Brit. lit quotes for 20 Mar 08

Percy Bysshe Shelly
Ozymandias lines 7-8
“Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.”

All things we see in this fallen sculpture, we still have them now. Moral: all things that are great do not last.

John Keats
When I Have Fears lines 1-2
“When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,”

This proved to be the start of a challenge for me. Assignment: write a sonnet on this theme. John Keats theme was to write about his fears before a predictible early death. I don’t like the thought of early death. I think that is just bad vibes to put out. So I changed my theme to rebirth combined with the fear of being a misunderstood member in society, due to societies impulseful fears, and more. I hope it worked out, time will tell.

John Keats
The Eve of St. Agnes lines 201-204
“She clos’d the door, she panted, all akin
To spirits of the air, and visions wide:
No utter’d syllable, or, woe betide!
But to her heart, her heart was voluble,”

Keats had eroticism, passion and the dedication to emotion and delicate imagery. He was devoted to beauty not politics. What an inspiration! I seem to get on the political side with my thoughts, but my girlfriend is my muse to go the other way. I am trying Keats, oh thankyou for your beautiful writing!

John Keats
The Eve of St. Agnes lines 377-378
“The Beadsman, after thousand aves told,
For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold.”

Remorse. What if the beadsman is actually Porphyo looking back on his life and the dream, or the Eve, that never happened? Maybe he lusted after this virgin for years, and always wished he had acted on these impulses. We’ll never know…

John Keats
La Belle Dame sans Mercy lines 17-24
“I set her on my pacing stee,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A fairy’s song.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.”

I liked how the footnote says that these stanzas are transposed with each other. It’s worth reading into. I read each line with the other stanza several times and it is interesting. Fun!

John Keats
This Living Hand lines 1-2
“This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold”

This is the beginning of a very emotional metamorphisis between the living and dead. Who is he addressing? we will soon ask. It goes on to suggest a relationship of vampirism or maybe the love that will not be forgotten after death. Take advantage of the now I think he is saying. Is it a suicide note? It has the subtext of a warning to somebody. Maybe something like be careful not to reject me. It displays a troubled relationship between him and someone, or his readers.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese #21 lines 12-14
“Say thou dost love me, love me, love me–toll
The silver iterance!–only minding, Dear,
To love me also in silence with thy soul.”

I really liked this sonnet, and the idea of the title of the sonnets to keep readers off track of her and her future husband’s courting. This one is nice, and I like her excitement to be in love because she had been longing for what may have seemed forever. A lonely heart gets what it deserves.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese #43 lines 3-4
“I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight”

It is beautiful. She was thirty nine at the time of her courtships. Very inspirational for writing to a loved one.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Aurora Leigh lines 165-166
“In her last kiss upon the baby-mouth
My father pushed down on the bed for that,–”

I think she is powerfully expressing her dislike for her Father refusing his kids the right to marry. I think he felt that after his wife died, all his frustration of that turned into jealousy of his kids possible happiness and he felt that: if I can’t have love anymore, neither can you kids. Very very poor parenting.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Aurora Leigh from Book 2 [Woman And Artist] lines 1-2
“Times followed one another. Came a morn
I stood upon the brink of twenty years,”

This reminds me of how fast our lives pass us by which I have always thought John Lennon quoted best in a song when he said: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”