POESÍA INGLESA DE LOS SIGLOS XIX Y XX
LORD BYRON; To a Lady, From Fugitive Pieces
(1806)
O! had my
Fate been join'd with thine,
As once this pledge appear'd a token,
These follies had not, then, been mine,
For, then, my peace had not been broken.
To thee, these early faults I owe,
To thee, the wise and old reproving:
They know my sins, but do not know
'Twas thine to break the bonds of loving.
For once my soul, like thine, was pure,
And all its rising fires could smother;
But, now, thy vows no more endure,
Bestow'd by thee upon another.
Perhaps, his peace I could destroy,
And spoil the blisses that await him;
Yet let my Rival smile in joy,
For thy dear sake, I cannot hate him.
Ah! since thy angel form is gone,
My heart no more can rest with any;
But what it sought in thee alone,
Attempts, alas! to find in many.
Then, fare thee well, deceitful Maid!
'Twere vain and fruitless to regret thee;
Nor Hope, nor Memory yield their aid,
But Pride may teach me to forget thee.
Yet all this giddy waste of years,
This tiresome round of palling pleasures;
These varied loves, these matrons' fears,
These thoughtless strains to Passion's measures --
If thou wert mine, had all been hush'd: --
This cheek, now pale from early riot,
With Passion's hectic ne'er had flush'd,
But bloom'd in calm domestic quiet.
Yes, once the rural Scene was sweet,
For Nature seem'd to smile before thee;
And once my Breast abhorr'd deceit, --
For then it beat but to adore thee.
But, now, I seek for other joys --
To think, would drive my soul to madness;
In thoughtless throngs, and empty noise,
I conquer half my Bosom's sadness.
Yet, even in these, a thought will steal,
In spite of every vain endeavor;
And fiends might pity what I feel --
To know that thou art lost for ever.
LORD BYRON; To a Lady, From Fugitive Pieces
(1806)
http://www.blackphoenixalchemylab.com/byron.html#lady
JOHN
KEATS; To Some Ladies, From Poems (1817)
What
though while the wonders of nature exploring,
I cannot your light, mazy footsteps attend;
Nor listen to accents, that almost adoring,
Bless Cynthia’s face, the enthusiast’s friend:
Yet over the steep, whence the mountain stream rushes,
With you, kindest friends, in idea I rove;
Mark the clear tumbling crystal, its passionate gushes,
Its spray that the wild flower kindly bedews.
Why linger you so, the wild labyrinth strolling?
Why breathless, unable your bliss to declare?
Ah! you list to the nightingale’s tender condoling,
Responsive to sylphs, in the moon beamy air.
’Tis morn, and the flowers with dew are yet drooping,
I see you are treading the verge of the sea:
And now! ah, I see it - you just now are stooping
To pick up the keep-sake intended for me.
If a cherub, on pinions of silver descending,
Had brought me a gem from the fret-work of heaven;
And smiles, with his star-cheering voice sweetly blending,
The blessings of Tighe had melodiously given;
Ithad not created a warmer emotion
han the present, fair nymphs, I was blest with from you
Than the shell, from the bright golden sands of the ocean
Which the emerald waves at your feet gladly threw.
For, indeed, ’tis a sweet and peculiar pleasure,
(And blissful is he who such happiness finds,)
To possess but a span of the hour of leisure,
In elegant, pure, and aerial minds.
JOHN
KEATS; To Some Ladies, From Poems (1817)
http://www.john-keats.com/
The
first impression reading To a Lady is that the author is lamenting his
failings and remembering the best moments of his love story.
This
poem is divided in 11 stanzas with four verses each one, and its rhyme is abab.
Byron,
in the first stanza, shows the reader his craziness because his destiny is not
joined with his beloved woman.
In
the second stanza, the author laments himself and recognises his failings
during the relation, but he also shows us that his woman has made mistakes. The
sum of all this is that the destinies of these two persons aren’t joined
because of these faults.
In lines 9 to 12 there is a contrast between how love was before the breaking of the marriage and how it is now. Before, the relation was like ‘rising fires’, and now it is all over. In the fourth stanza the author feels guilty again. In the next verses Byron describes the lady as an ‘angel form’, and says that he will never find another lady like that.
The
next verses tell the laments of Byron and his impotence for the loss of his
lady. In lines 33 and 34 nature appears. It is a
personification of nature, which ‘seem’d to smile before
thee’.
In
the tenth stanza Byron tells that it is better being occupied in new objectives
than to continue thinking about what happened. In the last four verses he says
that even doing other things, there are always moments to remember, although
their love has died.
On
the other hand, my first impression reading Keats’ poem is that it is all
happening in nature, and everything is funny. The poem has seven stanzas and
its rhyme is abab.
In
the first lines Keats says that he can’t attend anything that is happening in
nature because he must be looking all the time at Cynthia’s face. In the next
verses there are many appearances of nature and Cynthia is always in contact
with nature too.
The presence of the surrounding and how it affects us is a
common characteristic of these two authors, in which we can find many elements
that make the reader get immersed in the universe of the poem. From my point of
view it is quite a good element because it helps to understand the poems very
much, and the reader can imagine the situation very well.
These two poems treat the same theme: love. But they don’t
share the same characteristics. Byron uses a lamenting tone while Keats uses a
fluent vocabulary that is at every moment in contact with nature.
In
my opinion, the sound of the words in Keats’ poem is very important, because it
can be read fluently without cuts and it is very nice to hear the sound of the
words. Moreover, we can see the constant contact with nature in To Some
Ladies.
They are both romantic poets and they belong to the same group of revolutionary poets, in which we find as the main characteristic that nature becomes dramatic and in constant contact with the poems that these authors wrote.