Voici un poème étrange et triste, évoquant l’inutilité de la vie, paru dans le deuxième recueil de Minou, Le Pêcheur de lune. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
… À rien, par Minou Drouet
May Queen Ode, by Edgar Allan Poe
About April 1836, Harriet Virginia Scott, a schoolgirl in Richmond, asked Edgar Allan Poe to compose a poem for her to recite to the Queen of the May. He complied by writing four or five stanzas. About eighty years later (between 1911 and 1917), she remembered one of them and sent it to J. H. Whitty, who published it in the second edition of Complete Poems (1917). CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Ivresse d’amour
Buvons l’amour, sans modération, dans une coupe en forme de fleur. Enivrons-nous à sa fontaine, douce offrande de la demoiselle. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
More sonnets by Brooke Boothby
In a previous post, I copied 3 sonnets from Sorrows. Sacred to the Memory of Penelope, the collection of poems written by Brooke Boothby in memory of his daughter Penelope, who died one month before her sixth birthday. Here I transcribe three more sonnets (and correct another). CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Aux quatre vents, par Minou Drouet
Extrait de son deuxième recueil de vers, un joli petit poème, où la petite fille laisse libre cours à son imagination… CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Mary, by Aleister Crowley
A beautiful love poem, the eleventh from the collection Rosa Mundi, and other love-songs. Here ‘darkmans’ means ‘night’ and is an old English canting word (according to the editor). CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Sorrows, by Brooke Boothby
Sir Brooke Boothby (1743–1824), seventh Baronet, and his wife Susanna (1755–1822) had a daughter, Penelope, born on April 11, 1785, their only child. The little girl is renowned for her portrait made by Sir Joshua Reynolds in July 1788. As writes Estelle Hurll in her booklet about Sir Joshua Reynolds: CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Drinking song, by Eric Stenbock
My second choice from Myrtle, Rue and Cypress (1883), Stenbock’s second collection of verses, is a poem in the spirit of carpe diem, honouring love, youth and wine. Here he joins Baudelaire, who also extolled wine and drunkenness, and indeed both authors experienced the pleasures of alcohol and drugs. As in many of Stenbock’s poems, the gender of the beloved young person is left unknown, but it was most probably a boy. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, by Robert Herrick
Robert Herrick (1591–1674) was an English poet and cleric who lived through the Stuart dynasty, then the civil war and finally the Restoration. In 1648 he published Hesperides: Or, The Works Both Humane & Divine, a huge collection of poetry, to which he appended a shorter collection of religious poems, His Noble Numbers: Or, His Pious Pieces, apparently dated 1647; together, they make over 1400 poems. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Pour toi, par Minou Drouet
Contrairement aux autres poèmes du deuxième recueil de Minou, Le Pêcheur de lune, celui-ci n’est pas dédié. On peut donc imaginer qu’il s’adresse à un amoureux secret. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…