So a while back I got hooked on Game of Thrones (sorry, people who are sick of it *sheepish look*) and that's really my only excuse for this post. That and my habit of sticking Shakespeare quotes onto everything.

Many thanks as well to gehayi and lareinenoire for helping pick out the quotes I used. :) All of them are freely usable -- that's what they're for, after all! I like credit/comments but I'm not going to, like, hunt you down or something (even though it would be in the spirit of the show to do so).

( 32 Game of Thrones icons with Shakespeare quotes )

And because there are a lot of not-that-instantly-recognizable quotes in here, I did make up a guide to them. I was going to give you line numbers, but most online sources don't have them and I didn't want to spend the entire evening poring over a hot Riverside, so I got lazy. I totally recommend Open Source Shakespeare for all your Shakespeare searching needs, though. :)

( sources of the quotes )

So I was in the middle of a temper tantrum just now because people on my twitter feed have been tweeting about seeing Palestinian Richard II at the Globe to Globe Festival, an event that has filled me with occasional rage and disappointment because I CANNOT AFFORD TO GO SEE IT and EVEN IF I COULD I HAVE CLASSES TO TEACH.

EXCEPT.

The estimable fuunsaiki has informed me that the BBC and the Arts Council are doing a thing called The Space which is carrying the productions for free online (for, apparently, a limited time, but still, free online). And it works outside the UK, or at least some of it does (I am watching a South African adaptation of Venus and Adonis RIGHT NOW) and if you have an ipad or whatever there is, to coin a phrase, an app for that.

SO. I WILL GET TO SEE INTERNATIONAL SHAKESPEARE. MY LIFE: SUDDENLY A BILLION TIMES MORE AWESOME.

(p.s. GLOBE PARTY AT KZOO Y/Y/MFY?)

I'm not sure I actually think this poem's depiction of the present state of poetry and gender studies is accurate, but Margaret Cavendish is cool, so I'm posting it anyway.

Sonnets Uncorseted
Maxine Kumin

1

She was twenty-two. He was fifty-three,
a duke, a widower with ten children.

They met in Paris, each in exile from
the English Civil War. Virginal

and terrified, still she agreed
to marry him. Though women were mere chattel

spinsterhood made you invisible
in the sixteen hundreds. Marriage was arranged

—hers a rare exception. Despite a dowry
a woman never could own property.

Your womb was just for rent. Birth control
contrivances—a paste of ants, cow dung

mashed with honey, tree bark with pennyroyal—
all too often failed the applicant.


( If anything went wrong you bled to death... )

Amoretti, Sonnet 26
Edmund Spenser

Sweet is the Rose, but growes vpon a brere;
Sweet is the Iunipere, but sharpe his bough;
sweet is the Eglantine, but pricketh nere;
sweet is the firbloome, but his braunches rough
Sweet is the Cypresse, but his rynd is tough,
sweet is the nut, but bitter is his pill;
sweet is the broome-flowre, but yet sowre enough;
and sweet is Moly, but his root is ill.
So euery sweet with soure is tempred still,
that maketh it be coueted the more:
for easie things that may be got at will,
most sorts of men doe set but little store.
Why then should I accoumpt of little paine,
that endlesse pleasure shall vnto me gaine.

No worst, there is none
Gerard Manley Hopkins

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old anvil wince and sing —
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief."'

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

Sea Rose
H.D.

Rose, harsh rose,
marred and with stint of petals,
meagre flower, thin,
sparse of leaf,

more precious
than a wet rose
single on a stem—
you are caught in the drift.

Stunted, with small leaf,
you are flung on the sand,
you are lifted
in the crisp sand
that drives in the wind.

Can the spice-rose
drip such acrid fragrance
hardened in a leaf?

The Funeral
John Donne

Whoever comes to shroud me, do not harm
Nor question much
That subtle wreath of hair, which crowns my arm;
The mystery, the sign, you must not touch,
For 'tis my outward soul,
Viceroy to that, which then to heaven being gone,
Will leave this to control
And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution.

For if the sinewy thread my brain lets fall
Through every part
Can tie those parts, and make me one of all,
Those hairs which upward grew, and strength and art
Have from a better brain,
Can better do'it; except she meant that I
By this should know my pain,
As prisoners then are manacled, when they'are condemn'd to die.

Whate'er she meant by'it, bury it with me,
For since I am
Love's martyr, it might breed idolatry,
If into other hands these relics came;
As 'twas humility
To afford to it all that a soul can do,
So, 'tis some bravery,
That since you would have none of me, I bury some of you.

Silentium Amoris
Oscar Wilde

As often-times the too resplendent sun
Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon
Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won
A single ballad from the nightingale,
So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,
And all my sweetest singing out of tune.

And as at dawn across the level mead
On wings impetuous some wind will come,
And with its too harsh kisses break the reed
Which was its only instrument of song,
So my too stormy passions work me wrong,
And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.

But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show
Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung;
Else it were better we should part, and go,
Thou to some lips of sweeter melody,
And I to nurse the barren memory
Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.

The Prisoners
Robert Hayden

Steel doors -- guillotine gates --
of the doorless house closed massively.
We were locked in with loss.

Guards frisked us, marked our wrists,
then let us into the drab Rec Hall --
splotched green walls, high windows barred --

where the dispossessed awaited us.
Hands intimate with knife and pistol,
hands that had cruelly grasped and throttled

clasped ours in welcome. I sensed the plea
of men denied: Believe us human
like yourselves, who but for Grace....

We shared reprieving Hidden Words
revealed by the Godlike imprisoned
One, whose crime was truth.

And I read poems I hoped were true.
It's like you been there, brother, been there,
the scarred young lifer said.

In honor of the presumptive birthday boy, of course. :)

Sonnet 21
William Shakespeare

So is it not with me as with that Muse
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven itself for ornament doth use
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
Making a couplement of proud compare
With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems,
With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare
That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.
O let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair
As any mother's child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fixed in heaven's air:
Let them say more than like of hearsay well;
I will not praise that purpose not to sell.

One of the best-known and most enigmatic of medieval lyrics.

Maiden in the mor lay
Anon., 14th c. English

Maiden in the mor lay,
In the mor lay,
Sevenyst fulle
Sevenist fulle.
Maiden in the mor lay,
In the mor lay,
Sevenistes fulle ant a day.

Welle was hire mete:
Wat was hire mete?
The primerole ant the,
The primerole ant the,
Welle was hire mete:
Wat was hire mete?
The primerole ant the violet.

( Welle was hire dryng... )

Mowing
Robert Frost

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

Beth asked for today's entry to be "something comforting, like A.A. Milne," so, as per her request, one of my favorites. ;)

The King's Breakfast
A.A. Milne

The King asked
The Queen, and
The Queen asked
The Dairymaid:
"Could we have some butter for
The Royal slice of bread?"
The Queen asked the Dairymaid,
The Dairymaid
Said, "Certainly,
I'll go and tell the cow
Now
Before she goes to bed."

( The Dairymaid / She curtsied, / And went and told / The Alderney... )

To Everlasting Oblivion
John Marston

Thou mighty gulf, insatiate cormorant,
Deride me not, though I seem petulant
To fall into thy chops. Let others pray
Forever their fair poems flourish may.
But as for me, hungry Oblivion,
Devour me quick, accept my orison,
My earnest prayers, which do importune thee,
With gloomy shade of thy still empery
To veil both me and my rude poesy.

Far worthier lines in silence of thy state
Do sleep securely, free from love or hate,
From which this living ne'er can be exempt,
But whilst it breathes will hate and fury tempt.
Then close his eyes with thy all-dimming hand,
Which not right glorious actions can withstand.
Peace, hateful tongues, I now in silence pace;
Unless some hound do wake me from my place,
I with this sharp, yet well-meant poesy,
Will sleep secure, right free from injury
Of cankered hate or rankest villainy.

Achilles' Song
Robert Duncan

I do not know more than the Sea tells me,
told me long ago, or I overheard Her
telling distant roar upon the sands,
waves of meaning in the cradle of whose
sounding and resounding power I
slept.

Manchild, She sang

--or was it a storm uplifting the night
into a moving wall in which
I was carried as if a mothering nest had
been made in dread?

the wave of a life darker than my
life before me sped, and I,
larger than I was, grown dark as
the shoreless depth,
arose from myself, shaking the last
light of the sun
from me.

( Manchild, she said, / Come back to the shores of what you are. )

Life
George Herbert

I made a posy, while the day ran by:
"Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band."
But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away,
And withered in my hand.

My hand was next to them, and then my heart;
I took, without more thinking, in good part
Time's gentle admonition;
Who did so sweetly death's sad taste convey,
Making my mind to smell my fatal day,
Yet, sug'ring the suspicion.

Farewell dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures.
I follow straight without complaints or grief,
Since, if my scent be good, I care not if
It be as short as yours.

On the Grasshopper and the Cricket
John Keats

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's -- he takes the lead
In summer luxury, -- he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

The Convergence of the Twain
Thomas Hardy

(Lines on the loss of the "Titanic")

I
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

II
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

III
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

IV
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

( Dim moon-eyed fishes near / Gaze at the gilded gear... )

This one is probably best known for John Dowland's lovely musical setting of it, which is included at the bottom of the post. The Dowland setting doesn't include the second verse, I guess because nobody wants to sing about weasels and apes.

The lowest trees have tops
Attrib. Sir Edward Dyer

The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall,
The fly her spleen, the little spark his heat;
Hairs cast their shadows, though they be but small,
And bees have stings, although they be not great.
Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs,
And love is love, in beggars and in kings.

The ermine hath the fairest skin on earth,
Yet doth she choose the weasel for her peer;
The panther hath a sweet perfumed breath,
Yet doth she suffer apes to draw her near.
No flower more fresh than is the damask rose,
Yet next her side the nettle often grows.

Where waters smoothest run, deep'st are the fords,
The dial stirs, though none perceive it move;
The firmest faith is in the fewest words;*
The turtles sing not love, and yet they love.
True hearts have eyes and ears, no tongues to speak;
They hear and see, and sigh, and then they break.

( Dowland's version, performed by the Chicago Early Music Consort )

*The text in the New Oxford Book of Sixteenth-Century Poetry, ed. Emrys Jones, reads "The fairest faith is in the sweetest words." I have retained the other textual variants, but went with the better-known version of this line, because Jones' reading makes no sense in the context of the poem.

Many a phrase has the English language
Emily Dickinson

Many a phrase has the English language --
I have heard but one --
Low as the laughter of the Cricket,
Loud, as the Thunder's Tongue --

Murmuring, like old Caspian Choirs,
When the Tide's a' lull --
Saying itself in new inflection --
Like a Whippoorwill --

Breaking in bright Orthography
On my simple sleep --
Thundering its Prospective --
Till I stir, and weep --

Not for the Sorrow, done me --
But the push of Joy --
Say it again, Saxon!
Hush -- Only to me!

Pillow
Li-Young Lee

There's nothing I can't find under there.
Voices in the trees, the missing pages
of the sea.

Everything but sleep.

And night is a river bridging
the speaking and the listening banks,

a fortress, undefended and inviolate.

There's nothing that won't fit under it:
fountains clogged with mud and leaves,
the houses of my childhood.

And night begins when my mother's fingers
let go of the thread
they've been tying and untying
to touch toward our fraying story's hem.

Night is the shadow of my father's hands
setting the clock for resurrection.

Or is it the clock unraveled, the numbers flown?

There's nothing that hasn't found home there:
discarded wings, lost shoes, a broken alphabet.

Everything but sleep. And night begins

with the first beheading
of the jasmine, its captive fragrance
rid at last of burial clothes.

I moot go walke the wode so wilde
Anon. English, 15th century

I moot go walke the wode so wilde,
And wandren heer and ther
In drede and deedly fere;
For wher I trusted I am bigiled,
And al for oon.

Thus am I banysshed from my blisse
By craft and fals pretence,
Fautles wythoute offence;
As of retourne no certeyn is,
And al for fere of oon.

My bed shal be under the grene-wode tree,
A toft of brakes under myn hed,
As oon from joye were fled;
Thus from my lyf day by day I flee,
And al for oon.

The rennyng stremes shullen be my drynke,
Accornes shullen be my fode;
No-thyng may do me good
But whan of thy beautee I do thenke --
And al for love of oon.

The Little Vagabond
William Blake

Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold,
But the Ale-house is healthy and pleasant and warm;
Besides I can tell where I am used well,
Such usage in heaven will never do well.

But if at the Church they would give us some Ale,
And a pleasant fire our souls to regale,
We'd sing and we'd pray all the live-long day,
Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray.

Then the Parson might preach, & drink, & sing,
And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring;
And modest dame Lurch, who is always at Church,
Would not have bandy children, nor fasting, nor birch.

And God, like a father rejoicing to see
His children as pleasant and happy as he,
Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel,
But kiss him, & give him both drink and apparel.

Ludwig van Beethoven's Return to Vienna
Rita Dove

Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn,
or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me....
-- The Heiligenstadt Testament

Three miles from my adopted city
lies a village where I came to peace.
The world there was a calm place,
even the great Danube no more
than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape
by a girl's careless hand. Into this stillness

I had been ordered to recover.
The hills were gold with late summer;
my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen,
situated upstairs in the back of a cottage
at the end of the Herrengasse.
From my window I could see onto the courtyard
where a linden tree twined skyward —
leafy umbilicus canted toward light,
warped in the very act of yearning —
and I would feed on the sun as if that alone
would dismantle the silence around me.

( At first I raged. Then music raged in me... )