Sweet Rosemary...

I suppose you are all wondering why I have posted a tragic poem and a tragic excerpt of such graceful women in literature.  Well that is just it, they are graceful, whimsical and both loved men that could not love them back.  The imagery is sad, beautiful and still gives them the ending they deserve...writing them into angelic forms and knowing only in death how they had love all along.

 

I have always been drawn towards tragic romance in literature and the romantic art of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.  I have a great interest in the one of the Artists in particular, John William Waterhouse, as his paintings depict the women of these poems, and other myths and legends, to how I imagine them to look.  From their faces, to their build, the way their clothes fall, the colours and textures of their hair, the smoothness of their often pale skin and their mannerisms.

Another one of my favourites by John William Waterhouse can be coupled with Keats's poem La Belle Dame sans Merci (1883).

Excerpt from La Belle Dame sans Merci (1883)
From a poem by Keats:
...
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful-a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragant zone,
She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bed, and sing
A faery's song.

She found me foots or relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said-
"I love thee true!"
...

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

John William Waterhouse (1849-1917)