Poetry Please on 30 September consisted entirely of recordings drawn from the extensive BBC sound archives.
Many of these archives are now being made available on line – often with valuable supporting material –& are as delightful & useful as, though of course in no way a complete replacement for, any library of books. Desert Island Discs & In Our Time spring particularly to mind.
It came as a bit of a surprise to find that a fair proportion of the poems in this edition already feature in the favourite poems strand of this blog; I guess that just reflects the age of the archive & of those sending in the requests – we would have first learned & loved many of them during childhood, at school.
One of the poems new to me was the Elegy of Chidiock Tichborne, which he wrote in the Tower of London in 1586, in contemplation of his imminent execution for his role in the Babington plot to murder Queen Elizabeth I in the hope That this would lead to throne going to the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots.
It is, intriguingly, another example of a monosyllabic poem; which leads me to the (very tentative) speculation, that men in the grip of powerful, passionate emotion reach naturally for the plain & unflowery language to express their love & pain.
Tichborne’s Elegy
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain;
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
My tale was heard and yet it was not told,
My fruit is fallen and yet my leaves are green,
My youth is spent and yet I am not old,
I saw the world and yet I was not seen;
My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
I sought my death and found it in my womb,
I looked for life and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made;
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
Links
BBC Radio 4: Poetry Please 30/9/2012
Chidiock Tichborne
Related posts
All that I have
How Horatius kept the bridge
Windhover
James James Morrison Morrison
