poetry

I look around if it is a dream

I look around if it is a dream

With the grey I see not the green.

Vision forced to look back inside

Barely anything is left outside.

And this the fire that called their desire,

When the supreme seemed to be written,

By the demon who was there, hidden.

He then exposed it on his plates,

He cried he has opened the gates,

Mad as he was, he missed their madness,

And there he was, burning with the fire

His work lost, with no one to admire.

And this the fire that called their desire,

He went wherever nature led, for the words worth,

To bless them with a new birth,

Where each would understand the other,

And men would carry it further.

The ‘I’ failed to feed; fire died away.

Then asked what he could not refuse,

He took the honor and forgot his muse.

The storm was over but a flame

Ignited, it was then that they came.

Vision forced to look back inside

Barely anything was left outside.

And this the flame that led to his fame

With the sun the blazing star found he was famous

And swore to publish his mind while he feels the impetus,

With battle in his breath from boyhood

He grew up watching him to manhood.

Or indeed his brain was feminine,

He could not accept the war but, more his fall,

Ardently he did hear and it was the ocean’s call.

I now see the nightingale on that bough

It looks real close,

No it’s fled, come here!

I will find you, he said you are around

And I believe in your sound

They won as I now exist

To narrate what you know not,

That they were nothing but themselves

And this the fire that called their desire,

Or was it there always?

Rising;

With an indefinable power,

Beauty of the intellect,

Liberty of the soul,

Men among men,

With no fear of life and death,

I sing their immortal song.

Poetry of Romantics

 

The Smile

There is a Smile of Love

And there is a Smile of Deceit

And there is a Smile of Smiles

In which these two Smiles meet

 - An Extract of the Poem The Smile, By William Blake

These were the lines in the first page of the book that attracted my attention. I was surfing my book shelf when I found this beautiful book that I even forgot that I had. I suddenly remembered that my brother brought it in one of his vacations  and I used a poem from the collection to impress a lady at that time. Other than that I did not remember anything else about it. I decided to give a look at this book.Romantic Poetry was a kind of statement at one time, rejecting the formality of style and subject of Augustan Poets, the Romantics gave voice to sentiments, desires and unconscious feelings. Poets like Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley were trying to create a new style of poetry and were very active in the Romantic revolution.

I always hated literature as a subject when I was student and mostly bunked the classes, so it was a new experience for me reading these poems. And I would say that I definitely liked it. A must have in one’s collection if you are a poetry lover. A good companion in solitude… There are about 110 poems in the compilation. The poets who feature in it are William Blake, Robert Burns, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, JL Hunt, William Wordsworth, Robert Southney, Lord Byron, PB Shelley, Anon, John Keats, Walter Savage Landor, John Clare, and George Darley. The collection has wide variety of themes like human spirit, time, love, art and beauty. My personal favorites are To a Butterfly By Wordsworth, To a Skylark by Shelley and Infant Sorrow by William Blake. If you however ask who my favorite poet is, I would say John Clare.  So, I would end with one of his verse.

 I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,

My friends forsake me like a memory lost;

I am the self-consumer of my woes -

They rise and vanish in oblivion’s host,

Like shadows in love-frenzied stifled throes;

And yet I am, and live – like vapours tost.

-  An Extract of “I am” by John Clare

Compiled by Paul Driver

Publish date: 1995

Publisher: Penguine books

Paperback, 112 pages

ISBN 0140622020    (ISBN: 13: 9780140622027)

Book review written by Pramathesh Borkotoky