Soul making is a phrase from Keats.{ link to article by Jeffrey C. Johnson in Paris Review]
We saw Wolf Hall on TV recently and it is so wonderful.I am just writing down a few of my thoughts not about that but about Anne Boleyn… I meant it to be funny but I couldn’t manage that after seeing the play.
ANNE BOLEYN
Anne Boleyn withheld to win
As Henry lusted in his sin.
Once a virgin,sweet Madonna;
Henry turned in rage on her.
She bore him but one living child,
For her quips,she was reviled.
Henry knew not the fault was his
It seems the king had syphilis.
Or Anne was rhesus negative
then just her first born child would live.
We women make our worst mistake
When power for love we wrongly take
Our strength lasts but till we submit.
We need less love and far more wit.
Whatever lusty men may say,
their “love” dies when they get their way.
And they will take their wife by force
As cannons pound on oaken doors.
As for women,we must not
Promise gold we have not got.
Conception is a game of chance;
it happens more by happy chance.
we sin in pride in promising
What only God or Nature bring.
We deceive and trick and charm
At last our hearts bang in alarm
The man who begged upon his knees
Chops off our heads when we displease.
For Emperors and Kings and Lords
Wield fearful power by the sword.
Yet when for judgement they shall stand
How will point the knowing hand?
And just like us they’ll ashen be
When true majesty they see.
Into dust and crumbled ruin
they will go by their own doings.
Each day create with grace your soul.
Cracked shall be the golden bowl.
Keats wrote this extract below [read all by clicking on soul above[ and he died when aged only 25 years:
I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read—I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School—and I will call the Child able to read, the Soul made from that school and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!