Ballads and Sonnets - Has the heaven came down to earth OR dreams blossomed in the sky

Ballads and Sonnets – Has the heaven came down to earth OR dreams blossomed in the sky

 

                                                 

There was a big plant in my courtyard adjacent to my bedroom windows blossomed like a variant of huge Jasmine flower.  The fragrance of the giant thick  white flower used to be so intoxicating like an invitation for a  “Gandharvan” (a lover boy from the God Indra’s palace in the heaven in search of youthful earthly beauties) or a “Yakshi”  (a beautiful Apsara turned witch who seduces and then kill the love-struck young men). This is a flashback down the memory lane from my adolescent years.  The aura of the atmosphere becomes irresistible especially in a full moonlit night.  I am blessed with a beautiful landscape in my native town full of flowers, greenery and flowing streams.

In terms with the realities today, my city Mumbai was sweltering in sizzling October heat for the past few days.  All of a sudden, out of the blue, clouds appears in the sky towards the evening and culminates in thunder and lightning accompanied by heavy rains.  The atmosphere gets gloomy and the mind frame becomes dejected and lost.

Today, I am writing this BLOG post in such a saddened evening almost lost all cheers.  The different types of poetry and songs including the  “Yaksha Gana”  (a song written by a Yaksha separated from his loving wife behind the mount Everest in Himalayas and sent it through a passing cloud to deliver it to his beloved) attracts me now.  The world of Ballads and Sonnets invite to take a psychedelic colorful dip in the holy river Ganges and a ride with ice skating in the snow-capped mountains of Himalayas resting from the cozy comfort of my master bedroom adjacent to the terrace balcony of the multi-storied tower building.

I look forward to tomorrow afternoon when in all probability I will be publishing this Blog post.  Afternoons are generally soothing, comforting and caring experience for me.  The sun in 120 degrees cares my person and evokes a beautiful feeling which is beyond imagination.  I feel like singing and enjoying  Ballads and Sonnets in the afternoons.

 

                   

Poetry is literary work in which the expression of feelings and ideas is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; poems collectively or as a genre of literature.

A ballad  is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally "dancing songs".

Sonnet definition -

A lyric poem of fourteen lines, often about love, that follows one of several strict conventional patterns of rhyme. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Keats, and William Shakespeare are poets known for their sonnets.

Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature.

Along with other poems in Lyrical Ballads, it was a signal shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British Romantic literature.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98 and published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner relates the experiences of a sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage. The mariner stops a man who is on the way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The wedding-guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience to fear to fascination as the mariner's story progresses, as can be seen in the language style: Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood in different parts of the poem.

The mariner's tale begins with his ship departing on its journey. Despite initial good fortune, the ship is driven south by a storm and eventually reaches Antarctic waters. An albatross appears and leads them out of the ice jam where they are stuck, but even as the albatross is praised by the ship's crew, the mariner shoots the bird:

The crew is angry with the mariner, believing the albatross brought the south wind that led them out of the Antarctic. However, the sailors change their minds when the weather becomes warmer and the mist disappears:

However, they made a grave mistake in supporting this crime, as it arouses the wrath of spirits who then pursue the ship "from the land of mist and snow"; the south wind that had initially led them from the land of ice now sends the ship into uncharted waters near the equator, where it is becalmed.

The sailors change their minds again and blame the mariner for the torment of their thirst. In anger, the crew forces the mariner to wear the dead albatross about his neck, perhaps to illustrate the burden he must suffer from killing it, or perhaps as a sign of regret:

With my cross-bow,

I shot the albatross

Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,

That bring the fog and mist.  
                                              

         

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot - Oh Christ!

That ever this should be.

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs,

Upon the slimy sea.

Ah! Well a-day! What evil looks

Had I from old and young!

Instead of the cross, the albatross

About my neck was hung

The air is cut away before,

And closes from behind.

Oh! Dream of joy! Is this indeed

The light-house top I see?

Is this the hill? Is this the kirk?

Is this mine own countree?                                                            

We drifted o'er the harbour-bar,                             

And I with sobs did pray—

O let me be awake, my God!

Or let me sleep always.

He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.

After relaying the story, the mariner leaves, and the wedding guest returns home, and wakes the next morning "a sadder and a wiser man".

 

    

    

                   

A sonnet is a poetic form which originated in Italy; Giacomo Da Lentini is credited with its invention. The term sonnet is derived from the Italian word sonetto (from Old Provençal sonet a little poem, from son song, from Latin sonus a sound).

From the Italian sonetto, which means “a little sound or song," the sonnet is a popular classical form that has compelled poets for centuries.

The Shakespeare sonnets are considered by many to be the most romantic poems ever written.

The Best Sonnets of All Time.

The best sonnets in the English language include modern sonnets, postmodern sonnets, Elizabethan sonnets, Victorian sonnets and Romantic sonnets. They include Petrarchan, Spenserian, Shakespearean, curtal, blank verse and free verse sonnets. There are sonnets by contemporary, historical and unknown/anonymous poets. There are classic, classical, nontraditional and avant garde sonnets. There are sad sonnets, funny sonnets and whimsical sonnets. There are sonnets with topics of love, romance, virginity/chastity, lust, sex, courtship, weddings, marriage, parting/separation/divorce, friendship, hatred, nature, life, death, joy, despair, science and philosophy. There are sonnets about Christianity and other religions and non-religions such as skepticism, agnosticism and atheism. There are English sonnets, American sonnets, Canadian sonnets, Australian sonnets, sonnets from the Portuguese, and even a Palestinian sonnet translated into English. There are sonnets worthy of being memorized, recited, discussed, taught and analyzed. The sonnets were written by poets as diverse as Conrad Aiken, William Blake, Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, John Clare, Hart Crane, e. e. Cummings, Emily Dickinson, Ernest Dowson, William Dunbar, Mary Elizabeth Frye, Robert Frost, Robert Hayden, Seamus Heaney, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Keats, D. H. Lawrence, Robert Mezey, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Richard Moore, Wilfred Owen, William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, Walt Whitman, Richard Wilbur, William Wordsworth and William Butler Yeats.

Do not stand at my grave and weep                            
by Mary Elizabeth Frye                                                              

Do not stand at my grave and weep:
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starshine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry:
I am not there; I did not die.

Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar [1460-1525] 
                                                  

               


Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest in bounty and in beauty clear
and in every virtue that is held most dear―
except only that you are merciless.

Into your garden, today, I followed you;
there I saw flowers of freshest hue,
both white and red, delightful to see,
and wholesome herbs, waving resplendently―
yet nowhere, one leaf or flower of rue.

I fear that March with his last arctic blast
has slain my fair rose of pallid and gentle cast,
whose piteous death does my heart such pain
that, if I could, I would compose her roots again―
so comforting her bowering leaves have been.

In My Craft Or Sullen Art 

                                                        
 







by Dylan Thomas 

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labor by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spin drift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

Song                                                                                      

by John Donne                                                                

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devils foot;
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.




If thou best born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights
Till Age snow white hairs on thee;
Thou, when thou return wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.

Alone       
                                                                                            

                                                                                          
by Edgar Alan Poe                                                   

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then—in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view

Full Fathom Five                                                                                

                                                  
by William Shakespeare

Full fathom five thy father lies;
    Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
    Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
        Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them — ding-dong, bell.

The Autumn     
                                                                  

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning                                                 

Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
Do hymn an autumn sound.
The summer sun is faint on them --
The summer flowers depart --
Sit still -- as all transformed to stone,
Except your musing heart.

How there you sat in summer-time,
May yet be in your mind;
And how you heard the green woods sing
Beneath the freshening wind.
Though the same wind now blows around,
You would its blast recall;
For every breath that stirs the trees,
Doth cause a leaf to fall.

The dearest hands that clasp our hands, --
Their presence may be o'er;
The dearest voice that meets our ear,
That tone may come no more!
Youth fades; and then, the joys of youth,
Which once refreshed our mind,
Shall come -- as, on those sighing woods,
The chilling autumn wind.

Leaning Into The Afternoons                        

                    

                                                                         

by Pablo Neruda

Leaning into the afternoons,
I cast my sad nets towards your oceanic eyes.
There, in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames;
Its arms turning like a drowning man's.
I send out red signals across your absent eyes
That wave like the sea, or the beach by a lighthouse.
You keep only darkness my distant female;
>From your regard sometimes, the coast of dread emerges.

Leaning into the afternoons,
I fling my sad nets to that sea that is thrashed
By your oceanic eyes.
The birds of night peck at the first stars
That flash like my soul when I love you.
The night, gallops on its shadowy mare
Shedding blue tassels over the land.

From Spring Days To Winter (For Music)  

                                       

by Oscar Wilde

In the glad springtime when leaves were green,
O merrily the throstle sings!
I sought, amid the tangled sheen,
Love whom mine eyes had never seen,
O the glad dove has golden wings!

Between the blossoms red and white,
O merrily the throstle sings!
My love first came into my sight,
O perfect vision of delight,
O the glad dove has golden wings!

The yellow apples glowed like fire,
O merrily the throstle sings!
O Love too great for lip or lyre,
Blown rose of love and of desire,
O the glad dove has golden wings!

But now with snow the tree is grey,
Ah, sadly now the throstle sings!
My love is dead: ah! well-a-day,
See at her silent feet I lay
A dove with broken wings!
Ah, Love! ah, Love! that thou wert slain -
Fond Dove, fond Dove return again!

To A Young Beauty       
                                                    

                                                        

by William Butler Yeats

Dear fellow-artist, why so free
With every sort of company,
With every Jack and Jill?
Choose your companions from the best;
Who draws a bucket with the rest
Soon topples down the hill.

You may, that mirror for a school,
Be passionate, not bountiful
As common beauties may,
Who were not born to keep in trim
With old Ezekiel's cherubim
But those of Beauvarlet.

I know what wages beauty gives,
How hard a life her setvant lives,
Yet praise the winters gone:
There is not a fool can call me friend,
And I may dine at journey's end
With Landor and with Donne.

The dew settled on the grass in the morning inviting you to step on it with naked feet and experience a thrilling YOGA exercise.  A beautiful mind rests in a healthy body.  A nice persona is developed from a beautiful and peaceful mind.  In my younger days when reading was a passion, I used to enjoy pastoral elegies and listened to the shepherd and boatman songs with greater interest and enthusiasm.

The Ballads and Sonnets were the food for my soul and soothing, comforting existence.  It wipes out and eradicates all the bruises and injuries inflicted on your mind and transforms you to a beautiful human being.

This BLOG finds me being humane and that  is a noble virtue which  lightens up the cheers of a beautiful mind.