Personal Challenge ~ Hedgewitch

Hello toads, toadettes and any passing tadpoles, hedgewitch here. Isadora Gruye gave me the dreaded shoulder tap last week, and asked me to tackle a huge topic, and one I could really chew on. To be precise here is what she said 

"The challenge:  the bad girl.  Take your favorite rebellious female icon and write a poem based on one of her rebel girl antics." So, I immediately wrote this one:

Circe Speaks

After twenty cups of wine

a warrior turns to a swine.

They called it witch's sorcery, poison lore;

but really, all I ever did was pour.

© joyannjones all rights reserved

 

Somehow that didn’t seem to be quite enough. Then I thought of some other bad girls, Medea, Zelda, Morgan La Fey, --but alas, this had to be a new poem and I've already covered those particular icons. So I decided to take a historical journey back to one of my favorite settings, the oh so frivolous world of Regency England, where wealth, dressing well and discretely gratifying the senses went hand in hand, where only the first child of any noble marriage was expected to be fathered by the husband, and where gambling, laudanum addiction, infidelity and every form of indulgence quietly went on among even the most genteel lords and ladies.

Portrait of Lady Caroline Lamb, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, Public doman via wikimedia commons

There were a lot of aristocratic bad girls back then who managed to keep it between the lines and cover their tracks, but there was one who made a flaming scandal of herself and never looked back, Lady Caroline Lamb. She seemed especially appropriate because she was something of a poet herself, and also wrote a (lurid pulp) novel about her ill-starred affair with another poet, George Gordon, Lord Byron. She famously said on first meeting him, that he was ' mad, bad, and dangerous to know, ' but later the two had a passionate, poetry-dripping nine-month liaison. 

Her book, Glenarvon, was a Gothic  roman à clef,  a novel where all the characters were thinly disguised caricatures of actual people, all members of Regency high society. Not surprisingly, though the book was extremely popular, Caroline herself became the opposite. She nursed a fervid, obsessive passion for Byron long after their short affair ended, and has also been called 'the first celebrity stalker,' though I think that's a bit unkind. She died at 42, after a long physical and mental decline attributed to excessive alcohol and laudanum use, still ranting about Byron.

Here is her biography at wikipedia for those who'd like to know more.  And here is a link to one of her poems, where she calls out a famous courtesan* for blackmailing her clients with a sensational book and excusing it by comparing it to Lamb's novel about Byron. 

It's a rather sassy poem, under all that formal rhyme and dated language. Here are my favorite lines:

"..Why should I hide men's follies, whilst my own
Blaze like the gas along this talking town?
Is it being bitter to be too sincere?

Must we adulterate truth as they do beer?..."

~Lady Caroline Lamb, from Lines to Harriet Wilson

Got to love the bad girl attitude.

So, without further ado, here is my poem, as if written by the infamous Lady Caroline Lamb. I wrote it in sonnet form, to suit the historical period, though Caro (Byron's nickname for her) usually wrote in pure heroic couplets. (I wrote another, longer one in that style, which may appear on my blog at a later date.)

Caro's Sonnet

I saw your midnight eyes fix on me, love

without a speck of kindness in their glow.

I should not have loved this long, to see you prove   

my point: 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know,'

but your spoken candle threw a luring light,

the moth soul shattered its shell of silent doubt.

Then thirst and scorn gave in to lover's night

till the moth was dead, the candle guttered out.

It seemed well worth it, all the things I lost,

my place, my peace, my sanity at last

to chase your lies and never count the cost,

to drink your hate, for love emptied too fast.

The dust of that scarlet poppy fills my cup;

now all that's left me is to drink it up.

© joyannjones all rights reserved

poppies,

© joyannjones

Thanks, Izy, for the great challenge! And thanks to everyone at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads for the wonderful support and encouragement you provide.

*Harriette Wilson, about whom the famous quote 'publish and be damned,' was first coined, was mistress to the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Wellington, four Prime Ministers and apparently half the male nobility of the era. She would be another excellent example of a bad girl.

A Poem to Share

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

Sympathy

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
   When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
   When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals —
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
   Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
   And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting —
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
   When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
   But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings —
I know why the caged bird sings!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The above poem was published in Lyrics of the Hearthside by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1899.
It was this poem that inspired the title to Maya Angelou's autobiography I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.

Sourced HERE