The Poetry Quiz Taken

Re: Some Poetry by E. L. Core, wherein I gave a little challenge:

.... Here's a poetry quiz: "Autumn Sunset" contains a brief phrase (three words) snatched from Shakespeare; "September Evening", a brief phrase (also three words) snatched from Gerard Manley Hopkins. Can you identify them?

Dylan of error503 has blogged the answers: "Summer ends now" from Hopkins' poem "Hurrahing in Harvest" and "the winter's near" from Shakespeare's poem "How like a winter" (both posted today).

That sonnet is one of my favorite's from Shakespeare; another is "From you have I been absent in the spring". I always think of them together, and they are the only among Shakespeare's poems that I have (almost) memorized. I do not number the sonnets here, because they have been variously numbered over the centuries, this or that critic thinking them to have been originally published out of order.

And Steven Riddle of Flos Carmeli wrote me this e-mail:

Without question the phrase from Hopkins is "Summer Ends Now." In the other poem it seems you borrow from the same Hopkins poem with the "silk-sack" phrase. As to the Shakespeare, there are so many contenders. I know "the aged sun" is part of one phrase. But I need further investigation.

The poems are nice--not to my immediate taste. I will give them further attention. I truly enjoy your site and I really enjoyed finding the poems the other day. As I said, I'll need to look more closely at a time when I can give them time.

Generally, I regard e-mail as a means of private communication. However, if you had had a comments facility, I would have posted this there. Please feel free to use it and to associate my name with it if you so choose.

And (borrowing a phrase from Dylan today), I think Steven may "be reminding me of what I never knew about". Sort of. For surely the phrase "silk-sack" appears in Hopkin's poem and in one of mine, but I do not remember GMH having been consciously the source of the word for me. I should think it rather likely, but I cannot (at this distance in time from composition) verify it. Ditto for "aged sun".

P.S. May I nominate myself for the Glorious Seventeenth Century Poets Society with the following entries: this and this?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 09/03/02 02:57:55 PM
Categorized as Classic.