Hedge, that divides the lovely
Garden, and myself from me,
Never in you so fair a rose I see
As she who is my lady,
Loving, sweet and holy:
Who as I stretch my hand to you
Presses it, so softly, too.
Please! ! ! Some one delete the oral reading by the virtual voice. It's like Siri or a generic voice mail recording. Simply destroys any of the sense of the poem. Ugh! !
I have been reading the comments below and just felt like putting my two word about hedge. Hedge is the key word. It seems to represent the reality of life - a life where the partner in life are not always so full of love the way we see in our imagination. The lovely lady of dreams is always by you pressing your hands but the one behind hedge of life is not like that.
Dismay or hate is a great suggestion for the meaning of the hedge. I like that. But it's pure supposition without any backing in the text. It might be his own hideous appearance or his abject poverty or a million or things. We just don't know.
I wonder what he is referring to when he says 'Hedge that divides the lovely garden, and myself from me? ' Obviously, his beautiful lover is the rose, but I don't quite understand what the hedge represents, and what it is separating him from. Anyone?
Precisely my problem with this poem. The compression of ideas being sought here defies, or is defied by, grammatical construction. It may an issue of the translator's failures. I think Tasso wants the concluding word of the penultimate line (°you°) to refer the rose / lover but my deconstruction of this single sentence poem leads me back grammatically to the hedge as its referent. And overall I'm left wanting a resolution. Focus. The picture's too blurry.
Still, that said, I love the first line and think the break perfectly placed for the words in that line and the next to accrue meaning beyond the literal content there. Maybe the problem lies in marrying a metaphor to simile that upsets the balance. I just don't know. I feel divided.
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