Today is the first day of Spring and it happens also to be World Poetry Day and Mother’s Day (in Egypt and the US and several other places in the world, in the UK, however it falls on Sunday 26/03). For this triple occasion, I chose three short but potent poems, which are Victorian in the broader sense of the word. The first two poems are Ionic and Anna Dalassini by the renowned Alexandrian Poet, C. P. Cavafy, whose birth and death were in the Springs of 1863 and 1933. The third poem is by Ann Mary Evans (1819-1880), whose pen name is George Eliot. Evans is an internationally-renowned Victorian novelist but she is less known for her poetry. Her poem Roses is such a delightful one and well-fitted for a sunny Spring day like today.
Ionic
That we’ve broken their statues,
that we’ve driven them out of their temples,
doesn’t mean at all that the gods are dead.
O land of Ionia, they’re still in love with you,
their souls still keep your memory.
When an August dawn wakes over you,
your atmosphere is potent with their life,
and sometimes a young ethereal figure,
indistinct, in rapid flight,
wings across your hills.
(C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated from Modern Greek by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992)
Anna Dalassini
In the royal decree that Alexios Komninos
put out especially to honor his mother—
the very intelligent Lady Anna Dalassini,
noteworthy in both her works and her manners—
much is said in praise of her.
Here let me offer one phrase only,
a phrase that is beautiful, sublime:
“She never uttered those cold words ‘mine’ or ‘yours.’ ”
(C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated from Modern Greek by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992)
Roses
You love the roses – so do I. I wish
The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valley would be pink and white
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!
(George Eliot, 1819-1880, The complete poetical works of George Eliot. New York, F.A. Stokes & brother, 1888)
H Bastawy 