[1605] One Sung of Thee who Left the Tale Untold

Rounding out Parker's "Trio of Lyrical Treats"

One sung of thee who left the tale untold,
   Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting;
Like empty cups of wrought and daedal gold,
   Which mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting.

    -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

       from "Percy Bysshe Shelley, Posthumous Poems", ed. Mary Shelley (1824)

Note:
  daedal:
   1. Ingenious and complex in design or function; intricate.
   2. Finely or skillfully made or employed; artistic.
	 (after Daedalus, who "gave his name eponymously to any Greek artificer
   and to many Greek contraptions that represented dextrous skill."
(Wikipedia))

This is one of the "many short fragments from Shelley's MSS. published by
Mary Shelley, his wife, in her editions of 1824 and 1839", says
Representative Poetry Online, going on to note that she entitles this poem "A
Tale Untold". To my mind, these short fragments are some of the best, or at
least the most enjoyable stuff that Shelley produced, little gems that
reveal his genius for imagery without being dragged down to earth by his
rather uncertain ear for euphony.[1]

Too, I enjoy the "fragment" as a poetic form in its own right - a little
snatch of verse that is patently not a complete poem, but which nevertheless
stands very well on its own - often so well that an attempt to "complete" it
or work it into a larger poem would only dilute its impact. (See Tennyson's
"The Eagle" [Poem #15] for the best example I can think of). All in all, I
am distinctly grateful to Mary Shelley for preserving these gems of
Shelley's - Shelley is so widely acclaimed a poet that I always feel that I
am missing out on something in my dislike for the majority of his work.

martin

[1] to see what I mean, try reading "The Cloud"
[http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1884.html] - there were
several wonderful bits in there, but the poem as a whole I had to force
myself to finish



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From: aseemk@  Wed Jan 26 20:40:04 2005

And speaking of fragments....



The New York Times Book Review had a column a while back (Nov 21, 2004)
with scraps of poems from Amichai's papers - just random jottings that
he left behind. I'm not able to copy in the link for some reason, but a
quick search at www.nytimes.com <http://www.nytimes.com/>  for Amichai
should help find it (although the formatting's all messed up now). One
particular favourite:



"Instructions to furniture makers:

a good measure for a bed

is the measure of a cross,

there should be room to stretch your arms."

 - Yehuda Amichai (translation by Leon Wieseltier)

Aseem