View of Heidelberg
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Jan Brueghel the Elder made this topographical drawing of Heidelberg around 1588–89, when he was roughly twenty years old and likely traveling on his way through Germany toward Italy. It records a specific place from observation, using pen and brown ink combined with blue and brown wash and touches of white heightening.
Brueghel (1568–1625) was the younger son of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and brother of Pieter Brueghel the Younger. He became one of the leading Flemish painters of the early seventeenth century and a frequent collaborator with Peter Paul Rubens.
The sheet measures about 20 by 30.5 cm and has framing lines drawn in pen and brown ink. It entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1995, acquired through the David T. Schiff Gift and the Harris Brisbane Dick Fund.
Background drawn from The Met & Wikipedia
Today's poem
I Dream’d in a Dream.
I DREAM’D in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth; I dream’d that was the new City of Friends; Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love—it led the rest; It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, And in all their looks and words. 5
Walt Whitman · Public domain
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Walt Whitman (1819–1892) is often called the father of free verse, and this brief poem shows the form at work: five unrhymed lines of varying length, built on repetition and expansive syntax rather than meter. An American poet, essayist, and journalist who also wrote two novels, Whitman is considered one of the most influential poets in American and world literature, blending transcendentalism and realism in his work. His poetry was controversial in his lifetime, and his 1855 collection Leaves of Grass was condemned by some as obscene for its overt sensuality.
"I Dream'd in a Dream" imagines a city "invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth"—a "new City of Friends" whose defining quality is "robust love." That love is not private but public and visible, shown "every hour" in the actions, looks, and words of the city's men, making comradeship the foundation of an ideal community.
Background drawn from PoetryDB & Wikipedia