8 oct 2003

I.18a "Lo! yonder shed; observe its garden-ground"

The neglect of "our reformers" of the plight of the humble fisherman. The language is quite vivid. Heroic couplets, suggestive of the 18th century, but the language is concrete and specific rather than abstract and universalistic. This has to be by someone like Cowper. Clare?

"That coal-dust flies along the blinding blast:
None heed the stagnant pools on either side,
Where new-launched ships of infant sailors ride."

Whoever it is, it is superb: A+ [yawn]

18b "He voyd of fear made answer thus, Acetis is my name"

Here we find, in a dialectal context, a poetic form outside of the 18th- century mainstream: fourteeners again. It is quite effective, partially because of its apparent naiveté:

"God wote he was but poor himselfe, With lyne and bayted hooke
The frisking fishes in the pooles upon the Reede he tooke."

Is LZ setting up a naive vs. sentimental opposition with these two examples? I'm not falling for it. Both poems get an A+

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