Today
Today is St George's day and Shakespeare's birthday. This should be one of the high days for English literary-types; but we are all in lockdown so I can't get my megaphone out and declaim selected sonnets at folk while riding an old bicycle and dressed improbably.
Next year...
And I may walk rather than ride a bike.
Many years ago I faked a quote from Eliot as part of a selection of quotes prefacing a long poem wot I rote.
"The Platonic ideal of poetry in the English language is to be found within the ordinary of Shakespeare."
Eliotically pompous, but nevertheless true. (And yes, to the best of my knowledge Eliotically is a neologism; and a beautifully barbarous one at that.)
I suppose I juxtaposed them because they are the two of the biggest pleasures in English poetry I have; but I do find the less formal "ordinary" of our Bill rather more poetic in places than the more formal verse.
A Tudor grammar-school boy with a basic education, with small Latin, and less Greek; Shakespeare made words which we still use now, and he strung them together in phrases which are still in common usage, and sentences which get to the heart of some aspects of early-modern humans and their stories.
And an upper-middle class Anglo-American chap from Missouri, and then London. I guess they will bookend my life between them:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
I grow old... I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trouser's rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach
I have heard the mermaids singing each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
Next year...
And I may walk rather than ride a bike.
Many years ago I faked a quote from Eliot as part of a selection of quotes prefacing a long poem wot I rote.
"The Platonic ideal of poetry in the English language is to be found within the ordinary of Shakespeare."
Eliotically pompous, but nevertheless true. (And yes, to the best of my knowledge Eliotically is a neologism; and a beautifully barbarous one at that.)
I suppose I juxtaposed them because they are the two of the biggest pleasures in English poetry I have; but I do find the less formal "ordinary" of our Bill rather more poetic in places than the more formal verse.
A Tudor grammar-school boy with a basic education, with small Latin, and less Greek; Shakespeare made words which we still use now, and he strung them together in phrases which are still in common usage, and sentences which get to the heart of some aspects of early-modern humans and their stories.
And an upper-middle class Anglo-American chap from Missouri, and then London. I guess they will bookend my life between them:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
I grow old... I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trouser's rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach
I have heard the mermaids singing each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.