Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily.
    Merrily, merrily shall I live now
    Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

One can never have too much Shakespeare on a poetry list…

from The Tempest, words spoken by Ariel after he is set free by Prospero.

The Tempest fascinates me. Shakespeare’s last play, it combines the lyrical perfection of the early comedies with the refined sensibility and practiced dramatic skill of the middle period plays and the power and emotion of the great tragedies. And although it’s far from perfect¹, there’s no doubt that it’s a glorious work of art - endlessly complex thematically, shimmeringly (and, at times, mystically) beautiful, the work of a mature playwright at peace with the world. The Tempest’s progressions are refined, elegant, even stately. It has power, but it also has grace. And it’s simply gorgeous to read.

The character of Ariel is perhaps the most interesting aspect of The Tempest. For some reason, it’s spawned more literary offshoots than almost any other character in any of the plays - from Milton and Pope through Browning and Hopkins to Eliot and Plath, poets have used (and abused) the persona and symbolism of Prospero’s attendant spirit, to great effect. I wish I knew why; since I don’t, I’ll content myself with enjoying the play for its innate poetry, as exemplified by today’s seven short lines. As I said before, simply gorgeous.

(I could at this point digress and talk about the concept of iconicity, how Shakespeare’s creations have taken on lives of their own, and are now as much a part of the collective unconscious as, say, the Bible, or the classics, or the heliocentric hypothesis. But I won’t. Suffice to say that Shakespeare continues to be the greatest of them all).

— Thomas

[More on Ariel]

Ariel: A spirit of the air and guardian of innocence. He was enslaved to the witch Sycorax, who overtasked him; and in punishment for not doing what was beyond his power, shut him up in a pine-rift for twelve years. On the death of Sycorax, Ariel became the slave of Caliban, who tortured him most cruelly. Prospero liberated him from the pine-rift, and the grateful fairy served him for sixteen years, when he was set free. (Shakespeare, The Tempest.)

– Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

Minstrels Links

Both Martin and I absolutely worship Shakespeare; it’s no surprise that he’s been featured on the Minstrels more often than any other poet. Some of my favourite pieces of verse are
‘Our revels now are ended’
(poem #126)
for its metaphysical insight,
‘Full fathom five’
(poem #16) for
its lyrical beauty,
‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow’
(poem #229)
for the depth of its emotion, and
‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks’
(poem #200)
for its sheer power.

All these, and much much more by the Bard (and others) can be read at the Minstrels website,
The Wondering Minstrels

Oh, and you especially shouldn’t miss Sylvia Plath’s incredible ‘Ariel’,
poem #129, which, although I haven’t the slightest idea what it means, remains one of the most powerful poems I’ve ever read.