Poetry and Art (2)

Two poems today, one by Emily Dickinson – short yet full of meaning; and the other by Dora Sigerson Shorter.  Like the ‘Solitude’ poem of last week, I knew parts of Ms Shorter's poem but only discovered the whole when I was putting this book together.  I particularly like the imagery this presents of the fairies, gliding in their dance without a care, not realising that death, in the form of the spider, is luring them in with his exquisite web – the dichotomy of beauty and danger.

‘I Stepped From Plank to Plank’ ~ Emily Dickinson

I stepped from Plank to Plank

A slow and cautious way

The Stars about my Head I felt

About my Feet the Sea.

I knew not but the next

Would be my final inch –

This gave me that precarious Gait

Some call Experience.

Art - 'Hope in the Prison of Despair' ~ Evelyn de Morgan

‘The Watcher in the Wood’ ~ Dora Sigerson Shorter

Deep in the wood’s recesses cool

I see the fairy dancers glide,

In cloth of gold, in gown of green,

My lord and lady side by side.

   But who has hung from leaf to leaf,

   From flower to flower, a silken twine –

   A cloud of grey that holds the dew

   In globes of clear enchanted wine?

Or stretches far from branch to branch,

From thorn to thorn, in diamond rain,

Who caught the cup of crystal pure

And hung so fair the shining chain?

   Tis death, the spider, in his net,

   Who lures the dancers as they glide,

   In cloth of gold, in gown of green,

   My lord and lady side by side.

Art - 'The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania' ~ Sir Joseph N. Paton