Poetry Thursday: Eliza Cook 1818 ~ 1889

From The Poetical Works of Eliza Cook,
Song of the Seagull, last stanza

We hold our course o'er the deep or the land,

O'er the swelling tide or weed-grown strand;

We are safe and joyous when mad waves roll,

We sport o'er the whirlpool, the rock, and the shoal;--

Away on the winds we plume our wings,

And soar the freest of all free things

Oh! the sea-gull leads a merry life

In the glassy calm or tempest strife.

 

Eliza Cook

In 1980, I bought an old book that was to be the first of a collection of poetry books by women poets. Alas, I didn't find the old obscure books of poetry to make the happen. So the Eliza Cook poems have rested in boxes, cabinets and bookshelves in all my moves for these last 44 years. 

Ninteenth Century sing songy poetry is easier to read under a big shady tree on a sunny summer's day with a nice picnic spread out on a flowery blanket. 

Reading other stanzas of the poem quoted above, I didn't find myself breezing along. The wording didn't go comfy with my 21st Century senses. Strange. I grew up reading such metered lines of poety. Thus, my youthful brain was more at ease than my elderly mind of today.

If you have a chance to read old poetry, then give it a try. Despite the wordiness, sweetness excess (imho), the experience can be refreshing in the way of contrasts.