R.L. Swihart's Blog, page 14

Virgil's Aeneid: Death of Dido

Then Juno in all her power, filled with pity for Dido’s agonizing death, her labor long and hard, sped Iris down from Olympus to release her spirit wrestling now in a deathlock with her limbs. Since she was dying a death not fated or deserved, no, tormented, before her day, in a blaze of passion— Proserpina had yet to pluck a golden lock from her head and commit her life to the Styx and the dark world below. 870 So Iris, glistening dew, comes skimming down from the sky on gilded wings, trailing showers of iridescence shimmering into the sun, and hovering over Dido’s head, declares: “So commanded, I take this lock as a sacred gift to the God of Death, and I release you from your body.” With that, she cut the lock with her hand and all at once the warmth slipped away, the life dissolved in the winds.

Virgil's Aeneid

Rereading Virgil's Aeneid (Fagle's translation). What I remembered is that many of the best parts were related to Dido.;)

*

Dido, her lips parted, pores over their entrails, throbbing still, for signs… But, oh, how little they know, the omniscient seers. 

What good are prayers and shrines to a person mad with love? 

The flame keeps gnawing into her tender marrow hour by hour and deep in her heart the silent wound lives on. Dido burns with love—the tragic queen.

Solitary Sandpiper @ El Dorado Park

Well, I believe this to be the Solitary Sandpiper @ the El Dorado Park Duck Pond in Long Beach CA. If so: Lifer. If not: You'll tell me.;) A bit tricky to ID because he's got some other near-look-alikes stopping in too (also looking very "solitary"): the spotless Spotted Sandpiper and the Greater Yellowlegs. (Hope you have your shopping finished and can now lean back in your easychair and read a good book.) Happy Holidays!!! 🎄💗🎄💗

#rlswihart

#longbeachca

#eldoradopark

#duckpond

#sandpipersofinstagram

#solitarysandpiper

#ilovesandpipers

#christmas2024💗🎄💗🎄

#nature

#poetry

#beauty

#readmorepoetry2024♥️

#thebigclockisticking

R L Swihart: New Poem in storySouth

New poem in storySouth (Issue 58: Fall 2024): "Another Good Read." Thanks, Story, for including me.;)♥️

http://storysouth.com/stories/another...

#rlswihart #storySouth #poetryisthething #poetry #AnotherGoodRead #tistheseason #readmorepoetry2024♥️🎄♥️🎄

John Berryman: Wash Far Away

“That’s like what I meant,” Smith hastened his drawl. “He really asks the questions about King. They’re his questions, but he kept himself out of the poem as much as he could.” 

His questions. Did he? The professor as he opened the book felt that all things were possible, and seeing the flower passage he imagined a rustling, as if his metaphor were true, and under the passage moved the animal, the massive insight of the grieving poet. “Yet the flowers are to satisfy himself, not King. Of course, the whole elegy is in King’s honour, but I mean their pathos is less than their beauty. The melancholy is all Milton’s. Listen. 

Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies. For so, to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thought …” 

At this point, an extraordinary thing happened. The professor saw the word “false” coming. FALSE. He felt as if snatched up by the throat and wrung. “False” threw its iron backward through the poem. The room shook. Then the unutterable verse mastered his voice and took it off like a tempest: 

“dally with false surmise. Ay me!” 

The cry rang hopeless through his mind— 

“whilst THEE the shores and sounding seas Wash far away, where‘er thy bones are hurled; Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where THOU perhaps under the whelming tide Visit’st the bottom of the monstrous world—”

Nicholas McDowell: Milton Bio

The maturing John Milton, tending toward his mature works, is very serious:;)

As in the invocation of the ‘heavenly Muse’ in the ‘Nativity Ode’, where the poet calls for his mouth to be touched by ‘hallowed fire’ from the angelic altar (line 28), Milton presents himself as a type of Isaiah, whose prophetic speech is released by a fiery coal placed against his lips by the one of the seraphim (Isaiah 6: 6–7). Milton’s lips are purified by holy fire but the ‘Vulgar Amorist’, whose desire is directed towards the body, is unable to control his physical discharges and so is implicitly feminized in terms of contemporary stereotypes of woman as ‘leaky vessel’.

John Berryman's "Wash Far Away"

First sentence:

Long after the professor had come to doubt whether lives held crucial points as often as the men conducting them or undergoing them imagined, he still considered that one day in early spring had made a difference for him.

John Milton: From Lycidas

YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more, 

Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, 

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, 

And with forced fingers rude 

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. 

Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear 

Compels me to disturb your season due; 

For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, 

Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. 

Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew 

Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. 

He must not float upon his watery bier 

Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, 

Without the meed of some melodious tear. 

Begin, then, Sisters of the sacred well 

That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring; 

Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string. 

Hence with denial vain and coy excuse: 

So may some gentle Muse 

With lucky words favour my destined urn, 

And as he passes turn, 

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud! 

For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, 

Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill; ...

John Milton: From Paradise Lost

What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the highth of this great Argument I may assert th' Eternal Providence, And justifie the wayes of God to men.

John Milton: Paradise Lost

What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the highth of this great Argument I may assert th' Eternal Providence, And justifie the wayes of God to men.