Poetry Monday

April's poetry inspiration comes from the very satirical classic The Canterbury Tales

My first selection for this month, although connected to Chaucer's humorous work, can really only be called witty. Really it is a game of wits between a hormonal teenage boy and a sensible, however, immature and naive 13 year old girl. It is from Romeo and Juliet and is one of my favorite passages from the play. It does relate to The Canterbury Tales in the sense that Romeo claims to seek Juliet, as a pilgrim does a saint, just as the pilgrims of Chaucer's tale are on the way to see the grave of Thomas Beckett.

ROMEO:	[To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand
	This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
	My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
	To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET:	Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
	Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
	For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
	And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
ROMEO:	Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET:	Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO:	O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
	They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET:	Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
ROMEO:	Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take

I am also now part of a blog group called Crafted Poetry. Amanda came up with this idea and I am very excited! We are reading Christina Rosetti's "The Goblin Market", discussing it, and then crafting something inspired by the poem. I plan to make a purse out of some reproduction fabric from the Victorian period that I have in my fabric stash. The bag will include fruit as an element in its design, to signify the f ruit that tempts the Victorian ladies of the poem as the goblins are calling out to them.

I will leave you a short passage from "The Goblin Market" as well as a great Pre-Raphaelite painting of Romeo and Juliet.

"Come buy," call the goblins
Hobbling down the glen.
"O! cried Lizzie, Laura, Laura,
You should not peep at goblin men."