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Where would old literature professors be without energetic postgraduates? A recent human acquisition, working on the literary sociology of pulp science fiction, has introduced me to the intellectual equivalent of catnip: Google Ngrams. Anyone reading this blog must be tech-savvy by definition; you probably contrive Ngrams over your muesli. But for a woefully challenged person like myself they are the easiest way to waste an entire morning since God invented snooker.

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By Christopher Page

I am struck by the way the recent issue of Early Music devoted to the early romantic guitar provides a timely reminder of how little is known about even the recent history of what is to day today the most popular musical instrument in existence. With millions of devotees worldwide, the guitar eclipses the considerably more expensive piano and allows a beginner to achieve passable results much sooner than the violin. In England, the foundations for this ascendancy were laid in the age of the great Romantic poets. It was during the lifetimes of Keats, Shelley, Byron, and Coleridge, extending from 1772 to 1834, that the guitar rose from a relatively subsidiary position in Georgian musical life to a place of such fashionable eminence that it rivalled the pianoforte and harp as the chosen instrument of many amateur musicians.

What makes this rise so fascinating is that it was not just a musical matter; the vogue for the guitar in England after 1800 owed much to a new imaginative landscape for the guitar owing much to Romanticism. John Keats, in one of his letters, tellingly associates the guitar with popular novels and serialized romances that were shaped by the interests of a predominantly female readership and were romantic in several senses of the word with their stories of hyperbolized emotion in exotic settings. For Byron, a poet with a wider horizon than Keats, the guitar was a potent image of the Spanish temper as the English commonly imagined it during the Napoleonic wars and long after: passionate and yet melancholic, lyrical and yet bellicose in the defence of political liberty, it gave full play to the Romantic fascination with extremes of sentiment. For Shelley in his Poem “With a Guitar,” the gentle sound of the instrument distilled the voices of Nature who had given the materials of her wooded hillsides to make it, but it also evoked something beyond Nature: the enchantment of Prospero’s isle and a reverie reaching beyond the limitations of sense to “such stuff as dreams are made on.” As the compilers of the Giulianiad, England’s first niche magazine for guitarists, asked in 1833: “What instrument so completely allows us to live, for a time, in a world of our own imagination?”

Given the wealth of material for a social history of the guitar in Regency England, and for its engagement with the romantic imagination, it is surprising that so little has been written about the instrument. It does say something about why England is widely regarded as the poor relation in the family of guitar-playing nations. The fortunes of the guitar in the early nineteenth century are commonly understood in a continental context established especially by contemporary developments in Italy, Spain, and France. To some extent, this is an understandable mistake, for Georgian England received rather more from the European mainland in the matter of guitar playing than she gave, but it is contrary to all indications. But we may discover, in the coming years, that the history of the guitar in England contains much that accords with that nation’s position as the most powerful country, and the most industrially advanced, of Western Europe at the close of the Napoleonic Wars.

There is so much material to consider: references to the guitar and guitarists in newspapers, advertisements, novels, short stories, poems and manuals of deportment, the majority of them published in the metropolis of London. The pictorial sources encompass a great many images of guitars and guitarists in a wealth of prints, mezzotints, lithographs, and paintings. The surviving music comprise a great many compositions for guitar, both in printed versions and in manuscript together with tutors that are themselves important social documents. Electronic resources, though fallible, permit a depth of coverage previously unattainable. Never have the words of John Thomson in the first issue of Early Music been more relevant: we set out on an intriguing journey.

Christopher Page is a long-standing contributor to Early Music. A Fellow of the British Academy, he is Professor of Medieval Music and Literature in the University of Cambridge and Gresham Professor of Music elect at Gresham College in London. In 1981 he founded the professional vocal ensemble Gothic voices, now with twenty-five CDs in the catalogue, from which he retired in 2000 to write his most recent book, The Christian West and its Singers: The first Thousand Years (Yale University Press, 2010).

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Image: Courtesy of Christopher Page. Do not use without permission.

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Following yesterday's poem selection, A Man Said to the Universe by Stephen Crane, I considered posting something from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass that begins "A child said 'What is the grass?'", but it turns out I posted that as part of this series already, on April 2nd of last year. I toyed with posting a second Crane poem ("In the Desert"), but opted instead to go with a poem that - at least on its surface - addresses communication by a speaker on earth with a body out in space. It is a partial reprise of a post I did in January of 2009 about the dialogue between poets - in this case, Keats and Frost and, as you'll see, T.S. Eliot as well.

Choose Something Like a Star
by Robert Frost

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud—
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to the wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says, 'I burn.'
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

This 25-line poem is written in iambic tetrameter (four iambic feet per line), and uses a complicated nested rhyme scheme (AABAABCBDEDEFGGFGHIIHJKKJ), although one could fairly characterize the final eight lines as stanzas set in envelope rhyme. The starting 17 lines use a nested rhyme technique that is quite similar to what T.S. Eliot used in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", posted here previously, and rest assured, that is no coincidence.



Frost specifically references Keats's poem within his, both by addressing a star in the first place and by specifically talking about the steadfastness of the star and "Keats' Eremite". Were this poem to be performed on the stage, there'd be no fainting couch around, and the speaker would essentially be arguing with the star for a good 17 lines. Because it's not until the final 8 lines of this poem that Frost stops addressing the star directly. Yet there, at the start of the 18th line - "And steadfast as Keats' Eremite" - is a volta, where the poet stops hollering at the star and turns to his audience to address them directly.

Now, Frost's poem is actually quite lovely on its surface. It purports to be about a star in the night sky, and the speaker asks it questions, seeking answers, and the star tells us precious little about itself. "It says 'I burn'./But say with what degree of heat./Talk Fahrenheit. Talk Centigrade. Tell us what elements you blend." The speaker wants facts and specifics, something he can wrap his head around.

But, to quote Eliot's Prufrock, "That is not it at all,/That is not what [he] meant, at all." Frost, you see, told at least one of his classes that the "star" to which the poem is addressed was a contemporary star in the world of poetry: T.S. Eliot. Frost is being his usual cantankerous self, criticizing Eliot for his highbrow ways and for combining elements (Sanskrit, Hebrew, myt

All that talk of the Greek and Roman gods yesterday in the post about "The Garden" by Andrew Marvell called to mind one of the most famous of famous Keats poems, which I've not yet posted here. It seemed high time to remedy that situation, and so it is that today's selection is one of the five famous Odes written by Keats in 1819: "Ode on a Grecian Urn". The title doesn't mean that he physically wrote the poem on an urn, but that he was inspired by the frieze around the outside of a Grecian urn.

The poem closes with a maxim based on the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose works on the nature of art were well-known and respected by Keats and many of his readers: "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Ode on a Grecian Urn
by John Keats

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
  Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
  A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunt about thy shape
  Of deities or mortals, or of both,
    In Tempe or the dales of Arcady*?
  What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
  What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
  Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
  Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
  Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
    Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal - yet, do not grieve;
    She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
  For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
  Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
  For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
  For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
    For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
  That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
    A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
  To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
  And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
  Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
    Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
  Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
    Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic** shape! Fair attitude! with brede***
  Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
  Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
  When old age shall this generation waste,
    Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
  Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all
    Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

*Tempe or the dales of Arcady: Tempe and Arcadia are beautiful locations in Greece, representing here a form of idealized rural or pastoral beauty

**Attic: of, relating to, or having the characteristics of Athens or its ancient civilization; marked by simplicity, purity or refinement (per

Yesterday's post about Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky", which used a form of hymn metre (three lines of more-or-less iambic tetrameter followed by a line of trimeter). Although it is indeed a nonsense poem, "Jabberwocky" is also a narrative poem, meaning one that tells a story. And all that talk of slaying monsters made me think of knights, making today's choice obvious (at least for me).

Today, one of my favorite short narrative poems, by the incomparable John Keats. It's called "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", by which Keats meant "the beautiful woman without pity/mercy" and not "the beautiful woman without thanks" - the title comes from a medieval French court poem by Alain Chartier. This lyric narrative poems tells a seemingly simple story in the form of a stylized folk ballad. In the first three stanzas, a speaker asks a woeful knight what's wrong, and the remainder of the poem is the knight's answer. I absolutely, flat-out adore this poem, which was part of the impetus for my own poem, "La Belle Dame Sans Regrets", which was written in response to a picture prompt posted by The Merry Sisters of Fate, based on a painting inspired by . . . well, by this Keats poem. I begin to tire of my circular digression, and will move straight to the poem:

La Belle Dame Sans Merci
by John Keats

O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
  Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
  And no birds sing.

O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
  So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
  And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow
  With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
  Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
  Full beautiful— a faery's child:
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
  And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
  And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
  And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
  And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
  A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
  And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
  'I love thee true.'

She took me to her elfin grot,
  And there she gazed and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
  With kisses four.

And there she lullèd me asleep
  And there I dreamed— Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dreamed
  On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
  Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cried— 'La Belle Dame sans Merci
  Hath thee in thrall!'

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
  With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
  On the cold hill side.

And that is why I sojourn here,
  Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge has withered from the lake,
  And no birds sing.

Form: Each stanza contains four lines. Were you to number the lines 1-4, lines 2 & 4 rhyme. The first three lines in each stanza are roughly in iambic tetrameter (four iambic feet per line: taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM), although sometimes Keats adds an extra syllable here or there, usually meaning that one of the feet has a third syllable, as in the third line of the final stanza: "Though the sedge has withered from the lake", which still has four poetic feet in the line: an anapest (tadaDUM) followed by three iambs (taDUM taDUM taDUM). In any case,