The origins of Romantic Poetry though nominally confined to a small group of poets in England had such a vast influence that its effervescence may be detected in the poetry of nations across Europe. So special is the delight in their poetry that KRG devotes a whole session every year to mining the untold riches of what those poets left behind, though several of them died very young.
The usual suspects were represented – Wordsworth, Keats, Byron – but so were three women poets and a dashing representative from Spain. It was a thrilling experience. The joy comes through in the accounts supplied by several readers, especially in the verse casually appended to a letter of Keats to a friend where the poet recounts his spontaneous reaction to the song of a thrush floating into his study through a window.
The song thrush
The poem by Wordsworth concerned a hero of Haiti whose leadership in mounting a revolt of the slaves against their exploitative slave-owning plantation masters won the independence of the island (western part) from France – but, at the cost of Toussaint L'Ouverture’s imprisonment and death in a French prison. The poem excited discussion about the subsequent impoverishing debt imposed on Haitians by France to compensate the French landowners for their losses.
Lord Byron, Cleaned up Image of a large statue of Lord Byron erected in the courtyard of Byronei Messolonghi. The statue shows him in Greek costume of the time, standing, gazing at the waters
A poem by Byron demonstrated how committed he was to the cause of the independence of Greece from Ottoman rule. HIs poem was written only a few months before his death from a mosquito-borne fever in Messolonghi – the historic town in located about 250 km west of Athens on the edge of a rich ecological lagoon. Byron seems to have had a presentiment of his death as he ponders his thirty-sixth birthday in the poem, filled with a determination to fight on.
It was invigorating to listen to the Spanish verses of Bécquer, the very embodiment of the spirit of Romanticism in the soil of Sevilla. His famous Rima LIII was recited by Thomo, attempting to learn Spanish through the effort of decoding the pathos of the poem.
Read on and savour the pleasure of reading the Romantic Poets … to whom KRG returns every August.
Full Account and Record of the Romantic Poetry Session
Devika
Devika was quite surprised, actually, that nobody had read Casablanca so far in our group, because it's a poem we have all read in school. We've only read one another poem by her. This is such an iconic one, by the poet Felicia Dorothea Hemans.
Felicia Dorothea Hemans Bio (September25, 1793 to May16, 1835)
Felicia Dorothea Hemans was an English poet regarded as the leading poet of her day. She was immensely popular during her lifetime in both England and the United States, second only to Lord Byron in terms of book sales. Two of her opening lines “The boy stood on the burning deck” and “The stately homes of England” have acquired classic status. Born on September 25, 1793 in Liverpool, the Romantic poet Felicia Hemans was the daughter of the Tuscan Consul in Liverpool and the fifth of seven children. The family shifted to Wales following a period of financial difficulty in 1800. Hemans was a voracious reader, and she made use of the extensive home library and was instructed by her mother in several languages – Welsh, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.
Hemans first published her collection Poems in 1808 at the age of fourteen. She married Captain Alfred Hemans in 1812, had five children by him before separating when her husband moved to Italy in 1818. She had to support her children with the income from her poetry. Despite her illustrious admirers, her stature as a serious poet gradually declined, ironically on account of her success in the literary market place. Her poetry was often assigned for school children to read, as it was considered morally exemplary.
The poem, Casabianca, is sung in ballad form and consists of a boy asking his father whether he had fulfilled his duties, as the ship continues to burn until the magazine catches fire. Hemans adds the following note to the poem: “Young Casabianca, a boy about thirteen years old, son to the Admiral of the Orient, remained at his post (in the Battle of the Nile) after the ship had taken fire, and all the guns had been abandoned, and perished in the explosion of the vessel, when the flames reached the powder.”
From 1831 onward Hemans lived in Dublin which was recommended for being healthier than Liverpool. Despite the change, she continued to experience poor health. She died on 16 May 1835. Sources suggest that she had suffered from an attack of scarlet fever, followed by a ‘consumptive decline‘, or by ‘dropsy’. She was regarded as a leading an English poet of her day.
It's a tragic poem. It gives you goose bumps when you read it. And the other one we often read in school is The Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson. Do the children learn these poems nowadays? Every year, there would be at least one child reciting the poem at elocution competition in school. These poems were par for the course and another was Lord Ullin’s Daughter, the ballad by Scottish poet Thomas Campbell.
Geetha
Usually Geetha choses poems from Byron or Keats or Shelley for this session, but she chanced upon a lady poet who's actually older than all of these and was an inspiration to them.
Her name is Charlotte Turner Smith, known as Charlotte Smith (CS). She was born on May 4 in London, Great Britain, 1749, died October 28, 1806. She was born 200 years before Thoreau. She was a pioneering English poet and novelist who helped to revive the English sonnet and heavily influenced the early poetry foundation of the Romantic movement.
Indeed, she can perhaps be rightly called the first of the Romantic poets, influencing those who followed, including William Wordsworth, John Keats, and so on. Outspoken for the time, she once described her early marriage as nothing more than prostitution because her father sold her to the richest suitor; her father was a spendthrift.
But although it was not the happiest of relationships, she still managed to have 13 children by her husband. OMG, someone exclaimed.
Her early life was marked by the untimely death of her mother and the poor spending habits of her father. She loved to read poetry as a child and even submitted some of her own work to local publications, only to have them rejected. Her father, finding himself in severe financial difficulties, then married her off at age 15 to Benjamin Smith who hailed from a very well-off family, landed family. He was a violent and financially reckless West India merchant.
From the beginning she didn't get on with her in-laws, whom she thought rather uncouth.They, in turn, thought her frivolous for spending so much time reading poetry. It turned out that Benjamin was nearly as bad with money as her own father had been and ended up in a debtor's prison. As was a custom at that time, Charlotte went to join him in King's Bench Prison in 1783, where she wrote her first collection of poetry called Elegiac Sonnets.
The poems were a great success and gave her the chance to pay for their release. They fled to France in order to avoid any further debt collection. She separated formally from her husband in 1787 in order to live independently.
Literary Career
Charlotte Smith published her breakthrough poetry collection, Elegiac Sonnets, in 1784, which became immensely popular and helped revive the sonnet form in English poetry. CS transitioned to writing novels for financial stability, publishing her debut fiction, Emmeline, or the Orphan of the Castle, in 1788.
She also authored radical works of social criticism, including Desmond (1792) and her finest novel, The Old Manor-House (1793). She also wrote educational books for children, notably Conversations Introducing Poetry (1804).
Despite eleven novels, four children's books and other works, she saw herself mainly as a poet and hoped to be remembered for that.
Death and Legacy
CS died on October 28, 1806, in Tilford, Surrey, broken in health and financial distress. She was praised by William Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott for her profound sensitivity to nature and melancholic lyrical style.
What Geetha read was an excerpt from The Emigrants, a two-book blank verse poem published in 1793. It describes French Catholic and royalist refugees fleeing the Reign of Terror and arriving on the cliffs of Sussex, England. The speaker blends their national grief with her own personal financial and marital displacement. It's in sympathy of the French Revolution and what the people suffered. And this excerpt is just a part from the second book.
The setting is a Spring landscape of the blossoming Sussex countryside in April 1793. There is a contrast between Nature and Violence. Spring arrives with blooming flowers, but the speaker cannot enjoy nature because she is haunted by the human bloodshed and political madness of happenings in France.
CS is all-in for true liberty that will bring peace rather than terror and chaos. She condemns radical tyranny and war.
The excerpt ends with the words ‘for employment.’ Those are the needy. Somewhere, Geetha felt the poet is siding with the monarchy. She was initially for liberty and freedom, the call of the revolutionaries. But during Robespierre's reign of terror, all that wanton killing and beheading, turned Charlotte Smith against the revolution. She laments that, actually.
The readers were glad that Geetha introduced an old lady’s poem that we haven't heard before. To think that she's one of the first poets of the Romantic period. A bit of it reads like modern poetry towards the end.
Joe
Joe read a poem that Lord Byron wrote toward the end of his life. called, On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year.
Lord Byron wrote the poem on January 22, 1824, in Missolonghi (now mostly spelled Mesolongi), Greece. He died less than three months later on April 19, 1824, of a severe illness while still in Missolonghi.
He wrote this while he was on his single-minded vision to help the Greek people win freedom from the Ottoman Turks. After selling his English estates he invested his own money into the revolution. He took command of a brigade of soldiers, intending to lead an attack on the Turkish-held fortress of Lepanto.
The swampy, damp environment of Missolonghi severely worsened his health. Doctors used bloodletting to assuage his fever, but they bled him to exhaustion and it hastened his death.. The Greeks deeply mourned him, and he remains celebrated as a national hero in Greece to this day, with numerous statues erected to him in Greece.
Lord Byron statue in Messolonghi Garden of Heroes
Byron faced severe political chaos in Greece because the Greeks were fighting a brutal civil war against each other while simultaneously trying to fight the Ottoman Empire for independence. Main regional factions included the military chieftains of the Peloponnese, the wealthy shipowners of the islands, and the politicians of Central Greece. The primary internal struggle was between a Western-educated politician and a powerful guerrilla military leader.
The first stanza reads –
Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
Here Byron, Joe thinks, is expressing his failure in love among the women he knew – it was not for lack of trying. This handsome flamboyant man of wit and with a heart large enough to embrace several women at once, had only encountered failures in love:
1. Mary Chaworth – A distant cousin and teenage muse who rejected him, inspiring many of his early melancholic poems.
2. Lady Caroline Lamb – A passionate aristocrat who famously described Byron as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." She caused public scenes about their volatile affair.
3. Lady Oxford – A politically minded, older married woman who provided Byron with a peaceful refuge =after the chaos of Caroline Lamb
4. Lady Frances Webster – A married woman whom Byron courted in a tense game of psychological seduction.
5. Annabella Milbanke – A mathematical heiress whom Byron married in 1815 in a disastrous attempt to reform his life. She left him in just one year on account of rumours of incest with his sister. By Millbanke Lord Byron had his only legitimate child, Ada Lovelace (born Augusta Ada Byron); she went on to become the world’s first computer programmer under the tutelage of Charles Babbage, the ingenious British engineer, who invented the Differential Engine to solve mathematical problems by automatic programming.
Byron left England four months after his daughter’s birth, never seeing her again. Byron famously dedicated the opening of Canto III of his epic poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage to her with the lines:
Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child!
ADA! sole daughter of my house and heart?
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,
And then we parted, -- not as now we part,
But with a hope. --
Lord Byron was rumoured to have had an incestuous relationship with this older half-sister, Augusta Leigh.
The second stanza of Byron’s poem in Missolonghi begins
My days are in the yellow leaf;
– which will remind the reader of Shakespeare’s sonnet 73:
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
The third stanza is where we hear the sad cry from the heart when ‘Volcano Isle’ and “funeral pile’ are used as rhyming phrases. The first refers to his heaving heart, the emotional state of longing and fighting for an independent Greece. The second is probably the premonition of his death to come. He is feeling prematurely old at 36, exhausted from his affairs of the heart, and now mired in a fight.
But in a later stanza he recovers his spirit and cries out
The Sword, the Banner, and the Field,
Glory and Greece around us see!
The penultimate stanza begins in a sinking mood but ends singing the Glory of valorous death:
If thou regret'st thy Youth, why live?
The land of honourable Death
Is here:—up to the Field, and give
Away thy breath!
Joe was reminded of Captain Bikram Batra who died in the Indo-Pak Kargil War of 1999. He wrote to his family:
या तो तिरंगा लहराकर आऊंगा, या तिरंगे में लिपटकर आऊंगा, लेकिन ज़रूर आऊंगा
I shall return with flying flag
Or wrapt in the flag –
But return, I shall!
For Byron it was the latter alternative. We still mourn him, a flawed romantic hero whose heart was in the right place.
Kavita
It so happened that Kavita selected another poem of Byron’s, Stanzas to a Hindoo Air.
Though Byron was a Lord by heredity, he didn't depend on his lordship for his fame, which spread far wider than that of any other Lord of the time as a result of his poetry.
Stanzas to a Hindoo Air (written in Pisa, 1821) is a lesser-known yet fascinating lyric. Written toward the end of his life before his departure for Greece, the poem reflects both Byron's characteristic dramatic intensity and the 19th-century British Romantic fascination with Orientalism.
The poem was composed to fit a popular Hindustani tune of the time titled "Alla Malla Punca", which Byron's mistress, Countess Teresa Guiccioli, was fond of singing. During the early 19th century, returning British colonial officials brought back popular Indian melodies, which were arranged for piano and sung in European salons.
Like today, we sing, Parda Hai, Parda, from the film Amar Akbar Anthony; but Hindi film songs are so popular that they are sung in many parts of the world – here is an Uzbek group singing that number:
Somebody else gesturing to our Priya, cited the song Pretty Pretty Pretty Priya from the 1970 film Priya. In the film the character of Priya is played by the actress Tanuja (younger sister of actress Nutan, and also famous as the mother of actress Kajol). So one could sing here Lonely, Lonely Pillow. Our Hindi translation would be so funny, said Priya. But it will make a good Bollywood song if set to lilting music.
Byron adopts a female voice, turning the pillow into a confidant while her lover sails away over the ocean.
The poem makes use of repetition and incremental refrain (e.g., "Oh! my lonely—lonely—lonely—Pillow!"). This repetition echoes the rhythmic cadence of a musical song or "air," mimicking a mournful chant or lullaby.
Byron weaves typical Romantic motifs – dreams, ships ("bark"), waves ("billow"), and drooping flora ("willow") – to emphasise physical isolation and emotional agony.
The speaker addresses an inanimate object—the pillow—transmuting a domestic item into the sole witness of her grief:
Oh! my lonely—lonely—lonely—Pillow!
Why must my head ache where his gentle brow lay?
The contrast between the past (where the lover's head rested) and the present (where the speaker's head aches in isolation) reinforces the pain of sudden absence.
Because daytime reality offers no comfort, the speaker relies on the nocturnal realm:
Send me kind dreams to keep my heart from breaking,
In return for the tears I shed upon thee waking;
The dream becomes the only site of potential reunion, a common trope in Byron's poetry where real-world exile is countered only by subconscious escape. In classic Byronian style, extreme emotional states collapse into one another:
In one embrace let these arms again enfold him,
And then expire of the joy—but to behold him!
The emotional intensity reaches a peak where the speaker desires to die not from sorrow, but from the overwhelming sensation of seeing the lover again ("expire of the joy").
Byron’s poem is often compared to Shelley's famous Lines to an Indian Air (also known as I Arise from Dreams of Thee), composed around the same period.
Byron had a clubfoot, but he was a very handsome man. Among the romantic poets, he was the rich one. The others had no money, except Shelley, who was born into a wealthy, landed gentry family that attained minor nobility when his grandfather received a baronetcy in 1806. Shelley grew up in a privileged aristocratic environment, with his father serving as a Member of Parliament. During his life he had a good relationship with Byron.
Joe said Byron had all the characteristics of a romantic poet. He not only romanced several women, but embraced lost causes. He was a failure in love. These things conspire to make him uber-romantic, in Joe’s opinion. And then just imagine, that he sold his estates and invested in a cause which would not be realised for many years afterwards. Greece formally won its independence when it was recognised as an independent sovereign state by major European powers via the London Protocol on February 3, 1830, concluding a revolution that began on March 25, 1821.
KumKum
KumKum read a poem by Keats, What the Thrush Said. It's a sonnet. But he didn't write it as a poem in the first instance. He was writing a letter to a friend, and at the end, casually subscribed this verse.
These last three lines are beautiful:
He who saddens
At thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.
Joe noted that it seems rather irregular because it doesn't have a rhyme scheme. Sonnets, whether they are Shakespearean or Petrarchan or whatever, do follow a certain rhyme scheme. But this doesn't have one. It does have 14 lines, though.
Poets are rather finicky. They won't call a poem a sonnet unless it follows one of the established sonnet forms. KumKum said “Maybe Keats didn't call it a sonnet. But those who included it in collections called it a sonnet.”
Geetha noted the footnote says ‘lines from a letter to John Hamilton.’ KumKum replied that Keats was writing a letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, the poet, satirist, critic, and playwright who was a close friend and correspondent of Keats. At the end of the letter, he added this gift of a poem.
Keats heard a thrush outside his window and spontaneously added on these lines. Recall that Keats composed rapidly. But he didn't have time to polish it, remarked Joe.
Later KumKum added this appreciation:
John Keats: My Favourite Romantic Poet
Regarding What the Thrush Said
Sculpture of John Keats seated on bench by Vincent Gray, in Chichester, West Sussex, UK
Among the Romantic poets, KumKum’s first choice has always been John Keats. The great figures of that movement are Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats – but there is something particularly appealing about Keats. Perhaps it is his extraordinary sensitivity to beauty, his love of nature, or the way he could transform an ordinary moment into something magical.
Keats lived a remarkably short life. Born in 1795, he died in 1821 at only twenty-five years of age. Yet in those few years, he produced poetry that has continued to speak to readers for more than two centuries. Though his life was marked by illness, financial hardship, and personal sorrow, his poetry remains filled with beauty, music, and an intense awareness of natural existence.
Keats believed deeply in beauty. However, his idea of beauty went far beyond aesthetics; for him, beauty was intimately tied to truth, imagination, and the very experience of being alive. His poetry compels us to stop, look, and listen to the world around us. Yet, Keats was also acutely aware of impermanence – he recognised the fleeting nature of beauty at the very moment he found it.
Consequently, a wistful melancholy runs through his odes, sonnets, and shorter lyrics. They seem to remind us that even though “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” nothing in life or nature lasts. The present moment is what truly matters.
This fragment was originally included in a letter Keats wrote to his friend John Hamilton Reynolds on February 19, 1818. Though written as a sonnet apparently inspired by a thrush's song, its concluding lines cited above carry a profound philosophical weight:
He who saddens
At thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.
It is a short poem, but she found it deeply moving. It draws us into the quiet stillness of nature where a thrush is singing. There is no grand story or dramatic spectacle – simply the bird, its song, and the poet listening.
Yet in Keats’s hands, this simple moment becomes expansive. The thrush seems to speak through its song, and Keats listens as if receiving a revelation. Nature is not merely a passive backdrop; it becomes a living presence. The bird has something meaningful to say, even if its language transcends ordinary human understanding.
What she loves most about Keats is his willingness to remain open to mystery. He does not force explanations; instead, he allows himself – and us – to simply dwell in the experience.
The thrush’s song also reminds us of how brief life is. The bird sings entirely in the present, unconcerned with yesterday or tomorrow. Keats, who certainly sensed that his own time was short, was especially attuned to such moments. The song becomes a celebration of life precisely because it is transient.
There is also a gentle restraint in the poem. Keats does not try to dominate nature or impose a heavy-handed message upon it. He simply listens. That is perhaps the greatest lesson of this small poem: sometimes we understand more by listening quietly than by trying to analyse everything.
This is what makes Keats such a special poet for KumKum. His work invites us to pause – to notice the bird, the flower, the season, the sound, the light – and to recognise that these quiet moments hold something profound.
Rather than viewing Keats merely as a figure from literary history, KumKum prefers to experience what the poet offers directly: his love of beauty, his sensitivity to nature, and his ability to find wonder in a fleeting moment. Perhaps the thrush is telling us what Keats understood so well – that life is short, but while we are here, there is always beauty to be experienced.
Priya
We've read Sir Walter Scott before, said Priya. She gave a brief recap on the poet.
Biography:
Scott Monument on Princess Street, Edinburgh
Statue of Sir Walter Scott within the Scott Monument on Princess Street, Edinburgh
Walter Scott was one of the earlier romantics, 1771 to 1832 was the time frame. He falls in the romantic era and was one of the most important men of letters of his time.
He was born in Edinburgh, and is famously known as the pioneer of the historical novel, the Waverley series, which he wrote starting in 1814. The Waverley series is a group of 26 historical novels, published anonymously, The books explore Scottish, English, and European history, shaping the modern historical fiction genre. Scott did not admit he wrote them until 1827.
He spent his early childhood years in Edinburgh, studying at the Edinburgh High School. He got a law degree at the University, and at the age of 25, started writing.
At first he wrote poems. He was very prolific. He wrote a lot of poetry and lots of novels, particularly the historical novels, for he had a great interest in history.
In 1797, he married the daughter of a French refugee, Charlotte Carpenter, with whom he had four children. In his legal career, he became the Sheriff Deputy of Selkirk, a position that he occupied till the end of his life.
He championed Scottish traditions, history, culture, and stories of the highlands and the lowlands. In 1820, when King George IV visited Edinburgh, he was asked to handle the entire grand event. People were amazed that he made the king wear tartan and kilt and pink stockings.
Scott became famous because of his literary output. But in 1825, his financial state deteriorated drastically.
He was very successful in his writing. So how did this happen? His dramatic financial ruin was caused by secret business partnerships in printing and publishing, and by lavish overspending on his estate. In addition a major 19th-century banking crisis exposed his web of debt.
He lived in Abbotsford near Melrose in Edinburgh and died there in 1832. Among the tributes, a splendid one is the prominent Scott Monument on Princess Street in Edinburgh. There was also a laudatory biography by his son-in-law, John Lockhart, which speaks volumes about him. You can read more about him on the Britannica site:
The Lady of the Lake was written in 1810. All his poems are narrative poems, rather long. This poem, is as large as a book, with four cantos as subdivisions.
Priya’s choice was from stanza 29. You need to know a little bit about the story behind this to understand it. The importance of this poem is that the hymn Ave Maria by Schubert was inspired by this poem. For the connection between The Lady of the Lake and Ave Maria, the hymn, see
“In Scott's poem, the character Ellen Douglas, the Lady of the Lake, has gone with her exiled father to stay in the Goblin's cave as he has declined to join their previous host, Roderick Dhu, the chieftain of Clan Alpine, in rebellion against King James. Roderick Dhu sets off up the mountain with his warriors, but lingers and hears the distant sound of the harpist Allan-bane, accompanying Ellen who sings a prayer addressed to the Virgin Mary, calling upon her help. Roderick Dhu pauses, then goes on to battle.”
In Schubert’s oeuvre it is known as Ellens Dritter Gesang Opus 52, the 6th in a collection of 7 lieder he wrote inspired by Sir Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake. The Latin version of it, the Ave Maria, has words from the Gospel of Luke when the Angel Gabriel appears to Mary and announces that she will be the mother of Jesus. It was set to this same music of Ellens Dritter Gesang. You can hear it below:
The story behind it, of course, is The Lady of the Lake. James Douglas was a nobleman, and the king of Scotland at the time was James V. This nobleman has been exiled, because he's fallen out with the king. The king disguises himself and goes around the highlands and the lowlands. He goes near the lake, where this girl and her father, James Douglas have been exiled, and are living in a cave.
There is another nobleman called Michael Green, who she's in love with. Then there is another rebel (Dru) who's at war with King James. The story is about all of them. There is a big battle. James Douglas, though exiled, is loyal to the king. So he says he will fight for the king, and the battle happens.
This stanza 29 is about Ellen Douglas, the daughter, whom the king also finds very attractive, very kind and a sweet-hearted girl, who rescues him. When the battle is going on, there's a storm. The romantic elements of the storm, the battle, and the kindly girl, all combine with the thunder and lightning.
The girl in the cave is praying to Mother Mary, addressing her in the prayer Hail Mary (Ave Maria, in Latin) , to protect her father, to protect her country. That's the poem which Priya read. You can imagine this girl inside the cave with a storm brewing outside, and the battle in full swing. She is trembling and shivering, and her only hope is Mother Mary.
Very nice, said KumKum, when Priya finished reading, but she could not believe it was such a long poem. This much is good enough. It's beautiful, said Zakia.
You can listen to Luciano Pavarotti sing Schubert’s Ave Maria.
Priya was surprised about the connection between these stanzas and the music composed by Franz Schubert, using the words of this and other stanzas of the poem to compose seven of his lieder comprising his Opus 52. It's so beautiful.
I love the hymn as well, said Priya. “And it's so romantic.”
Shoba
Shoba read the poem titled Toussaint L'Ouverture by William Wordsworth,
Toussaint (short for Tous les saints) means all saints. All Saints' Day in French is la Toussaint. It is a public holiday celebrated every year on November 1st. It is meant to honour all faithful people who have reached heaven, including both famous and unknown saints. It reminds believers of the spiritual bond between the living on Earth and those in heaven, and it encourages everyone to live a holy life.
In the poem Toussaint is the name of a French general, from Haiti, a Caribbean island and a colony of France.
It's the second biggest island after Cuba, which was called Hispaniola, at the time, made up of Dominican Republic, in the eastern part of the island, and Haiti was the western part.
At first the island was taken over by the Spanish. The portion which is Haiti was taken over by the French in the 1600s. They brought in slaves from West Africa and it with slaves in order to cultivate sugarcane and make sugar there and export it to Europe and other parts of the world.
Almost 60% of the sugar that the Western world was using came from Haiti because the soil was very good. 9 out of 10 people in Haiti were slaves. The rest were the rich landowners who owned these plantations.
The slaves were treated very poorly. They worked in the fields and operated the machines used to crush sugarcane. Often there were accidents and some slaves would lose their hands and die there. They were treated most cruelly.
The slaves banded together to fight against the French colonisers. The Spanish who controlled the Dominican Republic gave some help to overthrow the French.
Toussaint Louverture, the subject of the poem, was born into a black household. Fortunately, the slave-owner was kind. He gave this boy a chance to spend time in the library and learn to read. He educated him somewhat. Toussaint grew up literate, unlike the slaves around him. He became a leader.
The slaves would run away to the mountains, and there, they formed a small army to attack the French. Meanwhile, the French Revolution happened – that gave an impetus to these slaves to also demand freedom from the colonisers.
When the fighting was going on England sent forces to take over Haiti, because they also were avid colonisers. But the English were defeated.
Then finally, after the French Revolution, Toussaint Louverture, made a constitution for a free Haiti and he declared independence. Once he did that, he began to have a relationship with the United States. Napoleon Bonaparte was very unhappy and he wanted to capture Toussaint and put him in prison. He sent his brother-in-law with soldiers to Haiti to capture him.
They told Toussaint that they were going to have friendly talks with him. He innocently, he believed them. When he came to speak to the brother-in-law of Napoleon Bonaparte, he was captured, taken to France and put in prison. This happened in 1802.
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William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)
It was while he was in prison that Wordsworth wrote this poem in support of Toussaint. He was in a French prison only for one year and died while incarcerated in 1803, before Haiti won full independence. This poem was written in the year following his death. Haiti became independent just one year after his death.
When Haiti declared independence another cruel man became the leader of the blacks. They killed about 5,000 French people. They made gallows all along the coastline and left the French landowners hanging there to show the passing ships what they had done.
It was extracting bitter revenge for slavery. The slaves took back the country into their own hands with a lot of violence.
Sugar made France rich because they were controlling almost 60% of the world’s production. Later on, coffee also was grown there. Ultimately it all ended badly for them.
The original native people were native Indians of the Arawak tribe who died out. Now the population is entirely black. Unless we know this background the poem won't make sense.
It's amazing to think Wordsworth wrote this. It’s a kind of tribute. He was upholding liberty when Toussaint was unjustly imprisoned. It was Wordsworth protesting. There was no television or radio to convey news but there were papers, probably one month old when received in England, said KumKum. By boat and ships sailors carried the news.
The French don't regard Toussaint kindly because he was a revolutionary.
KumKum recalled the poem of Keats On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer. Keats compares his amazement at reading Chapman’s translation of Homer, to that of the Spanish explorer “stout Cortez” staring at the Pacific Ocean with his men in silent wonder upon a peak in Darien. But as commentators have pointed out the Spanish explorer who stood on a peak in Darien (the Isthmus of Panama) and first beheld the Pacific Ocean was Vasco Núñez de Balboa, not Hernán Cortés, the “stout Cortez" of Keats.
But you might ask how did Keats learn of that fact in order to use it in his poem as a metaphor for his own amazement at reading Homer through Chapman?
In a similar way Devika was surprised when she read the poem that Joanna Baillie wrote about Rani Ahalya Bai of Indore. She lived in Britain, and Ahalya Bai in Indore was 8,000 kms away.
Yet Joanna Baillie wrote a poem of 22 lines about Ahalya Bai, which was amazing, thought Devika. Today, we can just type a query into Google and get voluminous information and scores of original references to sources. How did people in those times learn about happenings?
Joe thought of Haiti as one of the worst and most despicable cases of colonialism. In return for granting them their independence in the 1820s the French foisted a huge debt on Haiti. They stated that unless Haiti paid hundreds of millions of francs, in recompense for plantations lost and future income foregone, France would not give them their liberty.
Consider, said Joe, this colonial nation of France, which has profited for centuries from slavery and extraction of Haiti’s wealth, now demanding that in order to free them, they must further compensate the slavers too.
After the landowners had extracted the wealth and stashed it in foreign banks Haiti was left as an impoverished nation. It could not pay that amount. It had to take on debt by borrowing from banks in France in order to pay the compensation. And of course, France profited from those debts in turn.
Joe read that it was not until the 1950s or so that the debt incurred in 1825, with interest, could be paid. By that time, Haiti had paid out a further half a billion dollars to France. And it became bankrupt, a charge on the charity of other nations and the UN. Here are the details from Google Gemini:
Haiti’s 1825 “Independence Debt”
In 1804, after a 12-year war against Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies, Haitians defeated French forces to establish the world's first free Black republic and the only nation created by a successful revolt of enslaved people. However, colonial exploitation transformed from physical slavery to financial bondage:
• Gunboat Extortion: In 1825, French King Charles X dispatched warships to Port-au-Prince and demanded Haiti pay 150 million gold francs (equivalent to tens of billions of dollars today) to compensate former French slaveholders for lost "property"—including the human beings who had liberated themselves.
• The "Double Debt": Threatened with total trade embargoes and military re-invasion, Haiti was forced to sign the treaty and borrow money from French banks at exorbitant interest rates just to make the initial payments.
• Century-Long Stagnation: Paying off this indemnity consumed up to 80% of Haiti's national budget for decades. It took Haiti until 1947—over 120 years—to fully pay off the debt and interest to French and American banks, leaving the nation utterly incapable of building public infrastructure, schools, hospitals, or modern agricultural systems.
And that is what Haiti is today, an impoverished, denuded nation. The country became so poor because were bled dry by their erstwhile colonial masters. This is the most disgraceful thing that France could ever do. Of course, analogues of this have been done by all the other colonial nations.
You should read the economist, Dr. Utsa Patnaik of Jawaharlal Nehru University, and ponder the research she has done to uncover the sly underhand means used by the British to extract the wealth of India, and spirit it away to the British Treasury. It's something on the order of $45 trillion worth in modern equivalent wealth that they pillaged.
“Do you mean the Bengal famine, and Churchill“, asked Priya. No, said Joe; the Bengal famine was something else, demonstrating the callous racist disregard for the lives of Indians by Mr Churchill. That is a different aspect of colonialism. What one is talking of here is about the ransacking of the economy of a colonised nation to enrich its colonial masters. One is talking here of pillage, of revenues from taxes levied in India being spirited away to a foreign land, instead of benefiting the Indian people – more than a third of those taxes left India to benefit the British treasury. Read Utsa Patnaik. That's how the British got rich.
To consider a theoretical converse: how many years would it take to reduce Britain to penury? – if one-third of its current tax revenues (estimated as £1,232 billion), that is £411 billion, were paid out as a due annually to an external entity, instead of being used for the benefit of British citizens. Joe estimates Britain would be bankrupt in 10 years; and reduced to the current living standard of sub-Saharan Africa, if the theft continued for another 50 years.
That is what Haiti has been reduced to today, an impoverished nation.
If Britain has lost much of its former glory today, and become a second rate power economically and militarily, that's because they've lost their colonies, of which India was chiefest source to pilfer riches.
Joe said all colonial nations – Germany, Belgium, Holland, France, Spain, Portugal – in their heyday stole the wealth of colonised nations on a massive scale. If they ever paid reparations, they'd be paying reparations for the rest of their existence. Of course, they never think of reparations for their crimes.
France still does not recognise its major culpability in the impoverishment of Haiti.
They grandly proclaim Liberté, égalité, fraternité (LEF). But over its entire history, France controlled about 80 to 90 distinct colonial territories and major possessions, making it the second-largest colonial empire in modern history behind Great Britain. At its peak around 1938, the French Colonial Empire spanned roughly 13.5 million square kilometres, about 25 times the size of mainland France.
What France offered abroad would amount to
Emprisonné, Discriminée, Diminuée (EDD)
Geetha said LEF was what her poet, Charlotte Smith was supporting. She was lamenting, actually. She had some bias, a soft corner for the monarchy initially in the poem. But only because they were butchered afterwards. The Haitians killed their French oppressors and hanged them; that too was cruelty.
Geetha mentioned that on the previous day, they saw a video. It showed the 15 rulers who had massacred the most people. One was Leopold II of Belgium. King Leopold II gained the Congo as his own private land at the Berlin Conference in 1885. He privately owned and brutally ruled the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. Driven by extreme greed for rubber and ivory, his regime used forced labor, starvation, and mutilation, causing an estimated 10 million deaths – halving the region's population. He annihilated the people there.
According to that Top 10 list, the top is Mao Zedong. He erased about 60 million of his own Chinese compatriots, it is estimated, by his policies. KumKum and Joe attended a session of the Hay Festival in Trivandrum in Dec 2011 at which Jung Chang, a Chinese author settled in Britain recounted her detailed history of the times in a 832-page biography titled Mao Zedong, Mao: The Unknown Story, written with her husband, the Irish historian Jon Halliday. The most shocking news was that the great famine of 1958-1961 in China was a deliberate starvation of the people by sending grain from China to the Soviet Union and its satellites to pay for armaments; it was paid in grain to the extent of 7% of China's GDP at the time.
There are so many Maoists, so many communists who speak so highly of Mao. Jung Chang at the 2011 Hay Festival said “In the 50s, 60s, 70s, you could be excused for being pro-Mao, but being pro-Mao now is inexcusable ignorance.”
Pol Pot is on the list, as one of the most brutal despots in modern world history, who headed the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia after seizing power in 1975. Over the next four years, the Khmer Rouge perpetrated the Cambodian genocide, in which an estimated 1.5–2 million people died – approximately one-quarter of the country's then population.
Hitler and Stalin are there too on the list, and after them in rank comes Leopold II of Belgium.
Thomo
Thomo mentioned his exercise regimen these days. In the morning, he climbs seven stories to his rooftop terrace, then comes down by the lift, and walks around the condo property, listening to the sounds of nature. To this listening he has added Spanish songs.
It occurred then to him why not use YouTube to learn some Spanish. When this poetry session came up, he found a Spanish poet, who by Joe’s reckoning doesn't actually fit neatly in the Romantic era – he’s a little past that time. But that was fine; he had other characteristics that made him a good fit.
Birthplace of the poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer on what is now Conde de Barajas Street, Seville
The poet Thomo chose was Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, born 1836, and died 1870. He is considered to be Spain's greatest romantic lyric poet. In fact, he's the second best read of all Spanish writers after Miguel de Cervantes, famous as the author of Don Quixote, spelled Don Quijote in modern Spanish, and pronounced dohn kee-HOH-teh.
Portrait of Bécquer
Gustavo Adolfo was also a playwright and a literary columnist. He was talented in drawing and painting. His father was a noted painter, from whom he must have inherited his talent.. Unfortunately, his father died when he was five. His mother died six years later when he was 11. He and his younger brother, Valeriano, were brought up by their uncle.
His collection of work is called Rimas y Leyendas. It transformed Spanish poetry with its simplicity, musicality, and emotional depth. Rather than using grand declarations, Bécquer wrote with quiet intensity about love, longing, memory, and loss.
His influence on later Spanish poets, including Antonio Machado and Federico García Lorca, were profound. His work remains among the most widely read in the Spanish speaking world.
He married Casta Esteban Navarro and had three children by her. He died very rather young at age 34. They say it was of tuberculosis. His final months were clouded by the painful loss of his brother and artistic collaborator, Valeriano.
His last words were, “Acordaos de mis niños“ (remember my children).
Statue of Becquer in Maria Luisa Park in Seville
Thomo read out the English translation of Rima LIII before the Spanish original. But he read only 3 of the 6 stanzas. Refer to Joe’s selection of Oct 2010 for the full poem.
Thomo agreed this was not the whole poem but could get a translation only these 3 stanzas. There are many translations of the entire poem, Joe said. When he recited it in 2010 a translation by Kate Flores was provided. There is also a translation by Brian Cole.
Thomo then read the poem in Spanish. Thomo expanded his knowledge of Spanish by selecting this poem. That’s a major benefit of making the effort. ‘Golondrinas’ means swallows. What is the ‘Volverán’?
Opening line of the poem by Bécquer – Volveran las oscuras golondrinas (The dark swallows will return)
It is interesting that Bécquer uses the word volveran, meaning to ‘return’ as a refrain in alternating stanzas. The poet is reminding his lover everything will return again (the swallows, the honeysuckle, words of love) but NOT in the way they experienced it once. The sixth stanza offers deep pathos when he tells his lover:
But mute, enraptured, kneeling,
As God before His altar is adored,
As I loved you … be not deceived:
You will be loved no more!
Geetha then volunteered an unpoetic reminder that ‘Voveran’ is the name of a painkiller. It is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) containing diclofenac that treats pain, swelling, and inflammation. I hope none of you have had to take this to suffer my reading, said Thomo (laughter …)
Zakia
Zakia read a sonnet by William Wordsworth. It's a simple, charming and romantic one.
Wordsworth wrote this Petrarchan sonnet in 1835. It explores the emotional vulnerability and anxiety of a distant lover. He is painfully alienated. An agonising void has been left by an uncommunicative loved one. It was composed while he was on a walk with his daughter, Dora. He saw an empty nest on this snowy winter’s day, in the leafless tree.
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Petrarch (1304-1374) perfected the sonnet form in his famous Canzoniere, which is why it bears his name, rather than that of Giacomo da Lentini who invented it a hundred years earlier
The poem strictly follows the Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet structure, divided into an octave (first 8 lines) and a sestet (final 6 lines). The rhyme scheme of the Octave is ABBA ABBA, and of the Sestet, CDE CDE. The meter is iambic pentameter with subtle variations to reflect emotional agitation.
That was what inspired him to write these lines. It's a sweet poem expressing the devotion of a lover and the sudden desolation he feels. Wordsworth has used his signature imagery of nature (plants, frost, wind) alongside classical stone imagery (marble, grave) to contrast organic, living affection with deadened silence.
Such was Zakia’s poem for the day. Joe noted the reference in the penultimate line to the flower eglantine
a forsaken bird’s-nest filled with snow
‘Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine—
Eglantine – admired as a country rose, acquired all sorts of romantic associations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
The eglantine (also known as sweetbriar, Rosa rubiginosa) is a Eurasian wild rose known for its delicate pink petals and apple-scented leaves. It has long served in Western poetry as a symbol of rural beauty, sweetness, and delicate romance. See below how many English poets have used it as a signpost.
This flower occurs in Shakespeare‘s play A Midsummer Night's Dream (Act II, Scene 1) where Oberon describes Titania’s lush, enchanted arbour:
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.
Keats in his Ode to a Nightingale (Stanza 5) evokes the sensory richness of the dark woodland in spring:
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Shelley weaves eglantine into a dreamlike bouquet of wildflowers in his poem The Question:
And in the warm hedge-growth bell-flowers, that keep
Their wet cups open to the embraced bees,
As their young mother Green Earth powers,
Keep the child happy; and eglantine,
In which the pale rose will not blue so soon
John Milton in L'Allegro links the flower to morning cottage life:
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet-briar or the eglantine,
Arundhaty
Joanna Baillie has been read before. She's a Scottish poet and a playwright whose work challenged the prevailing literary trends of her time. While her plays were popular and critically acclaimed during her lifetime, Baillie is primarily remembered today for her poetry, particularly her series of plays on the passions, a collection of dramatic verse exploring the full spectrum of human emotions.
Baillie's writing is characterised by its psychological depth and focus on the inner lives of her characters. Unlike the sentimental poetry popular in the late 18th century, Baillie's work embraced a more realistic and unsentimental approach to human nature. This emphasis on psychological realism anticipated the work of later writers like Robert Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson. It was influenced by the Enlightenment signalled by thinkers such as David Hume and Adam Smith.
Baillie was fascinated by the power of emotions and their influence on human behaviour. Her poetry often explored the complex interplay between reasons and emotion, showcasing the ways in which passions can both elevate and destroy individuals. Baillie's work contributed to the development of the romanticism by emphasising the importance of subjective experience and the power of the imagination.
Joanna Baillie
Baillie was born in September in 1762, and her mother was a member of the Physicians and Anatomists. her father, Reverend James Baillie, was a Presbyterian minister, and in his last two years, Professor of Divinity at the University of Glasgow. The Baillies were an old Scottish family, which claimed descent from the Scottish patriot Sir William Wallace. Wallace is not known to have had any children, however.
Joanna Baillie was the youngest of three children.
A Summer's Day is a very long poem (2375 words, as Joe pointed out). It talks about the summer's day, starting from the night and then moving on to the sunrise, and then moving on to noon, and finally to dusk again, and then sunrise.
It covers all the activities that human beings do during all these various stages of the day, but Arundhaty read an excerpt of 60 lines (about 460 words) – the part leading to the noon.
The Poems
Arundhaty – A Summer ‘s Day (excerpt) by Joanna Baillie
The dark-blue clouds of night in dusky lines,
Drawn wide and streaky o'er the purer sky,
Wear faint the morning purple on their skirts.
The stars that full and bright shone in the west,
But dimly twinkle to the stedfast eye;
And seen, and vanishing, and seen again,
Like dying tapers smoth'ring in their sockets,
Appear at last shut from the face of heav'n;
Whilst every lesser flame which shone by night,
The flashy meteor from the op'ning cloud,
That shoots full oft' across the dusky sky;
Or wand'ring fire which looks across the marsh,
Beaming like candle in a lonely cot,
To cheer the hopes of the benighted trav'ller,
Till swifter than the very change of thought,
It shifts from place to place, escapes his glance,
And makes him wond'ring rub his doubtful eyes;
Or humble glow-worm, or the silver moth,
Which cast a feeble glimm'ring o'er the green,
All die away. ––
For now the sun, slow moving in his grandeur,
Above the eastern mountains lifts his head.
The webs of dew spread o'er the hoary lawn,
The smooth clear bosom of the settled pool,
The polish'd ploughshare on the distant field,
Catch fire from him, and dart their new got beams
Upon die dazzled eye.
The new-wak'd birds upon the branches hop,
Peck their loft down, and bristle out their feathers;
Then stretch their throats and tune their morning song;
Whilst stately crows, high swinging o'er their heads.
Upon the topmost boughs, in lordly pride,
Mix their hoarse croaking with the linnet's note;
The village labourer, with careful mind,
As soon as doth the morning light appear,
Opens his eyes with the first darting ray
That pierces thro' the window of his cot,
And quits his easy bed; then o'er the field,
With lengthen'd swinging strides, betakes his way,
Bearing his spade and hoe across his moulder,
Seen from afar clear glancing in the sun,
And with good will begins his daily
Half naked children, half awake, are seen
Scratching their heads, and blinking to the light;
Till roused by degrees, they run about,
Or rolling in the sun, amongst the sand
Build many a little house, with heedful art.
The housewife tends within, her morning care;
And stooping 'midst her tubs of curdled milk,
With busy patience, draws the clear green whey
From the press'd sides of the pure snowy curd;
Whilst her brown dimpled maid, with tuck'd-up sleeve,
And swelling arm, assists her in her toil.
Pots smoke, pails rattle, and the warm confusion
Still thickens on them, till within its mould,
With careful hands, they press the well-wrought curd.
So goes the morning, till the pow'rful sun
High in the heav'ns sends forth his strengthen'd beams,
And all the freshness of the morn is fled.
Devika – Casabianca by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm -
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though child-like form.
The flames rolled on - he would not go
Without his Father's word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.
He called aloud: – 'say, Father, say
If yet my task is done?'
He knew not that the chieftain lay
Unconscious of his son.
'Speak, father!' once again he cried,
'If I may yet be gone!'
And but the booming shots replied,
And fast the flames rolled on.
Upon his brow he felt their breath,
And in his waving hair,
And looked from that lone post of death
In still yet brave despair;
And shouted but once more aloud,
'My father! must I stay?'
While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,
The wreathing fires made way.
They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
They caught the flag on high,
And streamed above the gallant child,
Like banners in the sky.
There came a burst of thunder-sound –
The boy – oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strewed the sea!–
With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
That well had borne their part –
But the noblest thing which perished there
Was that young faithful heart.
Geetha – from The Emigrants: A Poem by Charlotte Smith
[Disillusion with the French Revolution]
So many years have passed,
Since, on my native hills, I learned to gaze
On these delightful landscapes; and those years
Have taught me so much sorrow, that my soul
Feels not the joy reviving Nature brings;
But, in dark retrospect, dejected dwells
On human follies, and on human woes.—
What is the promise of the infant year,
The lively verdure, or the bursting blooms,
To those, who shrink from horrors such as War
Spreads o’er the affrighted world? With swimming eye,
Back on the past they throw their mournful looks,
And see the Temple, which they fondly hoped
Reason would raise to Liberty, destroyed
By ruffian hands; while, on the ruined mass,
Flushed with hot blood, the Fiend of Discord sits
In savage triumph; mocking every plea
Of policy and justice, as she shows
The headless corse of one, whose only crime
Was being born a Monarch—Mercy turns,
From spectacle so dire, her swollen eyes;
And Liberty, with calm, unruffled brow
Magnanimous, as conscious of her strength
In Reason’s panoply, scorns to distain
Her righteous cause with carnage, and resigns
To Fraud and Anarchy the infuriate crowd.—
What is the promise of the infant year
To those, who (while the poor but peaceful hind
Pens, unmolested, the increasing flock
Of his rich master in this sea-fenced isle)
Survey, in neighboring countries, scenes that make
The sick heart shudder; and the man, who thinks,
Blush for his species? There the trumpet’s voice
Drowns the soft warbling of the woodland choir;
And violets, lurking in their turfy beds
Beneath the flowering thorn, are stained with blood.
There fall, at once, the spoiler and the spoiled;
While War, wide-ravaging, annihilates
The hope of cultivation; gives to Fiends,
The meager, ghastly Fiends of Want and Woe,
The blasted land—There, taunting in the van
Of vengeance-breathing armies, Insult stalks;
And, in the ranks, “Famine, and Sword, and Fire,
Crouch for employment.”
Joe – On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year
By Lord Byron (George Gordon)
On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year
'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;
The worm—the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!
The fire that on my bosom preys
Is lone as some Volcanic Isle;
No torch is kindled at its blaze
A funeral pile.
The hope, the fear, the jealous care,
The exalted portion of the pain
And power of Love I cannot share,
But wear the chain.
But 'tis not thus—and 'tis not here
Such thoughts should shake my Soul, nor now,
Where Glory decks the hero's bier,
Or binds his brow.
The Sword, the Banner, and the Field,
Glory and Greece around us see!
The Spartan borne upon his shield
Was not more free.
Awake (not Greece—she is awake!)
Awake, my Spirit! Think through whom
Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake
And then strike home!
Tread those reviving passions down
Unworthy Manhood—unto thee
Indifferent should the smile or frown
Of beauty be.
If thou regret'st thy Youth, why live?
The land of honourable Death
Is here:—up to the Field, and give
Away thy breath!
Seek out—less often sought than found—
A Soldier's Grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy Ground,
And take thy rest.
Kavita – Stanzas to a Hindoo Air by Lord Byron
Oh! my lonely--lonely--lonely--Pillow!
Where is my lover? where is my lover?
Is it his bark which my dreary dreams discover?
Far--far away! and alone along the billow?
Oh! my lonely-lonely-lonely-Pillow!
Why must my head ache where his gentle brow lay?
How the long night flags lovelessly and slowly,
And my head droops over thee like the willow!
Oh! thou, my sad and solitary Pillow!
Send me kind dreams to keep my heart from breaking,
In return for the tears I shed upon thee waking;
Let me not die till he comes back o'er the billow.
Then if thou wilt--no more my lonely Pillow,
In one embrace let these arms again enfold him,
And then expire of the joy-but to behold him!
Oh! my lone bosom!-oh! my lonely Pillow!
KumKum – What the Thrush Said by John Keats
(From A Letter To John Hamilton Reynolds)
O thou whose face hath felt the Winter's wind,
Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist
And the black elm tops 'mong the freezing stars,
To thee the spring will be a harvest-time.
O thou, whose only book has been the light
Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on
Night after night when Phoebus was away,
To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn.
O fret not after knowledge -- I have none,
And yet my song comes native with the warmth.
O fret not after knowledge -- I have none,
And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens
At thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.
Priya – The Lady of the Lake, by Sir Walter Scott
Canto III Stanza 29
XXIX. Hymn to the Virgin.
Ave. Maria! maiden mild!
Listen to a maiden's prayer!
Thou canst hear though from the wild,
Thou canst save amid despair.
Safe may we sleep beneath thy care,
Though banished, outcast, and reviled—
Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer;
Mother, hear a suppliant child!
Ave Maria!
Ave Maria! undefiled!
The flinty couch we now must share
Shall seem with down of eider piled,
If thy protection hover there.
The murky cavern's heavy air
Shall breathe of balm if thou hast smiled;
Then, Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer,
Mother, list a suppliant child!
Ave Maria!
Ave. Maria! stainless styled!
Foul demons of the earth and air,
From this their wonted haunt exiled,
Shall flee before thy presence fair.
We bow us to our lot of care,
Beneath thy guidance reconciled:
Hear for a maid a maiden's prayer,
And for a father hear a child!
Ave Maria!
Shoba – To Toussaint Louverture by William Wordsworth
Toussaint, the most unhappy Man of Men!
Whether the rural Milk-maid by her cow
Sing in thy hearing, or thy head be now
Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s earless den;--
O miserable Chieftain! where and when
Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not; do thou
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:
Though fallen Thyself, never to rise again,
Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;
There’s not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and Man’s unconquerable mind.
Thomo – Rima LIII Volverán las oscuras golondrinas (Excerpt) by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
ORIGINAL SPANISH
Volverán las oscuras golondrinas
en tu balcón sus nidos a colgar,
y otra vez con el ala a sus cristales
jugando llamarán.
Pero aquéllas que el vuelo refrenaban
tu hermosura y mi dicha al contemplar,
aquéllas que aprendieron nuestros nombres...
ésas... ¡no volverán!
Volverán las tupidas madreselvas
de tu jardín las tapias a escalar,
y otra vez a la tarde, aún más hermosas,
sus flores se abrirán.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
The dark swallows will return
to hang their nests upon your balcony,
and once again, with beating wings,
will tap upon your windowpanes.
But those that paused in flight
to gaze upon your beauty and my happiness,
those that learned our very names...
those... will never return.
The thick honeysuckle vines will return
to climb the walls of your garden,
and once again, at evening, lovelier still,
their blossoms will unfold.
Zakia – WHY art thou silent! Is thy love a plant. By William Wordsworth
Why art thou silent! Is thy love a plant
Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air
Of absence withers what was once so fair?
Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?
Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant—
Bound to thy service with unceasing care,
The mind’s least generous wish a mendicant
For nought but what thy happiness could spare.
Speak— though this soft warm heart, once free to hold
A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,
Be left more desolate, more dreary cold
Than a forsaken bird’s-nest filled with snow
‘Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine—
Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know.
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