#19th century poems

[relaxedbunny]

[oldwinesoul]

“Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling”

—Oscar Wilde

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Dante's Inferno - art by Gustave Doré (1861)

[ltwilliammowett]

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), illustrations by Gustave Dore' (1832-1883)

[7pleiades7]

Acme and Septimius (c. 1868) by Sir Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton, PRA (British, 1830-1896), oil on canvas, diameter: 99 cm, The Ashmolean Museum of Art, Oxford

[weirdlookindog]

Theodor von Holst (1810-1844) - Hero and Leander, 1833

"She went up to the tower, and straining out To search the seas, downwards, and round about, She saw, at last,—she saw her lord indeed Floating, and washed about, like a vile weed; On which such strength of passion and dismay Seized her, and such an impotence to stay. That from the turret, like a stricken dove. With fluttering arms she leaped, and joined her drowned love" - Leigh Hunt

[year24groupedits]

Gilbert Cocteau from the manga "Kaze to Ki no Uta" (1976-1984) by Keiko Takemiya

[relaxedbunny]

[oldwinesoul]

𝐼𝑛 𝑚𝑦 𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑚𝑠 𝐼 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑎 𝑠𝑝𝑙𝑖𝑡 𝑠𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑑 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑝 𝐼 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔.

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Paradise Lost - art by Gustave Doré (1866)

[ltwilliammowett]

A pink lustre mug with a ship and a poem, England, c. 1840

When riding o'er, the mountain wave. The Hardy, Sailor, ever brave. He laughs at danger, smiles at fate. And risks his life, to save his mate.

[the-evil-clergyman]

Illustrations from Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso by Gustave Doré (1879)

[7pleiades7]

Love’s Greeting (c. 1861) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), oil on panel, 57 x 61 cm, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

[whenaprilwoodsarered]

Opinion — Imperfection —

Those we all must have -

To Butt out Heads,-

Superior —

And Fall on Soiled ground —

The Sky can tell you what is right,-

And the Patterns of the sand —

Though - we are imperfect -

We live on perfect Land —

[verse-voyager]

Walking through the streets That we used to roam The silence feels so loud Now that you're not home

[finelythreadedsky]

 On one level the book is about the life of a woman who is hardly more than a token in a great epic poem, on another it’s about how history and context shape how we are seen, and the brief moment there is to act between the inescapable past and the unknowable future. Perhaps to write Lavinia Le Guin had to live long enough to see her own early books read in a different context from the one where they were written, and to think about what that means.

-Jo Walton