04
Apr
Not enough poetry in my poetry month
It’s already April 4 and I haven’t read any poetry all month. That’s a sad thing, normally, but since it is National Poetry Month it seems especially egregious. There ought to be poems on the morning news, appearing in mailboxes, Burma-Shaved across the landscape. The closest I got was the book of Isaiah for my Sunday school class.
It’s particularly sad because poetry is one of those self-fulfilling things in my life. The more I see, the more I want to see, the more I hear it in my head and have to write it. So, I guess I’ll steal some and share it here, perhaps spark something, or possibly commit copyright infringement.
Okay, somebody long dead, to avoid that last bit.
Sonnets from the Portuguese: Sonnet 26
I lived with visions for my company,
Instead of men and women, years ago,
And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know
A sweeter music than they played to me.
But soon their trailing purple was not free
Of this world’s dust, — their lutes did silent grow,
And I myself grew faint and blind below
Their vanishing eyes. Then THOU didst come … to be,
Belovèd, what they seemed. Their shining fronts,
Their songs, their splendours, (better, yet the same,
As river-water hallowed into fonts)
Met in thee, and from out thee overcame
My soul with satisfaction of all wants —
Because God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1 Comment
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