Alison:
> I have a soft spot for Tennyson, I can't help it,
> though a lot of the time
> he is pure camp and there's those dialect poems
> which ought to have been
> left to quietly rot in a drawer (I just tried to
> read Maud: A Monologue,
> whew, it's pure melodrama, and yet some of its lines
> strikes resonances even
> now) - but there's In Memoriam AHH, after all -
Maud goes over quite well with my students, though I
will say I emphasize the comic. The talking to flowers
bit is pure stand-up.
And speaking of resonances of a Tennyson poem, here's
one that shows plus ca change etc.
"Literary Squabbles"
AH God! the petty fools of rhyme
That shriek and sweat in pigmy wars
Before the stony face of Time,
And look'd at by the silent stars;
Who hate each other for a song,
And do their little best to bite
And pinch their brethren in the throng,
And scratch the very dead for spite;
And strain to make an inch of room
For their sweet selves, and cannot hear
The sullen Lethe rolling doom
On them and theirs and all things here;
When one small touch of Charity
Could lift them nearer Godlike state
Than if the crowded Orb should cry
Like those who cried Diana great.
And I too talk, and lose the touch
I talk of. Surely, after all,
The noblest answer unto such
Is perfect stillness when they brawl.
=====
David Latané
Stand Magazine: http://www.people.vcu.edu/~dlatane/stand.html
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