A Febregency Poetry Salon
Dreaming of daffodils with Wordsworth and tracing huge cloudy symbols of high romance with Keats
Febregency has begun, and I thought it would be fun to kick off the month of Regency era reading with a poetry salon!
Fetch yourself a cup of tea or your calming beverage of choice and join myself and the other hosts as we read out our favorites from Wordsworth, Coleridge, Cowper, Blake, Keats, Byron, Shelley and Scott. We covered a variety of poets and a variety of topics - from a wayward cat to mighty Apollo, from honey-dew to poison-trees.
In Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Anne Elliot mentions “the richness of the present age” of poetry, and it really is remarkable how many great poets lived during the early nineteenth century! I’ve been reading more of Austen’s favorite poet, William Cowper, this month - he didn’t only write about cats. 😸 Here’s a sublime description from The Task about the sun rising on a winter morning…
His slanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And, tinging all with his own rosy hue,
From ev’ry herb and ev’ry spiry blade
Stretches a length of shadow o’er the field.
Mine, spindling into longitude immense,
In spite of gravity, and sage remark
That I myself am but a fleeting shade,
Provokes me to a smile…
Today’s new upload is not in fact the first poetry recitation on my channel - one of my earliest vlogs was “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” recited on location while I was visiting Tintern Abbey. And on my last trip to England, I got my cousin to help me recite “Expostulation and Reply” while we were in the Lake District.
Just because it’s so beautiful, here’s one more bit of Wordsworth…a few “little lines of sportive wood run wild” to brighten up your Friday…
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.