THE ROMANTIC PERIOD

The room – just then – 

as now,  

was tinged in 

dreamy blue, soft,  

violet light

as, I recall, it often was

 

that year  

so passionate and bright –

and the hours spent  

GLOR - I - OUS - LY ! ! ! 

in the stacks

– AMID –

 

the wild and ardent words of  

THE ROMANTIC PERIOD.

And thus . . .  

I found myself with you, 

My Dear, 

in the soft periwinkle glow

impetuously moved  

to place - the fingers 

of my hand, upon 

your sweater arm 

. . . just so

and sashay them,  

coyly, 

moving 

to your shoulder . . . 

and your throat

and on your bottom lip:  

I plucked 

one bold pizzicato note.

  

Then you took my hands

and kissed them 

and you laughed . . . but with affection.

And in that kiss . . . and in your laugh,

ROMANTIC – period:

PERFECTION.

notes:

The Romantic Period (an era I took very much to heart in my university studies) was a movement that originated in Europe primarily from 1800 to 1850.  Partly as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution and the resulting urban sprawl, Romanticism validated strong emotion and spontaneity as a source of the artistic and intellectual aesthetic experience and expression.  It legitimized individual imagination, which permitted freedom from classical notions of art.  

William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and Jane Austin are a few of the British writers of the Romantic Period.

I think, this quote from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Love’s Philosophy hits the Romantic Period nail of the head in the following line:  “And the sunlight clasps the earth.  And the moonbeams kiss the sea:  What is all this sweet work worth, If thou kiss not me?”

Pizzicato – Italian for a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a string musical instrument with fingertips. 

photos:  In Dreamy Blue, Soft, Violet (the top photo is part of a water feature on the campus of Simon Fraser University on Burnaby Mountain)  – W. Bourke 

© 2014 Wendy Bourke