Eloquent, Beautiful & Divine
Uploaded by kathylambchop on Nov 07, 2002
Poetry is only a mere fifteen lines or so in length, yet it is one of
the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things. (Matthew Arnold)
As much joy it has brought to many readers, there are many more who are unaware of this hidden secret. It is my honour {pleasure} to unlock the door and share the many pleasures of poetry in Eloquent, Beautiful & Divine. Containing passionate emotions of the Elizabethan period and concluding with the alluring Cavalier Poets, I believe my anthology contains poems of the most important period. They will hopefully craft striking images for my readers through the writer’s use of various poetic techniques.
In the opening section of my compilation- Everlasting Elizabethan, I have selected the finest poets of that era such as Even Such is Time by Sir Walter Raleigh; extracts from “The Faerie Queene” by Edmund Spenser; With How Sad Steps, O Moon by Sir Philip Sidney; and Michael Dayton’s The Ballad of Agincourt. Their popularity (still to the present day) is due to the poets’ talent of expression stimulated by the lively world of music and excitement of the Renaissance. Even a shoemaker had to be able “to sound the trumpets or play upon the flute, and bear his part in a three-man’s song, and readily reckon his tools with rhyme”.
The sensuous theme of innocent love and beauty flowed out of every pen during the period, but none so memorable then the poems of William Shakespeare. My Mistress’s Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun which I believe is the most represented poem of that time, has been included in the first section of my anthology.
This is a reflective sonnet dedicated to the mysterious “Dark Lady”. Whilst poets in this period focused on physical beauty and deportment, Shakespeare believed that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.
Throughout the poem, he describes his love as having eyes “nothing like the sun”; lips not red enough; and cheeks not rosy enough. Every bit of her features doesn’t represent the “ideal” lady of that time. If the final couplet were neglected, the reader would think that Shakespeare had an immense hatred towards his mistress:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
This sonnet of three quatrains and his beliefs in the final couplet was Shakespeare’s typical structure. Written with an ironic tone and simple diction, visual...