ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

CAROLINE AMUSEMENTS
empowered Puritanical culture responsible for (in the eyes of royalists) making
a winter of festive celebration itself by officially abolishing the observance of
Christmas by order of December 19, 1644. 58 And the seasoning is tonal as
well: laudatory, elegiac, wry, spontaneous, Spartan. Beginning with the
underlying Aesopic tale reported in Caxton (and elsewhere) of the aristocratic
grasshopper who sings in the summer but fails to store up corn for the winter,
the ode braids together a range of classical gestures and allusions to achieve a
powerfully complex response to the experience of being ousted. When
Lovelace begins,
Oh thou that swing’st upon the waving haire
Of some well-filled Oaten Beard,
Drunke ev’ry night with a Delicious teare
Dropt thee from Heav’n, where now th’ art reard,
we sense in the longing apostrophe a poet who could be great without always
being very good. Since the poem is not long, and, as critical commentary
attests, central to any evaluation of Lovelace, 59 I quote the remaining nine
stanzas:
2
The Joyes of Earth and Ayre are thine intire,
That with thy feet and wings dost hop and flye;
And when thy Poppy workes thou dost retire
To thy Carv’d Acorn-bed to lye.
3
Up with the Day, the Sun thou welcomst then,
Sportst in the guilt-plats of his Beames,
And all these merry dayes mak’st merry men,
Thy selfe, and Melancholy streames.
4
But ah the Sickle! Golden Eares are Cropt;
Ceres and Bacchus bid good night;
Sharpe frosty fingers all your Flowr’s have topt,
And what sithes spar’d, Winds shave off quite.
5
Poore verdant foole! and now green Ice! thy Joys
Large and as lasting, as thy Peirch of Grasse,
Bid us lay in ’gainst Winter, Raine, and poize
Their flouds, with an o’reflowing glasse.
6
Thou best of Men and Friends! we will create
A Genuine Summer in each others breast;
128