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Do you want poetry reccomendations as well?
It's a thorny ground, that one, as a lot of people display a sentimental attachment to the Rossettis and various other contemptible vagarisers and divorcers of thought from feeling.
I'd better not get too exercised on this as it's part of a serious sssay I'm writing for publication, but I see evidence that the bad poetry of the Victorian era is responsible for the current understanding of poetry now as something Not To Be Read. It's a foul fog that, by debasing the Tradition, makes the stuff before it seem even more lifeless and inacessible when actually the reverse is true.
Now, Robert Browning and Gerard Manley Hopkins, on the other hand ... and also some of Emily Bronte, as in 'My Lady's Grave', if we omit the last two stanzas and are charitable toward S2:
THE linnet in the rocky dells,
The moor-lark in the air,
The bee among the heather bells
That hide my lady fair:
The wild deer browse above her breast;
The wild birds raise their brood;
And they, her smiles of love caress'd,
Have left her solitude!
I ween that when the grave's dark wall
Did first her form retain,
They thought their hearts could ne'er recall
The light of joy again.
They thought the tide of grief would flow
Uncheck'd through future years;
But where is all their anguish now,
And where are all their tears?
Well, let them fight for honour's breath,
Or pleasure's shade pursue--
The dweller in the land of death
Is changed and careless too.
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