From Catullus V
The sun may set and rise,
But we, contrariwise,
Sleep, after our short light,
One everlasting night.
Commentary
Typically, Raleigh seizes upon the most fatalistic aspect of Catullus’ love song, and converts it into an epigram that is no less poignant for being less than staggeringly original. I don’t have much more to say, and this commentary is already twice as long as the poem being commented on, so I’ll stop here :)
— Thomas
Minstrels Links
Ben Jonson:
Poem #301, The Noble Nature
Poem #313, Gypsy Songs
Poem #340, To Celia
Poem #724, Hymn to Diana
John Donne:
Poem #330, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
Poem #384, Song
Poem #403, A Lame Beggar
Poem #465, The Sun Rising
Poem #796, Death Be Not Proud (Holy Sonnets: X)
Poem #866, The Canonization
Poem #1002, The Bait
Poem #1168, The Good Morrow
and others:
Poem #149, Bethsabe’s Song – George Peele
Poem #957, Whoso list to hunt – Thomas Wyatt
Poem #1001, The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd – Sir Walter Raleigh
Poem #1289, The Lie – Sir Walter Raleigh
Poem #1336, Of Human Knowledge – John Davies
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
John K. Taber · 24 February 2004
The goal of originality is fairly recent. I date it to the Romantic era.
Before then, roughly from the Middle Ages to the Romantic era (1800s and later), originality was suspect.
The feeling was, the World was once near perfect, as were humans. It was the Golden Age. Imperceptibly, humans and the World slipped into the Silver Age. Pretty good, but nevertheless not what it was. It was downhill ever since, deplorable even.
Thus, if it was not done before, it probably should not be done now. Poets deliberately modelled themselves on the classical poets. Spencer imitates Virgil’s Eclogues in his Shepard’s Calender. I lose track of how many poets imitated Horace. Everybody’s ambition was to imitate, if not Homer, at least Virgil’s Aeneid. None succeeded. Poets avoided anything that did not have precedence in the more perfect past.
Some poets could not help being original. Someplace, in his introduction to the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer apologizes for his originality as if it were an imperfection, and asks the reader’s indulgence.
Raleigh imitating Catullus was doing the right thing. It was a different mind-set.
John K. Taber