I've managed to get an extension - still looking for comedy in this lyrical poem. I know it looks like a sad 'love lost' ballad, but honestly, there is supposed to be an element of comedy in it. Incidentally, does anyone know if this is the original stanza layout; I'm studying it as two stanzas rather than four? Also, think metaphysical.......?

The earth, late chok'd with showers,
Is now array'd in green,
Her bosom springs with flowers,
The air dissolves her teen;
The heavens laugh at her glory,
Yet bide I sad and sorry.

The woods are deck'd with leaves,
And trees are clothed gay,
And Flora crown'd with sheaves,
With oaken boughs doth play;
Where I am clad in black,
The token of my wrack.

The birds upon the trees
Do sing with pleasant voices,
And chant in their degrees
Their loves and lucky choices;
When I, whilst they are singing,
With sighs mine arms am wringing.

The thrushes seek the shade,
And I my fatal grave;
Their flight to heaven is made,
My walk on earth I have;
They freely, I thrall; they jolly,
I sad and pensive wholly.

Well, I could make a couple of dirty words by anagramming (anagrammatizing?) the first letters of the first two stanzas, if that is any help.

If and when you discover the answer, I sincerely hope you will report back. You have me curious now.

I swear if Thomas was not dead already I would kill him myself! Thanks for your help with this Hugh, your previous email is useful. Your naughty anagram idea is not - nice try though! Indeed I will report back.

Nature laughs because it feels no emotions. The key to that irony is here:

>They freely, I thrall; they jolly,
>I sad and pensive wholly.


Les

It does look as if it was conceived as 4 stanzas, not 2.

There is an element of the ridiculous in such a series of overwritten contrasts between the poet's personal unhappiness and the apparent happiness he observes around him. The poem repeats the same thought in each stanza, with no development.

If there was comic effect intended, maybe it was from this being a poetic drag act: a man writing the sort of soppy, emotionally exaggerated stanzas an over-serious woman poet might have written. As Kingsley Amis commented much later:

Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart
Or squash it flat?
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;
Girls aren't like that.

We men have got love well weighed up; our stuff
Can get by without it.
Women don't seem to think that's good enough;
They write about it.

And the awful way their poems lay them open
Just doesn't strike them.
Women are really much nicer than men:
No wonder we like them.

Unfair generalisations of course, but probably not much different from the prevalent prejudices about women writers in Lodge's day, which perhaps he was drawing on for satire.

Incidentally, it's not clear that the grief in the poem is about a lost love. Could be any kind of woe.

Ian



Post Edited (11-13-04 19:35)

Excellent - that will do. Thank you all very much!

Incidentally (Ian) thank you for typing the word 'satire' - it's the buzz word on the degree course - oh, and excellent poem you quoted. Must remember that one.