Ralph,
I love the Herrick. The brilliant start, the hopeless middle, the distracted end. Alas, everything I love about Herrick, and all of his faults, displayed in a single piece!
Phillip, I've chucked the whole idea of perfect, and replaced it with "lovely little piece of work." My problem is that I agree with Henry: "Literature bores me, especially great literature..."
It's a sign of my bad character that I have a fondness for small medallions. So I prefer things like J. V. Cunningham:
*********************
For My Contemporaries
How time reverses
The proud in heart!
I now make verses
Who aimed at art.
But I sleep well.
Ambitious boys
Whose big lines swell
With spiritual noise,
Despise me not!
And be not queasy
To praise somewhat:
Verse is not easy.
But rage who will.
Time that procured me
Good sense and skill
Of madness cured me.
*************************
Now, there's a pretty little thing. Gorgeous. And every time we go over the George Washington Bridge, my wife insists I recite Paul Goodman's little ditty to her:
*************************
The Lordly Hudson
"Driver, what stream is it?" I asked, well knowing
it was our lordly Hudson hardly flowing.
"It is our lordly Hudson hardly flowing,"
he said, under the green-grown cliffs."
Be still, heart! No one needs
your passionate suffrage to select this glory,
this is our lordly Hudson hardly flowing
under the green-grown cliffs.
"Driver, has this a peer in Europe or the East?"
"No, no!" he said. Home! Home!
Be quiet, heart! This is our lordly Hudson
and has no peer in Europe or the east.
This is our lordly Hudson hardly flowing
under the green-grown cliffs
and has no peer in Europe or the East.
Be quiet, heart! Home! Home!
*****************************
It's funny what sticks in our heads. Little medallions, silly small things. Charming.
Thanks,
Bill
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