Here the Gentle Lark

A few months ago, I found and fell in love with this old recording of Nellie Melba singing the song "Lo, Here the Gentle Lark." BUT, until today, it had escaped me that the words are lines 875-886 from Venus and Adonis!!!


There are other, more modern recordings of this song, but I like this one best. The old fashioned singing style suits the song so well - and even with the scratchy old recording, Melba's voice is amazing!

Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty;
Who doth the world so gloriously behold
That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.

Venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow:
'O thou clear god, and patron of all light,
From whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow
The beauteous influence that makes him bright,
There lives a son that suck'd an earthly mother,
May lend thee light, as thou dost lend to other.'

Venus and Adonis - Deadly Kisses

'But this foul, grim, and urchin-snouted boar,
Whose downward eye still looketh for a grave,
Ne'er saw the beauteous livery that he wore;
Witness the entertainment that he gave:
If he did see his face, why then I know
He thought to kiss him, and hath kill'd him so.

'Tis true, 'tis true; thus was Adonis slain:
He ran upon the boar with his sharp spear,
Who did not whet his teeth at him again,
But by a kiss thought to persuade him there;
And nuzzling in his flank, the loving swine
Sheathed unaware the tusk in his soft groin.

'Had I been tooth'd like him, I must confess,
With kissing him I should have kill'd him first;
But he is dead, and never did he bless
My youth with his; the more am I accurst.'
With this, she falleth in the place she stood,
And stains her face with his congealed blood.

(Venus and Adonis, 1127-1144)

In a previous post about this poem, I touched on some of the elements of the "love" story here that give us pause - 

Read more »

Venus and Adonis - Love or Lust?

'Call it not love, for Love to heaven is fled,
Since sweating Lust on earth usurp'd his name;
Under whose simple semblance he hath fed
Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame;
Which the hot tyrant stains and soon bereaves,
As caterpillars do the tender leaves. 


'Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.
(Venus and Adonis, 815-826)

(Venus Lamenting the Death of Adonis by Benjamin West, 1768. This painting seems be of the Ovid version, as it all seems much more peaceful than Shakespeare's interpretation)

There is a lot of discussion of different aspects of love in this poem, even down to one of the title characters - Venus, a personification of love - being referenced by "love" as a name. But is the story about love or lust? 

Read more »

Venus and Adonis - What's Going On?

Even as the sun with purple-colour'd face
Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase;
Hunting he loved, but love he laugh'd to scorn;
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
And like a bold-faced suitor 'gins to woo him.

.....

Over one arm the lusty courser's rein,
Under her other was the tender boy,
Who blush'd and pouted in a dull disdain,
With leaden appetite, unapt to toy;
She red and hot as coals of glowing fire,
He red for shame, but frosty in desire.

(Venus and Adonis, 20-26, 50-56)

(Venus and Adonis - Jusepe de Ribera, 1637)

Welcome to Shakespeare's poetry. So far we've just read his plays, which besides prose include a lot of poetic elements: iambic pentamenter in blank verse, and (in some plays more than others) rhyming couplets or various other rhyming elements. However, here we've got a full blown lengthy narrative poem with an unrelenting ababcc rhyme scheme!

We want another play! Why did Shakespeare do this to us?
(Not that we mind. We're tough. We can take it.)

Well, some scholars speculate, given its original 1593 publication date, that Shakespeare wrote the poem to keep himself busy and to bring in some cash and publicity when the London theaters were closed for a while due to an outbreak of the bubonic plague. Nothing like the Black Death to get the poetic juices going, right?
Surprisingly to those of us who are used to our present age's historically uncharacteristic disinterest in narrative poetry, this poem was very popular and often re-printed within Shakespeare's lifetime. We tend to prefer his plays. For the Elizabethans, this was not necessarily the case.

Shakespeare based his plot on one of the classical stories from Ovid's Metamorphoses, which all involve things - usually people - turning into something else. The stories tend to be rather disturbing, with gods often chasing after or messing with humans in some way that causes them not to be human any more. :(  

So, quick synopsis of the story.
*SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT*
Venus, the goddess of love, sees this gorgeous young kid (Adonis) and goes crazy with desire. She grabs him in a vice-like grip and for the next 800 lines of poetry holds him captive against his will, kisses him A LOT, tells him that he is really beautiful, and tries to convince him that he should like her and want to be with her because she is really beautiful too. He, however, is pouty, exasperated and scornful, and rebuffs all her advances. She won't let him go for a WHOLE DAY, but finally relents, but tells him that she has a really bad feeling that he's going to die! He doesn't care! And goes boar hunting with his friends! A boar kills him! (OH NOES!) Venus finds his body wallowing in blood! Then the corpse transmogrifies into a flower! Venus looks at the flower, says "I know you want to live, little flower, but I don't care, I'm going to pick you anyway," and then she does. The End.

DISTURBINGGG

In my next post, I'll pick up on the theme of Adonis as victim. Why does Shakespeare give us yet another portrait of desire forcing itself upon an unwilling subject?