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.

Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,

Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,

Who all their parts of me to thee did give:

That due of many now is thine alone.

Sonnet 31                               

Okay, that’s lines nine through twelve, but here’s the whole thing. No sense in looking at just part of a sonnet.

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts

Which I by lacking have supposed dead,

And there reigns love and all love’s loving parts,

And all those friends which I thought buried.

How many a holy and obsequious tear

Hath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye

As interest of the dead, which now appear

But things remov’d that hidden in thee lie!

Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,

Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,

Who all their parts of me to thee did give:

That due of many now is thine alone.

            Their images I lov’d I view in thee,

            And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.

There. The sonnets aren’t easy, are they. Best if you take each four lines, and then the last two, separately as separate thoughts. Like this:

Lines 1-4: In you I see all my previous lovers.

Lines 5-8: I’ve cried many tears over these past lovers, and now I see them in you.

Lines 9-12: Again, all my past lovers are in you, and all that I gave them is in you, so that any love I owed them is now owed to you.

Lines 13-14: I see them in you, and you now have all of me, including any love I gave to my previous lovers.

What do you think? Did I get it? I guess I could go look in my sonnet book which explains each sonnet. Except that I’m at work right now and that book is at home. Maybe later.

I was looking for a picture of one of my trophies, since the second line mentions trophies. Then I realized that I don't have any trophies. So here's a pic of my nose tray that's supposed to be used for holding my glasses. I think it looks a little bit like a trophy. The idea with the nose tray is that I will know where I left my glasses if I were to use the nose tray. But no, I still leave my glasses all over the place, and wear my wife out with 'Where'd I put my glasses?' Yes, she hast all of me, including the 'Where'd I put my glasses?' part. I think she would be willing to live without that part.

T'were to consider too curiously, to consider so.

-Horatio

Hamlet                        Act V, scene i, line 212

Translation: You think too much, Hamlet. In fact, if you wanted to sum us this play in one sentence (and I’m not saying that you really could), you might use this line, You think too much, Hamlet. Though Will’s way of putting it is much nicer. T'were to consider too curiously, to consider so.

Hamlet spends an awful lot of time thinking, and re-thinking, in this play. Horatio’s response here is to Hamlet’s thought that it might be possible to trace Alexander the Great from his life, to his dead body, to that body rotting into dirt, and from thence to a cork stopping up a beer keg. That’s right, that’s Alexander the Great stopping up that keg of beer over there. Wow. 

Yes, I definitely feel like Hamlet a lot of the time. And just like him, I’m pretty sure that most of my thinking ain’t doing me much good.

 

Here's me with my Hamlet face; I'm thinking. I've no idea what I was thinking about, but I'm definitely thinking.

So, underneath the belly of their steeds,

That stain’d their fetlocks in his smoking blood,

The noble gentleman gave up the ghost. 

-Richard

King Henry The Sixth Part III           Act II, scene iii, line 20

This scene is taking place on the fringes of a battle. Richard is talking to Warwick and describing how he just saw the latter’s brother being killed by Clifford. He gave up the ghost. It sounds like there’s more than one person dying because he mentions their steeds, but he’s just talking about Warwick’s brother. At least, I think he is. And I don’t know who Warwick’s brother is. There are just way too many names in these history plays.

It’s a pretty interesting mental image, though. The guy is lying on the ground, presumably his horse is still standing over him, and this dying fellow’s blood is all over the bottom of the horse’s legs. Or maybe he’s underneath the belly of the horse that has fallen on him, like to Theoden on the Pelannor Fields. It could be just one more little thing that Tolkien borrowed from Will. I’ll have to go read that Tolkien passage again, won’t I.  

'To me! To me!' cried Theoden. 'Up Eorlingas! Fear no darkness!' But Snowmane wild with terror stood up on high, fighting with the air, and then with a great scream he crashed upon his side: a black dart had pierced him. The king fell beneath him.

That’s from chapter 6 of The Return Of The King. No question in that scenario; the horse fell on the king. I think I’d prefer to think of Warwick’s brother’s horse falling and lying on top of him as well. That is, if you don’t mind. Though, to be honest, I think the lines seem to be saying that the horse is still standing. Anyway, Tolkien's lines don’t really give any indication of being borrowed from Will. So at least we know that.

I can't really think of any way that these pics go with today's Totally Random lines, but I'm using them anyway.

I went for a walk today after lunch because it was a really beautiful day out. So I was walking by this abandoned, burnt-out factory. It was Winchester Repeating Arms at one time, but it's been empty for thirty or forty years. It's not much to look at. As I was walking I noticed something red stuck in that rusty fencing you see there, so I looked closer.

 

It says The search for love continues even in the face of great odds. 

So on the edifice of this wreck of a building we find this message of hope. I think it's pretty interesting, and now that I re-read today's Totally Random lines, maybe there is some correlation. 

What do you think?