Wednesday 27 April 2011

Poetic Ponders (7)

Thanks to the awesome Sara for this button.

During this year studying English Literature and Creative Writing, I’ve developed a new appreciation for poetry. With this in mind, I thought that I’d start a new weekly feature on So Many Books, So Little Time in which I share with you my favourite poems. They may be ones I discover on my course or ones I’ve loved for a long time.

Hopefully some of you will join me in sharing some awesome poems.

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce (1914)

Are you not weary of ardent ways,
Lure of the fallen seraphim?
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Your eyes have set man’s heart ablaze
And you have had your will of him.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

Above the flame the smoke of praise
Goes up from ocean rim to rim.
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Our broken cries and mournful lays
Rise in one eucharistic hymn.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

While sacrificing hands upraise
The chalice flowing to the brim,
Tell no more of enchanted days.

And still you hold our longing gaze
With languorous look and lavish limb!
Are you not weary of ardent ways?
Tell no more of enchanted days.

We looked at this in Creative Writing as a way for our tutor to reintroduce lyrical and romantic language into what he sees as a very unromantic modern world and to get us to try our hand at writing a villanelle – a very difficult poetic structure. I failed, but my friend did brilliantly well using this as inspiration.

Sophie

2 comments:

Leave a message, I'd love to hear from you!