Island and the Sea

The words for this week are Sea and Island of course Robert Louis Stevenson of Treasure Island fame would have been our logical choice as our wordsmith but we highlighted him last week so we have Edgar Allan Poe and Mr Hiawatha, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, as our Wordsmiths.Hope you all enjoy this post.

 Never Ending 
Buddy Kaye, Phil Springer
Lyrics

Love the see and ocean combination here.

Always one of my Elvis favourites

Walk down to the beach at sunset
Look as far as you can see
You will find that endless ocean
And that's how my love will always be

If you like your coffee with sand for dregs,
A decided hint of salt in your tea,
And a fishy taste in the very eggs
By all means choose the Sea. 
 Lewis carroll

And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;
And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas Day

 Robert Louis Stevenson

Pincushion Island

 

 Wordsmiths

 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow/Edgar Allan Poe

Catawba Wine

There grows no vine

By the haunted Rhine,

By Danube or Guadalquivir,

Nor on island or cape,

That bears such a grape

As grows by the Beautiful River

And this Song of the Vine,
This greeting of mine,
The winds and the birds shall deliver
To the Queen of the West,
In her garlands dressed,
On the banks of the Beautiful River

Longfellow

Wouldst thou' so the helmsman answered.Learn the secret of the

sea? Only those who brave its dangers. Comprehend its mystery! 

 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

 

     Probably the best loved of American poets the world over is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Many of his lines are as familiar to us as rhymes from Mother Goose or the words of nursery songs learned in early childhood. Like these rhymes and melodies, they remain in the memory and accompany us through life. Born in 1807, he had become a national literary figure by the 1850s and a world-famous personality by the time of his death in 1882. Some of his favourite works were Slavery (1844), Evangeline (1847), The Song of Hiawatha (1855), The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), his translation of Dante's Divine Comedy (1867), and Keramos (1878).

Song of Hiawatha

By the shore of Gitchie Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.
All the air was full of freshness,
All the earth was bright and joyous

Brooms Head NSW The Sea

Edgar Allan Poe

was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. His mother Elizabeth Poe died in 1811, when Edgar was 2 years old. She had separated from her husband and had taken her three kids with her.After her death, Henry the eldest went to live with his grandparents while Edgar was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. John Allan and Rosalie was taken in by another family. John Allan was a successful merchant, so Edgar grew up in good surroundings and went to good schools.

Edgar Allan Poe

 

I and My Annabel Lee

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love -
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me
Yes! that was the reason
(as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. 

Have a read of a story based around Sullivans Island where Poe lived for a few years.

 The Gold Bug 

A passage from one of Poe's famous stories

 Pit and the Pendulum 

  I had swooned; but still will not say that all of consciousness was lost. What of it there remained I will not attempt to define, or even to describe; yet all was not lost. In the deepest slumber -- no! In delirium -- no! In a swoon -- no! In death -- no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed. In the return to life from the swoon there are two stages; first, that of the sense of mental or spiritual; secondly, that of the sense of physical, existence. It seems probable that if, upon reaching the second stage, we could recall the impressions of the first, we should find these impressions eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond. And that gulf is -- what? How at least shall we distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb? But if the impressions of what I have termed the first stage, are not, at will, recalled, yet, after long interval, do they not come unbidden, while we marvel whence they come? He who has never swooned, is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad visions that the many may not view; is not he who ponders over the perfume of some novel flower -- is not he whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which has never before arrested his attention.

 Symbolism

 The Sea in Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea”. The sea here was used to represent the speaker’s memory. The entire phrase suggests that Annabel Lee’s death occurred a very long time ago, but the sea speaks of reminiscence and an undying memory of love. This particular pattern was repeated in the succeeding stanzas, where each time the “kingdom by the sea” was mentioned, there was also a mention of things which belonged to a distant past.

Island

The island symbolism as "heaven on earth" is a powerful one

One of the most widespread symbols of a non-celestial heaven is the Island. Symbolically, it is always a magical "elsewhere", a world set apart. The island may be a spiritual goal or a center reserved for elected immortals (such as the Happy Isles of classic mythology and the mystic Islands of the Blessed in China), or an enchanted place like Prospero's Island in Shakespeare's The Tempest, where wrongs are righted.

 Poe symbolisms and links

A Poem of Passion

The Raven

The Black Cat

Murder in the Rue Morgue

City in the Sea

Sea of Love

Come with me, my love

To the sea, the sea of love

I want to tell you how much I love you

Tom Waits version of Sea of Love used on the Al Pacino movie Sea of Love

 Quotes on Islands and Sea

Any one can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

Publilius Syrus

No man or woman is an island,

To exist just yourself is meaningkless,You can achieve the most satisfaction when you feel related to some greater purpose in life,

something greater than yourself.

Denis Waitley

We shall defend our island,

whatever the cost may be,

we shall fight on the beaches,

we shall fight on the landing grounds,

we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,

we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

Winston Churchill

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls”

Kahlil Gibran

Voyage upon life's sea, To yourself be true,

And, whatever your lot may be, Paddle your own canoe

Sarah Bolton