Hearing Snape in the Sonnets

I didn't mean to disappear so precipitously off this blog. I've been wanting time to read and think more about Harry (I hate that the series is already beginning to feel like something in the past tense!) but it has been such a very busy month as we adjust to our new schedules. Now that I am getting fairly adjusted to my new teaching schedule, I am hoping to do at least a few more posts here though. And I am still really enjoying your poetry, Erin!

I keep going back to Snape and Lily and the courtly love tradition, as I wrote about at some length in an earlier post. I almost titled this "Seeing Snape in the Sonnets" (much more alliterative) but "Hearing" is more accurate. Whenever I go back to Petrarch's Sonnets for Laura, his long-loved (and unreachable) love, it's Snape's voice I hear as I read. Just a few for instances...all of the following lines are taken from various of the Songs and Sonnets as translated by Nicholas Kilmer.

"These verses hold the sound of the grief my heart has eaten.
My life has turned the boy's mistake into a different man.
Regret and hope have drawn me into such empty sadness

My thinking makes odd shapes. Lament.
Love is known here by experience. You will hear it.
I hope to learn pity from you, not only pardon."
(Poem 1, p. 3)

"If the fact of my living works to defend itself
From fierce torment, and from the terrible knowledge
That I will see, by virtue of the years' passing,
Madam, the light spent from your eyes,

And the hair of fine gold turn to silver,
Garlands and green vesture spent,
And the face gone pale: that in my present concern
Makes me hesitant to announce my sadness.

Yet love will give me enough boldness
That I will make my martyrdom known,
And how the years, days, the hours mark me,

Mark my desire. Even if time should fault that
My desolation will be joined quietly
By the small comfort of late weeping."

(Poem 12, p. 9)


"Now and then she stands among other ladies.
Love comes into her face, and desire
Is as alive in me, as she is more beautiful than they.

There is honor in the distance my soul has travelled
Since the place, moment -- they are in my mind --
When I looked upward for the first time.

What little I know of love is her gift:
My glimpse of perfect grace, and my ability
To follow it are hers; my knowledge
That what men want is mostly worthless.

I am proud of what she allows me to hope,
Her beckoning me to some distance from sin:
Light, love, air -- my own soul's future."

(Poem 13, p. 11)

I think that poem, by the way, is just about perfect for Snape...not entirely, of course, but the general shape and tone.

And then there are these lines...when I imagine Snape uttering or writing them, I get shivers.

"I have made myself an example to many.
I apologize for repeating injuries
Whose words have by now worked into the walls
Of these valleys, scrawled with broken chalk.

I have been sad. Memory does not help
Me as it used to. If this be true, blame
The sacrifice first, and the thinking which worries the wound.
I have become one single idea, fashioned of anguish.
I forget myself.
I am a cold rim around an inhabitant I have not
Been introduced to."

(Poem 23, p. 19)

What do you think? Can you hear Snape in these poems?

Sweet Dreams, Vernon...

Poor Vernon was having a very bad day in The Boy Who Lived. Here, I imagine him chalking it all up to a bad dream, until he can't deny it anymore...

Vernon's Dream

The most bizarre, disturbing dream
Assaulted me last night.
I thought, "It must be something that I ate."
What else could make the city teem
With sights that caused such fright
And left my mind in such a frenzied state?

It started when I saw the cat.
An ordinary beast,
Except... Since when do cats know how to read?
Well, what was I to make of that?
I didn't have the least
Intention of remaining. No, indeed!

I hurried on away from there,
But then what did I see?
A bunch of dodgy, closely clustered blokes
With scandalously unkempt hair -
Some just as old as me! -
All loitering about in colored cloaks.

And then, the lowest blow of all!
A fellow, barking mad,
Insulted me, I think; what did he say?
Ah, yes. The ruddy rotter called
Me "Muggle". Then he had
The gall to hug me! What a dreadful day...

The evening news reported birds
Were swarming in a host
Of wicked wings and evil beaks and claws.
To top it off, I know I heard
The name that I hate most:
The Potters, my degenerate in-laws.

Such fear I'd never felt before,
But still it didn't turn
Me inside-out or make me quail and quake
Until I opened my front door
And was distressed to learn
That all that time, I had been wide awake.

Hagrid, You Have My Sympathy

I have always been cursed with a very, shall we say, weak constitution. I've gotten carsick on the way to the post office before - and that's four blocks away. So I think I know just what Hagrid is going through when he boards that cart with Harry, and I'm guessing that he dreads having to make the trip to Gringotts whenever the need arises. I wouldn't want to go on that roller coaster either...

Unhinging Hagrid

Hagrid could handle a blast-ended skrewt -
Actually thought that the buggers were cute.
He never worried about getting germs
While he was digging for fresh flobberworms.

Norbert the dragon had lived in his hut.
He'd gently coddled a three-headed mutt.
Hagrid was puzzled by others' alarm,
Wondering why no one else saw their charm.

Big, hairy spiders excited to eat
Wandering students? He thought they were sweet.
No living creature, no matter how grim,
Bothered, befuddled or terrified him.

Yet Hagrid shivered as he slowly neared
Gringotts, for this place held something he feared.
No sword-like teeth and no fiery breath
Made Hagrid's face turn the color of death.

No killer claws haunted him as he stopped,
Clutching his stomach, which fluttered and flopped.
No spiky spine and no peaked pinchers loomed.
Still, Hagrid walked like a man who was doomed.

Once in the bank, as he silently shook,
Poor Hagrid followed the goblin Griphook,
Dreading the journey he knew would soon start.
Hagrid, unhinged by a rickety cart.