A poem for National Poetry Day

[sheenaghpugh]

- a bit late on, but I've been slaving in the poetry mines (all right, talking at a teachers' inset day). This is by Georg Rudolf Weckherlin, and if that doesn't sound like an English name it isn't. He was a German, working in England as Cromwell's Latin secretary (I don't know if it was before or after Milton did that job) and writing in his third language. Too clever for their own good, some folk. Elizabeth Trumball was the daughter of the family he lodged with.

ON THE DEATH OF THE MOST VIRTUOUS GENTLEWOMAN MRIS ELIZABETH TRUMBALL, AGED 16 YEARS

Ere winter's doom, his powerful sway to show,
Condemns this earth of beauty stript to be,
Bids waterstreams not to flow, hard to grow,
Nips tender sprigs and strips the loftiest tree,
A gardener good, that future time doth know,
Will spare no pains, his choicest flowers to free
From wrong of hardening cold or harming snow,
But sets them where th'air may with them agree.
Thus knowing best Our Saving Gardener's grace,
(Without whose care all care of man is vain)
Th'unworthiness of this low freezing place,
Transported soon in Paradise again
This Virgin flower, that there before his face
Pure, fresh and sweet it may for aye remain.

Comments

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

I have to confess I am finding it a bit hard to warm to this one, and not just because the theme is winter. It seems a little mannered to me.

[sheenaghpugh]

I think what I like about it is the way it uses the sonnet form. It's classic -not just the break into octave and sestet but the breaks into 4, 4 and 3,3 within those. The way the first 4 lines set out the garden in winter, and the chilling power of winter/death, then the next 4 show the gardener saving his flowers; then after the volta we get the admission of who this gardener really is, then finally, in the last 3 lines, the first and only mention of the girl. It's very structured and, yes, overtly unemotional, but I like that.