This sonnet had a familiar Petrarchan form, so evidently poetry had not suffered too badly in the interim centuries; and Barnaby appreciated the allusion of dead paper seeming somehow alive, for obvious reasons. So he allowed Greengrass to make his way through it, and it was very – fluttery, wasn’t it?
“It is not terrible, I confess’t,” Barnaby offered, glad to have an audience ready for his judgement: “but you would do better to read it with a little more drama, I say,” he chided; Greengrass was a good reader, he knew that, but this poem about tremulous hands and quivering letters ought to have made his heart flutter, if his heart were capable of beating at all; and Greengrass need not be so even-keeled and cautious in his reading!
“But, he wished to have me in his sight once, as a friend...” Barnaby echoed, turning over the poem in his mind with creased eyebrows. “‘Tis not terribly – erotic, is it?” The poetry of his (living) day had been founded upon Ovid and Catullus, all erotic elegies and naked mistresses, lewd verses passed around from gentleman to gentleman. Greengrass was not so much a stranger to him to feign that his ideas of love poetry were some quiet lettered declarations, was he? Not that Barnaby was one to talk, given he had no body left to make any use of – oh, he would weep to have someone even touch his hand now! – but all the spiritual letter-writing and tender I love thees seemed a little dull, for a young Living fellow.
“It is not terrible, I confess’t,” Barnaby offered, glad to have an audience ready for his judgement: “but you would do better to read it with a little more drama, I say,” he chided; Greengrass was a good reader, he knew that, but this poem about tremulous hands and quivering letters ought to have made his heart flutter, if his heart were capable of beating at all; and Greengrass need not be so even-keeled and cautious in his reading!
“But, he wished to have me in his sight once, as a friend...” Barnaby echoed, turning over the poem in his mind with creased eyebrows. “‘Tis not terribly – erotic, is it?” The poetry of his (living) day had been founded upon Ovid and Catullus, all erotic elegies and naked mistresses, lewd verses passed around from gentleman to gentleman. Greengrass was not so much a stranger to him to feign that his ideas of love poetry were some quiet lettered declarations, was he? Not that Barnaby was one to talk, given he had no body left to make any use of – oh, he would weep to have someone even touch his hand now! – but all the spiritual letter-writing and tender I love thees seemed a little dull, for a young Living fellow.
