/lit/ - Literature

>Thomas Carew (pronounced as "Carey") (1595 – 22 March 1640) was an English poet, among the 'Cavalier' group of Caroline poets.
>Carew's poems are sensuous lyrics. They open to us, in his own phrase, "a mine of rich and pregnant fancy." His metrical style was influenced by Jonson and his imagery by Donne, for whom he had an almost servile admiration. Carew had a lucidity and directness of lyrical utterance unknown to Donne. It is perhaps his greatest distinction that he is the earliest of the Cavalier song-writers by profession, of whom John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was a later example, poets who turned the disreputable incidents of an idle court-life into poetry which was often of the rarest delicacy and the purest melody and colour. The longest of Carew's poems, "A Rapture," would be more widely appreciated if the rich flow of its imagination were restrained by greater reticence of taste. A testimonial to his posterity is that he was analyzed by 19th century critics such as Charles Neaves, who even two centuries later found Carew on the sensuous border of propriety.

>>19784238
Exquisite, the best one since I started to follow this general, which was with Tennyson's Eagle. It gives too much for one to give an analysis immediately after a single reading. This is a poem you take in and live with it. Pristine iambic couplets gliding over natural scenery which suddenly leap into the mysteries of the human heart at its end.

Is it better to have loved and lost then to never having been loved at all?

>>19784238
Can't help but feel some of this is lost on me because I live in the tropics.

Bump

Meh. I tend to get lost with these nature poems.

>>19786428
Good poem to practice on then

flows well. i like candying as a verb. but all romantic nature worship sounds similar. the passage of time is too common a subject too but damn that last line is great.

If you are filtered by nature can you really understand poetry?

>>19787683
If you're filtered by anything you will never understand poetry.
>>19784238
That's a good one, OP

>>19784238
janky meter
lot of empty words
2/10

>>19787749
yikes

What does it mean to 'give a sacred birth to the dead swallow'???? Is it just saying the sun makes corpses look prettier? Or is it an allusion to animal heaven or something

>>19788042
The swallow is said to be dead because it could not be seem flying around during winter. It was gone, dead. Then, with the coming of Spring and Sun regaining his strength, the swallows come back, the Sun's warmth allows them to come back, gives them birth.

>>19788130
I still feel that imagery is kind of weird. The bird isn't really dead, it's just flown away. Though I like the pun with 'bumblebee' 'humble-bee' lol.

>>19788188
They didn't know at the time that swallows migrate; they believed swallows hibernated in the mud of riverbeds until the sun warmed them back up and they came out of their torpor.

I think it peaks in the first four lines. I like the phrases "candies the grass" and especially "icy cream"

>>19788208
Interesting.

>>19788188
I find it a good metaphor, gives it a perspective of total subjectivity. What can't be seen by you is dead, and when it swims into your perception it is given birth. However, as >>19788208 informs us, a reading sensitive to historical context would have to take the swallow hybernation theory in account as well. It's interesting how the progress of natural knowledge makes certain things appear to be metaphorical when read in hindsight, or metaphorical in a different way

>>19788208
>they believed swallows hibernated in the mud of riverbeds
Couldn't they just check? Sounds fake

>>19788042
I interpreted it as the corpse becoming visible as the snow melts, since swallows die in the cold