To a Child of Quality, by Matthew Prior

Thomas Hudson - Matthew Prior
Thomas Hudson – Matthew Prior – National Portrait Gallery, NPG 562

Matthew Prior (1664-1721) was an English poet and diplomat, whose poetry knew fame at the beginning of the 18th century. One of his most famous poems is “To a Child of Quality, Five Years Old, The Author Forty” (1704). Requested to write his love for a 5 years old little girl, he complies, but she cannot read his poems, she plays with the paper on which they are written; when she will reach an age where she can understand them, he will be too old for love. Indeed, as writes Prior’s biography by the Poetry Foundation: CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

Madeline, par Jean-Michel Caradec

Madeline Caradec avec Fred Elian, cimetière de Recouvrance, 14 Avril 2012
Madeline Caradec avec Fred Elian, cimetière de Recouvrance, 14 Avril 2012 (détail) – provient de jeanmichelcaradec.com

Dans un article précédent, j’ai présenté la chanson « Ma petite fille de rêve » de Jean-Michel Caradec, qui a donné son titre à son deuxième album 33 tours, sorti en 1974, par lequel il connut le succès. Celui-ci comprend d’autres chansons consacrées à l’enfance, comme « La colline aux coralines ». CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

Power in Silence, by Michael Field

Christian Schloe
Christian Schloe

I present today my last selection from Underneath the Bough, a love poem in “The Third Book of Songs” in that collection. It must be understood within the context of the lesbian relation between the two authors, Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper. The poet loves a silent girl, but “her royal, jewelled speechlessness” does not mean that she does not reciprocate: “It were not right / To reckon her the poorer lover; / She does not love me less.” The two are like birds, looking for intimacy: “what is more dear / Than a cherry-bough, bees feeding near / In the soft, proffered blooms?” The young girl “is a dove” who must liberate herself from barriers and give herself fully to the power of love: “My close-housed bird should take her flight / To magnify our love.CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

Chansons en Espagne d’Émile Blémont

Odysseas Oikonomou
Odysseas Oikonomou – provient de poramoralarte-exposito.blogspot.com

Émile Blémont publia en 1904 Beautés étrangères, un recueil en deux parties. La première, intitulée Poèmes d’outre-mer et d’outre-monts, divisée en cinq sections, est constituée de poèmes ; la deuxième, intitulée Notes sur quelques Poètes anglais ou américains du XIXe siècle, est une série d’essais sur plusieurs poètes de langue anglaise. En frontispice, l’auteur écrit : CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…