In case you missed AJ's comment on Day 1. Caelica is a series of poems written between three friends, Fluke Greville, Phillip Sydney, and Edward Dyer. The poems are sequenced sonnets in response to each other's poems. The main theme throughout Caelica is soul-struggle. Sydney writes to a mistress Stella while Greville dedicates his poems to the sky (Caelica). For fullest understanding we should read these poems in their sonnet sequences, but since this is the first sonnet of the series, we should be good. When the narrator speak of "her" below he is personifying the sky/heavens.
"Caelica - Sonnet 1" by Fulke, 1st Baron Brooke Greville
Love, the delight of all well-thinking minds,
Delight, the fruit of virtue dearly loved,
Virtue, the highest good that reason finds,
Reason, the fire wherein men's thoughts be proved,
Are from the world by nature's power bereft,
And in one creature for her glory left.
Beauty her cover is, the eye's true pleasure;
In honour's fame she lives, the ear's sweet music;
Excess of wonder grows from her true measure;
Her worth is passion's wound and passion's physic;
From her true heart clear springs of wisdom flow,
Which, imaged in her words and deeds, men know.
Time fain would stay that she might never leave her,
Place doth rejoice that she must needs contain her,
Death craves of heaven that she may not bereave her,
The heavens know their own and do maintain her.
Delight, Love, Reason, Virtue, let it be
To set all women light but only she.
bereave/bereft- deprive/deprived
fain- (adj) pleased; (adv) with pleasure
"set light" to something- to burn it down.
resource for info and poem here.
Delight, the fruit of virtue dearly loved,
Virtue, the highest good that reason finds,
Reason, the fire wherein men's thoughts be proved,
Are from the world by nature's power bereft,
And in one creature for her glory left.
Beauty her cover is, the eye's true pleasure;
In honour's fame she lives, the ear's sweet music;
Excess of wonder grows from her true measure;
Her worth is passion's wound and passion's physic;
From her true heart clear springs of wisdom flow,
Which, imaged in her words and deeds, men know.
Time fain would stay that she might never leave her,
Place doth rejoice that she must needs contain her,
Death craves of heaven that she may not bereave her,
The heavens know their own and do maintain her.
Delight, Love, Reason, Virtue, let it be
To set all women light but only she.
bereave/bereft- deprive/deprived
fain- (adj) pleased; (adv) with pleasure
"set light" to something- to burn it down.
resource for info and poem here.
bereave/bereft- deprive/deprived
ReplyDeletefain- (adj) pleased; (adv) with pleasure
After doing a little research, I expected the poem to make more sense knowing the theme, audience, and def for caelica. But I'm still lost.
There is still a she and a her. "She might never leave her/... contain her/... bereave her/... maintain her." What does it mean to set all women light?
To "set light" to something is to burn it down.
"But only she?" Is this the one woman for the narrator that can compare to the sky? Let all the women be judge by their delight, love, reason, and virtue, but this one be? Or is the one still the sky? Those last two lines have me all messed up!
Someone help me connect the dots here
Time, Death, Place, and the heavens are all up on her, is that why she needs to be let free. Is to let it be, to set free? I'm done for now
ReplyDeleteI read the her as Earth, perhaps, of Nature in relation to the Heavens, the Source. All references seem to work comparing human women to Mother Earth...as if the great understanding will come through Nature alone! The answers of Delight, Love, Reason, Virtue found within...
ReplyDeleteThe she and her as human and earth?