One of the
many joys of reading English literature is to revel in “poetic diction”, that
high-flown style of writing or speaking, which arrests by its rhythms, its
aptness and its imaginative range. In our rich literature, there are many
exponents of this style, mainly recognised poets, and I share with you some of
my favourites, to supplement those of my readers. My selection is conventional
- many are ”golden oldies” which have delighted us for centuries.
1. Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400)
Whan
that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The
droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And
bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of
which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan
Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The
tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath
in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And
smale foweles maken melodye,
That
slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So
priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne
longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
(from
the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales 1387)
Unfamiliar
vocabulary, eccentric spelling, obscure meanings were enough to send a
schoolboy a-quiver with apprehension, but after some robust teaching, and with
access to a glossary, he quickly gave the passage a grin of recognition and set
out on the road of moving through middle English to the modern language.
2.
Thomas Cranmer (1469-1556)
We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like
lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own
hearts.
We have left undone those things which we ought
to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done;
And there is no health in us
And grant, O most merciful Father, for his
sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive
them that trespass against us.
Glory be to the Father, and to the
Son: and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall
be: world without end. Amen.
(From The Book of Common Prayer,
revised 1662)
Prose, of course, and devotional, but I call it
Poetic Prose.
3.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Tomorrow,
and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps
in this petty pace from day to day,
To
the last syllable of recorded time;
And
all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The
way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's
but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That
struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And
then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told
by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying
nothing.
From
Macbeth
Who
would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread
of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveller
returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly
to others that we know not of? Thus, conscience does make cowards of us all, and
thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of
thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard their
currents turn awry and lose the name of action.
From Hamlet
Our revels
now are ended. These our actors,
As I
foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted
into air, into thin air:
And, like
the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d
towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn
temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all
which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like
this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a
rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams
are made on, and our little life
Is rounded
with a sleep.
From The Tempest
Poetic Diction in all its glory!
4. John Donne (1572-1631)
If some king of the earth have so large an extent
of dominion, in North, and South, as that he hath Winter and Summer together in
his dominions, so large an extent East and West, as that he hath day and night
together in his dominions, much more hath God mercy and judgment together: He
brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he can bring thy
Summer out of Winter, though thou hast no Spring? though in the ways of
fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now,
wintered and frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, smothered and
stupefied till now - now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day,
not as in the bud of the spring, but as the Sun at noon to illustrate all
shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries. All occasions
invite his mercies.
(From sermon preached at St Paul’s Christmas Day 1624)
Donne’s peroration is one of the glories of our language.
5. Samuel
Taylor Coleridge (1771-1834)
But oh that deep romantic
chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and inchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil
seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were
breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted Burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of
the dome of pleasure
Floated midway
on the waves;
Where was heard
the mingled measure
From the
fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
(From Kubla Khan
1816)
Coleridge’s visions may
have been opiate-assisted – they possess great power nonetheless.
6. William
Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Then sing,
ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We
in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What
though the radiance which was once so bright
Be
now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of
splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In
years that bring the philosophic mind.
And
O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode
not any severing of our loves!
Yet
in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I
only have relinquished one delight
To
live beneath your more habitual sway.
I
love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even
more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The
innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet.
(From Intimations of Immortality 1807)
To
my mind, Wordsworth’s Poetic Diction surpasses all others.
7.
John Keats
(1795-1821)
Much
have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And
many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round
many western islands have I been
Which
bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft
of one wide expanse had I been told
That
deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet
did I never breathe its pure serene
Till
I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then
felt I like some watcher of the skies
When
a new planet swims into his ken;
Or
like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He
star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd
at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent,
upon a peak in Darien.
(From
On First looking into Chapman’s Homer 1816)
Keats’
Odes are unsurpassed but the above is very striking.
8.
Lord George
Byron (1780-1824)
THE
isles of Greece! the isles of Greece
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.
The
Scian and the Teian muse,
The hero’s harp, the lover’s lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse:
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires’ ‘Islands of the Blest’.
The
mountains look on Marathon—
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dream’d that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians’ grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.
My
chosen quote is an 1819 patriotic call for Greek independence and Byron, like
me, was brought up in Aberdeen and even went to my same primary school. Some
alumnus!
9.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792-1822)
To suffer woes which Hope
thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, not falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory
(From Prometheus Unbound 1820)
Shelley was a committed radical
and this inspiring passage proclaims his hopes.
10. W.
B. Yeats (1868-1939)
I will
arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for
the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace
comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to
where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a
purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and
day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by
the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the
pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
(The Lake Isle of
Innisfree 1890)
Yeats survived into my
century and his lovely poem is still widely admired. Some of his native Irish
disparage it, as hackneyed and over-familiar, but I remain moved by its
language and its emotive images.
I hope my selection appeals
to my readers. I already hear some critics who may complain it is “male, stale
and pale, “but no lady, person of colour or youngster has yet produced diction
of comparable quality, although there must be an abundance of talent.
Meanwhile, take immense
pride in our profound literary and cultural heritage – as a final bonne
bouche I attach a video of “Jerusalem” – a great poem by William Blake and
a great 1916 anthem by Sir Hubert Parry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1x8wouy3mE&ab_channel=RoyalChoralSoc
SMD
6.6.23
Text Copyright ©Sidney
Donald 2023
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