Monday, October 29, 2007
Remembering Raleigh
On this day in 1618, Sir Walter Raleigh, explorer, adventurer, courtier and great writer, was beheaded at Whitehall. See the Death section of this for the story. Then read his last poem, written, it is believed, on the night before his death. They knew how to die - and live - and write - in those far off times.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
So true. One has the impression everybody was so much more intelligent then.
ReplyDeleteAnd this intelligence manifested itself by chopping off this great man's head?
ReplyDeleteI don't know about more intelligent, but at least they spoke English back then.
ReplyDeleteA time when a gentleman, rather than just being wealthy, was also expected to write poetry, play & appreciate music, ride, look good in tights & kill. A time when the public thought of Shakespeare, Marlowe etc. as entertainment rather than as tedious.
ReplyDeleteImagine a time when the 16th C equivalent of a chav could follow highly-convoluted syntax & neologisms by ear alone, and thought of this as a good night out.
Was it Raleigh who wrote that poem about "three things there be that prosper up apace" -- and it was the young man, the gallows tree, and the hemp to hang him with?
ReplyDeletePoor old Walt -- should have been himself he was worried about.
He wrote one side of a very good pair of poems with Marlowe:
ReplyDeletehttp://poemsandprose.blog.co.uk/2007/05/31/come_live_with_me~2365045