Sunday, August 28, 2011

Sunday poetry - Romantics

This beautiful poem by Kathleen Raine (picture from here) is not a conventional romantic poem to a lover. To My Mountain is about a love of landscape, of a place, that the poet obviously knows well. But I wonder if she's not also addressing a human lover using the metaphor of the mountain to express the pain of unrequited love? I've dipped into Raine's poems & autobiography over the years but I would like to read more of her work.

Since I must love your north
of darkness, cold, and pain,
the snow, the lovely glen,
let me love true worth,


the strength of the hard rock,
the deafening stream of wind
that carries sense away
swifter than flowing blood.


Heather is harsh to tears
and the rough moors
give the buried face no peace
but make me rise,


and, oh, the sweet scent, and purple skies!

4 comments:

  1. This is beautiful! the style is a bit similar to Owen Sheers it think, landscape features heavily in his.

    Wonderful post!

    http://keepcalmandbookworm.blogspot.com/

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  2. Hannah, did you see Owens Sheers's TV series A poet's guide to Britain? He concentrated very much on the landscapes of the poets he chose.

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  3. No I didn't! What channel was it on? I may be able to catch it on a catup channel?

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  4. Hannah, the series was on ABC2 here in Australia & I only caught it by chance. It's available on DVD so I bought it for my library & watched the other episodes.

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