I am extremely fond of poetry. Although Bengali is my mother tongue, I am sad to say that I am illiterate in it. It is a very sweet language, and I believe that it is endowed with excellent literature and poetry. Fortunately I am reasonably competent in English. I therefore have access to its rich literary tradition.
I have not studied English literature and cannot claim any expertise in critical analysis of poetry. I am just someone who loves poetry. Allow me to share with you some of my favorite English language poems. Poems fill my heart with pleasure.
Let’s begin with the concluding lines of William Wordsworth’s Daffodils.
For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.
Next, Percy Bysse Shelly’s Ozymandias. The entire poem.
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.
The Poetry Foundation has an interesting article that provides the context to the poem. A bit:
“Ozymandias” is comparable to another signature poem by a great Romantic, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.” But whereas Coleridge aligns the ruler’s “stately pleasure dome” with poetic vision, Shelley opposes the statue and its boast to his own powerful negative imagination. Time renders fame hollow: it counterposes to the ruler’s proud sentence a devastated vista, the trackless sands of Egypt.
Let’s read the first part of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
It’s a short poem. Read the entire poem here.
I know quite a few poems by heart by mere repeated readings. I can recite a few long poems, too. I know The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by heart because I enjoy listening to a recording of the poem by Richard Burton.
Here are a few favorite lines:
Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink.
Note, the wording: “nor any drop to drink.”
The ending invariably brings tears to my eyes even though as a Hindu, I am a dyed-in-the-wool atheist. The ancient mariner tells the wedding guest in parting:
Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding-Guest ! He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.
Richard Burton’s voice is something awesome. He could read the telephone book and make it sound dramatic. Listen to at least the first 10 minutes.
(Somehow close captioning is showing up in the video. It’s full of errors. Ignore it.)
Now, it’s time for Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballard of Reading Gaol.” Note the pronunciation is “redding” and not “reading” as spelt. The video below begins with a nice introduction to the poet and the poem.
A few verses close to the start of the ballad:
Yet each man kills the thing he loves By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword! Some kill their love when they are young, And some when they are old; Some strangle with the hands of Lust, Some with the hands of Gold: The kindest use a knife, because The dead so soon grow cold. Some love too little, some too long, Some sell, and others buy; Some do the deed with many tears, And some without a sigh: For each man kills the thing he loves, Yet each man does not die.
What I find most compelling in the poem is the underlying tone which is about having compassion for ourselves. Shakespeare cautioned, “Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.” Here’s a bit about a prison:
The vilest deeds like poison weeds Bloom well in prison-air: It is only what is good in Man That wastes and withers there.
A few more verses. About the gallows:
For oak and elm have pleasant leaves That in the spring-time shoot: But grim to see is the gallows-tree, With its adder-bitten root, And, green or dry, a man must die Before it bears its fruit!
And about hanging:
It is sweet to dance to violins When Love and Life are fair: To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes Is delicate and rare: But it is not sweet with nimble feet To dance upon the air!
Time to take a break and get to the second part of this post later.
Today for music we have cued up a song titled “Guru Brahma” with Shankar Tucker, Mahesh Vinayakram, Sree Sundarkumar and Puneet Gabriel. (NOTE: It’s Bramha, not Brahma.)
Thank you, good night, and may your god go with you.
