I think my favourite lines of English poetry come from Alexander Pope's The Dunciadwhere he is describing an English milord on the Grand Tour visiting Italy:

To happy Convents, bosm'd deep in Vines
Where slumber Abbots, purple as their Wines.

I'm far too lazy to transcribe whole poems so instead I'll just give a summary of my favourite poets and let you recite quietly them to yourselves if you so wish


1: Blake
Amazing vision and imagination; everything he writes makes you go.... "huh?" 

2: Carroll
"But four young Oysters hurried up, all eager for the treat / Their coats were brushed, their faces washed, their shoes were clean and neat / And this was odd because, you know, they hadn't any feet."
Pure genius

3: Milne
"A fish can't whistle and neither can I"... it's funny because it's TRUE! 

4: Tennyson
Yes, ok, I'm just a sucker for King Arthur stories   

5: Byron
Actually wrote a fair bit of drivel but deserves immortality for writing the greatest poem in the English language: "She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies / And all that's best of dark and bright / Meet in her aspect and her eyes" (sigh).

Despite my fondness for Pope, I must say Blake does wow me from time to time (although all those Books of Prophecies leave me confused.)

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with my smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree

and Tennyson, by now recovered from his reputation as the dear Queen's favourite poet (Did she understand In Memoriam?  I doubt it.)

Calm is the morn without a sound,
calm as to suit a calmer grief,
and only through the faded leaf
the chestnut pattering to the ground;

Calm and deep peace on this high wold,
and on these dews that drench the furze,
and all the silvery gossamers
that twinkle into green and gold;

Calm and still light on yon great plain
that sweeps with all its autumn bowers,
and crowded farms and lessening towers,
to mingle with the bounding main;

Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
these leaves that redden to the fall,
and in my heart, if calm at all,
if any calm, a calm despair;

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
and waves that sway themselves in rest,
and dead calm in that noble breast
which heaves but with the heaving deep.

Thank you IRF.  Can't say I care for the poetry of Byron, although he was the only Romantic to admire Pope, but if he moves Good Eggs like you and roslynmuse, he must be OK really.  (He did inspire some very ho hum operas.)

Tony don't get me quoting Pope, I can do it by the yard.

Thus round and round the Ghosts of Beauty glide
And haunt the Places where their Honour died.

Donbasilio - you've done it too, with your Blake - a poem I had reason to read in great sorrow only a few months ago...

Must dash, but I shall post some of my other favourites soon too.

Interesting question, Reiner. I'm sorry to hear that attendances for concerts with French songs were so poor. I have to say that I do understand why not everybody likes the French song. I don't know exactly why, but I'll try to think of a few possible reasons.

A thing that comes to my mind is the certain "weakness" that many French seem to have. The melodic line in the German song is much stronger. It's more difficult following the melodic line in a French song than it is in a German song. English songs also have strong and accessible melodies. I think this has to do with the fact that many English composers used folk song material in their compositions. A lot of the Russian, Spanish, Italian and Scandinavian songs that I've heard also have stronger melodies than many French songs that I know of.

There are a few composers outside France who have composed music on French poems and it's very surprising to see that these compositions sound more dramatic and "stronger" than many French songs (Britten's Illuminitations, Hendrik Andriessen's Miroir de Peine, Lutoslawski's orchestral songs).

Another thing I would like to add is the fact that for me, French composers don't underline the character of a poem when they compose a song. After hearing songs by Pfitzner or Wolff, I'm no longer able to read poems by Eichendorff without thinking of the songs. French songs don't affect me in that way. To give an example: In his Journal particulier 1933 Paul Léautaud wrote down his disappointment about a song of Henri Duparc on a poem by Charles Baudelaire (L'invitation au voyage). For Léautaud, the character of the music didn't suit the poem at all. I think he was right.

To me, the only French song composer who really underlined the character of poetry is Francis Poulenc.

Re the discussion of French song.

Some thoughts on Reiner's and Pim's posts - I think that the Lied had an unbeatable start with Schubert - a huge and stylistically varied output, with some great poems being set (as well as some not so great ones!). Schumann and Brahms consolidate that, with Mendelssohn (and Beethoven) providing perhaps lesser but still attractive songs. The type of poetry is important: apart from the mysterious/supernatural content of Eichendorff, much of this is interior self-examination, particularly about love. Compare this to the generally lighter quality of French verse being set, and the stature of the composers - much as I love Gounod, Bizet, Saint-Saens, Delibes, Massenet et al, they are representing musically a different type of emotional world, and there is less emphasis on the serious or epic. Only Berlioz in that first generation of melodie writers can seriously stand up to the Lieder composers.

The Parnassian poets give a new slant to the flavour of French poetry, perhaps a little closer to Heine; Faure is the first major composer to set these poets (Silvestre, Prudhomme etc). Then come the real giants - Verlaine, Baudelaire and Mallarme - Faure and Debussy are the great Verlaine setters, Debussy and Duparc (L'invitation au voyage - I love this song, although Duparc does the unforgiveable and omits a verse! - and, especially, La vie anterieure) do wonders for Baudelaire, and Debussy (again!) and Ravel are the only composers who manage to set Mallarme (until Boulez, which is a different ball-game entirely). As melodists, I'm not sure I agree that the French composers are less skilled than their German counterparts, although I do think the Lied's origins in the Ballad and in folksong probably gives it more genetic resilience than the Melodie which came out of the Romance and had little to do with French folksong. Memorable songs - Gounod, Ce que je suis sans toi; Delibes, Les filles de Cadiz, Faure, Apres un reve, Chanson d'amour; Chausson Le colibri, Chabrier Barnyard Songs....

But the true glory years for the Melodie are from approx 1875 - 1930 - Faure, Chausson, Chabrier, Duparc, Debussy, Ravel, Roussel...

And then Poulenc, who was to Eluard and Apollinaire what Finzi was to Hardy. And, with a slightly different aesthetic, Messiaen, with three great song cycles.

In Germany, the Lied was (I believe) in decline - Wolf and Mahler were the last great Lieder composers, despite fine songs from Zemlinsky, Berg and Schoenberg.

So, I think that for the average listener (whatever that is) the relative musical difficulty of the best of French melodie compared to the best of Lieder, and the relative poetical complexity of the texts of those best melodies compared to the simplicity (and profundity) of the best Lieder is what has proved a barrier to their acceptance as being the equal to the Lied.

I don't know if you speak French, pim - as you're Dutch maybe you speak everything...

French is a much more monotonal language than German or English or Italian - you tend to spit whole sentences out on more or less a single pitch with maybe a bit of undulation at the beginning and end. If you know Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande with all those groups of syllables on the same note: that's really not so far from how French sounds. (Ravel's Histoires Naturelles is like that as well to an extent, for example.) To me it isn't a weakness, at least not in the sense of not being as good; just that the language doesn't really do the rising and falling melody thing so their songs don't either. Which I suppose also means that you're less likely to find a melody that's interesting in itself, separated from the text, than you are in the German repertoire. There are plenty of arrangements of German songs for instruments - it's rather difficult to do that with French songs.

Except maybe Fauré.

Aw shucks...

Didn't think it would take this long, did you?