Extracts from Poetry
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Poetry’
As Lord Marmion lies dying on Flodden Field, there is no one near to tend him but the woman he has wronged.
It is 1513, and Lord Marmion has been mortally wounded on the battlefield of Flodden. As he lies there, his lifeblood ebbing away, a woman kneels beside him. Clare feels no love for him, and the ungoverned passion he feels for her has spread death and dishonour all around. Yet her heart is not as hard as his.
One of China’s greatest poets reflects on silence, on speech, and on a song in the heart of a friend.
Po Chu-i or Bai Juyi (772-846) was a career bureaucrat in the Chinese government, national and regional, whose abilities and frank criticisms brought a head-spinning series of promotions and demotions. He is also one of China’s best-loved poets. Below are three of his many short poems, one playful, one protesting, and one a thoughtful tribute to his closest friend.
Leigh Hunt looks back to a memorable event in a long life.
Leigh Hunt first published this delightful poem (which he labelled a Rondeau, though hardly in the technical sense of that term) in The Monthly Chronicle for November 1838. It was inspired by a impulsive greeting from Jane Welsh, wife of Thomas Carlyle.
On a money-spinning pilgrimage to Canterbury, a Pardoner says the quiet part out loud.
Pardoners, in pre-Reformation England, raised funds for the Pope by selling Indulgences, blessings that relieved sinners of some of the punishment they could expect to undergo in Purgatory after death. Naturally a Pardoner attached himself to the pilgrims walking to Canterbury, and he was refreshingly open about his profitable game.
A little fable about a cat, a chicken and some wasted words.
Russian fabulist Ivan Andreyevich Krylov published his first collection of tales in 1809. More fables followed, and he became something of a celebrity, who was friendly with Emperor Nicholas I. Krylov was one of a handful of literary figures honoured with a place on the Millennium of Russia monument in Veliky Novgorod, unveiled in 1862.
During a severe sickness, John Donne, Dean of St Paul’s, asked of God three boons.
John Donne had been a soldier and assistant to prominent lawyer Sir Thomas Egerton; but James I encouraged him to be ordained in the Church of England, and in 1621 he was appointed Dean of St Paul’s in London. A life-threatening bout of illness in 1623 caused him to reflect deeply and not a little anxiously on where he stood with God.