Category Archives: A walk-through of classic poetry

Classic Poetry is awesome! It’s not boring. Really, I promise. These classic poems will make you laugh, cry, and say goodbye. Goodbye to modern poetry that is :)

The Purpose of Poetry

March 4, 2009

Before we go on our walk-through of classic poetry, let’s take a moment and reflect on the purpose of poetry.  In my mind, poetry has but one purpose: to show us the best of things in life – not in intellectual ideals for us to ponder – poetry shows us the best of things in life by convincing our hearts that there really are things in the world worth fighting for, things worth longing for, things of a rarer substance than the humdrum malaise that often crowds our days. “When we are unhurried and wise we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute value, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of reality” Henry David Thoreau. Poetry is for the unhurried and wise, those who long to discover better things in life than the petty fears and pleasures that often come to find us.

This is what I believe: it is the duty and privilege of every person to spend a time pondering those timeless, meddlesome questions that have troubled the whole of mankind. It is his duty, I say, to spend a season simply pondering his life in its whole economy, dipping his toes within the stream of time through which he often swims – and while there, to stand in awe of that grand, elusive scheme intertwining all of humankind. Our only challenge is can we gain the stillness and wisdom to truly be inspired by the timeless feeling in the poems we read? That is my challenge to any who are willing to take the walk through of classic poetry: to, for a time, wipe away the petty fears and pleasures, and to realize that only great and worthy things have any permenant and absolute value.

On this walk-through, we’ll take a look at a lot of different themes. Classical poetry has the best renditions of love poems, and that’s where I want to begin. Of anything that has the potential to inspire the sleeping spirit, the telling of love can invigorate those childlike ideals and fairytale notions most of us have long forgotten about. From there we’ll wander through poems of memory and loss, of the brevity of time, of nature, and of the human condition in general.

There is such a large composition of classical poetry, most of which the average reader would never enjoy. I myself only really latch on to small number of the overwhelming supply. But the ones that do stir the soul are like buried treasure. I feel compelled to share and highlight them, to have them stir within others those noble aspirations that are more and more rare in our modern world. I hope you enjoy them.

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Classic Poems #1, Recuerdo, by Edna St. Vincent Millay

March 4, 2009

The first poem on our walk through is my favorite love poem. It’s by Edna St Vincent Millay, an American poet who wrote mostly in the early 1900’s. It’s called “Recuerdo,” which means remembrance. The reason this poem is my favorite romantic poem, is because Edna highlights that wonderful, carefree feeling of abandon that comes when two people are in love. You get this sense from the very first two lines:


We were very tired, we were very merry –
we had gone back and forth all night upon the ferry…”

From the very start, she sets up a peculiar scenario that begs the question in the readers mind: why in the world would someone want to ride back and forth on a ferry all night? It’s only because the couple so helplessly in love with one another that it doesn’t matter to them what in the world they’re doing, as long as they’re doing it together. That’s all I’ll give you for now. I don’t want to spoil the poem. We’ll talk more after. Recuerdo, by Edna St. Vincent Millay.


We were very tired, we were very merry –
We had gone back and forth all night upon the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable –
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.


We were very tired, we were very merry –
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.


We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and the pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Wasn’t that an amazing poem? The way she tells the story, with the random antics of the couple, showing how little they care about the happenings around them – doesn’t it showcase that wonderful, carefree abandon that comes with falling in love? Not only that, but the last two lines of this poem are some of the most powerful words in any poem. These two lines speak powerfully of the goodness that naturally flows from being in love. I love how the focus suddenly shifts. All throughout the story, the couple is in their own world, oblivious to the world around them. But then, suddenly, they come across an old woman, and the goodness immediately pours out of them. Because of the love they share, they can’t help but want to share goodness with those around them. And they do, keeping only what they need to continue onward to wherever fate may take them. I hope you enjoyed this poem. I’d love to hear your own thoughts.


Also posted in Romantic Poems – 2 Comments

Classic Poems #2, The Indian to His Love, by W.B. Yeats

March 4, 2009

The next love poem on our walk-through is by W.B. Yeats called “The Indian to His Love.” This poem contains probably the most beautiful of any stanza that I’ve seen describing love. The imagery he describes in the first stanza, followed by the way the two characters interact with the scene and each other, makes the heart long to one day find something as magical and wonderful as the poem describes. That’s all I’ll give you for now. We’ll talk more afterwards.


The island dreams under the dawn
And great boughs drop tranquillity;
The peahens dance on a smooth lawn,
A parrot sways upon a tree,
Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea.


Here we will moor our lonely ship
And wander ever with woven hands,
Murmuring softly lip to lip,
Along the grass, along the sands,
Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands:


How we alone of mortals are
Hid under quiet boughs apart,
While our love grows an Indian star,
A meteor of the burning heart,
One with the tide that gleams, the wings that gleam and dart,


The heavy boughs, the burnished dove
That moans and sighs a hundred days:
How when we die our shades will rove,
When eve has hushed the feathered ways,
With vapoury footsole by the water’s drowsy blaze.
WB Yeats

Before we talk about any of the lines, I want to take a moment to deconstruct the format of the poem, because your going to come across it again. Yeats uses a very powerful combination to draw us into his world, longing for what he’s described. In the first stanza, he describes the imagery of nature. If one only read the first stanza, they would have no idea that the poem was a love poem. But by first describing the beauty of the scene, he sets up the poem in a wonderful to describe his two characters and how they interact with it. It is a very powerful formula, and we’ll see it again in subsequent poems. The particular stanza that I want to highlight is the second one.


Here we will moor our lonely ship
And wander ever with woven hands,
Murmuring softly lip to lip,
Along the grass, along the sands,
Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands:

This is, in my mind, the most beautiful description of love from any poem I’ve read. The duality of feeling, of a lonely ship and woven hands, it elicits a feeling of sanctification, that these two have found something far above the rest of the world, that they are set apart and hidden from the rest of the corruption of mankind. And I love the tender descriptions of murmuring softly lip to lip as they slowly wander their own magical island about how far away the rest of the weary world is.

Part of me thinks this poem would be more powerful if the second two stanzas were left out. In some ways they’re just a reiteration of what has already been said. The third stanza begins:


How we alone of mortals are
Hid under quiet boughs apart,

This feeling has already been explored in the second stanza as the couple “murmurs how far away are the unquiet lands.” But I love how the last stanza begins to talk about the brevity of time and the fatal condition of mankind that all good things must come to an end. It is a powerful wrap up to the story. I hope you enjoyed it. Give the second stanza another read through.


Also posted in Romantic Poems – 0 Comments

Classic Poems #3, To Emma, by John Keats

March 4, 2009

The next poem I selected is by John Keats. I wanted it to follow WB Yeats’ poem because it uses the same format of the previous poem by WB Yeats. If you remember it, he uses the entire first stanza to relay his vision of the magical beauty of nature to then tell of his two characters and how they respond to it and to one another. I hope you enjoy. The poem is called “To Emma,” and it’s by John Keats.


O come, dearest Emma! the rose is full blown,
And the riches of Flora are lavishly strown;
The air is all softness, and crystal the streams,
And the west is resplendently cloathed in beams.


We will hasten, my fair, to the opening glades,
The quaintly carv’d seats, and the freshening shades;
Where the fairies are chaunting their evening hymns,
And in the last sun-beam the sylph lightly swims.


And when thou art weary, I’ll find thee a bed,
Of mosses, and flowers, to pillow thy head;
There, beauteous Emma, I’ll sit at thy feet,
While my story of love I enraptur’d repeat.


So fondly I’ll breathe, and so softly I’ll sigh,
Thou wilt think that some amorous zephyr is nigh;
Ah! no–as I breathe it, I press thy fair knee,
And then, thou wilt know that the sigh comes from me.


Then why, lovely girl, should we lose all these blisses?
That mortal’s a fool who such happiness misses;
So smile acquiescence, and give me thy hand,
With love-looking eyes, and with voice sweetly bland.
John Keats

John Keats is a master of imagery. Right away in the first stanza, we’re drawn into a beautiful world of description. Where others might say something like, “to the left there lay a beautiful sunset,” Keats writes, “And the west is resplendently clothed in beams.” But he doesn’t stop after the first stanza. We see this mesmerizing imagery all throughout the poem.

But what I probably love the most about this poem is that, despite the fact that it’s clearly a love poem, Keats tells us very little about Emma. The entire poem is focused around his love for her, how amazing she is in his eyes, how he would love nothing more than to run away with her into the beauty of nature, all the while telling his “story of love I enraptur’d repeat.”

It’s an odd combination. On the one hand, we see his amazing description of the beauty of nature, and on the other hand, we have little or no description of who Emma is. It’s an intriguing duality that’s not easily picked up on.


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Classic Poems #4, A Sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay

March 4, 2009

Now I’d like to make the transition from love poetry to poetry about lost love. Here is another poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It is a sonnet devoted to the memory and pain of a lost love. Where her first poem, “Recuerdo,” was full of life and joy, this poem is full of sadness. In this poem, Edna is bold and almost angry. I love the way she begins, with a statement of defiance against the advice and encouragement of others who had tried to relieve her pain. It is a sonnet, which means that it has a very specific rhyme scheme. The first 8 lines rhyme with one another, while the last 6 rhyme in pairs. If that’s confusing, just wait, you’ll figure it out. So… without further ado, her sonnet:


Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and how my old thoughts abide!
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, — so full of his memory they brim!
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, ‘There is no memory of him here!’
And so stand stricken, so remembering of him!
Edna St. Vincent Millay

The depth of feeling of this poem is extraordinary, taking us on a journey first from anger, then to reminiscence, to fear, and at last to abject despair. I want to break it down in sections because there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that I don’t want you to miss. The poem begins with a bold declaration to friends and those who’ve tried to comfort her. But she doesn’t linger there for long. After only the first two lines of defiance against comfort, she quickly transitions to a tender reminiscence:


I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

Here she tells of her bitterest moments; heightened all the more by those nostalgic settings, like staring out a rain-glazed window in early morning Spring, or walking along a quiet beach at sunset. The next four lines extend her beautiful imagery, and there’s a deep-seated meaning locked up inside them:


The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and how my old thoughts abide!

Here, even though the whole world has changed and become renewed, still for her, the memory and pain are unchanged. The snow has melted, the leaves are gone, and yet… still she sees him in the weeping of the rain. Though the whole world has changed, the remembrance of her love cannot be effaced from the scenery around her. And at last the feeling of the poem transitions to fear. Knowing that time has not brought relief, and knowing of the constant reminders of her loss, she comes to a place of despair, culminated by the last two lines, in which the memory of her loss has not only entrenched itself in all the places where once they were happily in love – now the memory is beginning to take over everywhere else as well.


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