind telling its banshees to fry

So confused I asked the spinning moon why

Hey, hey, hey - I was another lost fellow

No longer cool, damn sure no longer mellow

Awake there listening to life's sad bellows!



I remember great sorrows at Christmas time

Freezing and weeping, nowhere without a dime

Hey, hey, hey - I was another lost fellow

No longer cool, damn sure no longer mellow

Awake there listening to life's sad bellows!



I recall blues and sleeping on frozen ground

Hold a broke-heart refusing to ever pound

Hey, hey, hey - I was another lost fellow

No longer cool, damn sure no longer mellow

Awake there listening to life's sad bellows!



I remember when I was dead and dying

Ancient trees wept for me, Autumn leaves crying

Hey, hey, hey - I was another lost fellow

No longer cool, damn sure no longer mellow

Awake there listening to life's sad bellows!



Robert J. Lindley, 6-17-2021

(Life in for a penny, in for a pound)

Revised from much older piece- 1979.

*****

(2.)

Baby, Four A.M. And I Am Pleading



Baby, four A.M. and I am pleading

Will you come to me and stop this bleeding?



A hole, I feel where heart used to pump

Throat closes with that massive growing lump

Dark world weeps and then sky begins to fall

Next it comes, our flaming love I recall

In yellow moon, only your face I see

It is my birthday, I sit here moaning

Can you hear my cursing and loud moaning?



Baby, four A.M. and I am pleading

Will you come to me and stop this bleeding?



Baby, cold here- this room I am hating

Heart restless because we are not dating

I look out, bright stars are still slow falling

It is you this lost soul keeps on calling

In yellow moon only your face I see

It is my birthday, I sit here moaning

Can you hear my cursing and loud moaning?



Baby, four A.M. and I am pleading

Will you come to me and stop this bleeding?



Robert J. Lindley, 6-16-2021

Sad Romanticism,

*****

(3.)

That Night Moon Smiled, Venus Blew My Mind



That night moon smiled, Venus blew my mind

O'glory this heart you gave new love

Swept soft melodies from Heaven above

Life danced sending sweet blessings to find.



Me naked and watching in my backyard

Such splendor reminding me of you

And the hot July night we became two

Now this long separation is so hard.



Baby, send me, send me a hugging word

Fly to me, moon and I sincerely plea

May romance then reunite you and me

And we yet again become two lovebirds.



To you, I'll sail across the seven seas

Walk barefoot slowly through blazing-hot fires

Rise at dawn, write verse that true love inspires

Hear me darling, my most desperate plea.



That night moon smiled, Venus blew my mind

O'glory this heart you gave new love

Swept soft melodies from Heaven above

Life danced sending sweet blessings to find.

Robert J. Lindley,

Romanticism,

( When True Love Was Again So Deeply Sought )

*****

(4.)

Love I So Beg, Her Soft Kisses, Please I Implore



Life, sometimes I just can't take the pain anymore

I then dream about transmitting through that black door

Into another realm, where sun wakes midnight moon

Cats in the cradle without that new silver spoon.



Life, sometimes I just can't take the pain anymore

The trees are all falling, nobody knows the score

Sky weeps and the heavens make galaxies anew

Dawn returns waking me yet again without you.



Life, sometimes I just can't take the pain anymore

True love died and there is no paradise shores

Melodic voice singing from a distant dark cave

Crying out, please save me, save me if you are brave.



Life will you ever deign to show me that far shore

Open your treasure chest, give me a little more

Life, tell me will you my romantic heart restore

Love I so beg, her soft kisses, please I implore!

Robert J. Lindley,

Romanticism ( When the cold hand of lonely, tells a heart to beg )



******

(5.)

In Youth, When Life So Amplifies Our Grief



Twas not the winter of my discontent

Instead a summer of sad, epic loss

Days where aching soul was torn and rent

Dying thirst, each desert I tried to cross.



In youth, when life so amplifies our grief.

We fail and oft even our dreams are brief.



The comfortable trails I knew now gone

I struggled to cross that deep, dark abyss

Feeling horror down deep into my bones

Knowing soon evil would bequeath death's kiss.



In youth, when life so amplifies our grief.

We fail and oft even our dreams are brief.



Yes, it was a great love that had died

Its torture now, its burning red-hot flames

Weeping rivers of useless tears I cried

Her heart crushed and it is me she blames.



In youth, when life so amplifies our grief.

We fail and oft even our dreams are brief.



Twas not the winter of my discontent

Instead a summer of sad, epic loss

Days where aching soul was torn and rent

Dying thirst, each desert I tried to cross.



In youth, when life so amplifies our grief.

We fail and oft even our dreams are brief.

Robert J. Lindley,

Rhyme, ( Sights , Sound, Repeated Amplifications )

*****

(6.)

Life, I Beg No More



O'why does it hurt so

painful surging flow

I just don't know

I just can't defend it

my weakness, I can't mend it

She stays so strong

Sings her brave-cast song

Ooh, I can't defend it

Death, baby please don’t befriend it

Wish back to hell, I could send it

Ooh, I see her far ashore

Life, I beg no more

Than to not see her implore

That life loves again

And joy becomes her friend

Ooh, I want to be in it

It comes we don't know why

Diamonds tears from weeping sky

This great hurt I can't deny

O'why does it hurt so

painful surging flow

I just don't know

I just can't defend it

my weakness, I can't mend it

She stays so strong

Sings her brave-cast song

Ooh, I can't defend it

A battle we can't win it

Ooh, I see her far ashore

Life, I beg no more

Than to not see her implore

That life loves again

And joy becomes a friend

Love, I want to be in it

This battle we will win it

O'why does it hurt so

painful surging flow

I just don't know

I just can't defend it

my weakness, I can't mend it

She stays so strong

Sings her brave-cast song

Ooh, I can't defend it

Death, baby please don’t befriend it

Wish back to hell, I could send it

Ooh, I see her far ashore

Life, I beg no more

Than to not see her implore

That life loves again

And joy becomes her friend

Ooh, I want to be in it

It comes we don't know why

Diamonds tears from weeping sky

This great hurt I can't deny

O'why does it hurt so

painful surging flow

I just don't know

I just can't defend it

my weakness, I can't mend it

She stays so strong

Sings her brave-cast song

Ooh, I can't defend it

A battle we can't win it

Ooh, I see her far ashore

Life, I beg no more

Than to not see her implore

That life loves again

And joy becomes her friend

Love, I want to be in it

This battle we will win it

Robert J. Lindley, 6-16-2021
Lyrics- Inspired by a truly
magnificent famous song

Note:
A friend asked me why I do not write lyrics.
I decided to give it a shot.

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

1) "The creative adult is the child who survived." ...

2) "The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul." ...

3) "Creativity doesn't wait for that perfect moment. ...

4) "Everything you can imagine is real." ...

5) "You can't use up creativity. ...

6) "Creativity is intelligence having fun."



“Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up” – Pablo Picasso



“If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced” – Vincent Van Gogh



“Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it” – Salvador Dali



“Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people” – Leo Burnett



“You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club” – Jack London



“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will” – George Bernard Shaw



“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try” – Dr. Seuss



“Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity” – Charles Mingus



“Originality is nothing but judicious imitation” – Voltaire



“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things” – Ray Bradbury



“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, the just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while” – Steve Jobs



“Creativity is a drug I cannot live without” – Cecil B. DeMille



“You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not’?” – George Bernard Shaw



“Creativity is contagious, pass it on” – Albert Einstein

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Words Of Light, Life, Promise And Absent Of Fear And Dread - Robert Lindley's Blog
About Robert Lindley(Show Details...)(Show Details...)





Home Past Blogs Poems Photos Fav Poems Fav Poets
Words Of Light, Life, Promise And Absent Of Fear And Dread
Blog Posted:4/8/2020 7:07:00 PM

NEW POEM:

Give Me The Chiming Of Morn's Sweetest Call,
Words Of Hope And Nature's Beauty


Give me the chiming of morn's sweetest call
And dawning of new light shining with glee
Those days of joy, peace and treasured recalls
Bountiful harvests, glorious fruit trees;

And that feeling of life will be alright
The rustling of Autumn's old fallen leaves
Geese flying overhead, O' what a sight
Beautiful starlings nested in the eaves.

That hum of bees in meadows of bright gold
Fields of wheat, blowing as an ocean wave
Life and Love, romantic stories retold
Those gems one must hold and savor to save.

Blessings of peace, of treasures of Love's touch.
Morn's Promise, Faith, Hope, and all other such!

Robert J. Lindley, 4-08-2020,
Sonnet, ( Words Of Light, Life, Promise And Absent Of Fear And Dread )


Note-- I have written 4 dark poems in these last 4 days.
Today I decided to purge that dark , that dread out of
me and write of Light, Life, Love, Nature, Promise,
Hope, Faith, Beauty and Nature.
The dark poems can always be presented later. This
one should be presented now. Hoping it gives others
a needed lift and a thought of how one day this too
shall pass.. God Bless...

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

I read this shown below in my recent research and it
inspired me to write today. To write with renewed hope, with new heart and without the fear
now being promoted worldwide at a horrendous, breakneck pace. Robert J. Lindley...

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

Opinion


The Gift of Poetry
Nov. 20, 2002

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Late last Friday Joseph Parisi, the editor of Poetry magazine, announced that Ruth Lilly, an aspiring poet and a granddaughter of Eli Lilly, had given the magazine $100 million. One imagines lots of things that might have made a difference to the state of poetry over the years, like someone handing Shelley updated weather advice as he left the dock, or talking Sylvia Plath into reconsidering at the last moment. But this bequest is pretty hard to beat.

It more or less frees Poetry, which is published by the Modern Poetry Association, from the kind of financial constraints that most magazines have to worry about. And it does so without ethical compromise, since the magazine has always rejected Ms. Lilly's poetry submissions in the past and will, no doubt, continue to judge them with its usual critical acuity.

One assumes that most people know that poets don't make a lot of money from publishing poems. If you're good enough to have a sonnet accepted and printed in Poetry, you make $2 a line, or $28 total. Making a sonnet is no accident, and making one good enough to stand in the company of the poets that appear in Poetry is indeed the art of a lifetime, whereas $28 is about half the hourly rate of a decent auto mechanic. It is unlikely that Poetry will use Ms. Lilly's gift to raise rates to a level that will be more than honorific, though they will go up some. Instead the money will help increase the staff at the magazine, give it a new home and, most important, expand its programs designed to encourage the writing of poetry and enlarge its audience.

This was not Ms. Lilly's first gift to Poetry and the Modern Poetry Association. Her name adorns the Ruth Lilly Fellowships and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, which amounts to $100,000 and was given this year to Lisel Mueller. At the moment the tendency is to gaze in wonder at the scale of Ms. Lilly's benefaction. But what will really matter, of course, is the effect her gift has over the years and years to come. Ms. Lilly, who is 87 and in ill health, may not have published her poems for posterity's benefit, but she has found a way to benefit posterity nonetheless.


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A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 20, 2002, Section A, Page 22 of the National edition with the headline: The Gift of Poetry. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

I just re-found this from long ago..
A tribute given my poetry from Canadian poet- Arthur Vaso's blog.......... -Tyr

http://arthurvaso.weebly.com/guests2016.html

Click link scroll down.
I think my friend Arthur, did a truly wonderful job choosing the imagery to be presented with each poem.-Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

When Light Penetrates The Fog Of Fear And Darkness, subject faith, truth and poetry - Robert Lindley's Blog
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When Light Penetrates The Fog Of Fear And Darkness, subject faith, truth and poetry
Blog Posted:4/10/2020 6:38:00 AM

New Poem:


When Light Penetrates The Fog Of Fear And Darkness

When Light through the keyhole penetrates the malaise
And within that moment your soul gives sincere praise
For that divine gift that Life's sweet promise resets
Earth's clock to those times before this darkness beset
Know Truth and eternal Light never mankind fails
To conquer anything issued from pits of Hell.

Darkness fears not man but rather eternal Light.
On earth, we are in midst of that eternal fight.

When Light through the keyhole penetrates blackest Dark
And waking soul finds that Life is not just a lark
Path is made to from within the black walk away
Leave blinded fold and in earnest begin to pray.
World parades its great evils as the one true way
And sets foundation for man's greed to hold deepest sway.

Darkness fears not man but rather eternal Light.
On earth, we are in midst of that eternal fight.

When Light through the keyhole penetrates our sorrows
And we feel true fright and fear for our tomorrows
Truth reveals Light banishes that deep wicked fear
As echoes of paradise draws ever more near
Know eternal Light, Truth and Time is on our side
In that promise, certainty of man's saving tides.

Darkness fears not man but rather eternal Light.
On earth, we are in midst of that eternal fight.

Robert J. Lindley, 4-07-2020
Rhyme, ( When Eyes Are Opened To The Blessings Of True Light )

Syllables Per Line:
00 12 -(Title)
0 12 12 12 12 12 12 0 12 12
0 12 12 12 12 12 12 0 12 12
0 12 12 12 12 12 12 0 12 12
Total # Syllables: 300
Total # Words::::::224


Note: This is a revamping of an older poem.
One written four decades ago when I was a
mere twenty-six years old and then faced
a time of darkest dark in my life. I have
revamped it to modern times to address
this dark plague that the world faces now
and to yet again point out that the eternal
truth that mankind has a great purpose
than our time here on earth is a mere blink
of the eye. And nothing, nothing, nothing
can ever even come close to defeating that
our fated destiny.
Death and Darkness are only temporary,
while Light and Divine Promise is Eternal.

**********************************************
(1.)
http://inters.org/lumen-fidei-francis


The theological meaning of Light according to Lumen Fidei
The encyclical Lumen Fidei is the first document of Pope Francis’ pontificate. We suggest that our readers review numbers 1-4 (see below), which summarize the symbolism of light in reference to faith, as they appear in Sacred Scripture and are discussed in the patristic and theological Tradition (for interested visitors: the complete text is available on the Holy See web site). These paragraphs offer a short historical account of the evolution of the conception of faith as “light”, ranging from the novelty brought by Christianity in the pagan Roman world to modern thought’s critique of it, and conclude by affirming the value of the light of faith not only for Christians, but also for every man and woman.


1. The light of Faith: this is how the Church’s tradition speaks of the great gift brought by Jesus. In John’s Gospel, Christ says of himself: "I have come as light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness" (Jn 12:46). Saint Paul uses the same image: "God who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts" (2 Cor 4:6). The pagan world, which hungered for light, had seen the growth of the cult of the sun god, Sol Invictus, invoked each day at sunrise. Yet though the sun was born anew each morning, it was clearly incapable of casting its light on all of human existence. The sun does not illumine all reality; its rays cannot penetrate to the shadow of death, the place where men’s eyes are closed to its light. "No one — Saint Justin Martyr writes — has ever been ready to die for his faith in the sun".[1] Conscious of the immense horizon which their faith opened before them, Christians invoked Jesus as the true sun "whose rays bestow life". [2] To Martha, weeping for the death of her brother Lazarus, Jesus said: "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" (Jn 11:40). Those who believe, see; they see with a light that illumines their entire journey, for it comes from the risen Christ, the morning star which never sets.

2. Yet in speaking of the light of faith, we can almost hear the objections of many of our contemporaries. In modernity, that light might have been considered sufficient for societies of old, but was felt to be of no use for new times, for a humanity come of age, proud of its rationality and anxious to explore the future in novel ways. Faith thus appeared to some as an illusory light, preventing mankind from boldly setting out in quest of knowledge. The young Nietzsche encouraged his sister Elisabeth to take risks, to tread "new paths… with all the uncertainty of one who must find his own way", adding that "this is where humanity’s paths part: if you want peace of soul and happiness, then believe, but if you want to be a follower of truth, then seek".[3] Belief would be incompatible with seeking. From this starting point Nietzsche was to develop his critique of Christianity for diminishing the full meaning of human existence and stripping life of novelty and adventure. Faith would thus be the illusion of light, an illusion which blocks the path of a liberated humanity to its future.

3. In the process, faith came to be associated with darkness. There were those who tried to save faith by making room for it alongside the light of reason. Such room would open up wherever the light of reason could not penetrate, wherever certainty was no longer possible. Faith was thus understood either as a leap in the dark, to be taken in the absence of light, driven by blind emotion, or as a subjective light, capable perhaps of warming the heart and bringing personal consolation, but not something which could be proposed to others as an objective and shared light which points the way. Slowly but surely, however, it would become evident that the light of autonomous reason is not enough to illumine the future; ultimately the future remains shadowy and fraught with fear of the unknown. As a result, humanity renounced the search for a great light, Truth itself, in order to be content with smaller lights which illumine the fleeting moment yet prove incapable of showing the way. Yet in the absence of light everything becomes confused; it is impossible to tell good from evil, or the road to our destination from other roads which take us in endless circles, going nowhere.

4. There is an urgent need, then, to see once again that faith is a light, for once the flame of faith dies out, all other lights begin to dim. The light of faith is unique, since it is capable of illuminating every aspect of human existence. A light this powerful cannot come from ourselves but from a more primordial source: in a word, it must come from God. Faith is born of an encounter with the living God who calls us and reveals his love, a love which precedes us and upon which we can lean for security and for building our lives. Transformed by this love, we gain fresh vision, new eyes to see; we realize that it contains a great promise of fulfilment, and that a vision of the future opens up before us. Faith, received from God as a supernatural gift, becomes a light for our way, guiding our journey through time. On the one hand, it is a light coming from the past, the light of the foundational memory of the life of Jesus which revealed his perfectly trustworthy love, a love capable of triumphing over death. Yet since Christ has risen and draws us beyond death, faith is also a light coming from the future and opening before us vast horizons which guide us beyond our isolated selves towards the breadth of communion. We come to see that faith does not dwell in shadow and gloom; it is a light for our darkness. Dante, in the Divine Comedy, after professing his faith to Saint Peter, describes that light as a "spark, which then becomes a burning flame and like a heavenly star within me glimmers".[4] It is this light of faith that I would now like to consider, so that it can grow and enlighten the present, becoming a star to brighten the horizon of our journey at a time when mankind is particularly in need of light.
from Franciscus, Encyclical Lumen Fidei, 2013, June 29, nn. 1-4.

[1] Dialogus cum Tryphone Iudaeo, 121, 2: PG 6, 758.

[2] Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus, IX: PG 8, 195.

[3] Brief an Elisabeth Nietzsche (11 June 1865), in: Werke in drei Bänden, München, 1954, 953ff.

[4] Paradiso XXIV, 145-147.


************************************************
(2.)

https://interestingliterature.com/20...sh-literature/


LITERATURE
10 of the Best Religious Poems in English Literature
The best religious poems selected by Dr Oliver Tearle

What are the best religious poems in English literature? Obviously religious faith – and, indeed, religious doubt – has loomed large in English poetry, whether it’s in the devotional lyrics of John Donne and George Herbert or the modern, secular musings of Philip Larkin in ‘Church Going’. We’ve excluded longer works such as John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost, although naturally that’s a must-read work of English religious poetry, just conceived on a different scale from what we have here.


Caedmon, Hymn. Perhaps the oldest poem written in English, Caedmon’s Hymn was composed in the 7th century by a goatherd and takes the form of a short hymn in praise of God. It was Bede, or ‘the Venerable Bede’ as he is often known, who ensured the survival of Caedmon’s Hymn, when he jotted it down in Latin translation in one of his books. An anonymous scribe then added the Anglo-Saxon form of the hymn in the margins of Bede’s book.

William Dunbar, ‘Done is a battell on the dragon blak’. This poem, by the medieval Scottish poet William Dunbar (c. 1465-c. 1530), boasts one of the finest opening lines in all medieval poetry. The rest of the poem is pretty good, too. It takes as its theme the Resurrection, and casts Christ as a crusading knight, so it’s a hugely exciting piece of sacred poetry.

John Donne, ‘A Hymn to God the Father’. We could easily have chosen one of Donne’s celebrated Holy Sonnets here, but his ‘Hymn to God the Father’ offers something nicely representative of Donne’s style in his best religious verse. Donne is not aiming to sing God’s praises uncritically: rather, he wishes to ask God about sin and forgiveness, among other things. The to-and-fro of the poem’s rhyme schemes, where its stanzas are rhymed ababab, reinforces this idea of question-and-answer. The poem is a sort of confessional, containing Donne’s trademark directness and honesty, and sees him seeking forgiveness from God for his sins, while also confessing that he will continue to sin (he cannot help it) and that he fears death – another sin to add to the list. Donne then seeks reassurance from God that he will be forgiven and will reach Heaven.


George Herbert, ‘The Collar’. George Herbert (1593-1633) is one of the greatest devotional poets in the English language, and ‘The Collar’ one of his finest poems. Herbert’s speaker seeks to reject belief in God, to cast off his ‘collar’ and be free. (The collar refers specifically to the ‘dog collar’ that denotes a Christian priest, with its connotations of ownership and restricted freedom, though it also suggests being bound or restricted more generally. Herbert, we should add, was a priest himself.) However, as he rants and raves, the speaker comes to realise that God appears to be calling him – and the speaker duly and dutifully replies, the implication being that he has recovered his faith and is happy to bear the ‘collar’ of faith again.

Henry Vaughan, ‘They Are All Gone into the World of Light’. The Welsh metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan (1621-95) is best known for his 1650 collection, Silex Scintillans (‘Sparks from the Flint’), which established him as one of the great devotional poets in English literature. ‘They Are All Gone into the World of Light’ is about death, God, and the afterlife, and the poet’s desire to pass over into the next life – the ‘World of Light’ – to join those whom he has lost.


Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam. ‘There lives more faith in honest doubt, / Believe me, than in half the creeds’. These lines from this long 1850 elegy for Tennyson’s friend – perhaps his finest achievement – strike to the core of the greatness of Tennyson’s poem, which, as T. S. Eliot said, was a great religious poem not because of the quality of its faith, but because of the quality of its doubt. By the end of this long cycle of moving poems, Tennyson has conquered his doubts and his faith in God has been restored.

Christina Rossetti, ‘Good Friday’. This poem was published in Christina Rossetti’s 1866 collection The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems. The poem is about Rossetti’s struggle to feel close to Christ and the teachings of Christianity, and to weep for the sacrifice he made. Like Tennyson’s In Memoriam above, the poem reflects many Victorians’ difficulties in reconciling Christianity with the new worldview influenced by recent philosophy and scientific discoveries.

Thomas Hardy, ‘The Oxen’. Sometimes a great sacred poem is written by a poet who is not himself religious, and such as the case with ‘The Oxen’. Written in 1915 during WWI, this poem shows a yearning for childhood beliefs which the adult speaker can no longer hold. In other words, it highlights the yearning to believe, even – or perhaps especially – when we know that we cannot bring ourselves to entertain such beliefs. (Hardy had lost his religious faith early in life.)


T. S. Eliot, Ash-Wednesday. The first long poem Eliot composed after his conversion to Anglo-Catholicism in 1927, the six-part sequence Ash-Wednesday is about Eliot’s struggle to cleanse and purify himself so that he might be renewed and find deeper spiritual fulfilment. Using Dantean and Biblical tropes of stairwells, gardens, and bones being picked apart by leopards, the poem is at times frustratingly abstract (there is lots of wordplay around ‘the Word’, i.e. the Word of God) and at other times, marvellously vivid. Ash-Wednesday is the great modernist religious poem in English.

Philip Larkin, ‘Church Going’. A meditation on the role of the church in a secular age, written by a poet who described himself as an ‘Anglican agnostic’, ‘Church Going’ is one of Larkin’s most popular poems from The Less Deceived. In the poem, the speaker of the poem visits a church on one of his bicycle rides and stops to have a look inside – though he isn’t sure why he stopped. The title carries a double meaning: both going to church (if only to look around, rather than to worship there), and the going or disappearing of churches, and the Church, from British life.

For more classic poetry, see our pick of the best poems about heaven. If you’re in search of a good poetry collection, we recommend The Oxford Book of English Verse – perhaps the best poetry anthology on the market.


The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

A Blog On- A vision as seen from a forty-year span...
Blog Posted:9/5/2020 6:43:00 PM
A Blog On- A vision as seen from a forty-year span...

The Vision, The Reality, The Great Love Once Lost
(First phase, looking at a past reality)

She, an angel came in to buy a coke,
through din of dancing noise, ghastly thick smoke
a dream vision with a rose in her hair
I looked in deeply, with a longing stare
she gave me, her best million dollar smile
that cried out, my new love, lets talk a while,
she with those skin-tight shorts, her hippie style
all her sexy beauty set to beguile.

Then I knew she was surely Heaven sent,
to free me, from my dark life so hellbent
blessing so true, with her soft flowing glows
so beautiful, as hope's paradise shows
I thought, me with her, a miracle feat
can love be born beyond mortal defeat,
our first kiss, both eager hearts skipped a beat
love's dessert given, we began to eat.

Spring and summer's blessings, away they flew,
this was our nirvana, as we both knew
a love so deep something just had to give
tho' without her loving, I could not live
fate's wicked plan then began to unfold
she believed those dark lies, others had told,
venom thus born, her heart turned freezing cold
casting me into heartbreak's dark stronghold.

From that hell-born pit, I could see her tears,
time raced onward through all those crying years
she had moved on, so very far away
while I in my new prison had to stay
old and gray, so firmly chained in that cell
this pleading soul, living torturous hell,
on some nights, her sweet perfume I did smell
yet against fate's black curse, I still rebel.

She, an angel came in to buy a coke,
through din of dancing noise, ghastly thick smoke
a dream vision with a rose in her hair
I looked in deeply, with a longing stare
she gave me, her best million dollar smile
that cried out, my new love, lets talk a while,
she with those skin-tight shorts, her hippie style
all her sexy beauty set to beguile.

R.J. Lindley, May 2nd, 1980
Narrative, ( Imprisoned, And Still Dreaming Of Her )

Note:
Poem is based upon a real encounter, a very beautiful
girl. A loss and a romantic scar thus born....

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tribute Paid To,
"The Vision, The Reality, The Great Love Once Lost"
(Second phase, poet's aged eyes looking at past reality)

Dawn came, sandy seaside beach came alive,
seeking a new romance to soul revive
poet's heart begging that true love renew
joy, former life, that away I once threw
sun was beaming, as new world seemed to sing
heart was dancing, begging life again bring,
beautiful angel not a one-night fling
for this sad soul had once lost everything.

Seagulls overhead, sky was dancing too,
I marveling at its fantastic blues
white beach sands, were bare feet satisfying
gone away, days of moaning and crying
looking for a future of hope and love
left behind evil world of push and shove,
past sorrows, I no longer a part of
a new man on quest for deeper, truelove.

At water's edge dipping in toes to feel,
saw a vision coming, could not be real
yes she, that beauty of desirous dreams
an angel sent to prove new love redeems
I froze as thought came, this can not be so
surely if I blink away this will go
for she is dream goddess my love-dreams show
dare I blink to see, to really know?

Courage summoned, heart was all a flutter
with gasping breath, prayer I did mutter
dear Lord, please, please, let this be my reward
you know my life has been so very hard
from sky above a tender voice then spoke
mercy cometh, love's promise is no joke
now by faith, your spirit has again woke
blessings come when faithful vows you invoke.

Dawn came, sandy seaside beach came alive,
seeking out a new romance to revive
poet's heart begging that true love renew
joy, former life, that away I once threw
sun was beaming, as new world seemed to sing
heart was dancing, begging life again bring,
beautiful angel not a one-night fling
for this sad soul had once lost everything.

Robert J. Lindley, Sept.03-2020
Narrative, ( Imprisoned, And Poetically Still Dreaming Of Her )

Note:
This second poem is based upon a real encounter, a very beautiful
girl. A loss and a romantic scar thus born....
as seen through a poet's aged eyes...

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

I previously forgot to post this 5th blog in the lesser known poets series.--Tyr

For, A Look Into Lesser Known Poets, A Series, ( 5th.) Poet, Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Blog Posted:3/31/2020 9:57:00 AM
TO HONOR FIFTH POET- FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS
(1A.)

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe.../to-wordsworth

Felicia Dorothea Hemans
1793–1835

Born in Liverpool, England, Romantic poet Felicia Dorothea Hemans was the daughter of a merchant and a granddaughter of the consul, and the fifth of seven children. The family relocated to Wales following a period of financial difficulty in 1800. A voracious and early reader, Hemans made use of an extensive home library and was instructed by her mother in several languages. She spent two winters in London as a child, and was captivated by the classical art she saw there.

Hemans published her first collection, Poems (1808), at the age of 14. She married Captain Alfred Hemans in 1812, and together they had five children. However, her husband did not return from a trip to Italy in 1818, and from then on Hemans had to support her family with the income from her poetry.

Influenced by William Wordsworth and Lord Byron, Hemans’s poetry was published in 19 volumes, including The Domestic Affections and other Poems (1812), Records of Woman: With Other Poems (1828), and Siege of Valencia (1823). Her metrically assured poems often explore domestic and romantic themes.

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-hour-of-prayer/

1. Sonnet To Italy
- Poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

FOR thee, Ansonia! Nature's bounteous hand,
Luxuriant spreads around her blooming stores;
Profusion laughs o'er all the glowing land,
And softest breezes from thy myrtle-shores.

Yet though for thee, unclouded suns diffuse
Their genial radiance o'er thy blushing plains;
Though in thy fragrant groves the sportive muse
Delights to pour her wild, enchanted strains;

Though airs that breathe of paradise are thine,
Sweet as the Indian, or Arabian gales;
Though fruitful olive and empurpling vine,
Enrich, fair Italy! thy Alpine vales;
Yet far from thee inspiring freedom flies,
To Albion's coast and ever-varying skies!
Felicia Dorothea Hemans

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-hour-of-prayer/

2. The Hour Of Prayer - Poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

Child, amidst the flowers at play,
While the red light fades away;
Mother, with thine earnest eye,
Ever following silently;
Father, by the breeze of eve,
Call'd thy harvest-work to leave -
Pray: ere yet the dark hours be,
Lift the heart, and bend the knee!

Traveller, in the stranger's land,
Far from thine own household band;
Mourner, haunted by the tone
Of a voice from this world gone;
Captive, in whose narrow cell
Sunshine hath not leave to dwell;
Sailor, on the dark'ning sea-
Lift the heart, and bend the knee!

Warrior, that from battle won,
Breathest now at set of sun;
Woman, o'er the lowly slain,
Weeping on his burial plain:
Ye that triumph, ye that sigh,
Kindred by one holy tie,
Heaven's first star alike ye see-
Lift the heart, and bend the knee!
Felicia Dorothea Hemans

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-hour-of-prayer/

3.
To Wordsworth
BY FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS
There is a strain to read among the hills,
The old and full of voices — by the source
Of some free stream, whose gladdening presence fills
The solitude with sound; for in its course
Even such is thy deep song, that seems a part
Of those high scences, a fountain from the heart.

Or its calm spirit fitly may be taken
To the still breast in sunny garden bowers,
Where vernal winds each tree’s low tones awaken,
And bud and bell with changes mark the hours.
There let thy thoughts be with me, while the day
Sinks with a golden and serene decay.

Or by some hearth where happy faces meet,
When night hath hushed the woods, with all their birds,
There, from some gentle voice, that lay were sweet
As antique music, linked with household words;
While in pleased murmurs woman’s lip might move,
And the raised eye of childhood shine in love.

Or where the shadows of dark solemn yews
Brood silently o’er some lone burial-ground,
Thy verse hath power that brightly might diffuse
A breath, a kindling, as of spring, around;
From its own glow of hope and courage high,
And steadfast faith’s victorious constancy.

True bard and holy! — thou art e’en as one
Who, by some secret gift of soul or eye,
In every spot beneath the smiling sun,
Sees where the springs of living waters lie;
Unseen awhile they sleep — till, touched by thee,
Bright healthful waves flow forth, to each glad wanderer free.
BY FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-...rthern-legend/

Read perhaps her greatest poem- Not shown here.
The Sword Of The Tomb : A Northern Legend - Poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

************************************************** ****************
For Lesser Known Poets Series,
These poems composed to honor this truly great poet....

(1.)
Soothing Dream, Bathe Me In Her Light

Of lonely night and vivid dread
sad supper and large empty bed
denying wind, sets soul to stir
romantic memories of her
she, tender angel through and through
only true love I ever knew!

Soothing dream, bathe me in her light,
sail sweet passionate seas tonight!

Of our past days, beach sand and sun
cheers, smiles, and laughter, O' what fun
she a wonder, beauty that gave
her soul to love and love to save
gifting hope to a lonely man
set to dream all he ever can!

Soothing dream, bathe me in her light,
sail sweet passionate seas tonight!

Of dancing under soft moonlight
kissing so sweet holding so tight
her morning touch, treasure thus found
love's joyous, chains forever bound
begging time to wait, to stand still
I love her true and always will!

Soothing dream, bathe me in her light,
sail sweet passionate seas tonight!

Robert J. Lindley, 3-29-2020
Rhyme,
( Romantic Dreaming, A Star That Once Was,
Soothing Dream, Bathing Within Tender Light)

(2.)

For This Aching Love, I Feel In My Bones

For this Love, I feel in my bones
desires, wine pressed from fire-stones
pleasures set to music, and glee
rapture of freedoms, given me
for this my mind dwells, on dear life
for this I endure, world's dark knife!

For this Love, I shed sweat and blood
from far above, pours lively flood
within June's soft castle a smell
within heart's valiant truth, a spell
for this my soul, yearns true and cries
for this my eyes, search deep blue skies!

For this Love, I give my great all
from looming depths spirit recalls
tall mountains beyond sweetest dreams
there, wherein lies Hope's promised streams
for this- my journey, often bold
for this- my pledge, truth to be told!

For this Love, I feel in my bones
desires, wine pressed from fire-stones
pleasures set to music, and glee
rapture of freedoms, given me
for this my mind dwells, on dear life
for this I endure, world's dark knife!

Robert J. Lindley, 3-12-2020
Rhyme, ( For The Love Of Poetry I Dare To Splash Ink )

(3.)

Times At Heart, Romancing Opera, Else A Dying Clown

Old age is too often an aching feast of dreaded dreads
symphony of memories, prayers for those already dead
or gasping look back at youthful vigor blindly wasted
days of innocent searching for desserts not yet tasted
dashing into red-canyons, rock walls scaled far too steep
begging dreams paradise provided with much needed sleep!

Time, at heart a slow dancing opera, a dying clown,
Youth's bravado, that says, "To hell with it- bring it on down"!

Old age a contemptible thought to we carefree and young
oft groaning ballad, with violin playing, wrongly strung
or morns that demand we rise to shock, fight another day
defiance- wallowing onward as for more time we pray
a nightmare, as we realize life is sad, far too short
rocket ride, on an unknown mission, one can not abort!

Time, at heart a slow dancing opera, a dying clown,
Youth's bravado, that says, "To hell with it- bring it on down"!

Old age may be a gift golden, full of joy's sweetest sprees
a lark, sailing vacations on those blue colored seas
or swirling blackened pool, its eternally spinning drain
years of crying lonely, and cascading aches and deep pains
yet life, its years are so very precious to have lived through
for the alternative is that end, which is always due!

Time, at heart a slow dancing opera, a dying clown,
Youth's bravado, that says, "To hell with it- bring it on down"!

Robert J. Lindley, 3- 30 2020...
Rhyme,
Quote:
("Knowledge by suffering entereth, And life is perfected by death.")
by- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Vision of Poets (1844), last lines)...

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

A Blog on, "The Dying Indian" Philip Freneau - 1752-1832
Blog Posted:9/7/2020 11:12:00 AM
A Blog on, "The Dying Indian"
Philip Freneau - 1752-1832
https://poets.org/poem/dying-indian

The Dying Indian
Philip Freneau - 1752-1832

“On yonder lake I spread the sail no more!
Vigour, and youth, and active days are past—
Relentless demons urge me to that shore
On whose black forests all the dead are cast:—
Ye solemn train, prepare the funeral song,
For I must go to shades below,
Where all is strange and all is new;
Companion to the airy throng!—
What solitary streams,
In dull and dreary dreams,
All melancholy, must I rove along!

To what strange lands must Chequi take his way!
Groves of the dead departed mortals trace:
No deer along those gloomy forests stray,
No huntsmen there take pleasure in the chace,
But all are empty unsubstantial shades,
That ramble through those visionary glades;
No spongy fruits from verdant trees depend,
But sickly orchards there
Do fruits as sickly bear,
And apples a consumptive visage shew,
And withered hangs the hurtle-berry blue.

Ah me! what mischiefs on the dead attend!
Wandering a stranger to the shores below,
Where shall I brook or real fountain find?
Lazy and sad deluding waters flow—
Such is the picture in my boding mind!
Fine tales, indeed, they tell
Of shades and purling rills,
Where our dead fathers dwell
Beyond the western hills,
But when did ghost return his state to shew;
Or who can promise half the tale is true?

I too must be a fleeting ghost!—no more—
None, none but shadows to those mansions go;
I leave my woods, I leave the Huron shore,
For emptier groves below!
Ye charming solitudes,
Ye tall ascending woods,
Ye glassy lakes and prattling streams,
Whose aspect still was sweet,
Whether the sun did greet,
Or the pale moon embraced you with her beams—
Adieu to all!

To all, that charmed me where I strayed,
The winding stream, the dark sequestered shade;
Adieu all triumphs here!
Adieu the mountain’s lofty swell,
Adieu, thou little verdant hill,
And seas, and stars, and skies—farewell,
For some remoter sphere!

Perplexed with doubts, and tortured with despair,
Why so dejected at this hopeless sleep?
Nature at last these ruins may repair,
When fate’s long dream is o’er, and she forgets to weep
Some real world once more may be assigned,
Some new born mansion for the immortal mind!
Farewell, sweet lake; farewell surrounding woods,
To other groves, through midnight glooms, I stray,
Beyond the mountains, and beyond the floods,
Beyond the Huron bay!
Prepare the hollow tomb, and place me low,
My trusty bow and arrows by my side,
The cheerful bottle and the venison store;
For long the journey is that I must go,
Without a partner, and without a guide.”
He spoke, and bid the attending mourners weep,
Then closed his eyes, and sunk to endless sleep!

This poem is in the public domain.
************************************************** *

https://paulreuben.website/pal/chap2/freneau.html

Chapter 2: Early American Literature 1700-1800

Philip Morin Freneau
1752-1832

© Paul P. Reuben

September 10, 2019

E-Mail
|
Page Links: | Primary Works | Selected Bibliography 1980-Present | Leader of 18th Century Naturalism | Four Aspects of Freneau | Study Questions | MLA Style Citation of this Web Page |
| A Brief Biography |

Site Links: | Chap 2 - Index | Alphabetical List | Table Of Contents | Home Page |

Primary Works

Poems. Edited with a critical introd. by Harry Hayden Clark. NY: Hafner Pub. Co., 1960, 1929. PS755 .A5 C6
The poems of Philip Freneau, poet of the American Revolution. (1902) Edited for the Princeton Historical Association by Fred Lewis Pattee. NY: Russell & Russell, 1963. 3 vols. PS755 .A2

Father Bombo's pilgrimage to Mecca, 1770. by Hugh Henry Brackenridge and Philip Freneau; edited, with an introd., by Michael Davitt Bell. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton U Library, 1975. PS708 B5 F3

Selected Bibliography 1980-Present

Blakemore, Steven. Literature, Intertextuality, and the American Revolution: From Common Sense to 'Rip Van Winkle'. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2012.

Goudie, Sean X. Creole America: The West Indies and the Formation of Literature and Culture in the New Republic. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2006.

Hollander, John. ed. American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, I: Philip Freneau to Walt Whitman. NY: Library of America, 1993.

I. Freneau as Leader of 18th Century Naturalism

1. Fresh interest in nature.
2. The belief that nature is a revelation of God.

3. Humanitarian sympathy for the humble and oppressed.

4. The faith that people are naturally good.

5. That they lived idyllic and benevolent lives in a primitive past before the advent of civilization.

6. The radical doctrine that the golden age will dawn again when social institutions are modified, since they are responsible for existing evil.

II. Aspects of Freneau

1. Poet of American Independence: Freneau provides incentive and inspiration to the revolution by writing such poems as "The Rising Glory of America" and "Pictures of Columbus."
2. Journalist: Freneau was editor and contributor of The Freeman's Journal (Philadelphia) from 1781-1784. In his writings, he advocated the essence of what is known as Jeffersonian democracy - decentralization of government, equality for the masses, etc.

3. Freneau's Religion: Freneau is described as a deist - a believer in nature and humanity but not a pantheist. In deism, religion becomes an attitude of intellectual belief, not a matter of emotional of spiritual ecstasy. Freneau shows interest and sympathy for the humble and the oppressed.

4. Freneau as Father of American Poetry: His major themes are death, nature, transition, and the human in nature. All of these themes become important in 19th century writing. His famous poems are "The Wild Honey-Suckle" (1786), "The Indian Burying Ground" (1787), "The Dying Indian: Tomo Chequi" (1784), "The Millennium" (1797), "On a Honey Bee" (1809), "To a Caty-Did" (1815), "On the Universality and Other Attributes of the God of Nature," "On the Uniformity and Perfection of Nature," and "On the Religion of Nature" (the last three written in 1815).

| Top | Philip Freneau (1752-1832): A Brief Biography
A Student Project by Nicholas von Teck

Philip Freneau: Voice of Revolution
In 1598 King Henry IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes, promising to protect the rights of his Huguenot (Protestant) subjects and allowing them to worship in their own churches. The Bourbon King Louis XIV rescinded the Edict of Nantes with the Act of Revocation of 1685, condemning the Protestant Huguenots to trials of heresy by the Roman Church; those who were not massacred fled to any place that would take them. Two large communities of Huguenots settled in the colonies of North America: one in the area around Charleston, South Carolina and the other, larger colony in the city of Nieuw Amsterdam. Shortly after the arrival of the Huguenots in Nieuw Holland, that colony was forfeited to the United Kingdom and renamed New York. In the early but nonetheless cosmopolitan environs of New York Town, these French Protestants found themselves with Dutch colonists, English colonial administrators, Jewish-German merchants, African slaves, and Native American converts. One of these Huguenot families was the Fresneaus from La Rochelle, France (Austin 50). They arrived there from England in 1709 (Leary 5).

After a few generations, the Fresneaus who fought for space with the other New Yorkers in the small area of the city bounded by the Hudson and East rivers and Wall Street became the Freneaus who owned a prosperous plantation called Mount Pleasant in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and had a thousand slaves ( Clark xiv). Some traditions remain in families: Mont Plaisant was the name of the residence of the Fresneaus in La Rochelle, France (Austin 65). Despite being gentlemen farmers, each successive generation of Fresneaus carried on the family trade in wine, begun long before the Edict of Nantes, and Philip Freneau made many voyages to bring back port wines and madeiras (Clark xiv).

Philip Morin Freneau was born at Mount Pleasant on 2 January 1752 (Old Style: the United Kingdom and its colonies had yet to convert to the Julian calendar and still used the Gregorian at this time &emdash; as a result, an Englishman traveling to the Continent had to set his calendar ahead twelve days after crossing the Channel). Philip was the eldest of the five children of Pierre Freneau and Agnes Watson (Austin 65), and the first to use the spelling Freneau (Bowden 15).

Philip was schooled at Mount Pleasant until he was boarded with the Reverend William Tennent of Tennent's Church, New Jersey for his preparatory education in his tenth year in 1762 (Austin 72). His first known poem, "The Wild Honeysuckle," was penned about this time; the actual date of inscription is unknown, but tradition has Freneau writing it shortly before arriving at Tennent's Church (Austin 70). A little over three years later, in February, 1766, he was enrolled in the Penlopen Latin School in Monmouth under the tutelage of the Reverend Alexander Mitchell; he remained there until he was admitted to Nassau Hall at Princeton College, Princeton, New Jersey in 1768. During his time at Penlopen Latin, Philip's father died (Austin 73). Philip's mother, however, decided that Philip should continue his education and sent him along to Nassau Hall in due course, but with a tacit understanding between mother and son that he was to seek a degree in Divinity. He didn't (Leary 50).

The roster of Philip's classmates reads like a litany of the American Pantheon: the Honorable Justices Hugh Brackenridge and Brockholst Livingston of the Supreme Court of the United States; Gunning Bedford, a framer of the Constitution; Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States; Colonel Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee of Virginia; and James Madison, Fourth President of the United States of America; and several others, in addition to having as the president of his college the Reverend Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration of Independence (Austin 74). Seldom has such a small group of students achieved such enduring legacy for Freneau's graduating class of 1770 held but ten students (Austin 75).

| Top | During his sophomore year he wrote "The Poetical History of the Prophet Jonah," a "rhythymical (sic) poem, or 'versified paraphrase' to use his own expression." (Austin 76) At one-hundred-thirty-five lines it was considered remarkable for so young a poet and much commented on at the time, both at Princeton and at rival colleges such as Kings in New York, Harvard in Boston, and William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia (Austin 78). For graduation in 1771, he collaborated with (later Mr. Justice) Brackenridge on a poem they recited, "The Rising Glory of America," a blank verse dialogue (Austin 78). Brackenridge had earlier collaborated with Freneau on the mock epic "Father Bombo's Pilgrimage" (Bowden 22). Freneau also immortalizes Witherspoon in the poem "Caledonian Sage" and praised the "liberal education" he gained under Witherspoon's administration (Bowden 17). Among other activities, Witherspoon instituted student orations as a form of entertainment, and even allowed the students to chose their subjects for discourse, which Freneau satirizes in "The Distrest Orator." (Bowden 19) Interestingly, despite being a prodigal and prodigious student, Freneau did not attend his own graduation from Princeton; the fact that his mother remarried may have had something to do with it, but this period of Freneau's life is vague (Bowden 28).

Freneau's first occupation was as a school teacher in Flatbush, Bruecklin (Brooklyn) County on Nassau (Long) Island. He lasted thirteen days with "the youth of that detested place" and "finally bid adieu" to "that brainless crew, … devoid of reason and grace." (Austin 80) He said his employers were "gentlemen of New York: bullies, merchants, and scoundrels." (Austin 80) In the same letter to a classmate, he also mentions that he had just written and published a poem of "some four-hundred-and-fifty lines … called 'The American Village' and a few short pieces as well." (Austin 80) However, he was soon forced to accept another teaching position, this one at Somerset Academy near Baltimore, Maryland, where he stayed until the end of term, 1773.

Freneau had evidently collected his year's salary from Flatbush in advance, "some forty pounds," and expected his ex-employers to "trounce" him if they should find him (Austin 80). A Jamaican planter named Hanson invited Freneau to pay a prolonged visit to Hanson's plantation. As Hanson was also master of his own ship and was preparing to ship on the next tide, Freneau thought it behooved himself to clamber on board (Austin 83). During the passage, the first mate died and Freneau found himself learning the art of navigation by the "trial-by-fire" method (Austin 83). He discovered that he enjoyed it and eventually took master's papers (Austin 83).

During his prolonged stay in Jamaica, he developed a dislike for slavery. This is interesting because, like most large farmers of the era, the Freneaus had both house and field slaves at Mount Pleasant, although they also had tenant farmers as well on their fairly large holdings (Austin 60). Freneau obviously villianized Hanson by creating the character of Sir Tobey the slave-owner in the poem "To Sir Tobey" (Austin 83). During the next few years, Freneau sailed as master around the Caribbean and visited the Bermudas, the Danish Virgin Islands, and the Gulf of Mexico (Austin 83). These travels were the inspiration for such poems as "House of Night" and "The Beauties of Santa Cruz"(Austin 85). In 1775 he also publishes "American Liberty" (Bowden 13).

While Freneau sailed to and fro between the balmy Carib and the Delaware Bay, hostilities between Mother England and her colonies were growing to a fighting pitch. As soon as Freneau learned of the outbreak of revolution, he sailed back to New Jersey in the bark Amanda (it may not have actually been his, for he was recorded as being only the master of it) (Austin 105). Interestingly, the name for the "beauty" for whom his sings praises in his poem of the Caribbean poems is "Amanda" (Austin 86).

Freneau arrives at Mount Pleasant to find it burned, and his mother and younger siblings living elsewhere; the Battle of Monmouth had been fought on Mount Pleasant (Austin 103). Freneau arranges for "lettres of marque," authorizing him to be a privateer and attack English shipping in order to seize cargo and vessels (Austin 104). While the bark Amanda sails under another master with him as the recorded owner, Freneau orders a new sloop built at Philadelphia; he names her Aurora (Austin 104).

| Top | On 25 May 1778, Aurora left the ways at Philadelphia and stood out into Delaware Bay for Cape Henlopen and the Atlantic Ocean. Less than six hours later, Aurora had been chased and run aground by the English Captain Sir George Collier in HMS Iris (which before her own capture was ex-USS Hancock) and Freneau was captured (Austin 110). Lacking gallantry usually expected in a ship's master, Freneau at first denies he is the master when confronted by the prize-captain of HMS Iris (Leary 82). After he is handcuffed below decks with the "stench of seamen," Freneau finds a Tory aboard the frigate who knows him and begs recognition (Leary 82). Freneau was transported to the prison ship HMS Scorpion in New York Harbor, and later transferred again to the prison hospital ship HMS Hunter (Austin 113). This internment of nearly eighteen months was the genesis for the poem "The Prison Ship" (650 lines; published in 1780) in which he "compares the flight of [the] Aurora to the flight of Hector pursued by Achilles." (Austin 109) During this time, however, he does manage to contribute to Brackenridge's United States Magazine (Bowden 13). Freneau never recovered from the financial loss of Aurora (Clark xxiii).

He was paroled on condition that he not resume arms against the King, and he evidently kept his word, but Freneau must have reckoned the old saw about the pen being mightier than the sword had some verisimilitude for he continued to raise his quill in rebellion for the rest of the Revolution (Austin 121). He found work as a printer and editor with the Freeman's Journal in Philadelphia (Bowden 13). Freneau wrote poems on various patriotic subjects such as the departure of the traitor Benedict Arnold, the Battle of Temple Hill, the melting by the printer Isaac Sears of his type into bullets, etc … (Austin 133). By 1786, he was master of the brig Washington and making round-trips to the Madeiras (Austin 138). He left behind a newly published volume, The Poems of Philip Freneau (Bowden 13). The next year, 1787, he returned long enough to publish a second volume, A Journey from Philadelphia to New York before again standing out to sea (Bowden 13). 1788 saw the publication of a third volume, The Miscellaneous Works of Mr. Philip Freneau (Bowden 13).

In 1789 Freneau married Helen Forman of New Jersey, a sister of General David Forman, one of the founders of the Order of the Cincinnati (Austin 147). Helen Freneau is recorded as having a pleasant and "poetic" personality, and was a gracious hostess (Austin 149).

Freneau was offered the position of editor of the Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, but before he could assume that position he was induced to become editor of the National Gazette instead at the paltry salary of $250 per annum (Austin 152). Freneau had never financially recovered from the loss of Aurora, and was still trying to run his family's estate at Mount Pleasant, and maintain all who depended on him: "family and slaves." (Austin 152) Despite writing "To Sir Tobey" nearly twenty years before, Freneau was still a slaveholder himself.

| Top | The Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, offered Freneau the clerkship of "Interpreter of the French language for the Department of State" in 1793 (Austin 153). This raised a hue-and-cry of such proportions, and the appointment was so loudly denounced, that the offer was withdrawn; for some reason, many Philadephians at that time suspected Jefferson and Freneau of collusion and intrigue (Austin 156). Since Philadelphia was the seat of government at the time, and since Benjamin Franklin was then opposing Jefferson as to which form of government the foundling United States should adopt, Freneau was likely just a handy target for the pro-Franklin faction in their bid to undermine the Jeffersonian Republican-Democrats (Austin 156). The idea seems to have been that a clerk under Jefferson who just happened to be the editor of a major newspaper would give the Jeffersonians a propaganda leverage that would be nearly impossible to undermine if it were not stopped immediately (Austin 156). Austin qoutes a Mr. Benjamin as saying, "What Tyrtaeus was to the Spartans, was Freneau to the Republicans or anti-Federalists." (160) The allusion is that the National Gazette was, with Freneau as editor, a "powerful political paper." (Austin 160)

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

My dedication poem below . RJL

(**Are We Not Brothers, Made From The Same Dirt,
(Tribute to Philip Freneau and his poem,
The Dying Indian)**)


Are We Not Brothers, Made From The Same Dirt


I welcome you sweet dawn, soft break of day
As your vibrant voice sounds, seeming to say
Lad, I bid you relief from dark and gray
Feel my coming golden rays and rejoice
So precious life's gift, giving love free voice
Embrace your honor, honor that wise choice-
You are of braver heart, red is your blood
You are red-man, Native pride your soul floods
You hunt ancestral lands, wade tidal muds,
There amidst tall trees, beauty of the glades
You young lad, were of pure Native bloods made
Spirit must stay strong, as your time soon fades
In your dreams, you sail to paradise isles
You race through countryside for miles and miles
Live, soon your tribes will become sad exiles-
As you dare the great beast to your soul fight
Search mysteries that hide truth out of sight
Know that same hungry beast, will your race smite!

Alas! Fate's wicked hands, its evil sends.
Stopping mercy, from which Heaven descends.

I beg mother earth, this carnage avert
Heal dark souls of men, stop such coming hurts
Are we not brothers, made from the same dirt
Do we all not cry, and same red blood bleed
Are we all not sprung from weak mortal seeds
In pain, do we not, to same Father plead-
Will violence and death, your greed absolve
Can we seek to our differences solve
Must destruction serve as means to evolve,
Is what will be gained, great treasure to you
Shall we learn to love same sky's glowing blues
Share life's blessings, paying brotherly dues
Walk lit paths, love flowering meadows too-
Live serving peace and discover anew
Enjoy a rainbow's hope, its many hues?

Alas! Fate's wicked hands, its evil sends.
Stopping mercy, from which Heaven descends.

Robert J. Lindley, 9-07-2020
Rhyme, Phhillip Freneau,Tribute poem,

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Current blog listing as of today..
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