This is my eighth, and last, article in a series about my favorite poems. Click on the poem’s titles to read the previous seven.
- Nov. 2020 – The NightBefore Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore
- Oct. 2020 – The Raven,El Dorado, Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe
- Sept. 2020 – A Child’sGarden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Aug. 2020 – Acquaintedwith the Night, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
- July 2020 – Invictus by William Ernest Henley
- June 2020 – Casey at the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Thayer
- May 2020 – My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke
Beauty and the Beast was a tragically short-lived television series—1987-1990—starring Ron Perlman as Vincent and Linda Hamilton as Catherine Chandler.
I was so obsessed with this show that when Catherine died in the episode “Though Lovers Be Lost”, I was inconsolable. I cried so hard that my three young children, who didn’t understand my grief, were scared I’d not recover.
Consequently, I’ve never watched another television series as it aired. I have a few DVD sets of older television shows, but that’s as emotionally invested as I can muster. I watch shows and movies just like I read books. If I don’t know how it ends going in, I won’t watch or read it.
Catherine and Vincent
This isn’t a complete list, but along with quotes and
passages from books, many worthy poems were recited, referenced, or quoted in the
B & B series.
Ozymandias and I Arise from the Dreams of Thee by Percy Bysshe Shelly
Sonnets #CXVI and #XXIX by William Shakespeare
She Walks in Beauty
by George Gordon, Lord Byron
Acquainted with the
Night by Robert Frost
Somewhere I have Never
Traveled by E. E. Cummings
Invictus by
William Ernest Henley
Remember by
Christina Rosetti
This soundtrack of music and Ron Perlman reciting poetry, Love and Hope – Beauty and the Beast, is criminally over-priced on Amazon ($106.00 as of today). Listen to it on YouTube HERE.
The title of the B & B episode, “Though Lovers Be Lost”, is a line in Welsh poet and writer Dylan Thomas’ (1914-1953) poem And Death Shall have No Dominion. This poem was published in May 1933 in New England Weekly. The title, which is a recurring line/refrain is of Biblical origin.
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| Dylan Thomas courtesy Wikipedia Attribution HERE |
The poem illustrates that, while death ultimately has the last word so-to-speak, death doesn’t control everything. It can’t control our free will or, as Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, ‘man’s will to meaning’, which is our determination to stand firm and resolute against the power of death so that we actually have the last word.
But that is another subject for another time.
These two lines from the poem—
Though lovers be lost,
love shall not;
And death shall have
no dominion.
—serve as one of the themes in my western romance, The Comanchero’s Bride, as are Westley words to Buttercup. “Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.”
Click HERE to read more about The Comanchero's Bride.
Thomas’ poem is a reminder that death can’t take the love that lives on in our hearts and in our memories when we lose someone dear, because love is stronger than death. Death comes to all living things, but it cannot stay. It cannot linger. (to paraphrase Dickens) It must move on, never settling, never resting, and always alone.
But love, love endures. Love is forever. Love remains. Love has a companion called hope. A person is never alone when she holds on to both. They are the heart’s shield that death cannot penetrate.
This article may feel like a downer of a way to end the year, but it’s not. Much like 2016 that began with the celebrity deaths of David Bowie and Alan Rickman and ended with the world losing Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, 2020 hasn’t played nicely in its own special ways but, through it all, we’re heading into 2021, just as we looked to 2017, with love and hope in our hearts that things will be better.
And they will be. They always are.
Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.
Apology: If you're reading this from your phone, you probably won't see the YouTube video of Richard Burton reciting Death Shall have No Dominion.
If you need a good cry, you can find Catherine’s death scene
in on YouTube. After all these years, it’s still too close to my heart and too
raw in my memory to revisit. L
Throughout January, I will blog on my website about Chicago Lightning and the related history of the Prohibition/Roaring Twenties era. I’ll post the articles on Facebook for your reading convenience.
See you in 2021,
Kaye Spencer
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