Edible Poetry

Today I baked three batches of yummy cooked goods, and feel inspired to cover a foody poem. And the one I have found has lines that strangely link in with last week's poem, noting how 'good night' is not always a pleasant notion. Also, I love the coincidence of the poet's name: Mary Lamb.

Breakfast

A dinner party, coffee, tea,
Sandwich, or supper, all may be
In their way pleasant. But to me
Not one of these deserves the praise
That welcomer of new-born days,
A breakfast, merits; ever giving
Cheerful notice we are living
Another day refreshed by sleep,
When its festival we keep.
Now although I would not slight
Those kindly words we use ‘Good night',
Yet parting words are words of sorrow,
And may not vie with sweet ‘Good Morrow',
With which again our friends we greet,
When in the breakfast-room we meet,
At the social table round,
Listening to the lively sound
Of those notes which never tire,
Of urn, or kettle on the fire.
Sleepy Robert never hears
Or urn, or kettle; he appears
When all have finished, one by one
Dropping off, and breakfast done.
Yet has he too his own pleasure,
His breakfast hour's his hour of leisure;
And, left alone, he reads or muses,
Or else in idle mood he uses
To sit and watch the venturous fly,
Where the sugar's piled high,
Clambering o'er the lumps so white,
Rocky cliffs of sweet delight.

The main image in this poem is that breakfast is a rejuvenator, bringing a new beginning with each new day. The modifier 'new-born' is strongly emotive, connoting the bare purity which babies have and adults lack. Power is given to 'breakfast', as it is named 'the welcomer', and is personified to '[merit]' praise, again evoking the image of the benign child.

I perceived a sad yet relieved note in the section, 'we are living/ Another day'. It is broken up by enjambment and so I felt the slight pause imitated a sigh of relief that 'another day' has been given to the narrator. Ergo, I researched the poet's life and found she suffered with mental illness, which caused her to kill her mother, leading her to confinement. So the importance of breakfast is heightened in this case, as perhaps the thought of suicide, destitution or imprisonment was looming, and eating at leisure became a sign of safety for another few hours at least.

'Parting words are words of sorrow'. As I have mentioned, this chimes with Shelley's words a few decades before. The contrast of night and morning is highlighted with the rhyme to 'morrow'. This was a time of polite company, where one would stay with friends far longer than today, and so again the feeling of security is reinforced through the meeting in the 'breakfast-room'.

Even the servants ('Sleepy Robert') were given 'leisure' at breakfast. Then we drop further down the social scale to the 'fly', who is made akin to humans in the way that it enjoys breakfast in its own way, with a metaphorical 'cliff' symbolising human love of nature at the time also. Perhaps we are all, like animals, slaves to our appetites, but why not enjoy that fact as well as one can?