Pre-Raphaelites
27 Sunday Nov 2022
Posted art, Bible, Literature, Music, mythology, Nature, Photography, Religion
in27 Sunday Nov 2022
Posted art, Bible, Literature, Music, mythology, Nature, Photography, Religion
in20 Tuesday Sep 2016
Posted art, Arts, Literature, mythology, Nostalgia, Photography, Poetry, Psychology, Relationships, Romance, Writing
inTags
chloral, Cotswolds, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Guinevere, hollyhocks, Janey Morris, Julia Margaret Cameron, Kelmscott, La Belle Iseult, Lancelot, mille-fleurs, shape-changers, Topsy, William Morris
(The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere
by Julia Margaret Cameron)
Since I live in the vicinity of Kelmscott now, here is an
old poem, re-blogged…
William:
I raised a latch of a door in the wall
and immediately knew this was home.
The garden’s rosy superabundance
was a mille-fleurs embroidery stitching
raucous cawing of rooks from those high elms, the
swifts wheeling, doves’ cooing and blackbird song.
A mulberry tree was central. Pastel
hollyhocks nodded their welcome and men
scythed reeds and floated them down the river
under the willow trees’ gray-green flickers.
Lead waterspouts were limply supported
from the mellow masonry and woodworm
pricked the panelling. I felt not sadness,
but a beauty born of melancholy.
Leaving my charcoal overcoat downstairs,
I inspected the quaint garrets where once
tillers and herdsmen slept under the eaves.
The sloping floorboards creaked under my feet.
I realised she had never loved me.
How could she? Women are all shape-changers.
This house is an E with its tongue cut out,
so it will never prattle its scandal.
Betrayal’s woven in its tapestries:
Samson with his eyes gouged out for his love.
Please, dear Janey, be happy…I cannot
paint you, but I love you – and now leave you.
Janey:
Some called it amitie amoureuse.
They dubbed me Guenevere, La Belle Iseult.
Once in this lost riverland, out of depth,
we drowned in our adulterous passion.
I heard carriages arriving at night,
so the cob’s harsh hooves had to be silenced
by leather shoes. I had no energy
when William was here, but took long walks
with Gabriel, who said our leaky punt
was not a poetic locomotion.
I keep my thoughts locked in my casket
in my bedroom. It was kind of Topsy
to bring me back that fine Icelandic smock.
Gabriel said it served his purposes well.
When they had Mouse the babes were not tiresome,
but Jenny’s impairment grows every day.
Tomorrow someone must trim the dragon.
In the studio I hear faint crying
over a stillborn child. He took chloral,
alcohol and would stay awake till five.
What was I to do with his exhumed verse?
Sir Lancelot had welded us as one.
I suppose I never loved him at all.
Tonight I left a pansy in Blunt’s room.
I am past sobbing that he does not come.
24 Wednesday Oct 2012
Posted Arts, Poetry, Summer 2012
inTags
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Epping Forest, Liberty, Merton Abbey Mills, Morris, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Topsy, Wandle, William Morris
“If William Morris were alive today
he would turn over in his grave,” she said.
Reneging on co-operative roots,
weasly traders attempt to fob folk off
with cheap crazed pottery and Repro stuff
under bestriding Betjeman pylons
in the shadow of a silver Kaaba:
Sainsbury’s Savacentre. Poor Topsy
would have topped himself to see his named pub,
a Riverside Free House, serving (slowly)
Pre-Raphaelite burgers and Liberty
Jacket potatoes. Some spoof has written
under “Today’s Specials”: Leek and Cat Shit
Pie, £1.75 and Spinach and
Scrotum Quiche, £2.75. Thick smoke
reminds one of past local industries:
snuff and tobacco. Wading through potholes
one wonders at the willow-fringed Wandle
where fine printed silks were dipped by his hands,
dark, indigo-stained, like those large blue plums
which grew on the wall in his Woodford plot
in days when he rode through Epping Forest
in his miniature toy suit of armour,
looking for dragons to slay. Now he knew
dyeing was an art and when the fierce floods
whipped the millwheel into activity
such as might have wrecked the very millhouse,
he may have thought his enterprise would fail
like the relationship with the beauty
who was such a burden to him. But now
his Strawberry Thieves grace the punters’ ties.
“Have only beautiful or useful things”
falls on deaf ears, as past ideals take wings
and shopping trolleys fill with plastic junk
purchased from the monopolising store
which conserves workshops, but kills small growers.
Morris, you should be living at this hour.
England hath need of thee! Here be dragons.
24 Wednesday Oct 2012
Tags
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Guenevere, Guinevere, Janey, Kelmscott, La Belle Iseult, Lancelot, Si Je Puis, Topsy, William Morris
William:
I raised a latch of a door in the wall
and immediately knew this was home.
The garden’s rosy superabundance
was a mille-fleurs embroidery stitching
raucous cawing of rooks from those high elms, the
swifts wheeling, doves’ cooing and blackbird song.
A mulberry tree was central. Pastel
hollyhocks nodded their welcome and men
scythed reeds and floated them down the river
under the willow trees’ gray-green flickers.
Lead waterspouts were limply supported
from the mellow masonry and woodworm
pricked the panelling. I felt not sadness,
but a beauty born of melancholy.
Leaving my charcoal overcoat downstairs,
I inspected the quaint garrets where once
tillers and herdsmen slept under the eaves.
The sloping floorboards creaked under my feet.
I realised she had never loved me.
How could she? Women are all shape-changers.
This house is an E with its tongue cut out,
so it will never prattle its scandal.
Betrayal’s woven in its tapestries:
Samson with his eyes gouged out for his love.
“Please, dear Janey, be happy..I cannot
paint you, but I love you – and now leave you.”
Janey:
Some called it amitie amoureuse.
They dubbed me Guenevere, La Belle Iseult.
Once in this lost riverland, out of depth,
we drowned in our adulterous passion.
I heard carriages arriving at night,
so the cob’s harsh hooves had to be silenced
by leather shoes. I had no energy
when William was here, but took long walks
with Gabriel, who said our leaky punt
was not a poetic locomotion.
I keep my thoughts locked in my casket
in my bedroom. It was kind of Topsy
to bring me back that fine Icelandic smock.
Gabriel said it served his purposes well.
When they had Mouse the babes were not tiresome,
but Jenny’s impairment grows every day.
Tomorrow someone must trim the dragon.
In the studio I hear faint crying
over a stillborn child. He took chloral,
alcohol and would stay awake till five.
What was I to do with his exhumed verse?
Sir Lancelot had welded us as one.
I suppose I never loved him at all.
Tonight I left a pansy in Blunt’s room.
I am past sobbing that he does not come.
Rest then and rest and think. The floods encroach.
They say the frost has killed all our moorhens.
I’ll try to sleep: si je puis, si je puis..