Sunday, November 6, 2011

Let It Serve to Trample On

View from Tintagel Castle Ruins
I don't know what it says about my mood that all I want to do lately is take walks and read poetry.  Autumn always tends to put me in a poetry mood.  Today's choice was Songs from the Portuguese.  Here, have some Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
What can I give back thee, O liberal
And princely giver, who hast brought the gold
And purple of their heart, unstained, untold,
And laid them on the outside of the wall
For such as I to take or leave withal,
In unexpected largesse? am I cold,
Ungrateful, that for these most manifold
High gifts, I render nothing back at all?
Not so; not cold, --but very poor instead.
Ask God who knows. For frequent tears have run
The colors from my life, and left so dead
And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done
To give the same as pillow to thy head.
Go farther! Let it serve to trample on.
The photo, by Zanthia, is unrelated except that I want to go to there.  Do you have a favourite poet you turn to when your heart feels sad?

2 comments:

Stephen said...

It's silly, but Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Land of Counterpane" always makes me smile when I'm feeling a little melancholy:

http://www.lone-star.net/mall/literature/rls/LandofCounterpane.htm

Possibly because most of my reading these days is from children's books.

Kelly Anne said...

That is so lovely. I don't judge. The only poem I have memorized is "I Love You More Than Applesauce" by Jack Prelutsky.