The Sunday Poem: Wedding Bliss

    Oh, I did sincerely hope that two Sunday poems would not come together, but here I'm afraid they did. (It's my lack of laptop and limited borrowing time on another that prevents me from blogging efficiently! Still not sorted on that front....)

    But back to the poem. I know I intimated that I would not be including the so called traditionalist poems that are so well-known they're loathed, but here, I have to make an exception, my only defence being that it is not a common classic poem, and definitely not a long and rambling one!

    My mind has been on weddings this week due to a relative of mine getting married -  more specifically, the language and etiquette of weddings - and namely, how poetry should feature more prominently at these events. For isn't poetry the language of love and love, poetry in itself? So why aren't more poems read at weddings I ask? They're more common at funerals! Death, it seems, needs the expression of poetry to be explained, to be accepted, but what about Love?

    Is it fitting that love should be filtered through staged comic speeches, general greetings and inebriate stuttering declarations? I could never imagine having a wedding without a few poems embroidered into the event! How is it that quote goes - 'there are too many mediocre things in life and love should not be one of them.' So many times it seems weddings are more about a grand 'shindig' than an actual celebration and reverence of love. Especially here in Ireland, where people can't seem to express their emotions, and instead of gushing loved-up couples, we have take-a-hand banter and alcohol-fuelled jollity to take the place of real articulation. (Oh, do not get me started on this topic!!! Let's just say real romantics are left cold by most wedding celebrations!) All I'm saying is a poem or two would bring the ceremony back into its intended realm of romantic.

    Anyway, this train of thought led me to having a look again  at a collection of love poems I have, edited by Daisy Lowe, selector of the real Sunday poem for many years. There's a section on weddings, and instead of the well-known verses - Shakespeare's sonnet 'Love is not love which alters where it alteration finds' or the Corinthians passage defining love, there are a few lesser-known but suiting stunning poems.

    And one of them is the Tennyson one below, in which the marriage day is described in terms of light, golden to be precise. I just can't help but swoon at the line, 'Here is the golden close of love'. Ahh. What better more accurate way to describe the marriage ceremony? And the light, filling the land 'so low upon the earth.' Light as a metaphor for love is a fairly common one, and epecially gold. We merely need look at the wedding rings. And it always seems to remind me of alchemy, the transformation of ordinary substances into gold, by some mysterious magic. It's a fitting analogy of love don't you think? And this poem captures perfectly this awe at the light and indeed, its ability to sustain through hardships, 'a love that never tires.' Powerful stuff.

    So here's a toast to more poems at weddings! And this one, 'Marriage Morning', by Tennyson, would be one of my chosen to read.

    Enjoy,

~ Siobhán.

'Marriage Morning' - Alfred Lord Tennyson

Light, so low upon earh,

You send a flash to the sun.

Here is the golden close of love,

All my wooing is done.

Oh, all the woods and the meadows,

Woods, where we hid from the wet,

Stiles where we stayed to be kind,

Meadows in which we met!

Light, so low in the vale

You flash and lighten afar,

For this is the golden morning of love,

And you are his morning star.

Flash, I am coming, I come,

By meadow and stile and wood,

Oh, lighten into my eyes and my heart,

Into my heart and my blood!

Heart, are you great enough

For a love that never tires?

O heart, are you great enough for love?

I have heard of thorns and briers.

Over the thorns and briers,

Over the meadows and stiles,

Over the world to the end of it

Flash of a million miles.

The Sunday Poem: Shakespeare

I'm a little late with the weekly poem today - I've been waylaid by the gorgeous summery weather we've been having!

Maybe the most famous of 'sunny day' poems (even though it does not explore the subject matter) - is Shakespeare's infamous sonnet and love poem 'Shall I Compare Thee?' in which the bard compares his beloved muse to a summer's day.

And how can you better that simile? Summer's days are the epitome of happiness with everyone's spirits uplifted as if by magic. The ultimate compliment indeed to be compared to one

I personally love this poem for its lounge-worthy tone, its breezy shuffling manner of thought and the delighted revelling in a lover's perfection that parallels to that incomparable contentment of lying in and basking up the sun's rays, with not a care in the world. (No, not even aging, Mr S...)

Enjoying the sunshine,

~ Siobhán

Sonnet 18 - William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.     
  So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,     
  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

How Do I Love Thee? Let me Count the Poems...

Love, love, love. The most written about subject in poetry since poet first put quill to paper! Since it's Valentine's Day, I thought I'd share a few love poems.

For those of you who aren't familiar with poetry, love poems aren't all cheesy. There's a lot more to them than 'roses are red, violets are blue....' squabble.

From classic Shakespeare - the infamous rhyming couplets of Romeo and Juliet and his 150+ infatuation sonnets - to the more traditional poems that worshipped the beloved from afar, to the besotted unrequited romance of Yeats played out in his oeuvre, to the more modern quirky lyrics dealing with love in all its modern guises, you'll find all kinds of  poems written through the ages to suit every elation, emotion, heartache, break and high of this thing we call Love.

I've just picked a few here from Penguin's Poems for Love, a great collection that chronicles love through the decades in all its forms and expressions. In the introduction, the editor explains: When we try to say exactly how we love someone, it's difficult to sum it up. Our feelings can be so powerful, and so personal to us, that we struggle to put them into words. But that's where poetry can help - for if one of the conditions of being in love is feeling somewhat lost for words, then perhaps one of the conditions of being a poet in love is a belief that the right words can and must be found.

Here are some of what I think are the 'right words' found by poets and beloved by masses.  Enjoy. (And please feel free to share/recommend your favourite love poems, I'd love to hear - there are so many out there!)

Happy Valentine's Day, 

~ Siobhán.

 

From the superlative and famous:  

How Do I Love Thee - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with a passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

To the classic definition: 

Sonnet 116 - William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

To the original, modern, witty and weird:

Valentine - Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart. 

I give you an onion. 

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. 

It promises light 

like the careful undressing of love

Here.  

It will blind you with tears  

like a lover. 

It will make your reflection 

a wobbling photo of grief. 

I am trying to be truthful. 

Not a cute card or a kissogram. 

I give you an onion. 

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips, 

possessive and faithful 

as we are, 

for as long as we are. 

Take it.

Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring, 

if you like. 

Lethal. 

Its scent will cling to your fingers, 

cling to your knife. 

And finally, truly, madly, deeply, beautifully:

i carry your heart with me - EE Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you 

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)