Oh, sleep forever in the Latmian cave
Oh, sleep forever in the Latmian cave,
Mortal Endymion, darling of the Moon!
Her silver garments by the senseless wave
Shouldered and dropped and on the shingle strewn,
Her fluttering hand against her forehead pressed,
Her scattered looks that trouble all the sky,
Her rapid footsteps running down the west—
Of all her altered state, oblivious lie!
Whom earthen you, by deathless lips adored,
Wild-eyed and stammering to the grasses thrust,
And deep into her crystal body poured
The hot and sorrowful sweetness of the dust:
Whereof she wanders mad, being all unfit
For mortal love, that might not die of it.
Mortal Endymion, darling of the Moon!
Her silver garments by the senseless wave
Shouldered and dropped and on the shingle strewn,
Her fluttering hand against her forehead pressed,
Her scattered looks that trouble all the sky,
Her rapid footsteps running down the west—
Of all her altered state, oblivious lie!
Whom earthen you, by deathless lips adored,
Wild-eyed and stammering to the grasses thrust,
And deep into her crystal body poured
The hot and sorrowful sweetness of the dust:
Whereof she wanders mad, being all unfit
For mortal love, that might not die of it.
Hi y'all,
ReplyDeletePipaw and Granny and I discussed the above poem during a lovely sunny afternoon outside the Worthington. This gist of the conversation was "Christine didn't get it even though she had read wikipedia about the myth of Endymion while Pipaw helps her understand." So here goes:
1) Christine: why would ESVM even write this? Pipaw answers, "because some part of language that she heard incited her to write a poem...poems are not about the subjects, they are about the language, the subject follows." I will not tell you Christine's reaction to this, because this was not what she expected, and her reaction was rude.
2) Christine: waves are not senseless, they follow the laws of physics, so what the Hell? Pipaw: senseless means that they don't have emotion, they are sentients beings, and therefore, to the poet, "senseless."
3) Why are the waves on shingles? Pipaw: shingles means beach. Of course it does, everyone knows that! Makes A LOT more sense that way!
4) Summary of first 8 lines: Endymion (apparently quite the hunk) is asleep in a cave somewhere in Western Anatolia (Pipaw assures me it doesn't matter where the cave is) because the Moon goddess (Selene) made him so, and the moon is so passionate about this that she drops all this light on the beach and other places in her rapture as she sets in the west. But he is oblivious, because he is asleep. And just to be clear, this is the moon's fault.
5) So the earthen Endymion, made love with Selene, the moon goddess, before she made him go to sleep in order to make him immortal, so she could make love to him more often even though he was asleep (quizzical emoji) is adored by "deathless" (immortal) lips of Selene, and did the nasty with her crystal body on the grass (gave her a green gown, according to Pipaw, lol).....BUT NOW, she wanders around crazy with lust, because she is unfit for mortal love, and she can't kill herself because she is immortal, even though it is driving her crazy.
Pipaw adores this poem, and I must admit I liked it much better after he helped me understand all the language, which is beautiful and very passionate.
Like Christine, I had to do a fair amount of trolling through Wikipedia to get what this was supposedly about. But I stopped after a while because I decided the poem was 1. sensuous and 2. racy. And it has beautiful words.
ReplyDeleteWave threw me as well. I thought maybe it was a verb that was followed by Shouldered but I couldn't make that parse. I did get it that Selene was making love to a sleeping man but I wasn't sure whether that was ongoing or over. It sounds a bit like he raped her the first time, which wasn't very nice. But she was permanently maddened and kept coming back for more.
The best part for me, especially after reading Christine's explanation that it was moonlight on the beach, was the early part and how those words described the moon setting in passion. "Her fluttering hand against her forehead pressed." And Endymion, asleep, doesn't have a clue.