Poetry

Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (1320)

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“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”. No, not to this blog (though it’s a consideration) but to the entrance to Hell, this inscription appearing on the gates thereof in the early part of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, Book I of his Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia). Thus begins an epic journey through the Inferno (Hell), the Purgatorio (Purgatory), and the Paradiso (Heaven). And we are talking epic here: 14,233 lines of terza rima (three-line rhyming scheme in the pattern aba bcb cdc ded etc), begun in 1308 and completed in 1320, a year before Dante’s death. It is widely recognised as one of the greatest works of world literature; indeed, in T S Eliot’s estimation, “Dante and Shakespeare divide the world”.

The narrative describes Dante’s travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, allegorically representing the soul’s journey towards God. He is accompanied throughout by a guide: in Hell and Purgatory it’s the great Roman poet, Virgil, whilst in Heaven it’s Beatrice, thought to be Dante’s “ideal woman” and based on a real Florentine woman he had admired from a distance.

In Hell, Virgil shows Dante the poor souls suffering a punishment directly related to the nature of their sin. This is contrapasso (“suffer the opposite”): for example, the punishment for soothsayers and fortune-tellers (who had tried to see the future by forbidden means) is to walk with their heads on backwards so that they cannot see what is ahead. The lustful, who allowed their passions to blow them astray, are now constantly buffeted back and forth by stormy winds. Such poetic justice is similarly meted out to the gluttonous and greedy, the wrathful and violent, the fraudulent and hypocritical, and to the heretics and blasphemers. Many real personages of Dante’s time are named and shamed, damned by their incontinence in life. It paid to live an upright life in Dante’s day!

Purgatory is conceived as a terraced mountain to climb, representing spiritual growth. Dante discusses the nature of sin, vice and virtue, and moral issues prevalent in the Church and politics of the day. The 13th century was a rich time for medieval theology and philosophy, and Dante draws heavily from the body of work produced by philosophers such as Siger of Brabant, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas.

The third and final part, Heaven, is depicted as a series of concentric spheres around Earth, and here, Beatrice takes over the role of guide from Virgil, representing divine knowledge superseding human reason. Here we encounter the cardinal virtues, such as prudence, fortitude, justice and temperance, and ever upward, Dante finally has a vision of the ultimate and in a flash of understanding that he cannot express, he sees God himself.

If you’re imagining that a reading of the Divine Comedy could be a great adventure, you’d be right, but if you’re baulking at its length, an excellent alternative is to seek out the audio book narrated by (of all people) John Cleese, who does a smashing job of narrating this great poem.

 
Dante by Botticelli
Film, TV, and Theatre

Ken Loach’s Kes (1969)

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I’m from Yorkshire and, like all Yorkshire men and women, am very proud to be so (you may have encountered this probably not-unannoying phenomenon if you’re not yourself from Yorkshire). The county is known for the rugged beauty of its Dales in the north-west, and its Wolds and Moors in the north-east, though it is associated too, in the west and south, with a bleaker, more industrial landscape, where social deprivation and poverty has played its part. One such area provides the setting for Ken Loach’s 1969 film, the classic (and often very moving) “Yorkshire film”, Kes.

The film, adapted from Barry Hines’s novel A Kestrel for a Knave, follows Billy Casper, a sensitive and downtrodden 15-year-old from working-class Barnsley who finds solace in training a kestrel. It is a gentle drama about harsh circumstances, and I remember its impact: it was something of a sensation, and it won the young actor, David Bradley, a deserved BAFTA for his role.

Billy’s brother bullies him and his family neglects him. At school, most of his teachers ridicule and reject him, especially sadistic Mr Sugden (Brian Glover, with a bravura performance you’ll see below). Billy appears headed for a menial job with no future and consequently has no motivation and nothing to look forward to, until the day he finds a kestrel, a European falcon, which he befriends and cares for. He raises, nurtures, and trains the falcon, whom he calls “Kes”, and encouragement from one of his more sympathetic teachers (played admirably by Colin Welland) offers Billy hope.

The naturalism achieved in the film is testament to Loach’s directorial skills and his desire for authenticity. The schoolkids that he directs play their parts for real, with little apparent self-awareness. It often feels as if the viewer is watching via a hidden camera. Take this classic football match scene, below, wherein Mr Sugden bosses the kids boorishly (though, it has to be said, highly amusingly), eliciting much banter, rich with local jargon and accent, from kids on and off camera. It will perhaps prompt recollection of cold, muddy sports pitches from your own schooldays; it does me. However, it is a charming piece of social realism that you will enjoy even if you don’t catch every bit of dialogue!

Art

Jean-Léon Gérôme’s The Carpet Merchant (1887)

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In July of 1798, Napoleon marched into Egypt and defeated the Turks at the Battle of the Pyramids, weakening past breaking point the waning Ottoman Empire. He was driven out a year later by the British, but in that small amount of time he had already changed everything: because following him came first a trickle and then a torrent of westerners into the Near and Middle East. They came and they journeyed through Turkey, Iraq, Persia, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Arabia and North Africa. Many of them wrote about their experiences, sparking a deep fascination with these exotic, mysterious lands.

The artists came too, and they painted what they saw: bazaars and souks; robed and moustachioed Arabs smoking hookah pipes; mosques and minarets; Turkish baths and harems. With time this became an art movement and today we call it Orientalist art. I love it for the way it conjures up the exotic, and although it is clear that some artists let their imaginations get the better of them (I’m thinking of the harems, which no artist can have actually seen), their depictions of these lands must have inspired many a beating heart to visit.

One such Orientalist was French painter, Jean-Léon Gérôme. In 1856, he visited Egypt for the first time and followed the classic grand tour of a typical occidental visitor to the Orient: up the Nile to Cairo, then to Abu Simbel, across the Sinai Peninsula and through the Wadi el-Araba to the Holy Land, Jerusalem and finally to Damascus. He gathered themes, artefacts and costumes for his oriental scenes, and then set to work, soon establishing a reputation back home which saw him become honorary President of the French Society of Orientalist Painters.

There’s a gallery, below, of several of his Orientalist works, giving a good flavour of what he was about, and below that my favourite piece of the lot, The Carpet Merchant. I have travelled quite extensively myself in these lands, from Istanbul, Beirut and Damascus to Marrakesh, Petra and Cairo; and nothing quite beats the simple pleasure of wandering the snaking alleyways and souks of an old quarter, and taking in the sights, sounds and smells of life there. The Carpet Merchant captures that feeling perfectly.

Jean-Léon Gérôme

 

Music

The Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (1965)

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In April 1965, the Rolling Stones embarked on their first headlining tour of the United States. They had already had two US top ten hits (Time Is On My Side and The Last Time) but in terms of the British invasion they were still a notch or two below bands such as Herman’s Hermits and the Dave Clark Five. One song, written during this tour, would soon change that.

The story behind that song is enshrined in rock folklore. Midway through the tour, in a motel in Clearwater, Florida, Keith Richards woke up in the middle of the night with a tune in his head. Fumbling in the dark for his cassette recorder, he hit the record button and played the eight-note guitar riff. He also mumbled a lyric – “I can’t get no satisfaction” – and then fell asleep. In Richards’ own words: “On the tape you can hear me drop the pick. The rest is me snoring”.

Richards didn’t think his riff would turn into anything commercial; nonetheless, Mick Jagger was inspired to flesh out the lyrics and when the band’s tour took them to Chicago just three days after Richards’ nocturnal ramblings, they dropped into Chess Studios (home to their heroes Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters) and laid down the song.

This first attempt was actually an acoustic, folksy version of the song, sounding nothing like the swaggering stomp it would turn into. It didn’t take long for that transformation to occur, however: just two days later the band re-recorded the song, this time in RCA Studios on Hollywood Boulevard. Richards had just acquired a Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone pedal, Charlie Watts put down a different tempo, and the band gave the song a far more aggressive feel.The song was released as a single in the United States in June 1965. It was a smash hit, giving the Stones their first US number one and setting the band on their trajectory to become the “Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World”. Here’s a suitably electrifying performance delivered by the band and filmed during a quick tour of Ireland a few weeks after the song hit number one.

Literature

Joyce Lankester Brisley’s Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories (1925)

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One of life’s great pleasures is reading to your children at bedtime, and your blogger, accordingly, has read many a children’s story to his own girls (and provided, incidentally, many an amusing voice to bring characters to life and make the story more interesting – I didn’t live through years of Jackanory for nothing, you know!). Some of the books we read were contemporary, and some were hardy perennials from bygone eras enjoyed by preceding generations. One of the latter, from nearly a hundred years ago now, and which stands out as a paragon of charm is Joyce Lankester Brisley’s 1920s collections of stories about Milly-Molly-Mandy, the little girl in the nice white cottage with the thatched roof.

To this day, from time to time in our house, we return to Milly-Molly-Mandy and read one of her stories, each one a miniature masterpiece and the literary equivalent of comfort food. Now, it is pretty obvious that these stories are not “relevant” to today, and they are vulnerable to claims of sentimentality and a rose-tinted depiction of a simple and long-gone world. But such objections don’t matter a jot to a child to whom the story is being read; nor to me, the narrator, frankly. Children don’t need “relevance”; they need to be transported…and Joyce Lankester Brisley’s world certainly does that.

We are invited into a world of rural charm, in an unnamed village with a school, a blacksmith’s, a grocer’s, and a baker’s, along with copious fields used as shortcuts by Milly-Molly-Mandy, Little Friend Susan, Billy Blunt, and Toby the dog, as they walk to and from school or run errands for Mother. Each story begins with “Once upon a time”, and is followed by reassuringly unspectacular goings-on in Milly-Molly-Mandy’s life, be it running to the shops with a sixpence for a skein of wool for Grandma, feeding milk to a baby hedgehog, or having a picnic in a hollowed-out tree trunk with her friends.

The magic lies in the way Joyce Lankester Brisley weaves her simple stories, the words and phrases she uses, and the charming illustrations, drawn by the author herself, that accompany the narrative. Such simple childhood pastimes as “mending” a puddle by adding pebbles and stones into it, or getting wet and flapping and quacking like ducks: who doesn’t relate to that?

So to those to whom Milly-Molly-Mandy’s world is still culturally comprehensible, be warned: these stories can give you a lump in your throat, as you mourn a disappeared world trodden underfoot by the pitiless forces of modernism and globalism! Nevertheless, the stories are an absolute delight and solidly deserve their place in the pantheon of childhood literature.

Art

John Singer Sargent’s Madame X (1884)

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One of my favourite artists is John Singer Sargent, the great Edwardian-era portrait painter. Born in Florence to American parents, he lived an itinerant early life in Europe, his parents moving regularly between sea and mountain resorts in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland (alright for some). Sargent’s early signs of artistic talent led the family to Paris where he gained admission to the École des Beaux-Arts and studied with the noted French portraitist, Carolus-Duran.

In 1879, at the age of 23, Sargent painted a portrait of Carolus-Duran and exhibited it at the Paris Salon. It met with such public approval that his future direction was sealed. He quickly accumulated commissions for portraits and his fame spread. He painted commissioned portraits right up until his death in 1925, but in between commissions he would paint friends and colleagues for fun. It was one such non-commissioned painting, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, that grabbed my attention at the Tate Britain and turned me into an instant fan. However, the subject of today’s blog is the painting that became Sargent’s headline-grabber, Portrait of Madame X.

Just as we saw when I blogged about Edouard Manet, Sargent’s successful career was not without scandal. In 1884 he submitted Portrait of Madame X to the Paris Salon. “Madame X” was “professional beauty” and socialite, Virginie Gautreau, the American wife of a French banker. Sargent actually pursued her to paint her, rather than the other way round. It’s a deeply alluring piece, with the sitter standing in profile, and the deep black of her dress emphasising the “aristocratic pallor” of her skin. With cinched waist, the elegant bone structure, and with one shoulder strap seemingly about to fall off the shoulder, the image could only suggest one thing – the erotic – and it was this, inevitably (for the time), that precipitated the scandal at the Salon. It was only a temporary setback (and Sargent responded by repainting the shoulder strap in a “safer” position), and I don’t suppose a little bit of scandal is too harmful to the career of a gifted artist, after all.

In June of 1999, Nicole Kidman was the cover girl of Vogue, and in her cover story, she posed for photographs in a number of John Singer Sargent re-imaginings (including Madame X) by the photographer, Steven Meisel. The photogenic Kidman suits these pictures perfectly so I thought it well worth showcasing them here, alongside their originals…starting with the beguiling Madame X.

Madame X
Lady Agnew
Mrs George Swinton
Mrs Charles E Inches
John Singer Sargent
Art

Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson Of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (1632)

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Given all the standard genres of painting open to an artist in 17th century Amsterdam – landscape, portraiture, still life, history, religious – you could be forgiven for assuming that the subject of today’s blog, Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, was something of a one-off. It has a seemingly very specific and niche subject: that of an anatomy lesson involving the dissection of a cadaver! In fact, though, at the time of Rembrandt’s work in 1632, there was already a strong tradition of Dutch “guild portraiture” (group portraits commissioned by a professional association such as the Guild of Surgeons) and many of these involved dissection scenes, so Rembrandt’s subject was far from unique for the time.

This was the Dutch Golden Age. Compared to most other countries of 17th century Europe, the Netherlands was positively progressive in its model of government. Since the formation of the Dutch republic in 1581, the Netherlands had experienced the emergence of a national and cultural identity, and both religious freedom and open trade were highly valued. With a burgeoning economy and the rise of the middle classes, it was a place where Dutch scientists – and Dutch artists – were able to experiment without fear of papal censure. Guild portraiture was therefore an expression of Dutch progressivism.

The practice of dissection, prior to the Dutch republic, had been morally questionable: in fact, the Church had officially condemned it, and even post-republic it was still a grey area. However, it was recognised that dissection was part and parcel of scientific advancement, and so Amsterdam’s now-Protestant city council sanctioned the practice on the condition that only the corpses of criminals were used. Anatomic dissections soon became highly popular public events, lasting for several days (and for that reason carried out in the winter, to retard the decay of the cadavers) and generating a substantial income from paying observers.

Artists were thus commissioned to capture the scene and guild members would have paid a pretty sum to be featured in it. What differentiates this painting from all the others was the fact that this was Rembrandt, the most gifted and prolific artist of his age, and typically he undertook to reject the traditional composition of Dutch guild portraiture and instead he adopted a more visceral style. Rembrandt puts the corpse at the centre of the scene and portrays it in full length, in Christ-like repose. It turns a group vanitas portrait into a quite dramatic and arresting image.

The corpse, incidentally, was one Adriaan Adriaanszoon, who was convicted for armed robbery and sentenced to death by hanging (which occurred on the very morning of the dissection). Perhaps not the most illustrious reason to be captured on canvas for posterity, but hey ho!

Dance

Fred Astaire’s Revolving Room Dance Sequence in Royal Wedding (1951)

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The rotating movie set is a great example of how moviemakers can create cinema magic. An ordinary stage is suspended within a steel gimbal, like a box wedged into a washing machine drum, and then amazing effects can be achieved, whereby actors can be shown to appear to defy gravity. This has been useful for horror movie makers (Jeff Goldblum lurking on the ceiling in The Fly; JoBeth Williams being paranormally rolled up the wall to the ceiling in Poltergeist; Amanda Wyss in the dream sequence from Nightmare on Elm Street…) and the technique was also impressively employed by Stanley Kubrik in a remarkable scene from sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. In this scene, a crew member is shown running around the hub of the spacecraft, its rotation providing artificial gravity for his exercise; in reality, he is essentially running on the spot with the entire set rotating beneath his feet. Here’s a brief clip:

Back in 1951, however, director Stanley Donen used the technique to superb effect in musical comedy, in the MGM movie Royal Wedding, which showcased the talents of the suave Fred Astaire. Astaire had already retired once, back in 1946, before being lured back into the movie business to replace the injured Gene Kelly in Easter Parade (1948). Royal Wedding is set in London at the time of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten, and features songs by Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner; however, it was of course the dance routines that make it stand out.

In one of his solos, You’re All the World to Me, Astaire dances on the walls and ceilings of his room (long before Lionel Richie scored a hit with that concept!). The idea had actually occurred to Astaire himself, years before, so it must have been particularly rewarding for him to perfect this clever illusion. Let’s check out the scene both as seen by the movie audience, alongside the “how it’s done” version.

Poetry

Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata (1927)

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I remember, when I was young, my grandma having this enigmatic prose poem on her wall. For some reason I never actually asked her about it; I was merely aware of it and its strangely sagacious words. Beginning strikingly with “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste…”, and continuing with a series of sage aphorisms, I assumed it to be of unknown authorship, and of ancient, perhaps biblical, origin. It was titled Desiderata, which did little to dispel the idea of antiquity.

Time moved on and the piece became half-forgotten. Many years later, however, during a family stay in Haworth, and browsing in an art shop, I came across these words again, and remarked: “My gosh, I know this poem, it used to be on my grandma’s wall!”. My beautiful and thoughtful daughter, Freya, must have quietly noted and internalised my enthusiasm, because when Father’s Day came around, I unwrapped a present from her to find the words of Desiderata carefully, painstakingly written out, as shown below.

As you can see, unlike my grandma’s Desiderata, Freya’s version supplied a name and date: Max Ehrmann and 1927, so I did a little research. Max Ehrmann was an American writer and poet, of German descent, living and working in his home town of Terre Haute, Indiana, when he wrote Desiderata (Latin for “things to be desired”). It turns out that the poem wasn’t even published during Ehrmann’s lifetime; his widow published it in The Poems of Max Ehrmann in 1948. Even then it remained largely unknown, and probably would have stayed that way had it not become the subject of a lawsuit in the seventies, after it had been printed in a magazine without permission. It was deemed by the court to have had its copyright forfeited and to be in the public domain, and this gave it the impetus to be printed in poster form and distributed widely as a set of inspirational dictums; the words connected favourably with people and ended up, as in my grandma’s case, on their walls.

So my assumption of its antiquity was way off the mark, but it seems that I wasn’t the only one to mistake its provenance: in the fifties, the rector of St Paul’s Church in Baltimore, Maryland, used the poem in a collection of devotional materials, that he headed “Old St Paul’s Church, Baltimore AC 1692” (meaning that the church had been founded in 1692). As the material was handed from one friend to another, the authorship became clouded, and a later publisher would interpret this notation as meaning that the poem itself had been found in Old St Paul’s Church, dated 1692.

This confusion no doubt added to the charm and appeal of the poem, and the words were ripe, I suppose, for the inheritors of the “make peace, not war” sensibility of the 1960s. In any event, its message is timeless and its words worthy of examination to this day, particularly at the dawn of a new year when, inundated with bad and divisive news, we might focus on the final stanza and remind ourselves that “With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.”

Now, read on…

Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann
Poetry

Christina Rossetti’s In The Bleak Midwinter (1872)

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Given the season, it’s fair to assume that at some point soon you will be hearing a rendering of Christina Rossetti’s In The Bleak Midwinter. For me, it was last Sunday evening, at our local church’s Christmas carol concert, and of all the carols we know and love (or at least tolerate despite the overkill of decades’ worth of repetition), this is one I can truly get behind, due in no small measure to Gustav Holst’s fitting musical setting.

Rossetti’s poem was first published (as A Christmas Carol) in the January 1872 issue of American literary periodical, Scribner’s Monthly (thus just missing Christmas, ironically), and it presents her unique version of the nativity story. It was set to music in 1906 by Gustav Holst (the composer of The Planets suite), and again by Harold Darke in 1911. Darke’s version has become a staple of the BBC’s Carols From King’s programme, which airs each year on Christmas day, but it’s Holst’s that brings the poem to life for me.

Here is the famous first stanza of the poem:

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone:
Snow had fallen, snow on snow
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter,
Long ago.

Rossetti sets the pre-Nativity scene unequivocally: she piles on the snow (on snow, on snow) and the very sparseness of the language builds on the sense of bleakness introduced in the first line. We get it: it was a bleak landscape (surprisingly, given that the area is sub-tropical and snow only ever falls on the Golan Heights, but let’s not nitpick).

As the poem continues, we are introduced to the familiar juxtaposition of divine power being cast in the humbling circumstances of the lowly stable, with its shepherds and wise men, oxen and asses, cherubim and seraphim. It is a simple celebration of the Christian faith, a winter warmer of an ending to thaw out the bleak snows of the first lines. But it is also a celebration of motherly love, of the mother being the only one able to care for and love her child, despite the presence of heavenly hosts.

But only his mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the beloved
With a kiss

Rossetti’s poem is rightly remembered anew each Christmas, in part because of its simple language and message. With Holst’s tune, a candlelit church, and a congregation of bescarfed carollers, it’s guaranteed to get a late bloomer into the Christmas spirit. Here’s a wonderful rendition by the choir of Kings College, Cambridge…Merry Christmas!

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone:
Snow had fallen, snow on snow
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter,
Long ago.

Our God, heaven cannot hold him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When he comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.

Enough for him, whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk,
And a mangerful of hay:
Enough for him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air –
But only his mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man
I would do my part;
Yet what I can, I give him –
Give my heart.

Christina Rossetti

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