This week's Literary Blog Hop at the The Blue Bookcase asks:
What is your favourite poem and why?
The question brings several poets to mind: Thomas Hardy, Seamus Heaney, John Donne, Richard Lovelace, and all the greats. I run my 'Poem of the Month' feature to share some of my favourite poems,
and you can check them all out with this link. Not enough people read poetry these days, and it's a huge shame. Even on my creative writing course, students laugh about not knowing the difference between free verse and blank verse, like poetry's just a silly little something that they should know nothing about. It angers me because, for a creative writing course at least, it's ridiculously ignorant.
Anyhow, that's not answering the question. The poem I'm choosing as my favourite for today (because most favourites change, right?) is a ballad that my mum used to read to me often as a child. I love ballads - a story, huge characters, an adventure and some good old-fashioned tugging at the heartstrings. Mum couldn't read this to me without tears in her eyes, and now I can't read it without crying. I can't even think about it without getting teary eyed. It's just beautiful - everything a good story and a good poem should be.
Beth Gelert
-William Robert Spencer
The spearmen heard the bugle sound,
And cheerily smiled the morn;
And many a brach, and many a hound
Obeyed Llewellyn’s horn.
And still he blew a louder blast,
And gave a lustier cheer,
“Come, Gelert, come, wert never last
Llewellyn’s horn to hear.
O where does faithful Gelert roam
The flower of all his race;
So true, so brave – a lamb at home,
A lion in the chase?”
In sooth, he was a peerless hound,
The gift of royal John;
But now no Gelert could be found,
And all the chase rode on.
That day Llewellyn little loved
The chase of hart and hare;
And scant and small the booty proved,
For Gelert was not there.
Unpleased, Llewellyn homeward hied,
When, near the portal seat,
His truant Gelert he espied
Bounding his lord to greet.
But when he gained the castle-door,
Aghast the chieftain stood;
The hound all o’er was smeared with gore;
His lips, his fangs, ran blood.
Llewellyn gazed with fierce surprise;
Unused such looks to meet,
His favourite checked his joyful guise,
And crouched, and licked his feet.
Onwards, in haste, Llewellyn passed,
And on went Gelert too;
And still, where’er his eyes he cast,
Fresh blood-gouts shocked his view.
Overturned his infant’s bed he found,
With blood-stained covert rent;
And all around the walls and ground
With recent blood besprent.
He called his child – no voice replied –
He searched with terror wild;
Blood, blood he found on every side,
But nowhere found his child.
“Hell-hound! My child’s by thee devoured,”
The frantic father cried;
And to the hilt his vengeful sword
He plunged in Gelert’s side.
Aroused by Gelert’s dying yell,
Some slumberer wakened nigh;
What words the parent’s joy could tell
To hear his infant’s cry
Concealed beneath a tumbled heap
His hurried search had missed,
All glowing from his rosy sleep
The cherub boy he kissed.
No hurt had he, nor harm, nor dread,
But, the same couch beneath,
Lay a gaunt wolf, all torn and dead,
Tremendous still in death.
Ah, what was then Llewellyn’s pain!
For now the truth was clear;
His gallant hound the wolf had slain
To save Llewellyn’s heir.
Less Than Zero is a delicious little debut. I've read several of Bret Easton Ellis' novels, and it's interesting to only go back to his first one now.
