I shall call myself Alice and play croquet with the flamingos.
Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid. It is no conservationist love. It is a big game hunter and you are the game. A curse on this game. How can you stick at a game when the rules keep changing? I shall call myself Alice and play croquet with the flamingos. In Wonderland everyone cheats and love is Wonderland isn’t it? Love makes the world go round. Love is blind. All you need is love. Nobody ever died of a broken heart. You’ll get over it. It’ll be different when we’re married. Think of the children. Time’s a great healer. Still waiting for Mr. Right? Miss Right? and maybe all the little Rights?
Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed
And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,
Let temple burn, or flax; and equal light
Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:
And love is fire. And when I say at need
I love thee … mark! … I love thee – in thy sight
I stand transfigured, glorified aright,
With conscience of the new rays that proceed
Out of my face toward thine. There’s nothing low
In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures
Who love God, God accepts while loving so.
And what I feel, across the inferior features
Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show
How that great work of Love enhances Nature’s.
Lengthening wings break into fire at either curvèd point
Sonnets from the Portuguese No. XXII
When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curving point, – what bitter wrong
Can the earth do us, that we should not long
Be here contented? Think! In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us, and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay
Rather on earth, Belovèd — where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.
Mike’s great curlew image took me to imagining bird angels instead of human angels, and now I am rethinking the whole poem in terms of the natural world. Try it, and see what you get.
Rather on earth, Belovèd — where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.Sonnet No. XXII
Can you see a pure-spirited wild thing finding a place to stand and love (or live) for today, “with darkness and the death-hour rounding it?”
A hope, to sing by gladly? or a fine sad memory, with thy songs to interfuse?
Sonnets from the Portuguese No. XVII
My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes
God set between His After and Before,
And strike up and strike off the general roar
Of the rushing world a melody that floats
In a serene air purely. Antidotes
Of medicated music, answering for
Mankind’s forlornest uses, thou canst pour
From thence into their ears. God’s will devotes
Thine to such ends, and mine to wait on thine.
How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use?
A hope, to sing by gladly? or a fine
Sad memory, with thy songs to interfuse?
A shade, in which to sing—of palm or pine?
A grave, on which to rest from singing? Choose.
QuoteSnack offers fresh quotes daily, attributed and linked to a confirmed, published source. In addition, I’ll sometimes post a writing prompt with simple instructions. The next post will be a quote that has something to do with the prompt, so you can take a peek at differences or similarities in how someone else relates to using the same words.
There is no wrong approach. Don’t worry if something seems to be a lot more emotionally charged than it is on the surface, or if some prompts are duds for you. This is a mind-opening exercise; anything is possible.
The Prompt
Directions:
Be ready to write, word processor open, or pad and pencil in hand. Set a timer for five minutes.
Clear your mind.
Click “Reveal Writing Prompt” below, and look at the prompt for the space of one deep, quiet breath.
As you start the second breath, clear your mind of expectations.
Write, full on, whatever comes to you, for five minutes. Do not stop to correct anything – just go.
When the time is up, you have to stop.
Get up and wiggle. Move. Laugh. Growl. Pat self on back.
You’re welcome to leave comments about the experience and anything that comes of it, including links, but please don’t paste in your entire prompt-generated exercise. What you’ve got right now is a personal thing. What happens next is up to you.
Buttercup said, “Do you love me, Westley? Is that it?”
He couldn’t believe it. “Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches! If your love were -”
“I don’t understand that first one yet,” Buttercup interrupted. She was starting to get very excited now. “Let me get this straight. Are you saying my love is a grain of sand and yours is this other thing? Images confuse me so – is this universal business of yours bigger than my sand? Help me, Westley. I have the feeling we’re on the verge of something just terribly important.”
As Miracle Max put it: “…true love is the greatest thing, in the world-except for a nice MLT – mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe.”
I’m taking mine to a nice, sandy, sunny beach.
Can you believe that this movie has been around since 1987? My daughter was born in 1987. I’ll bet if I said “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya,” she would know to respond, “You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another’s being mingle,—
Why not I with thine?
See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?
I found clearer recordings, but this is my favorite because Eddi Reader starts off by smiling over falling in love with her culture when she was falling in love with the songs of Robert Burns. Robert Burns would smile over her for two reasons: he was a bit of a ladies’ man, and he dedicated himself to preserving traditional Scottish songs.
Burns gathered hundreds of traditional Scottish lyrics and melodies, many published for posterity in George Thomson’s five-volume A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice. Their sense of preservation was all about revitalization, not the un-embellished documentation that is common today. Fragments of lyrics were re-imagined as whole songs and embellished with “accompanyments for the violin & piano.”
A Select Collection of Original Scotish Airs for the Voice. To each of which are added, introductory & concluding symphonies, & accompanyments for the violin & piano forte by Pleyel. With select & characteristic verses by the most admired Scotish poets adapted to each air; many of them entirely new: also suitable English verses in addition to such of the songs as are written in the Scotish dialect
title page of A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice (1793)
found in The G. Ross Roy Collection of Robert Burns: An Illustrated Catalogue (2009)
Burns is thought to have written a great deal of the substance of these songs, relying on the spirit of traditional Scottish origins.
A Red, Red Rose didn’t make it into Thompson’s Select Collection until later printings. Instead, A Red, Red Rose was first published in Pietro Urbani’sScots Songs, “set… to Music in the style of a Scots Tune.” It was sung to a handful of different melodies before the current version became popular.
…………………..
I’m going to get teased for this. Before my research, I was not aware that A Red, Red Rose was written with a Scottish “accent.” I have a vague childhood memory of reading A Red, Red Rose in class, with standard English spelling. If I’d read it since, I must have ignored those funny luves, skipping right by the point of Robert Burns’s Scottish heritage, expecting the “real” version to be written with “love.”
(born 27 August 1959)
(1992)
(2009)
