William Collins: Things fall apart
Like Collins' poem, Stephen Foster's parlor song, "Hard Times Come Again No More," has mysterious "forms," but with interesting detail:
While we seek mirth and beauty and music bright and gay
There are frail forms fainting at the door
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh hard times come again no more.
(Version by the Red Clay Ramblers here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6e1xHPIQso).
Like much of 18th-century poetry, Collins relies too much on personification and abstraction, though the music certainly helps Foster's song succeed.
I fell in love with the song when my situation was perilously close to that described by Foster, so I'm hardly impartial.
That song always gets me choked up, especially if I try to sing it.
It's an emotional song for me, too.
Like Collins' poem, Stephen Foster's parlor song, "Hard Times Come Again No More," has mysterious "forms," but with interesting detail:
While we seek mirth and beauty and music bright and gay
There are frail forms fainting at the door
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh hard times come again no more.
(Version by the Red Clay Ramblers here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6e1xHPIQso).
Like much of 18th-century poetry, Collins relies too much on personification and abstraction, though the music certainly helps Foster's song succeed.
I fell in love with the song when my situation was perilously close to that described by Foster, so I'm hardly impartial.
That song always gets me choked up, especially if I try to sing it.
It's an emotional song for me, too.