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Cycling back to England: A Historical Poem, a quarter of the way in, I've finally given up. Ord had great facility with smooth stanzas that slide down easily, but he had not yet learned that compression rather than expansion strengthens the impact, nor how to use figurative language to heighten rather than simply ornament. Worse than either of those, however, is that the poem does not in fact narrate events in the popular history of England, but rather assumes knowledge and instead refers to them while rendering the poet's very Romantic-era responses to the events. And since Ord is very much a young man, said responses aren't all that interesting.
Also, I've no clue where Ord got the idea that Thor was a Celtic, as opposed to Saxon, god. Nor that the British Celts had no history or even knew what warfare was before Julius Caesar's invasion -- I can only assume he slept through the relevant sections of De Bello Gallico in school.
I have higher hopes for Warner's Albion's England, an Elizabethan poetic history. It's a thoroughly euhemeristic history, in the early parts, but skimming ahead I see some tasty legendary piffle to come.
OTOH, I did (finally) read all the way through The Seasons. Not only did James Thomson teach three generations of readers how to see nature, but his flowing blank verse is a marked contrast to, say, the couplets of Pope with its artfully pointed structures and, for ex, the modern blank verse of A.E. Robinson in its studiously conversational blandness. But an even greater contrast is with Ord, who may have publicly adored Spencer's parts and pilfered his stanza, but Thomson learned real versecraft from the master -- his lines are lush, paying attention to the vowels more closely than anyone I've read but Spencer himself and maybe Keats.
The result is a delight to read -- very much not at all bad poetry. His diction is very much of his time, but what he made of it works quite well. Thomson is at his best when he describes personal experiences of the natural world around him, in Britain, and weakest when he flits across the globe on wings of imagination. As such, I like "Spring" the best of the four, as it stays closest to home. But they're all good and worth the time reading.
---L.
Also, I've no clue where Ord got the idea that Thor was a Celtic, as opposed to Saxon, god. Nor that the British Celts had no history or even knew what warfare was before Julius Caesar's invasion -- I can only assume he slept through the relevant sections of De Bello Gallico in school.
I have higher hopes for Warner's Albion's England, an Elizabethan poetic history. It's a thoroughly euhemeristic history, in the early parts, but skimming ahead I see some tasty legendary piffle to come.
OTOH, I did (finally) read all the way through The Seasons. Not only did James Thomson teach three generations of readers how to see nature, but his flowing blank verse is a marked contrast to, say, the couplets of Pope with its artfully pointed structures and, for ex, the modern blank verse of A.E. Robinson in its studiously conversational blandness. But an even greater contrast is with Ord, who may have publicly adored Spencer's parts and pilfered his stanza, but Thomson learned real versecraft from the master -- his lines are lush, paying attention to the vowels more closely than anyone I've read but Spencer himself and maybe Keats.
The result is a delight to read -- very much not at all bad poetry. His diction is very much of his time, but what he made of it works quite well. Thomson is at his best when he describes personal experiences of the natural world around him, in Britain, and weakest when he flits across the globe on wings of imagination. As such, I like "Spring" the best of the four, as it stays closest to home. But they're all good and worth the time reading.
---L.