Den hellige Cecilie
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"Den hellige Cecilie" (Saint Cecilia) was painted in oil on canvas by the Danish artist Julius Paulsen in 1897–1898, and is held by the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK).
Paulsen studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1879 to 1882 and later taught there as a professor. His work drew on both Rembrandt and French salon painting, and he is remembered chiefly as a portraitist.
He also maintained close ties with several of the Skagen Painters, visiting Skagen in the early 1900s.
Background drawn from SMK — National Gallery of Denmark & Wikipedia
Today's poem
To a Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses
As late I rambled in the happy fields, What time the skylark shakes the tremulous dew From his lush clover covert;—when anew Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields; I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields, A fresh-blown musk-rose; 'twas the first that threw Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew As is the wand that Queen Titania wields. And, as I feasted on its fragrancy, I thought the garden-rose it far excelled; But when, O Wells! thy roses came to me, My sense with their deliciousness was spelled: Soft voices had they, that with tender plea Whispered of peace, and truth, and friendliness unquelled.
John Keats · Public domain
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John Keats, an English poet of the second generation of Romantics alongside Byron and Shelley, died of tuberculosis at 25, having published for less than four years. His work was indifferently received during his lifetime, but his reputation rose sharply after his death, and by the end of the nineteenth century he was firmly in the canon of English literature, influencing the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
"To a Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses" is a sonnet addressed to "Wells," thanking him for a gift of roses. The octave describes the speaker's walk through summer fields and his discovery of a wild musk-rose, which he judges superior to the cultivated garden-rose.
In the sestet, the poem turns: the friend's roses surpass even the wild one, their "soft voices" whispering "of peace, and truth, and friendliness unquelled." The poem makes the flowers an emblem of friendship, with imagery drawn from nature and, in its reference to Queen Titania, from Shakespeare.
Background drawn from PoetryDB & Wikipedia