Adelaide

Alas, how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,
And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.

Alas, how hardly things go right!
'Tis hard to watch in a summer night,
For the sigh will come, and the kiss will stay,
And the summer night is a wintry day.

— George MacDonald, Phantastes ch XIX.

And yet how easily things go right,
If the sigh and a kiss of a summer's night
Come deep from the soul in the stronger ray
That is born in the light of the winter's day.

And things can never go badly wrong
If the heart be true and the love be strong,
For the mist, if it comes, and the weeping rain
Will be changed by the love into sunshine again.

— Lorettus S. Metcalf, The Forum
Posted by Tim at 7/26/2009 05:42:00 PM
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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous8/05/2009 07:12:00 AM

    Tim, the stealth blogger under my nose! Great poems. So how, pray tell, do you find such parallel poems, not by chance I dare say. I really like the counterpoint between MacDonald (he isn't usually that gloomy, is he) and Metcalf. It appears MacDonald came first, and Metcalf was plagiarizing - -no !?
    Dad

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  2. Tim8/06/2009 10:32:00 AM

    Usually all four stanzas are attributed to MacDonald under the title Sweet Peril. Having recently read Phantastes, I can tell you this is not correct. But I don't know any more about The Forum. It appears to have been a journal published annually in the late nineteenth century. I wouldn't call it plagiarizing.

    As for context, it is from a series of songs described as "almost all sad, but with a sound of comfort." The main character needs to learn a lesson from them. So MacDonald is not always this gloomy.

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