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03-02-2014, 11:22 AM
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Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Breaux Bridge, LA, USA
Posts: 3,489
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Women's History Month - Poets' Division
In celebration of WHM 2014, here is a poem by Anne Bradstreet (d. 1672).
TO HER FATHER WITH SOME VERSES
Most truly honored, and as truly dear,
If worth in me or ought I do appear,
Who can of right better demand the same
Than may your worthy self from whom it came?
The principal might yield a greater sum
Yet handled ill, amounts but to this crumb;
My stock's so small I know not how to pay,
My bond remains in force unto this day;
Yet for part payment take this simple mite,
Where nothing's to be had, kings loose their right.
Such is my debt I may not say forgive,
But as I can, I'll pay it while I live;
Such is my bond, none can discharge but I,
Yet paying is not paid until I die.
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03-03-2014, 09:56 AM
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Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Kansas City, MO
Posts: 157
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That wild woman Edna St. Vincent Millay sucked me into poetry. I post this from a paperback collection I bought in high school, when already it had become quaint and reactionary to admire her work.
God's World
O World, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this:
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,--Lord, I do fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,--let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.
Eventually I got over the exclamation points and words like "prithee." But I never got over the passion.
Last edited by Barbara Loots; 03-03-2014 at 10:07 AM.
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03-05-2014, 02:23 AM
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Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Brisbane, QLD, Australia
Posts: 261
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What a good idea for a thread
Here's a classic by Aphra Behn.
A Thousand Martyrs
A thousand martyrs I have made,
All sacrificed to my desire;
A thousand beauties have betrayed,
That languish in resistless fire.
The untamed heart to hand I brought,
And fixed the wild and wandering thought.
I never vowed nor sighed in vain
But both, though false, were well received.
The fair are pleased to give us pain,
And what they wish is soon believed.
And though I talked of wounds and smart,
Love’s pleasures only touched my heart.
Alone the glory and the spoil
I always laughing bore away;
The triumphs, without pain or toil,
Without the hell, the heav’n of joy.
And while I thus at random rove
Despise the fools that whine for love.
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03-05-2014, 09:46 AM
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Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: usa
Posts: 7,645
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Where to begin....
Farewell to Bath
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762)
To all you ladies now at Bath,
And eke, ye beaux, to you,
With aching heart, and wat’ry eyes,
I bid my last adieu.
Farewell ye nymphs, who waters sip
Hot reeking from the pumps,
While music lends her friendly aid,
To cheer you from the dumps.
Farewell ye wits, who prating stand,
And criticise the fair;
Yourselves the joke of men of sense,
Who hate a coxcomb's air.
Farewell to Deard's, and all her toys,
Which glitter in her shop,
Deluding traps to girls and boys,
The warehouse of the fop.
Lindsay’s and Hayes’s both farewell,
Where in the spacious hall,
With bounding steps, and sprightly air,
I've led up many a ball.
Where Somerville of courteous mien,
Was partner in the dance,
With swimming Haws, and Brownlow blithe,
And Britton pink of France.
Poor Nash, farewell! may fortune smile,
Thy drooping soul revive,
My heart is full I can no more—
John, bid the coachman drive.
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03-06-2014, 03:25 AM
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Stocksbridge. Near the Dark Peak.
Posts: 1,524
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We are all Elizabethans
I love this poem by Elizabeth I. We will have to wait a little longer for Elizabeth II's poems to come to light, perhaps.
ON MONSIEUR'S DEPARTURE
I grieve and dare not show my discontent;
I love, and yet am forced to seem to hate;
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant;
I seem stark mute, but inwardly do prate.
xxx I am, and not; I freeze and yet am burned,
xxx Since from myself another self I turned.
My care is like my shadow in the sun—
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands, and lies by me, doth what I have done;
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
xxx No means I find to rid him from my breast,
xxx Till by the end of things it be supprest.
Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft, and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, Love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low;
xxx Or let me live with some more sweet content,
xxx Or die, and so forget what love e'er meant.
Elizabeth I. 1533--1603
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03-06-2014, 04:36 AM
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Devon England
Posts: 1,708
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Well, actually, Steve, a verse in the Castle of May guestbook by the young Princess Elizabeth after a stay there did come to light a few years ago and was published in The Guardian, which, I seem to remember, wheeled in Andrew Motion to pronounce on them, not a fate everyone would wish.
Last edited by Jerome Betts; 03-06-2014 at 06:16 AM.
Reason: Typo
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03-06-2014, 06:02 AM
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Canada and Uruguay
Posts: 5,857
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Remembrance
Cold in the earth - and the deep snow piled above thee!
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?
Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains on Angora's shore;
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
That noble heart for ever, ever more?
Cold in the earth - and fifteen wild Decembers
From those brown hills have melted into spring:
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!
Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee
While the world's tide is bearing me along;
Sterner desires and darker hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure but cannot do thee wrong.
No other Sun has lightened up my heaven;
No other Star has ever shone for me:
All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given--
All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee.
But when the days of golden dreams had perished
And even Despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy;
Then did I check my tears of useless passion -
Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine!
And even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in Memory's rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?
-- Emily Jane Brontë
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03-06-2014, 07:51 AM
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Old South Wales (UK)
Posts: 6,679
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Oh, the memories tied up in this one, from three-quarters of a life ago...
Renouncement
I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,
I shun the thought that lurks in all delight -
The thought of thee--and in the blue Heaven's height,
And in the sweetest passage of a song.
Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng
This breast, the thought of thee waits, hidden yet bright;
But it must never, never come in sight;
I must stop short of thee the whole day long.
But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,
When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,
Must doff my will as raiment laid away - a -
With the first dream that comes with the first sleep
I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.
Alice Meynell
1847 – 1922; English writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet. An interesting woman.
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03-06-2014, 03:34 PM
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Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Kansas City, MO
Posts: 157
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I treasure my Alice Meynell Poems ninth edition--1921. With a beautiful frontispiece portrait--engraved from a drawing by John Singer Sargent.
Last edited by Barbara Loots; 03-06-2014 at 03:37 PM.
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03-11-2014, 10:19 PM
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Posts: 8,340
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I'm in a feisty feminist mood, so I'll quote my favorite snippet of Anne Bradstreet, from "In Honour of That High and Mighty Princess, Queen Elizabeth":
Let such as say our sex is void of reason
Know ‘tis a slander now, but once was treason.
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