136th Virtual Poetry Circle
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Welcome to the 136th Virtual Poetry Circle!
Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.
Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.
Also, sign up for the 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April 2011 and beginning again in April 2012.
Today’s poems is from Andrew Marvell:
The Definition of Love
My Love is of a birth as rare As 'tis for object strange and high: It was begotten by Despair Upon Impossibility.
Magnanimous Despair alone Could show me so divine a thing, Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown But vainly flapped its Tinsel wing.
And yet I quickly might arrive Where my extended soul is fixt, But Fate does iron wedges drive, And always crowds itself betwixt.
For Fate with jealous eye does see Two perfect Loves; nor lets them close: Their union would her ruin be, And her tyrannic power depose.
And therefore her decrees of steel Us as the distant Poles have placed, (Though Love's whole World on us doth wheel) Not by themselves to be embraced.
Unless the giddy Heaven fall, And Earth some new convulsion tear; And, us to join, the World should all Be cramped into a planisphere.
As lines so Loves oblique may well Themselves in every angle greet: But ours so truly parallel, Though infinite can never meet. Therefore the Love which us doth bind, But Fate so enviously debars, Is the conjunction of the Mind, And opposition of the Stars.
What do you think?