[Milton-L] A Milton parody?

[Marlene Edelstein]

The form's reminiscent of "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso", but if there's a parodic content it's more likely to be of Kingsley's 'Ode to the North-East Wind'. 
   
               MRE

Nancy Charlton <pastorale55 at yahoo.com> wrote:
  Bartleby.com's poem for today is Robert Frost's "To the Thawing Wind." I was struck by its affinity to "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" both in meter and in content.  JM might blanch at the "hermit's crucifix" but he'd recognize a clear allusion in "Melt it as the ices go." Here it is:

        To the Thawing Wind                          COME with rain, O loud Southwester!      Bring the singer, bring the nester;      Give the buried flower a dream;      Make the settled snow-bank steam;      Find the brown beneath the white;          5    But whate’er you do to-night,      Bathe my window, make it flow,      Melt it as the ices go;      Melt the glass and leave the sticks      Like a hermit’s crucifix;          10    Burst into my narrow stall;      Swing the picture on the wall;      Run the rattling pages o’er;      Scatter poems on the floor;      Turn the poet out of door.          15

Dunno about the poet, but the whole Pacific NW has about given up ever being "out of door" again in an April where the sun has shone its head perhaps two days out 21 and snow, sleet, hail too much of the time.

Hoping the lawn won't have to be cut for hay,

Nancy Charlton



Nancy Charlton
http://groups.google.com/group/paradiselostdaily
...while Universal Pan
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance
Led on th' Eternal Spring. (IV.266-268)    
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