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Sonnet 16

04 Thursday Aug 2022

Posted by Jim Brooks in Poetry

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A Poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

And yet, because thou overcomest so,
Because thou art more noble and like a king,
Thou canst prevail against my fears and fling
Thy purple round me, till my heart shall grow
Too close against thine heart henceforth to know
How it shook when alone. Why, conquering
May prove as lordly and complete a thing
In lifting upward, as in crushing low!
And as a vanquished soldier yields his sword
To one who lifts him from the bloody earth,
Even so, Belovèd, I at last record,
Here ends my strife. If thou invite me forth,
I rise above abasement at the word.
Make thy love larger to enlarge my worth.

[Analysis of Sonnet 16]

Sonnet 16, a reading:

Video

Sonnet 7

03 Wednesday Aug 2022

Posted by Jim Brooks in Poetry

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A Poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The face of all the world is changed, I think,
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul
Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole
Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink
Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink,
Was caught up into love, and taught the whole
Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole
God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink,
And praise its sweetness, Sweet, with thee anear.
The names of country, heaven, are changed away
For where thou art or shalt be, there or here;
And this … this lute and song … loved yesterday,
(The singing angels know) are only dear
Because thy name moves right in what they say.

[Analysis of Sonnet 7]

Sonnet 7, a reading:

Video

FAUST, an opera in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. Performed in Paris (Bastille) from 22 Sept to 25 Oct 2011 with Roberto Alagna as Faust, Inva Mula as Marguerite, and Paul Gay as Méphistophélès, and conducted by Alain Altinoglu.

01 Monday Aug 2022

Posted by Jim Brooks in Music

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Video

FALSTAFF, a comic opera in three acts. Composer: Giuseppe Verdi; Libretto/Text Author: Arrigo Boito; Libretto Source: William Shakespeare; Conductor: Georg Solti; Orchestra: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra; Chorus: Vienna State Opera Chorus; Chorus Master: Norbert Balatsch. Date of production: 1979.  

28 Thursday Jul 2022

Posted by Jim Brooks in Music

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Video

I Look into My Glass

18 Monday Jul 2022

Posted by Jim Brooks in Poetry

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A Poem by Thomas Hardy

I LOOK into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, “Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!”

For then, I, undistrest
By hearts grown cold to me,
Could lonely wait my endless rest
With equanimity.

But Time, to make me grieve,
Part steals, lets part abide;
And shakes this fragile frame at eve
With throbbings of noontide.

[Analysis of I Look into My Glass]

Thomas Hardy- I look into my glass, a reading:

Video

The Forbidden Banns

14 Thursday Jul 2022

Posted by Jim Brooks in Poetry

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A Poem by Thomas Hardy

A Ballad of the Eighteen-Thirties

I

” O what’s the gain, my worthy Sir,
In stopping the banns to-day!
Your son declares he’ll marry her
If a thousand folk say Nay.”

” I’ll do’t; I’ll do’t; whether or no!
And, if I drop down dead,
To church this morning I will go,
And say they shall not wed!”

That day the parson clear outspoke
The maid’s name and the man’s:
His father, mid the assembled folk,
Said, ” I forbid the banns!”

Then, white in face lips pale and cold,
He turned him to sit down,
When he fell forward; and behold,
They found his life had flown.

II

‘Twas night-time, towards the middle part,
When low her husband said,
” I would from the bottom of my heart
That father was not dead!”

She turned from one to the other side,
And a sad woman was she
As he went on: ” He’d not have died
Had it not been for me!”

She brought him soon an idiot child,
And then she brought another:
His face waned wan, his manner wild
With hatred of their mother.

” Hearken to me, my son. No: no:
There’s madness in her blood!”
Those were his father’s words; and lo,
Now, now he understood.

What noise is that? One noise, and two
Resound from a near gun.
Two corpses found; and neighbours knew
By whom the deed was done.

[Analysis of The Forbidden Banns]

The Forbidden Banns By Thomas Hardy, a reading:

Video

Wessex Heights

12 Tuesday Jul 2022

Posted by Jim Brooks in Poetry

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A Poem by Thomas Hardy

There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand
For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand,
Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly,
I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be.

In the lowlands I have no comrade, not even the lone man’s friend —
Her who suffereth long and is kind; accepts what he is too weak to mend:
Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I,
But mind-chains do not clank where one’s next neighbour is the sky.

In the towns I am tracked by phantoms having weird detective ways —
Shadows of beings who fellowed with myself of earlier days:
They hang about at places, and they say harsh heavy things —
Men with a wintry sneer, and women with tart disparagings.

Down there I seem to be false to myself, my simple self that was,
And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what crass cause
Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this,
Who yet has something in common with himself, my chrysalis.

I cannot go to the great grey Plain; there’s a figure against the moon,
Nobody sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune;
I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms now passed
For everybody but me, in whose long vision they stand there fast.

There’s a ghost at Yell’ham Bottom chiding loud at the fall of the night,
There’s a ghost in Froom-side Vale, thin-lipped and vague, in a shroud of white,
There is one in the railway train whenever I do not want it near,
I see its profile against the pane, saying what I would not hear.

As for one rare fair woman, I am now but a thought of hers,
I enter her mind and another thought succeeds me that she prefers;
Yet my love for her in its fulness she herself even did not know;
Well, time cures hearts of tenderness, and now I can let her go.

So I am found on Ingpen Beacon, or on Wylls-Neck to the west,
Or else on homely Bulbarrow, or little Pilsdon Crest,
Where men have never cared to haunt, nor women have walked with me,
And ghosts then keep their distance; and I know some liberty.

[Analysis of Wessex Heights]

‘Wessex Heights’ read by Richard Burton:

Video

In the Servants’ Quarters

11 Monday Jul 2022

Posted by Jim Brooks in Poetry

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A Poem by Thomas Hardy

‘Man, you too, aren’t you, one of these rough followers of the criminal?
All hanging hereabout to gather how he’s going to bear
Examination in the hall.’ She flung disdainful glances on
The shabby figure standing at the fire with others there,
Who warmed them by its flare.

‘No indeed, my skipping maiden: I know nothing of the trial here,
Or criminal, if so he be. – I chanced to come this way,
And the fire shone out into the dawn, and morning airs are cold now;
I, too, was drawn in part by charms I see before me play,
That I see not every day.’

‘Ha, ha!’ then laughed the constables who also stood to warm themselves,
The while another maiden scrutinized his features hard,
As the blaze threw into contrast every line and knot that wrinkled them,
Exclaiming, ‘Why, last night when he was brought in by the guard,
You were with him in the yard!’

‘Nay, nay, you teasing wench, I say! You know you speak mistakenly.
Cannot a tired pedestrian who has footed it afar
Here on his way from northern parts, engrossed in humble marketings,
Come in and rest awhile, although judicial doings are
Moot by morning star?’

‘O, come, come!’ laughed the constables. ‘Why, man, you speak the dialect
He uses in his answers; you can hear him up the stairs. So own it.
We sha’n’t hurt ye. There he’s speaking His syllables
Are those you sound yourself when you are talking unawares,
As this pretty girl declares.’

‘And you shudder when his chain clinks!’ she rejoined. ‘O yes, I noticed it.
And you winced, too, when those cuffs they gave him echoed to us here.
They’ll soon be coming down, and you may then have to defend yourself
Unless you hold your tongue, or go away and keep you clear
When he’s led to judgment near!’

‘No! I’ll be damned in hell if I know anything about the man!
No single thing about him more than everybody knows!
Must not I even warm my hands but I am charged with blasphemies?’…
– His face convulses as the morning cock that moment crows,
And he stops, and turns, and goes.

[Analysis of In the Servants’ Quarters]

In The Servants’ Quarters Thomas Hardy audiobook:

Video

An August Midnight

10 Sunday Jul 2022

Posted by Jim Brooks in Poetry

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A Poem by Thomas Hardy

I

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
On this scene enter–winged, horned, and spined –
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;
While ‘mid my page there idly stands
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . .

II

Thus meet we five, in this still place,
At this point of time, at this point in space.
– My guests parade my new-penned ink,
Or bang at the lamp-glass, whirl, and sink.
“God’s humblest, they!” I muse. Yet why?
They know Earth-secrets that know not I.

[Analysis of An August Midnight]

An August Midnight Thomas Hardy Audiobook:

Video

The Poet

08 Friday Jul 2022

Posted by Jim Brooks in Poetry

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A Poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar

He sang of life, serenely sweet,
With, now and then, a deeper note.
From some high peak, nigh yet remote,
He voiced the world’s absorbing beat.

He sang of love when earth was young,
And Love, itself, was in his lays.
But ah, the world, it turned to praise
A jingle in a broken tongue.

[Analysis of The Poet]

“The Poet,” by Paul Laurence Dunbar:

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