Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007-2013. Please give credit where credit is due.
Terza di Quaresima : the third Sunday in Lent
As a teenager I was in love with John Keats. I was as much in love with him as he was with Fanny. As much in love with him as he was with Love itself. I blushed at his sexual imagery, I bathed in his sensual descriptions, I lay despondent with him in "embalmèd darkness", listening to the song of the nightingale. I memorized entire swathes of his sublime poetry just for fun (okay, for exams). I knew it would come in useful one day.Like this, for instance :O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth....
[John Keats Ode to a Nightingale]Oh yes, I misspent my youth in this glorious young man's company. And what do I get these days? Especially these days in Lent when I've sworn off alcohol just to prove a point?No beaded bubbles winking at me. No sunburnt mirth. No taste of Flora. And definitely no purple-stainèd mouth. No. I get the instruction booklet for the juicer and a couple of droopy carrots.
Terza di Quaresima : the third Sunday in Lent
As a teenager I was in love with John Keats. I was as much in love with him as he was with Fanny. As much in love with him as he was with Love itself. I blushed at his sexual imagery, I bathed in his sensual descriptions, I lay despondent with him in "embalmèd darkness", listening to the song of the nightingale. I memorized entire swathes of his sublime poetry just for fun (okay, for exams). I knew it would come in useful one day.Like this, for instance :O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth....
[John Keats Ode to a Nightingale]Oh yes, I misspent my youth in this glorious young man's company. And what do I get these days? Especially these days in Lent when I've sworn off alcohol just to prove a point?No beaded bubbles winking at me. No sunburnt mirth. No taste of Flora. And definitely no purple-stainèd mouth. No. I get the instruction booklet for the juicer and a couple of droopy carrots.
As a teenager I was in love with John Keats. I was as much in love with him as he was with Fanny. As much in love with him as he was with Love itself. I blushed at his sexual imagery, I bathed in his sensual descriptions, I lay despondent with him in "embalmèd darkness", listening to the song of the nightingale. I memorized entire swathes of his sublime poetry just for fun (okay, for exams). I knew it would come in useful one day.
9 comments:
much better than some of the doggerel prose that passes for poetry these days. Seems anyone who can string two non-rhyming words together is a poet today.
Hi Louise, We like the vision of the droopy carrot
From the sublime to the ridiculous! LOL Thanks for the laugh!
@Chairman Bill : That's democracy for you!
Just think how sad that Keats missed out on the carrot juice.(I imagine!)
Every teenage girl should read Keats ... It's better than teenage boys!
@Dave He might not have died so young if he'd had a juicer...
Ah - Keats.. and Byron.. how I swooned over them too.
The Strange Shores Blog Carnival is now published - and you have been featured! Please mention it in a post and ask your readers to go here: http://ladyfi.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/strange-shores-edition-number-heck-whos-counting/
@LadyFi : Done! And thanks for the update on Braja. Shocking news!
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