.
On Ford Madox Brown’s
“The Last of England”
Their balcony beringed with cabbages,
They fix their eyes on the receding shore
And blankly call to mind the ravages
Now past and wonder at the ones in store.
The Channel’s unrelenting winds upsoar
Magenta ribbons into bloody streaks,
While he, his face is set forevermore
Against a life whose meaning is oblique.
And she, her bearing something yet bespeaks
The sudden fear perhaps they haven’t brought
Enough or thought enough about how weak
We are, how strong the forces quite unsought.
For neath her cloak she holds a tiny hand
And soon she’ll have no sight at all of land.
.
.
Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Agape Review, America Magazine, Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review, U.S. Catholic, Grand Little Things, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, and various venues of the Benedictine monastery with which he is an oblate. He is editor of the Catholic Poetry Room page on the Integrated Catholic Life website.
Thank you, Jeffrey. This poem is a wake up call to us all about our own uncertainty today. Well done!
Your sonnet brings emotional heft to the painting.
Nicely wrought, Jeffrey, in every technical and thematic dimension.
Excellent description of the art. I hadn’t even noticed the “tiny hand” — thank you for pointing it out.
Jeffrey, your interpretation of the woman’s bearing is just what I might have thought. On any trip abroad with children, we carried a disproportionate supply of medicines for them, and even so, it wasn’t always enough. She looks so resigned to the voyage, but there are those few hairs blowing as strongly as her hat ribbons, whose threatening color you notice. I see that the sonnet rhyme scheme is the most intertwined Spenserian type. And you’ve loaded it with tension!