Myra here.
Friday, glorious day, poetry day! 🙂 Our host this week is Donna from Mainely Write.
We have just announced our new bimonthly theme til February – A Game of Thrones: Blue Bloods, Queenship, Aristocracy. And so, I tried looking for poetry that would fit this theme.
I consulted Carol Ann Duffy’s 101 Poems for Children illustrated by Emily Gravett
and found Shakespeare’s Queen, which I thought is just about perfect for our new theme. Enjoy, dear friends. I took a picture of the page and edited it using an iPhone app. It always amazes me how beautifully it turns out, even better than Photoshop, I think.
Gathering Books 
Oh, this sounds like a magical new theme, your Excellency. I’ll put my thinking crown on. In the meantime, thank you for sharing the Bard’s queenly lines. (And I’ve been an Emily Gravett fan since stumbling on her WOLVES a few years ago – great stuff!)
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Great way to start your theme! “Hence, you long-legged spinners, hence!” I love your logo. As far as suggestions for future poems…maybe something about the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland? Possibly “‘Once Upon A Time,’ She Said” by Jane Yolen?
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The poem serves to put a spell on all of us, doesn’t it, Myra. Lovely beginning! I’ll take a look at some of my anthologies for your theme. Now, most I can imagine are nursery rhymes about royalty.
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Magical poem — glad you chose Shakespeare to kick off the new theme. Great job with the book page image!
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You found the perfect poem with which to introduce the theme, Myra!
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Great selection, Myra! The Bard said it all. =)
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I think I’d bring in a study of the nursery rhymes and what their meanings were.
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I look forward to seeing where this theme will take you!
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I just got the Complete Works of Shakespeare for Christmas. Let me look. 🙂 Hmm… This may take a bit. I need to read the plays first, of course…
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What a gorgeous illustration for Shakespeare’s magical words. Can’t think of any poems about queens off the top of my head, and my poetry books are at school. Does Marilyn Singer have something in Mirror, Mirror or Follow, Follow? If I think of one, I’ll let you know.
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Myra, I think you did a beautiful job with the iPhone! Really! 😀
And I’m glad I read beyond the logo ’cause every time I saw it, I thought it had to do with the books and TV series of which I have no interest. So glad it’s not! lol Also, sorry, I can’t think of any poems at the moment. Not sure any will pop in! : /
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Myra, thought of Guinevere and found this on Bartleby.com:
Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron (1809–92)
LIKE souls that balance joy and pain,
With tears and smiles from heaven again
The maiden Spring upon the plain
Came in a sun-lit fall of rain.
In crystal vapor everywhere 5
Blue isles of heaven laugh’d between,
And far, in forest-deeps unseen,
The topmost elm-tree gather’d green
From draughts of balmy air.
Sometimes the linnet pip’d his song: 10
Sometimes the throstle whistled strong
Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel’d along,
Hush’d all the groves from fear of wrong:
By grassy capes with fuller sound
In curves the yellowing river ran, 15
And drooping chestnut-buds began
To spread into the perfect fan,
Above the teeming ground.
Then, in the boyhood of the year,
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere 20
Rode thro’ the coverts of the deer,
With blissful treble ringing clear.
She seem’d a part of joyous Spring;
A gown of grass-green silk she wore,
Buckled with golden clasps before; 25
A light-green tuft of plumes she bore
Clos’d in a golden ring.
Now on some twisted ivy-net,
Now by some tinkling rivulet,
In mosses mix’d with violet 30
Her cream-white mule his pastern set:
And fleeter now she skimm’d the plains
Than she whose elfin prancer springs
By night to eery warblings,
When all the glimmering moorland rings 35
With jingling bridle-reins.
As fast she fled thro’ sun and shade,
The happy winds upon her play’d,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid:
She look’d so lovely, as she sway’d 40
The rein with dainty finger-tips,
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.
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Myra, I’m finally catching up with PF posts. We’ve been lucky enough to see Midsummer Night’s Dream twice performed by a local, outdoor Shakespeare troupe — it’s a beautiful play to enjoy outside on a warm summer night. Had to share this — Sleeping Queens is a card game developed by a pre-teen American girl. It won an award and was made into an actual, buyable game. http://www.gamewright.com/gamewright/index.php?section=games&page=game&show=140
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Sorry I didn’t get to your post last week, but what better way than Shakespeare to welcome your new theme! Looking forward to today’s unveiling. 🙂
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Thanks Michelle! As the trite cliche goes: Better late than never! 🙂
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