Monday, June 22, 2020


When he again desires her, being sat,
Her grievance with his hearing to divide:

A Lover’s Complaint                         

This is a 329 line-long poem that is broken into 47 seven-line-long stanzas. So let’s look at the whole stanza that today’s line comes from.

            So slides he down upon his grained bat,
            And comely-distant sits he by her side;
            When he again desires her, being sat,
            Her grieving with his hearing to divide:
            If that from him there may be aught applied
            Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,
            ‘Tis promised in the charity of age.

There. This is the tenth stanza, so we’re in the first part of the poem. The first eight stanzas describe a woman, the titular lover, sitting by a stream and lamenting a lost love. In stanzas nine and ten an older man comes along and sits down to try to talk or listen to the young woman to help her.

His grained bat is, I think, his staff. So he’s sitting on his staff? Comely-distant I’m guessing means that he’s not sitting overly close to her. To divide her hearing is probably just to hear what she has to say. And finally, since he’s an old guy he’d like to help her if he can.

That’s all I’m getting from this stanza. How about you?

Well, I'm not quite sure how this pic fits in, but I'm going to take a shot at it. This is the Louvre Museum and all these people, including Jess in the forefront of this pic, are looking at the Mona Lisa. Mona is outside this pic to the left, behind that semi-circle wooden railing. This pic came up in conversation last night, the interesting thing being all those other paintings in the room being for the most part ignored. 
So how does this fit into today's discussion? Well I'll leave the challenge of connecting it up to you. Let me know if you come up with something.


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