Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Sonnet, Redux

As you can tell, I've rediscovered a treasure trove here.  This collection of sonnets, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, is wonderful.  This poem reminds me that all too often the private lives of creative people wind up as a horrible sort of sacrifice.  I believe everybody is deserving of privacy.  While I'm not usually a fan of Wilde, I am touched by his words here.  I don't think there were many more gentle in the world of letters than Keats.  To think of people pawing through the private musings of his heart breaks my own.  It's too much to hope that kind soul bought those letters, sealed them up in a box, and burned them to allow what was supposed to remain only between two to continue that way, isn't it?  I guess I'm just not much of a scholar when it comes right down to it; there's no desire in me to know what he wrote to his beloved.  It should be left alone.
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OSCAR WILDE  Sonnet: On the Sale by Auction of Keats’ Love Letters

These are the letters which Endymion wrote
To one he loved in secret and apart,
And now the brawlers of the auction-mart
Bargain and bid for each tear-blotted note,
Aye! for each separate pulse of passion quote
The merchant’s price! I think they love not art
Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart,
That small and sickly eyes may glare or gloat.
Is it not said, that many years ago,
In a far Eastern town some soldiers ran
With torches through the midnight, and began
To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw
Dice for the garments of a wretched man,
Not knowing the God’s wonder, or His woe?
1886

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