02-09-2005, 05:47 PM | #41 | |
Fëanorophobic
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When I first read the poem it seemed to me that the liquor was a metaphor for poetic inspiration (cf. the allegory with the Muse) but this seems to run amiss with the story of the headwaiter. However, I still think the poem has meaning beyond the literal one... |
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02-10-2005, 12:18 PM | #42 |
Elf Lord
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All poems have meaning beyond the literal one! It is just that one cannot deny the literal one! Since poetry is concentrated symbols (words and images they evoke or suggest) it is pregnant with possibility. But to use the metaphor, the union of the poet's DNA with the reader's DNA results in a unique experience of the poet which is definitely recognizable as a "personality" of the poem and which different readers may experience as persons are experienced (daughter/mother/grandmother/friend/aunt/artist/coworker/etc).
Each of these experiental states is valid, but they find their unity in the person (the poem).
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Inked "Aslan is not a tame lion." CSL/LWW "The new school [acts] as if it required...courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that requires real courage to say, and that is a truism." GK Chesterton "And there is always the danger of allowing people to suppose that our modern times are so wholly unlike any other times that the fundamental facts about man's nature have wholly changed with changing circumstances." Dorothy L. Sayers, 1 Sept. 1941 |
02-10-2005, 05:23 PM | #43 | |
Lady of Letters
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Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans, And phantom hopes assemble; And that child’s heart within the man’s Begins to move and tremble. Then he remembers that none of this will happen. This is just a pub and the waiter is just an ordinary man ("As just and mere a serving-man/ As any born of woman), and the speaker himself will never achieve more than he is at the moment. Only the port made him think otherwise for a little while. Moral: we have our "lot" and can't escape it by ambition and idealistic hopes, so we should be content.
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And all the time the waves, the waves, the waves Chase, intersect and flatten on the sand As they have done for centuries, as they will For centuries to come, when not a soul Is left to picnic on the blazing rocks, When England is not England, when mankind Has blown himself to pieces. Still the sea, Consolingly disastrous, will return While the strange starfish, hugely magnified, Waits in the jewelled basin of a pool. |
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02-16-2005, 11:38 AM | #44 | |
The Lovely Hobbit-Lass
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p.s. I think that the 'Muse' is a pseudonym for the ale, not the other way around.
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It's New Years Day, just like the day before; Same old skies of grey, same empty bottles on the floor. Another year's gone by, and I was thinking once again, How can I take this losing hand and somehow win? Just give me One Good Year To get my feet back on the ground. I've been chasing grace; Grace ain't so easily found One bad hand can devil a man, chase him and carry him down. I've got to get out of here, just give me One Good Year! |
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02-17-2005, 02:47 AM | #45 | |
Fëanorophobic
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02-21-2005, 03:08 PM | #46 |
Fëanorophobic
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I started In Memoriam yesterday. Powerful stuff! I just finished reading canto VI and I love its ending!
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02-23-2005, 10:43 AM | #47 |
The Lovely Hobbit-Lass
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I must admit that the sheer volume of In Memoriam really intimidates me. I have not read it, save for stray verses here and there- that, consequently, I cannot remember. I'll get around to it one of these days, I suppose.
I just bought a book of peotry by famous authors- Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Longfellow, Tennyson, etc. It has Charge of the Light Brigade in it. I love that poem! The sheer darkness of it all- the tradegy, the glory, the loss, the victory! Wonderful! I love T's way of exalting the nameless nobodies without giving them a name- 'Noble six hundred!', etc.
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It's New Years Day, just like the day before; Same old skies of grey, same empty bottles on the floor. Another year's gone by, and I was thinking once again, How can I take this losing hand and somehow win? Just give me One Good Year To get my feet back on the ground. I've been chasing grace; Grace ain't so easily found One bad hand can devil a man, chase him and carry him down. I've got to get out of here, just give me One Good Year! |
03-11-2005, 02:41 PM | #48 |
Lady of Letters
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'The Charge of the Light Brigade' is an interesting poem to think of in terms of a poet's public role. Tennyson seems to have been one of the more successful Poet Laureates* and I think this poem demonstates why - he manages to capture a national mood, while also writing a poem which stands alone as good poetry. Some wonderful poets have been Poet Laureate, but few of them have succeeded in adapting their work to the public requirements as well as Tennyson did. Do you think there is a particular reason for this? Is Tennyson a more accessible writer, who can be enjoyed by people who don't usually like poetry?
Also, it's curious that 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', which is about failure, is more popular than 'The Charge of the Heavy Brigade', which is about success. They're similar in other respects. Heroic failure must make better subject matter for poetry - like the Battle of Maldon *Poets Laureate, I suppose, but you know what I mean Last edited by sun-star : 03-11-2005 at 02:43 PM. |
03-12-2005, 01:39 PM | #49 |
Fëanorophobic
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03-16-2005, 10:31 AM | #50 | |
The Lovely Hobbit-Lass
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About it being more popular than The Charge of the Heavy Brigade (which I have never read)- which is, you say, about a victory- I personally am attracted to tragic stories. I think that poetry is a medium that lends itself partcularily well to tragedy- there's probably more melancholy poems than there are really happy ones- and it therefore stands to reason that, in general, if you like poetry you like tragedy, to a certain extent. Thus a poem about failure and sadness is more appealing than a poem where everyone lives happily ever after- in general. Anyway, it's a theory.
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It's New Years Day, just like the day before; Same old skies of grey, same empty bottles on the floor. Another year's gone by, and I was thinking once again, How can I take this losing hand and somehow win? Just give me One Good Year To get my feet back on the ground. I've been chasing grace; Grace ain't so easily found One bad hand can devil a man, chase him and carry him down. I've got to get out of here, just give me One Good Year! |
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05-06-2005, 06:07 AM | #51 |
of the House of Fëanor
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all you Tennyson addicts out there, here is my all-time favourtie Tennyson poem, which is rather lenghy so I'll break it up into a couple posts.
ulysses It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
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05-06-2005, 11:55 AM | #52 |
Death of Mooters and [Entmoot] Internal Affairs
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Ulysses is, I think, my favorite as well, though there are quite a few of his I enjoy
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Fëanor - Innocence incarnated Still, Aikanáro 'till the Last battle. Last edited by Falagar : 05-06-2005 at 11:57 AM. |
05-06-2005, 12:55 PM | #53 |
Fëanorophobic
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Lotesse, Ulysses is indeed a great Tennyson poem. What other poems by Tennyson do you like?
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05-07-2005, 04:24 AM | #54 |
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here's one for you, Beren...
In Memoriam A. H. H. XLIII If Sleep and Death be truly one, And every spirit's folded bloom Thro' all its intervital gloom In some long trance should slumber on; Unconscious of the sliding hour, Bare of the body, might it last, And silent traces of the past Be all the colour of the flower : So then were nothing lost to man; So that still garden of the souls In many a figured leaf enrolls The total world since life began; And love will last as pure and whole As when he loved me here in Time, And at the spiritual prime Rewaken with the dawning soul. Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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Few people have the imagination for reality.
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05-07-2005, 10:19 AM | #55 |
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In Memoriam is definitely great. My favorite Canto of it is:
XXI. I sing to him that rests below, And, since the grasses round me wave, I take the grasses of the grave, And make them pipes whereon to blow. The traveller hears me now and then, And sometimes harshly will he speak: ‘This fellow would make weakness weak, And melt the waxen hearts of men.’ Another answers, ‘Let him be, He loves to make parade of pain, That with his piping he may gain The praise that comes to constancy.’ A third is wroth: ‘Is this an hour For private sorrow’s barren song, When more and more the people throng The chairs and thrones of civil power? ‘A time to sicken and to swoon, When Science reaches forth her arms To feel from world to world, and charms Her secret from the latest moon?’ Behold, ye speak an idle thing: Ye never knew the sacred dust: I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing: And one is glad; her note is gay, For now her little ones have ranged; And one is sad; her note is changed, Because her brood is stol’n away. Have you read The Miller's Daughter? It's in my second post in this thread. If you find time tell me what you think of it. |
05-07-2005, 11:19 AM | #56 |
of the House of Fëanor
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I hadn't read "The Miller's Daughter" before; of course I feel this poem. Anyway, it is an impossibility for me to remain unaffected by the subtle emotional power of Tennyson's verse. He was a lingual artist, a genius.
My wonderful, terribly missed grandfather in England was passionate about Tennyson, and turned me on to his works while I was still very young, for which I'm eternallly grateful. Did it seem to you that there were a few word combinations in "Millers Daughter" reminiscent of "Ulysses"?
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05-07-2005, 04:30 PM | #57 | ||
Fëanorophobic
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Quote:
Quote:
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05-09-2005, 11:31 PM | #58 |
of the House of Fëanor
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Here is the way I am feeling as of late...
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more. Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly glows a glimmering square; So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. - A. Lord Tennyson, 1830
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Few people have the imagination for reality.
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05-11-2005, 10:13 AM | #59 |
The Lovely Hobbit-Lass
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I'm sorry. How come? Take a walk in the woods, eh? The flowers are blooming and the trees are leaving (or is the leafing?)...
'And all so variously wrought; I wondered how the mind was brought To anchor by one gloomy thought And wherefore rather I made choice To commune with that barren voice Than him that said "Rejoice! Rejoice!"' ~ A, LT
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It's New Years Day, just like the day before; Same old skies of grey, same empty bottles on the floor. Another year's gone by, and I was thinking once again, How can I take this losing hand and somehow win? Just give me One Good Year To get my feet back on the ground. I've been chasing grace; Grace ain't so easily found One bad hand can devil a man, chase him and carry him down. I've got to get out of here, just give me One Good Year! |
05-14-2005, 11:41 AM | #60 |
Fëanorophobic
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This may not be news to some of you but I never knew it before:
Yesterday I was watching a Discovery Channel documentary on war. They were talking about industrialized war and all... and they mentioned the charge of the light brigade at Balaklava. Apparently the light brigade was real and they were charged to capture a russian cannon battery. According to the documentary, the light brigade numbered about 637 men! The strange thing is they never mentioned Tennyson at all... |
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