Second poem by the famous author

J712 (1863) / F479 (1862)

Because I could not stop for Death - He kindly stopped for me - The Carriage held but just Ourselves - And Immortality. We slowly drove - He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility - We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess - in the Ring - We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain - We passed the Setting Sun - Or rather - He passed Us - The Dews drew quivering and Chill - For only Gossamer, my Gown - My Tippet - only Tulle - We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground - The Roof was scarcely visible - The Cornice - in the Ground - Since then - 'tis Centuries - and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity -

Poiché non potevo fermarmi per la Morte - Lei gentilmente si fermò per me - La Carrozza non portava che Noi Due - E l'Immortalità - Procedemmo lentamente - non aveva fretta Ed io avevo messo via Il mio lavoro e il mio tempo libero anche, Per la Sua Cortesia - Oltrepassammo la Scuola, dove i Bambini si battevano Nell'Intervallo - in Cerchio - Oltrepassammo Campi di Grano che ci Fissava - Oltrepassammo il Sole Calante - O piuttosto - Lui oltrepassò Noi - La Rugiada si posò rabbrividente e Gelida - Perché solo di Garza, la mia Veste - La mia Stola - solo Tulle - Sostammo davanti a una Casa che sembrava Un Rigonfiamento del Terreno - Il Tetto era a malapena visibile - Il Cornicione - nel Terreno - Da allora - sono Secoli - eppure Li avverto più brevi del Giorno In cui da subito intuii che le Teste dei Cavalli Andavano verso l'Eternità -

The great fire of London

Wuthering Heights in film (1992)

To be linked to the passage in your anthology:

Music, literature and art

Look at what I've discovered today at an art gallery:

Tim Rollins & K.O.S. A Midsummer Night's Dream (After Shakespeare and Mendelssohn)

I quote from the catalogue:
This work was made with a group of very young children who were asked to paint flowers using watercolours: the reference is to the sprite Puck who, in Shakespeare's comedy, symbolizes love as a type of transformation. Oberon, the King of the Fairies, orders him to find a flower from which to extract a magical juice that, trickled onto the eyelids of a slumbering person , makes him or her fall in love with the first person seen upon awakening. This incipit ..... is not only the source of the visual reference to flowers but also the use of materials such as apple juice in the pictorial impasto.
The acronym K.O.S means Kids of Survival, a group of adolescents from South Bronk that worked with the artist.

Figures of speech

Just a reminder of what the most important figures of speech are and how we use them very often:

Ozymandias

The ruined statue of Ozymandias in Luxor

Ozymandias  1818

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Un viaggiatore da un’antica terra tornando
mi ha detto: due gambe senza tronco, enormi, in pietra
stanno su nel deserto… Un po’ sepolta accanto
sulla sabbia, una testa spezzata, e il suo cipiglio,
il labbro increspato, il ghigno di freddo comando,
dicono che lo scultore ha visto bene quelle passioni,
impresse in cose senza vita, e vive ancora
oltre la mano che le colse e il cuore che le nutrì:
sul piedistallo appaiono queste parole:
«Ozymandias è il mio nome, re dei re:
guardate le mie opere, o Potenti, e disperate!».
Non resta altro. Intorno alla rovina
di quel rudere immenso, nude, illimitate
sabbie lisce e deserte si stendono lontano.
(Traduzione di Gianfranco Palmery)

 

La belle dame sans merci by John Keats

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Ballad

I. O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
II. O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!	5
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
III. I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,	10
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
IV. I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,	15
And her eyes were wild.
V. I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.	20
VI. I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
VII. She found me roots of relish sweet,	25
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
“I love thee true.”
VIII. She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,	30
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
IX. And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d	35
On the cold hill’s side.
X. I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”	40
XI. I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
XII. And this is why I sojourn here,	45
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

On the Anatomy of the World - John Donne, a comment by a student

The poet shows a new vision of man's relation with the universe and so his life. John Donne represents a confused creature who has lost his landmarks because of the contemporary scientific discoveries. The conclusion is cynical and tends to the dramatic: there is no universal value, every man is enough to himself because the objective of every individual is different.
This said, we can add that John Donne changes a lot his opinion about man's condition and relation with his race: there seems to be no more reason to be everybody like an enormous continent, because the difference between people is so remarkable and unbridgeable to force man to loneliness.
For example, we can notice the fracture of the personal relationships: between father and son, prince and subject. The poet conceives therefore a man with a false freedom, that of being sufficient to himself and not to be conditioned by society and religious reality, because he cannot fulfill his wish for something beyond.

For those who don't think it possible

Here's a visual comment to the life of Emily Dickinson (thanks to caltari.it)