Yesterday I strolled downtown in this weirdly warm January to meet a visiting English friend for lunch. “So,” she said, as she looked me up and down - “What on earth do you do in winter, with no garden to tend? Veg out?”
My eyes gleamed!
“Actually, I’m a musical mole, burrowing into my basement’s tiny recording studio at around 4 a.m. almost every morning. With messy hair and rumpled clothes I mutter lines and hum - the perfect picture of a slightly odd archeologist, except – I unearth marvelous poems that seem to beg for music! I have a ton of moldy old books down there that sometimes reveal gems, if I’m patient. Hunting them is like mining for gold - often a really tedious effort. Lately I’ve been scanning my much-thumbed 600-page Oxford Book of Classic Poetry. Some stuff in there makes me snore, but one, written by an English cavalier who lived from 1618 to 1657, stood out. Richard Lovelace word-painted a marvelous picture of a young woman whose long, pale hair flew every which way in the wind as she tried to re-braid it. He was completely smitten - unraveled - by the sight. (I loved her name - Amarantha!)
Turns out he was wealthy, well loved (especially by the ladies), and a legendary raconteur. I found an oil painting of him by somebody famous - William Dobson, I think, which portrays him as a doe-eyed, dashing fellow, with his shining armor and shoulder-length hair.
Fatally wounded at Dunkirk, he died without a farthing to his name, having given his all for King and country, but he left us his wonderful verses. Other of his poems are much more famous, but this one won my heart! He titled it:
Song (Is this an invitation, or what?!) to Amarantha, that she would Dishevel her Hair (‘Dishevel’- An almost lost word…)
Amarantha sweet and fair
Ah, braid no more that shining hair!
As my curious hand or eye
Hovering round thee- let it fly!
Let it fly as unconfin’d
As its calm ravisher, the wind,
Who hath left his darling th’East,
To wanton o’er that spicy nest.
Ev’ry tress must be confest
But neatly tangled at the best;
Like a clue of golden thread,
Most excellently ravelled. (Ra-vel-led.)
Do not then wind up that light
In ribands, (ribbons) and o’er-cloud in night;
Like the sun in’s early ray,
But shake your head and scatter day!
(Three other lusciously sensual verses follow, but I used just these.)
“I remember yelling ‘Richard! You caught her!’ In a blink the melody materialized, and then I tried dozens of instruments before settling down with my choice. When his words and my notes felt comfortable with each other I laid the song.
“I think he happened upon that slim lady just as her three-plus-feet of hair was being blown around in the warm summer wind. She’d stopped what she was doing for a minute and her hair accidentally came unbound - (women never chopped their hair off back then, you know) - and Richard Lovelace, clanking around in his armor, spotted her exactly then, wrapped in sunlight and tresses, and snatched a pen - (what did they write with back then?) and ka-bam!! Art happened. I’ll bet it fell out of him. I’ll bet he couldn’t scribble it fast enough!
“After recording it I needed to run around the block twice to siphon off excess energy and excitement.”
I paused for a breath and grinned, thinking what a peculiar sight I’d been - a rumpled, happy old lady dashing around outside in the waning hours of a warm January night...
“Oh,” my friend said, overrun by that avalanche of words.