CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE 'S POEM - LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

On the 9^th day of the Blog chatter’s #WRITEAPAGEADAY, Here is a poem with love as the major theme.

 

Poet: Christopher Marlowe

Poem:  Love at First Sight ( From Hero and Leander)

 

On this feast day, oh, cursed day and hour !

Went Hero thorough Sestos, from her tower

To Venus’s temple, where unhappily,

As after chanced, they did each other spy.

So fair a church as this  had Venus none;

The walls were off dicoloured jasper stone

Where in was Proteus carved, and o’er head

A lively vine of green sea – gate spread,

Where by one hand light headed Bacchus hung

And with the other wine from grapes out –wrung.

Of crystal shining fair the pavement was;

The town of Sestos called it  Venus’ glass

There mighty you see the Gods in sundry shapes,

Committing heady riots, incest, rapes;

For know that underneath this radiant floor

Was Danae’s statue in a brazen tower;

Jove slyly stealing from his sister’s bed

To dally with Idalian Ganymede,

And for his love, Europa bellowing loved,

And tumbling with the rainbow in a cloud;

Blood – quaffing Mars heaving the iron net

Which limping  Vulcan and his Cyclops set;

Love kindling fire to burn such towns as Troy;

Silvanus weeping for the lovely boy

That now is turned into a cypress tree,

Under whose shade the wood – Gods love to be

And in the midst a silver altar stood;

There Hero sacrificing turtle’s blood,

Vailed to the ground, vailing her eyelids close,

And modestly they opened as she rose;

 

 

Thence  flew love’s arrow with the golden head,

And thus Leander was enamoured.

Stone- still He stood, and ever more He gazed,

Till with the fire that from his countenance blazed

Relenting Hero’s gentle heart was Strook;

Such force and virtue hathen amorous look.

 

 

It lies not in our power to love or hate,

For will in us is over –ruled by fate

When two are stripped, long ere the course begin,

We wish that one should lose, the other win;

And one especially do we affect

Of two gold ingots, like in each respect.

The reason no man knows; let it suffice,

What we behold is censured by our eyes.

Where both deliberate, the love is slight;

Whoever loved, that loved not at first sight?

 

 

 

Christopher Marlowe‘s (1564-1593) the outstanding work, putting aside his four plays - the fragmentary Hero and Leander is a poem of singular freshness and beauty. His genius had serious limitations. Deficient as it was in humour, sympathetic insight and subtlety, along its own lines it was supremely great.