THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 'S POEM - A SONG

 

On the 7^th day  of the Blog chatter’s #WRITEAPAGEADAY, Here is a poem with love as the major theme.

 

Poet: Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Poem:  A SONG

How many times do I love thee, dear?
  Tell me how many thoughts there be
  In the atmosphere
  Of a new-fall'n year,
Whose white and sable hours appear
  The latest flake of Eternity:
So many times do I love thee, dear.

How many times do I love again?
  Tell me how many beads there are
  In a silver chain
  Of evening rain,
Unravell'd from the tumbling main,
  And threading the eye of a yellow star:
So many times do I love again.

 

 Thomas Lovell Beddoes profoundly affected by his great contemporaries Keats and Shelley, he yet retains an individuality of his own. At Oxford, he had saturated himself with the Elizabethans; later in Germany he felt the magic of Goethe at a time when the great man was yet unknown to the majority of Englishmen. But he was too exclusively romantic in temperament and outlook to be a whole hearted admirer of Goethe, and his admiration fell short of that of Carlyle.

Beddooes is richer indeed in fancy than in imagination, and shows a quick sense of the picturesque and bizarre. But there is more than fancy and grotesquerie in his work: there is real if fit full emotional power; and in his rapid transition of mood one is reminded often of Heine.

He is an admirable song writer and his best lyrics have a magic all their own. As a literary critic he often excellent if not wholly reliable; and his opinions are never echoed but are always well thought out, while as a letter writer he ranks high.