Glow-worms
First, Andrew Marvell. I have a hard time choosing favorite seventeenth-century poets, but at any given point, Marvell’s likely to be among my top three.
The Mower to the Glo-Worms
Ye living Lamps, by whose dear light
The Nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the Summer-night,
Her matchless Songs does meditate;Ye Country Comets, that portend
No War, nor Princes funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Then to presage the Grasses fall;Ye Glo-worms, whose officious Flame
To wandring Mowers shows the way,
That in the Night have lost their aim,
And after foolish Fires do stray;Your courteous Lights in vain you wast,
Since Juliana here is come,
For She my Mind hath so displac’d
That I shall never find my home.— Andrew Marvell (via the University of Virginia’s Electronic Text Center)
Marvell’s Mower, who appears in several of Marvell’s other poems, is a strange figure, sometimes angry, sometimes comic. This poem is one of the calmer ones, deliberately keeping its distance from the larger world in which wars and princes’ funerals figure. Juliana, the Mower’s always unavailable beloved, doesn’t appear until the last stanza. I find those last two lines stunning: Marvell seems to articulate something essential about the experience of being crazily in love with someone and suddenly having the entire world look unfamiliar. It reminds me somewhat of Freud’s "uncanny," the unheimlich or un-home-like. (Also of a bit from Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse: "I walk back and forth in my room: the various objects — whose familiarity usually comforts me — the gray roofs, the noises of the city, everything seems inert to me, cut off, thunderstruck.")
And secondly, glow-worms. It occurred to me that I didn’t know precisely what a glow-worm (or, in the earlier spelling, which I love, "glo-worm") was; I had a vague idea of their being sort of like fireflies. However, thanks to the UK Glow worm survey, I now know that they’re a type of beetle, that they’re related to fireflies but don’t flash, and that people organize glow-worm walks to look at them. If I ever visit the UK (and I hope I will at some point), I shall add glow-worm watching to the agenda.
This is what I think of as a glow-worm:
http://www.tvcrazy.net/cgi-bin/amazon/amazon_products_feed.cgi?input_item=B00009KWXX&input_search_type=AsinSearch
I couldn’t find the one my sister had, though. It does add a facet to the poem (which I like, very much).
I’d not read that one. I’m such a dork that I forget you like the 17th century and am always so surprised. Who are your other two? My knowledge is probably not as broad as yours but so far, I’d have to call Donne and Herrick. I’ve read Milton but not in seminar and it appears I won’t. Wah! I also really like Bacon. And Traherne even though he’s repetitve. OK never mind about top three.
I remember those, Wolfangel — they had little round plasticky glowing faces, didn’t they? My somewhat younger cousin had some while they were popular.
Michelle! Good to see you back! My other favorites are Herbert (not everyone’s favorite, but I got fascinated by him while writing my dissertation) and sometimes Donne, sometimes Milton. Traherne, too, though I haven’t read as much of him. And Crashaw.
Milton is kind of a big reading commitment if you’re not in a class or something like that; a friend and I tried to form a Paradise Lost reading group last year, but lost our momentum after Book 4. I think I’m coming back around to the shorter poems, though. Do you like “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso”?
Oh, I can see Herbert. I was mostly (from a novice pov) impressed with his craft; the structure of his poetry for the content and all that was so impressive, I thought. I read him directly after Donne and I think I was still mourning leaving Donne. I loved Donne. I have to choose this fall between Milton and a Medieval Lit class. I absolutely love the prof teaching Milton but I’ve cried in his office twice. It’ll be my last semester and I’ll take my comps. I know i’ll love the class if I take it but I’m trying to economize on time from the perspective of both comps and emotionally. God, that’s awful sounding.