The Lion and the Rose: Poems
By May Sarton
4.5/5
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About this ebook
Written in Santa Fe, New Mexico, May Sarton’s third collection of poems takes inspiration from the land, the light, and the palette of the American Southwest. With archaeological precision, Sarton uncovers American history and heredity. “Plain grandeur escapes definition,” begins one poem. But Sarton’s America is alive with history and is continually redefined by its own settings and mythology.
May Sarton
May Sarton (1912–1995) was born on May 3 in Wondelgem, Belgium, and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her first volume of poetry, Encounters in April, was published in 1937 and her first novel, The Single Hound, in 1938. Her novels A Shower of Summer Days, The Birth of a Grandfather, and Faithful Are the Wounds, as well as her poetry collection In Time Like Air, all received nominations for the National Book Award. An accomplished memoirist, Sarton came out as a lesbian in her 1965 book Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. Her memoir Journal of a Solitude (1973) was an account of her experiences as a female artist. Sarton spent her later years in York, Maine, living and writing by the sea. In her last memoir, Endgame: A Journal of the Seventy-Ninth Year (1992), she shares her own personal thoughts on getting older. Her final poetry collection, Coming into Eighty, was published in 1994. Sarton died on July 16, 1995, in York, Maine.
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Reviews for The Lion and the Rose
3 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I don't have anything profound to say about Sarton's third book of poetry. A good decade has progressed since her first book of poetry, so there is obvious growth in her writing. The poems are becoming, at least in my opinion, more what she was to become known for in her later years.
Book preview
The Lion and the Rose - May Sarton
THEME AND VARIATIONS:
SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO
MEDITATION IN SUNLIGHT
In space in time I sit
Thousands of feet above
The sea and meditate
On solitude on love
Near all is brown and poor
Houses are made of earth
Sun opens every door
The city is a hearth
Far all is blue and strange
The sky looks down on snow
And meets the mountain range
Where time is light not shadow
Time in the heart held still
Space as the household god
And joy instead of will
Knows love as solitude
Knows solitude as love
Knows time as light not shadow
Thousands of feet above
The sea where I am now
Who wear an envelope
Of crystal air and learn
That space is also hope
Where sky and snow both burn
Where spring is love not weather
And I happy alone
The place the time together
The sun upon the stone.
DIFFICULT SCENE
This landscape does not speak,
Exists, is simply there.
Take it or leave it; the weak
Suffer from fierce air.
For these high desolate
Lands where earth is skeleton
Make no demands; they state.
Who can resist the stone?
Implacable tranquility
That searches out the naked heart,
Touches the quick of anxiety
And breaks the world apart.
The angel in the flaming air
Is everywhere and no escape,
Asking of life that it be pure
And given as the austere landscape.
And most accompanied when alone;
Most sensitive when mastered sense;
Alive most when the will is gone,
Absence become the greatest Presence.
The golden landscape cannot save,
It only asks your right to be