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larryhammerFor a Poetry Monday, something that really isn't a response to last week's Wyatt, but I mentally link them together anyway:
“And if I did, what then?” George Gascoigne
“And if I did, what then?
Are you aggriev’d therefore?
The sea hath fish for every man,
And what would you have more?”
Thus did my mistress once,
Amaze my mind with doubt;
And popp’d a question for the nonce
To beat my brains about.
Whereto I thus replied:
“Each fisherman can wish
That all the seas at every tide
Were his alone to fish.
“And so did I (in vain)
But since it may not be,
Let such fish there as find the gain,
And leave the loss for me.
“And with such luck and loss
I will content myself,
Till tides of turning time may toss
Such fishers on the shelf.
“And when they stick on sands,
That every man may see,
Then will I laugh and clap my hands,
As they do now at me.”
Gascoigne was many things over his life, including soldier of fortune, courtier, member of parliament, and playwright. He was also the premier English poet of the 1570s, though his reputation has been completely overshadowed by Spenser's arrival on the scene a few years after his death. This is the final poem of The Adventures of Master F. J., a sort-of-novel-shaped thing of mixed prose and verse, with a layer of epistolary indirection, about a love affair that goes very wrong. It's an odd beast, but I don't regret having read it (many years ago), and I especially don't regret several of its poems. (BTW, in the narrative the speaker was, as per the second stanza, nonplussed by his mistress, and walked home before writing down this response.)
---L.
Subject quote from "Farmer Refuted," Lin-Manuel Miranda.
“And if I did, what then?” George Gascoigne
“And if I did, what then?
Are you aggriev’d therefore?
The sea hath fish for every man,
And what would you have more?”
Thus did my mistress once,
Amaze my mind with doubt;
And popp’d a question for the nonce
To beat my brains about.
Whereto I thus replied:
“Each fisherman can wish
That all the seas at every tide
Were his alone to fish.
“And so did I (in vain)
But since it may not be,
Let such fish there as find the gain,
And leave the loss for me.
“And with such luck and loss
I will content myself,
Till tides of turning time may toss
Such fishers on the shelf.
“And when they stick on sands,
That every man may see,
Then will I laugh and clap my hands,
As they do now at me.”
Gascoigne was many things over his life, including soldier of fortune, courtier, member of parliament, and playwright. He was also the premier English poet of the 1570s, though his reputation has been completely overshadowed by Spenser's arrival on the scene a few years after his death. This is the final poem of The Adventures of Master F. J., a sort-of-novel-shaped thing of mixed prose and verse, with a layer of epistolary indirection, about a love affair that goes very wrong. It's an odd beast, but I don't regret having read it (many years ago), and I especially don't regret several of its poems. (BTW, in the narrative the speaker was, as per the second stanza, nonplussed by his mistress, and walked home before writing down this response.)
---L.
Subject quote from "Farmer Refuted," Lin-Manuel Miranda.
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Date: 26 June 2017 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 June 2017 08:29 pm (UTC)(I should do Sidney next week, shouldn't I ... )
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Date: 27 June 2017 10:35 am (UTC)