by Eliot · Cluster: Joy · Animals · Comic Verse Song
Abstract
Nocturnal lyric contrasting cool white moon-flowers the beloved holds with a longing for warmer ‘scarlet’ tropic flowers of passion; white-vs-red imagery of chaste versus ardent love.
Connections
Motifs: Flowers, White and Red, Sea, Night Themes & Concepts: Romantic Love, Lust Sexual Desire Forms & Genres: Comic Verse Song
Testo integrale / Full text
Song: ‘The moonflower opens to the moth’
The moonflower opens to the moth,
The mist crawls in from sea;
A great white bird, a snowy owl,
Slips from the alder tree.
Whiter the flowers, Love, you hold,
Than the white mist on the sea;
Have you no brighter tropic flowers
With scarlet life, for me?
Nocturne
Romeo, grand sérieux, to importune
Guitar and hat in hand, beside the gate
With Juliet, in the usual debate
Of love, beneath a bored but courteous moon;
The conversation failing, strikes some tune
Banal, and out of pity for their fate
Behind the wall I have some servant wait,
Stab, and the lady sinks into a swoon.
Blood looks effective on the moonlit ground —
The hero smiles; in my best mode oblique
Rolls toward the moon a frenzied eye profound,
(No need of ‘Love forever?’ — ‘Love next week?’)
While female readers all in tears are drowned: —
‘The perfect climax all true lovers seek!’