Digging down for the meaning of the thing – my poem! - Edmund Gosse’s touchstone lines from the Tempest re-occur.
An exhortation to self as much as anything, a piece to keep in mind, like a consequent line in the play on conscience – and where lies that? – I have it by heart. Imperfectly. I tend to confuse the plurals and must tamper with my variations to find the proper meaning, much as the piece incurs.
Finding the twin principles in my verse, and my Ariel, running through Hyde Park, I am at the Tempest again. Miranda to Caliban:
...I pitied thee.
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour
One thing or other. When thou didst not, savage,
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble
Like a thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes
With words that made them know…
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour
One thing or other. When thou didst not, savage,
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble
Like a thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes
With words that made them know…
No comments:
Post a Comment