4/29/2023 0 Comments Renaine twitterAt the age of three, Whitman was moved to Brooklyn with his family, and it was there that he spent his childhood. Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in the farming community of West Hills, Long Island, in western Suffolk County. This is true of of this recording of the poetry of John Keats, read by Frederick Davidson. But (paradoxically), it seems to help when I hear it read out loud. I don’t have a good ear for poetry, usually. The most Scottish of the Russian writers – Mikhail Lermontov Night and day a kind voice soothing my ears With the life force snoozing in my breast I’ve stopped expecting anything from life, Stilly night, wilderness listening to God, This poem is recited from memory by Mikhail Gorbachev at the conclusion of Werner Herzog’s stupendous film Meeting Gorbachev.Įlisabeth van der Meer, host of the site A Russian Affair, has sent me a translation of Lermontov’s poem (which I regard as a better than the translation I posted) by Michael Longley: The vault is overwhelmed with solemn wonderīy night and day, my hearing would be soothed The flinty path is sparkling in the mist The whale swims the ocean, shouldering aside the waves. A man shoulders his way through a crowd, brushing aside others in his way. I could not get into Spenser and did not appreciate The Faerie Queene. I took an English course in college (in which I somehow got the grade of B) - Literature of Transition: Classic to Romantic - in which we read The Faerie Queene. It was an image, which, figuratively speaking (according to my former professor Aileen Ward’s magnificent biography), overpowered the future poet John Keats in his late teens when he began to read avidly. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene: Book II, Canto xii Mighty Monoceroses, with immeasured tayles. Great whirlpooles, which all fishes make to flee,īright Scolopendraes, arm’d with siluer scales, Spring-headed Hydraes, and SEA-SHOULDRING WHALES, Or shame, that euer should so fowle defects Such as Dame Nature selfe mote feare to see, Of huge Sea monsters, such as liuing sence dismayd. Vnweeting, what such horrour straunge did reare.Įftsoones they saw an hideous hoast arrayd, That all the three thereat woxe much afrayd, His whirling charet, for exceeding feare:įor not one puffe of wind there did appeare, Or wrathfull Neptune did them driue before The waues come rolling, and the billowes rore The surging waters like a mountaine rise,Īnd the great sea puft vp with proud disdaine,Īs threatning to deuoure all, that his powre despise. Suddeine they see from midst of all the Maine, Whiles the dred daunger does behind remaine. That th’vtmost sandy breach they shortly fetch, His brawnie armes, and all his body straine, But th’heedfull Boateman strongly forth did stretch
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