Book Summary — Poems that make Grown Men cry
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1 paragraph summary:
I’m not one for poems. That has definitely has something to do with school making me memorise and recite poems in German and Polish as a child. I really struggled as my memory doesn’t hold words well (my memory is more concept-driven). This book was very much out of my comfort zone. Each poem had a short explanation of the background and relevance, which provided helpful colour. Most went over my head, but I found a couple which resonated and made me thing.
Fleeting
Dragonfly catcher,
Where today
have you gone?
The Thread of Life
My youth is spent and yet I am not old,
I saw the world and yet I was not seen;
My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
Friendship
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoanéd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
Memories vs Happiness
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
The Journey
Someone once told me: ‘Don’t ask the way of those who know it, you might not get lost.’
Endings
It was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.