Finished: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Coleridge) and The Charge of the Light Brigade & others (Tennyson). I think I'll spend today reading some of the poetry by the authors on the list, and then get into some of the beginning works by Sophocles, etc.

I really enjoyed the Tennyson poems I read. One of his most famous is The Charge of the Light Brigade, about soldiers who make a charge into a battle due to a mistaken order given. Most of them don't survive. The poem is vivid, and sad in its depiction of the military blindly following orders. The poem has these famous lines in the middle of this stanza that I never knew the origin of 'til now:

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blundere'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

I also read Tennyson's Crossing the Bar, which is sentimental. We had it read at my dad's funeral. He always told us he'd want to be buried like a Viking...floating out on a funeral pyre in the ocean. We'd always say, yeah, yeah dad...you know that's illegal, right?? The best we could do was a poem about going back to the sea. He spent many a fishing trip in Oregon with my husband and son crossing the bar of the Columbia River Gorge, so I think he would have appreciated the sentiment. I also enjoyed Break, Break, Break, A Farewell, Ulysses, The Poet's Song, Kate and two others that moved me. The first was a happy feeling. I could just see and hear the water in Song of the Brook:

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

And the second, was an ode to days gone by, maybe thinking of the good times from the past that can't really be recaptured, Tears, Idle Tears. I just really, really love this stanza:

Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

Next, I read Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I feel like this poem was one we probably read in high school, but it was not familiar to me. I'm glad I had little notes in the book to explain some of what was going on. I enjoyed the poem, but it wasn't my favorite. My main thought....serves the old mariner right for killing the albatross (who was flying along with their ship) for no reason. After he kills the albatross with his crossbow and the ship starts encountering foul weather, the crew hangs the dead albatross around his neck, blaming him for their dire circumstances. There it stays until he is truly remorseful. He lives to forever tell his tale, but the crew isn't so lucky!

One after one, by the Star-dogged Moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.

Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.

The souls did from their bodies fly, --
They fled to bliss or woe!
And every soul, it passed me by,
Like the whizz of my cross-bow!