I salvaged a book from the room of a certain graduating senior for whom I feel the greatest affection (yes, there is a chink even in my armour!), and felt a bit as if I was opening the door to Narnia. Many a minute have I invested in this book of poetry, and I know there are many more in store. These are snippets of two poems which I read, the night before Dee Pee Cee exam (I loved him , his rose-apple cheeks and his "harsh words" to death, but I pray that in all my life I never have to do another of those courses again! Dee Pee Cee Pee Cee Pee Cee indeed!!!). Completely different from each other, one is a light hearted one, which so perfectly describes the behaviour of my bedclothes at night, and the other....well, reflect upon it and see what you get from it.
So here goes:
NIGHTMARE
By Sir W.S. Gilbert
When you're lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo'd by anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety;
For your brain is on fire - the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you:
First your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes, and your sheet slips demurely from under you;
Then the blanketing tickles - you feel like mixed pickles - so terribly sharp is the pricking,
And you're hot, and you're cross, and you tumble and toss till there's nothing 'twixt you and the ticking.
Then the bedclothes all creep to the ground in a heap, and you pick 'em all up in a tangle;
Next your pillow resigns and politely declines to remain at its usual angle!
Well, you get some repose in the form of a doze, with hot eye-balls and head ever aching,
But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams that you'd very much better be waking;
And so it goes on in a simmilar vein. I loved it because of the tongue-in-cheek humour, and because the words are so rhythmic and easy on the tongue.
In this next one, in the first verse, notice the calm of the settings, and then take in the cynicism,realization, and turmoil epressed in the last verse, in the background of the first verse.
DOVER BEACH
By Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; - on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
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Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Sourced from A Pocket Book of Modern Verse, edited by Oscar Williams, published by Washington Square Press, Inc., New York. s
Grateful.
6 years ago
