Jon:
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Hardy's "The Ruined Maid" is an old favorite of mine, but seeing it again
cited here suggested some new ironies to me. The piece has the unmistakable
accents of the most vulgar Victorian parlor poetry -- things like "The Old
Arm-Chair" or "Oh No, We Never Mention Her."
>>
"It's the same the whole world over,
It's the poor what gets the blame,
It's the rich what gets the pleasure,
Isn't it a blooming shame?"
http://www.monologues.co.uk/Poor_But_Honest.htm
... for the full-text.
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[Philological query: in the lines "At home in the barton you said 'thee'
and 'thou,' And 'thik oon,' and 'theäs oon,' and 't'other'" is it possible
to identify a regional origin for the accent? I know "thee" "thou" and
"t'other" could be from lots of places, but "thik oon" and "theas oon" sound
rarer.]
>>
Maybe Dorset via William Barnes, who was Hardy's "mentor" when Hardy was
young?
There's not much Barnes on the Net, and I can't find my Penguin Selected
Barnes, to check this out, but it seems plausible to me.
<<
This goes back to the
ancient theory that poetry should be "dulce et utile," the charm of the
sound and rhetoric being the dulce part, which is the sugar-coating, and the
extractable moral lesson which the poem teaches being the utile part, which
is the "real meaning."
>>
The nuttis schell, thocht it be hard and teuch,
Haldis the kirnell, sueit and delectabill;
Sa lyis thair ane doctrine wyse aneuch
And full of frute, under ane fenyeit fabill;
And clerkis sayis, it is richt profitabill
Amangis ernist to ming ane merie sport,
To light the spreit and gar the tyme be schort.
-- Robert Henryson, "Prologue" to The Fables ...
... though here Henryson is inverting the pleasure/difficulty equation!
<<
Robert Graves incidentally writes somewhere that women made a different kind
of poetry from men, one which, if it was true poetry, spoke with a unique
ancient authority.
>>
In _Seven Days in New Crete_ (retitled _Let the North Wind Rise_ in the US)
male and female poets are presented as pretty-much on a par, as I remember
it.
Robin
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