Great works of art, literature, poetry can cross generations and centuries… often… but sometimes a modern perspective casts an old work in a different light from what was intended. I love John Masefield’s work, but I wouldn’t necessarily say all of it was ‘great’, and certainly some of his sonnets seem sentimental, and even mawkish, and definitely ‘out of time’.
The sonnet I’ve chosen for today is blighted by its first line; for English people the phrase ‘spend a penny’ means to visit the bathroom. In the middle of the nineteenth century, public toilets with coin operated locks were opened, first in London and then across the country. The coin needed was a penny, so it literally cost a penny to ‘spend a penny’. However, the actual phrase is relatively modern, probably dating from the 1940’s so John Masefield can be excused (joke) for using the phrase in 1915!
When we were studying nineteenth century literature for our degrees, I remember the class being reduced to hysteria and uproar by lines from a classic poem which took on a whole modern meaning. It was either Tennyson or Wordsworth who was describing a heroine, and mentioned ‘her breath in thick hot pants…’
I don’t think this is one of his best poems, and not just because of the first line!
Go, spend your penny, Beauty, when you will,
In the grave’s darkness let the stamp be lost.
The water still will bubble from the hill,
And April quick the meadows with her ghost;
Over the grass the daffodils will shiver,
The primroses with their pale beauty abound,
The blackbird be a lover and make quiver
With his glad singing the great soul of the ground;
So that if the body rot, it will not matter;
Up in the earth the great game will go on,
The coming of Spring and the running of the water,
And the young things glad of the womb’s darkness gone;
And the joy we felt will be a part of the glory
In the lover’s kiss that makes the old couple’s story.
Lois Elsden 