Elmer Paisley:

January122013

“The Tune of Seven Towers” from “Pre-Raphaelite Ballads” by William Morris, illust. H.M. O’Kane
(Click for the complete book, via archive.org)

william morris pre-raphaelite pre-raphaelites art book design h.m. o'kane books poetry ballads illustration

October52012

percy bysshe shelley percy shelley poetry romanticism ozymandias

September52012

“Circe” by Louis Chalon, c. 1888

When Ulysses, after the fall of Troy, as the “Odyssey” relates it, went voyaging in search of adventures, he landed at the island of Aeaea, to the westward of Sicily, which was ruled over by the fairhaired and beautiful sorceress Circe, the daughter of the Sun. Around her wonderful palace, where she sat enthroned on a golden throne, in a pond of lotus and lilies, roved herds of beasts, wolves, lions, tigers, oxen, and the like, which had once been human beings and whom she had transformed by her spells. The companions of Ulysses, feasting and drinking her drugged wine while guests at her palace, were converted by her incantations into swine, but the hero himself, forewarned by Mercury and provided by him with a supply of mystic herb called moly, was proof against her sorcerey. His invulnerability, courage, and manly beauty captivated the lovely witch, and for a year he remained her guest, when, having induced her, out of her love for him, to disenchant his companions, he resumed his voyage. Louis Chalon, the painter, is a native of Paris, and a pupil of Jules Lefebvre and G. Boulanger.
(source)

louis chalon art illustration the odyssey circe witchcraft pigs homer poetry 1800s

August212012

william blake art songs of experience the sick rose poetry illustration

August102012

Apollo and Daphne by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, c. 1622-‘25

‘[Apollo] would have said
Much more than this, but Daphne, frightened, left him
With many words unsaid, and she was lovely
Even in flight, her limbs bare in the wind,
Her garments fluttering, ad her soft hair streaming,
More beautiful than ever. But Apollo,
Too young a god to waste his time in coaxing,
Came following fast. When a hound starts a rabbit
In an open field, one runs for game, one safety.
He has her, or thinks he has, and she is doubtful
Whether she’s caught or not, so close the margin,
So ran the god and girl one swift in hope,
The other in terror, but he ran more swiftly,
borne not the wings of love, gave her no rest,
Shadowed her shoulder, breathed on her streaming hair.
Her strength was gone, worn out by the long effort
Of the long flight; she was deathly pale, and seeing
The river of her father, cried “O help me,
If there is any power in the rivers,
Change and destroy the body which has given
Too much delight!” And hardly had she finished,
When her limbs grew numb and heavy, her soft breasts
Were closed with delicate bark, her hair was leaves,
Her arms were branches, and her speedy feet
Rooted and held, and her head became a tree top,
Everything gone except her grace, her shining.
Apollo loved her still. He placed his hand
Where he had hoped and felt the heart still beating
Under the bark; and he embraced the branches
As if they still were limbs, and kissed the wood,
And the wood shrank from his kisses, and the god
Exclaimed: “Since you can never be my bride,
My tree at least you shall be! Let the laurel
Adorn, henceforth, my hair, my lyre, my quiver;
Let Roman victors, in the long procession,
Wear laurel wreaths for triumph and ovation.
Beside Augustus’ portals let the laurel
Guard and watch over the oak, and as my head
Is always youthful, let the laurel always
Be green and shining!” He said no more. The laurel,
Stirring, seemed to consent, to be saying “Yes.”’

-from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, trans. Rolfe Humphries

apollo art baroque baroque art baroque sculpture bernini daphne mythology sculpture ovid poetry metamorphoses classical mythology

June242012

The “Perseus Cycle” by Edward Burne-Jones, c. 1875-1890

1. The Call of Perseus
2. Perseus and the Graiae
3. The Arming of Perseus (Perseus and the Nereids)
4. The Finding of Medusa
5. The Death of Medusa
6. The Birth of Pegasus and Chrysaor
7. The Rock of Doom
8. The Doom Fulfilled
9. The Baleful Head
10. Atlas Turned to Stone

These paintings are based on “The Doom of King Acrisius” (full text) by William Morris.

art fairy tales illustration medusa mythology perseus pre-raphaelites edward burne-jones folklore poetry william morris

June202012

Hogarth’s unfinished oil sketch is an illustration to John Milton’s epic poem, ‘Paradise Lost’. Satan, on the left, confronts Death who bars his way from hell to earth. Between them is Sin, shown as a naked woman. She reveals to Satan that she is his daughter, and that Death is their incestuous child. This is one of the earliest paintings devoted to a subject from Milton and predates Burke’s seminal Enquiry into … the sublime and the beautiful, 1757, in which this passage from Milton and the description of Death are singled out as an absolute example of the Sublime.

(Sources: 1, 2)

art william hogarth poetry literature paradise lost satan john milton

1PM

William Blake’s “The Divine Image” (1789) and “A Divine Image” (1794)

I think the former poem in particular is exceptionally beautiful

art poetry william blake songs of innocence songs of experience

June112012

WIFE of BATH
A film by Joanna Quinn
from Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”.

wife of bath canterbury tales geoffrey chaucer art poetry

May222012

hannahlmr:

Lewis Carroll, “The Mouse’s Tale” from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

In Martin Gardner’s Annotated Alice, he mentioned that the original version of the tale might be “a more appropriate one, for it fulfills the mouse’s promise to explain why he dislikes cats and dogs” (p. 50-51) (top image). He suggested that Carroll got the idea for this figurative poem from Tennyson (p. 50):

Tennyson once told Carroll that he had dreamed a lengthy poem about fairies, which began with very long lines, then the lines got shorter and shorter until the poem ended with fifty or sixty lines of two syllables each. (Tennyson thought highly of the poem in his sleep, but forgot it completely when he awoke.)

(via hannahlmr-deactivated20120706)

lewis carroll alice in wonderland poetry

May112012

by Edward Robert Hughes, c. 1895.

“Oh where are you going with your love-locks flowing

On the west wind blowing along this valley track?”

“The downhill path is easy, come with me an it please ye,

We shall escape the uphill by never turning back.”

So they two went together in glowing August weather,

The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right;

And dear she was to dote on, her swift feet seemed to float on

The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight.

“Oh what is that in heaven where gray cloud-flakes are seven,

Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt?”

“Oh that’s a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous,

An undeciphered solemn signal of help or hurt.”

“Oh what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,

Their scent comes rich and sickly?”—“A scaled and hooded worm.”

“Oh what’s that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow?”

“Oh that’s a thin dead body which waits the eternal term.”

“Turn again, O my sweetest,—turn again, false and fleetest:

This beaten way thou beatest I fear is hell’s own track.”

“Nay, too steep for hill-mounting; nay, too late for cost-counting:

This downhill path is easy, but there’s no turning back.”

- “Amor Mundi” by Christina Rossetti

art poetry christina rossetti edward robert hughes painting

April232012

"Idylls of the King"

by

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Illustrated by Gustave Doré

poetry literature arthurian legend illustration art gustave dore alfred lord tennyson books

March202012

Hauntingly beautiful and masterfully executed stop-motion adaptation of “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” from the PBS show “Long Ago and Far Away” (1989-1993). For more info on this story and its historical origins see my previous post.

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndaqgKUpQf0&feature=related

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFuj1VroQWM&feature=related

library fairy tales animation poetry literature robert browning stop motion

1PM

"The Pied Piper of Hamelin" by Robert Browning

"Once more he stept into the street 
And to his lips again 
Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane; 
And ere he blew three notes (such sweet 
Soft notes as yet musician's cunning 
Never gave the enraptured air) 
There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling 
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling, 
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering, 
Little hands clapping, and little tongues chattering, 
And, like fowls in a farm-yard when barley is scattering, 
Out came the children running. 
All the little boys and girls, 
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls, 
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls, 
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after 
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter."

Another fantastical story based on an historical event. In the year 1284 the townspeople of Hameln, Germany, tragically lost all of their children under mysterious circumstances. The first reference to this event is in the town records of 1384 which states “It is 100 years since our children left”. The story has been expanded upon over the centuries to include the plague of rats and the grim Piper, and reached what is perhaps its definitive form in 1842 when Robert Browning wrote this poem.