The first part of the excerpt is apropos for our next-to-youngest grandchild's high school graduation today; the second part for the periodic "in memoriam" emails from my own high school graduating class from 1970. Good choice for this time of year.
It is satisfying to have the poetry I knew and loved as a child returned to respectability and affection. The fifth part of Yeats' great poem, "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen," may not have had Lytton Strachey in mind ("Eminent Victorians" was published in 1918), but it seems to capture that era of desecration--"Come let us mock at the great," at the wise, and the good, the poet invites; and then: "Mock mockers after that / That would not lift a hand maybe / To help good, wise or great / To bar that foul storm out, for we / Traffic in mockery."
I like the poem/excerpt a lot, and in general applaud the renewal of appreciation for Longfellow. I recently read his Dante translation and enjoyed and appreciated it. It presents obvious difficulties and defects but musically, as English verse, I like it more than many more recent ones.
Fascinating. I'm glad to read this and know the backstory, but I'm glad it was only an excerpt. Clever as it was, I stopped reading at "Chirping like grasshoppers," since a graduating class didn't seem to merit so many lines. Not that I don't admire the extraordinary conceit (in the poetic usage of conceit) of "We who are about to die salute you." Also, what a contrast between the poem of praise to the young graduates and the mocking image you chose of a graduate with his nose in the air and a halo around his head and his hand pointing to the world, of which he now conceitedly (in the other sense of conceit) thinks himself the future master.
The first part of the excerpt is apropos for our next-to-youngest grandchild's high school graduation today; the second part for the periodic "in memoriam" emails from my own high school graduating class from 1970. Good choice for this time of year.
It is satisfying to have the poetry I knew and loved as a child returned to respectability and affection. The fifth part of Yeats' great poem, "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen," may not have had Lytton Strachey in mind ("Eminent Victorians" was published in 1918), but it seems to capture that era of desecration--"Come let us mock at the great," at the wise, and the good, the poet invites; and then: "Mock mockers after that / That would not lift a hand maybe / To help good, wise or great / To bar that foul storm out, for we / Traffic in mockery."
I like the poem/excerpt a lot, and in general applaud the renewal of appreciation for Longfellow. I recently read his Dante translation and enjoyed and appreciated it. It presents obvious difficulties and defects but musically, as English verse, I like it more than many more recent ones.
Fascinating. I'm glad to read this and know the backstory, but I'm glad it was only an excerpt. Clever as it was, I stopped reading at "Chirping like grasshoppers," since a graduating class didn't seem to merit so many lines. Not that I don't admire the extraordinary conceit (in the poetic usage of conceit) of "We who are about to die salute you." Also, what a contrast between the poem of praise to the young graduates and the mocking image you chose of a graduate with his nose in the air and a halo around his head and his hand pointing to the world, of which he now conceitedly (in the other sense of conceit) thinks himself the future master.
Brings a smile to the lips of those of us in our 80’s who look upon those at the “mid-century” mark as still children.
We're still living in the Modernist contempt for the Victorians, more's the pity. Joyce's reference to "Lawn Tennyson" comes to mind.