Poets and Poetry
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Poets and Poetry’
In ‘Familiarity Dangerous,’ poet William Cowper tells a little tale warning that if you join in the game you play by the rules.
William Cowper was very much a cat person, so naturally these lines from the Latin of Vincent Bourne (1695-1747), who had been on the staff at Westminster School when Cowper was a pupil there, appealed to him. A kitten reminds us that if you want to be one of the gang it has got to be on their terms.
Robert Browning, aboard ship in sight of Gibraltar, reflects on the momentous events in British history that have happened nearby.
In this poem from his travels in 1838, Robert Browning is aboard a ship just off Tangiers. Cape St Vincent in Portugal has faded from view, but he can see Cadiz and Cape Trafalgar clearly, and just make out Gibraltar. He thinks of the stirring events in British history that took place hereabouts, and wonders what an ordinary Englishmen can still do for his country.
William Shakespeare in sombre mood clings to love as the only changeless thing in a world of decay.
Sonnet 116 was published in 1609, when William Shakespeare was forty-five and still working as an actor in London. The capital was ravaged that year by particularly relentless outbreaks of plague, which perhaps helps to explain the sombre tone of his poem about love, the one constant in a world of sickness, age and death.
Rosalind explains to Orlando that Time moves at different paces depending on who you are.
William Shakespeare’s As You Like It is believed to be the play that opened the New Globe theatre in 1599. After Frederick usurped the throne of his brother Duke Senior (so the story goes) he exiled his own daughter Rosalind for disobedience. Disguised as a boy, Rosalind fled to the Forest of Arden only to run into a long-time admirer, Orlando. To hide her confusion, and still incognito, she accosts him ‘like a saucy lackey’.
William Shakespeare immortalised his lover in verse, as if holding back for ever the ravages of Time.
Without question, William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 is one of the best known and most beloved poems in the English language. William immortalises his lover in verse, saying that though beauty must pass away all too soon, she and her loveliness will live on in his lines as long as there are men to read them.
William Shakespeare recalls how the love of his life once teased him to the brink of despair.
This Sonnet is held to be one of William Shakespeare’s earlier works, owing in part to its relatively simple form. However, keen-eyed observers have noted that the husband of Anne Hathaway seems to have buried some tender-hearted little clues in the closing lines.