Ben Jonson: Two Poems -- Great Poems of the World, episode 17 -- with David Lehman and Mitch Sisskind

My Picture Left in Scotland

I now think love is rather deaf, than blind,

          For else it could not be,

                    That she,

Whom I adore so much, should so slight me,

   And cast my love behind:

I'm sure my language was as sweet,

                    And every close did meet

                    In sentence of as subtle feet

                              As hath the youngest he,

          That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree.

Oh, but my conscious fears,

          That fly my thoughts between,

          Tell me that she hath seen

   My hundreds of gray hairs,

   Told seven and forty years,

   Read so much waist, as she cannot embrace

   My mountain belly and my rock face,

As all these, through her eyes, have stopt her ears.

On my First Son

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;

My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.

Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,

Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

O, could I lose all father now! For why

Will man lament the state he should envy?

To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,

And if no other misery, yet age?

Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie

Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."

For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,

As what he loves may never like too much.

 

see also https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2024/06/sonnet-73-great-poems-of-the-world-episode-2-with-david-lehman-and-mitch-sisskind-.html

https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2024/07/my-life-had-stood-a-loaded-gun-great-poems-of-the-world-episode-5-with-david-lehman-and-mitch-sisski.html

https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2024/11/ulysses-and-the-gettysburg-address-great-poems-of-the-world-with-david-lehman-and-mitch-sisskind.html

Comments

[Kyril Alexander Calsoyas]

"As what he loves may never like too much" Higher order resolution for the natural involvements of a father, a man, and the universe itself with itself.