Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue, Contrast Podcast, I Love You

     It's a poetic contrast podcast this week, as we were to pick a poem to read and then submit a song to go with it. It was difficult, let me tell you, mainly because I'm not much of a poetry person. But I think it's going to be a very interesting episode (listen to it here). Next week's theme is "The Telephone," which should be a fairly easy one to choose a song for, don't you think?

     I went with a poem called "Evening" by Joyce Maxtone Graham. She is probably best known as the author of Mrs. Miniver (under the name Jan Struther), a book turned into an extremely famous WWII-era movie about the life of a virtuous, noble British woman during the war. It starred one of my favorite old-time actresses, Greer Garson (that's her in the photo).

     Anyway, I have a book called The Real Mrs. Miniver, which, as you may have guessed, is her biography. Turns out she was a bit more spirited and prone to adventurous (amorous) behavior than her fictional counterpart. She also wrote a lot of poetry, some of which is incorporated in the book, and that's where I found this poem. For me, the song underscores the bare, dim ache of the soul she feels.

Evening

I have looked too long upon the sunset.

Its spell has stripped me bare

Of all the comfortable thoughts

That commonly I wear.

Evening's the chink in the soul's armour,

And through it I can feel

The soft cold fingers of desolation

Silently, deftly steal.

Noughts's left of joy now but its transience;

Of pride, but its loneliness.

Love's a dim ache, a dying music,

Beautiful, comfortless.

Colour to greyness turns, and slowly

Light fades from the sky:

I sit bowed down by the weight of evening,

Too sorrowful to cry.

Counting Crows--"Colorblind" mp3 off This Desert Life (buy)

tags: contrast podcast  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati