Guest poem submitted by Aseem Kaul
(Poem #1821) Well I Remember Well I remember how you smiled To see me write your name upon The soft sea-sand-'O! what a child! You think you're writing upon stone!' I have since written what no tide Shall ever wash away, what men Unborn shall read o'er ocean wide And find Ianthe's name again. |
Yesterday's Spenser made me think of this other version of the 'not marble, nor the gilded monuments' theme. (Milosz writes: "It's hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from"). What I like about Landor is how quickly he cuts to the chase - this is not some lengthy meditation on art and immortality, this is the poem as an act of schoolboy vanity, the very arrogance of the claim founded in a deep insecurity, in the memory of being laughed at, of not being taken seriously. It is also, a more intensely personal poem, more intimate and somehow more pathetic. Plus I love the sequence of thought that connects 'no tide shall ever wash away' to 'read o'er ocean wide'. This is not, in my view, a great poem, but it is an interesting take on an age old theme. Aseem. P.S. A note on the text. The text (and title) here comes from bartleby. My edition of the Penguin Book of English Verse titles this poem Ianthe (which is misleading, I think, because Landor has a number of poems with that title) and has a slightly different text: WELL I remember how you smiled To see me write your name upon The soft sea-sand...'O! what a child! You think you're writing upon stone!' I have since written what no tide Shall ever wash away, what men Unborn shall read o'er ocean wide And find Ianthe's name agen.
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