palms
Palm Trees outside the Camellia Shopping Eye in Kotor, Montenegro

Yesterday I started reading 'Sweetness Content' by Thomas Dekker.

Sweet Content

ART thou poor, notwithstanding hast thousand golden slumbers?
O sweet content!
Fine art chiliad rich, nonetheless is thy mind perplex'd?
O penalization!
Dost thou laugh to run into how fools are vex'd
To add to golden numbers golden numbers?
O sweetness content! O sweetness, O sugariness content!
Work apace, apace, apace, apace;
Honest labour bears a lovely face;
So hey nonny nonny—hey nonny nonny!

Canst drink the waters of the crispèd spring?
O sugariness content!
Swim'st thou in wealth, yet sink'st in thine own tears?
O punishment!
Then he that patiently want'southward burden bears,
No burden bears, just is a king, a rex!
O sweet content! O sweetness, O sweet content!
Work chop-chop, chop-chop, speedily, quickly;
Honest labour bears a lovely face;
Then hey nonny nonny—hey nonny nonny!

I was showtime to think that the poem offered a flexible series of  possible thoughts  – are you poor yet content, are you rich yet punished … thirdly,  whether you are rich or poor;

Dost yard laugh to run into how fools are vex'd
To add together to golden numbers golden numbers?
O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content!

Are you lot costless of vexatious concerns about coin?  'Golden' here seems a faux discussion, equally if  'gilded numbers' are anything but – they seem meaningless partly through repetition, but at that place's also that obsessive feeling of worry, 'golden numbers aureate numbers', the same one-time thought going round and round. Free of that? Oh sweet content!

And so we come to a bit which seems at odds with what has come before:

Work quickly, apace, apace, speedily;
Honest labour bears a lovely face up;
Then hey nonny nonny—hey nonny nonny!

Like the mention of 'poor' and 'rich' at the opening, the word 'work' seems to set off chain reactions of opinions in readers.  This poet, someone volition say is telling poor people they should work hard to be happy. Yes, another will agree, it is the protestant work ethic enforced past the elite.

Oh dearest oh dearest my friends,  I  retrieve it is much odder than that. Just please – let's read what is there rather than knee jerk our ain pre-judgement. The three lines seem to me all different.

Offset – 'work apace, chop-chop, quickly, apace;' feels frenetic – four repetitions? –  and I'yard not sure  information technology is offered every bit a command. Perchance  a feeling of what information technology is like to be working 'chop-chop'. I looked upwardly quickly- thinking it meant 'fast' simply really the dictionary offers  at a steady e.m walking, pace. Perhaps it ways 'be steady'.

Honest labour bears a lovely face;

This is the line that always gets someone'south dorsum up. Perhaps information technology is that sometime grade warfare scars run deep. Perhaps readers are scared of being judged as 'masters' who would enforce' labour' from workers. Whatever the underlying trauma, it is the wrong reaction considering there'southward no evidence here that  the poet is trying to inflict this – with or without irony – on anyone.  Information technology is a statement. You might agree or disagree with  it.

Does honest labour bear a lovely face? I'd say it is does. Why honest? and I wonder at present if there is a connexion with the line that came earlier? If 'work rapidly'  is near steadiness rather than a more modern frenetic activeness…might 'honest labour' exist the aforementioned as 'work apace' – work steadily.

A new thought at present occurs to me: could this be a verse form confronting gambling? or something like gambling – the creation of coin out of coin?

And 'hey nonny nonny'?  It'south nonsense – like tra-la-la or oooh ah  in a modern lyric.

The 2nd poesy follows the same pattern, and the signal at which I'd want to concentrate reading energy is the central line which seems to offer a balance point, where at-home becomes gilded, and gold ceases to be about money:

And so he that patiently want'south burden bears,
No burden bears, only is a male monarch, a king!

In that location's a difference between being told to bear your brunt patiently past someone who has power over you (and is suffering no brunt) and learning to bear your burden patiently yourself.

What would you do, I ask myself, if yous were reading in a group and someone  continued to continue reading as if this verse form were a piece of class warfare?

I'd  let them  take their say, simply at the same  I'd be looking for other people in the grouping who  wanted to read differently, closer to the bodily text, from a less pre-set identify. I'd be asking people to exam certain of the poems  lines against their ain feel, lines where those pre-formed notions will interruption down a scrap. honest labour bears a lovely face is one of those.

At the conference in Newcastle, one of our readers described the difference in trying to sleep when you've washed nothing all day and  and so how you feel when you've walked the domestic dog, been to the gym, done things.  That may non be paid labour but information technology is  labour and peradventure bears a lovely confront. Doing things feels good.  Why is it 'honest'?   You put the piece of work in… dishonest labour? You get the reward – costless coin!! – without the endeavor.

is there an underlying principle about honesty and  the lovely nature of  labour? I recollect  at that place is – that is a truth almost like the truth of physics – if you lot   put the effort in hither, then this follows….

And then can you patiently bears want'southward burden? and if and then, does the brunt disappear?

Then he that patiently desire's burden bears,
No burden bears, but is a male monarch, a king!

This poem is well-nigh mind-control, how we think about what we (must) practise.  If you can control your own mind, or rather your mind's response to external reality, then you practice have absolute power: you are a king. You can't change 'want', yous may not exist able to change how rich or poor you are, but you lot tin can alter the manner you lot experience and mentally respond to your situation.

Tin can but a rich, powerful person call up this? I would be request this to get my group thinking beyond the bounds of rich and poor. Part of the verse form'southward purpose is to inquire us to ditch those piece of cake distinctions.

The verse form seems to fence  that the rich powerful person can't do this – this person is a fool, vex'd past 'gilded numbers'.

If we move the chat from the loonshit of rich and poor and into a more personally worked example  – what do you do with a affair you can't change, an affliction for example, a chronic condition… I know in most Shared Reading groups there will be at to the lowest degree one person living with such a status, and learning to get the person who 'patiently desire'south brunt bears'.