The Soap Opera was created by Dallas Wheatley. If you liked what you heard, please rate and review the show in Apple Podcasts, or tell your friends and family about it! Spreading the word makes all the difference.

Many thanks to Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com for the music. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The tracks used in this episode are "Ripples", "Kalimba Relaxation Music", "Brandenburg No4-1 BWV1049", and "Finding Movement".

Performers

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  Eleanor Grey

  
  


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  Shade Oyemakinwa

  
  

April
By Sara Teasdale
Performed by Eleanor Grey

The roofs are shining from the rain,
The sparrows twitter as they fly,
And with a windy April grace
The little clouds go by.

Yet the back-yards are bare and brown
With only one unchanging tree
I could not be so sure of spring
Save that it sings in me.

I Have Loved Hours At Sea
By Sara Teasdale
Performed by Eleanor Grey

I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower,
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour;

First stars above a snowy hill,
Voices of people kindly and wise,
And the great look of love, long hidden,
Found at last in meeting eyes.

I have loved much and been loved deeply,
Oh when my spirit's fire burns low,
Leave me the darkness and the stillness,
I shall be tired and glad to go.

Hello! This is Shade Oyemakinwa with a couple of poems from Christina Rossetti. To start is “No, Thank You, John”. “No, Thank You, John” is a poem about a person who is unequivocally and unambiguously uninterested. They are uninterested in John romantically, this is a known fact, and they are quite comfortable saying so.

It is so funny and the voice is so modern and familiar, that learning that Rosetti influenced some very influential writers is not really a surprise to me.

No, Thank You, John
By Christina Rosetti
Performed by Shade Oyemakinwa

I never said I loved you, John:
Why will you tease me, day by day,
And wax a weariness to think upon
With always "do" and "pray"?

You know I never loved you, John;
No fault of mine made me your toast:
Why will you haunt me with a face as wan
As shows an hour-old ghost?

I dare say Meg or Moll would take
Pity upon you, if you'd ask:
And pray don't remain single for my sake
Who can't perform that task.

I have no heart?—Perhaps I have not;
But then you're mad to take offence
That I don't give you what I have not got:
Use your common sense.

Let bygones be bygones:
Don't call me false, who owed not to be true:
I'd rather answer "No" to fifty Johns
Than answer "Yes" to you.

Let's mar our pleasant days no more,
Song-birds of passage, days of youth:
Catch at to-day, forget the days before:
I'll wink at your untruth.

Let us strike hands as hearty friends;
No more, no less: and friendship's good:
Only don't keep in view ulterior ends,
And points not understood

In open treaty. Rise above
Quibbles and shuffling off and on:
Here's friendship for you if you like; but love,—
No, thank you, John.

Now, “The Queen of Hearts” is about someone who is exasperated with their card mate’s ability to always gain the queen of hearts when they play. In the name of academic transparency, I’ll tell you that there are those who suppose that the the queen of hearts is an allegory for winning a person’s love and the poem itself is a metaphor for a person who is frustrated with their inability to find love compared to their friend’s ability to fall into it. Well I’m here to tell you that those people are boring. And that those people are cowards. We’re playing cards and either Flora’s cheating or the cards are magical!

All right. Let’s step down from this little soap box and read some more poetry by Christina Rossetti!

The Queen of Hearts
By Christina Rosetti
Performed by Shade Oyemakinwa

How comes it, Flora, that, whenever we
Play cards together, you invariably,
However the pack parts,
Still hold the Queen of Hearts?

I've scanned you with a scrutinizing gaze,
Resolved to fathom these your secret ways:
But, sift them as I will,
Your ways are secret still.

I cut and shuffle; shuffle, cut, again;
But all my cutting, shuffling, proves in vain:
Vain hope, vain forethought, too;
That Queen still falls to you.

I dropped her once, prepense; but, ere the deal
Was dealt, your instinct seemed her loss to feel:
"There should be one card more,"
You said, and searched the floor.

I cheated once: I made a private notch
In Heart-Queen's back, and kept a lynx-eyed watch;
Yet such another back
Deceived me in the pack:

The Queen of Clubs assumed by arts unknown
An imitative dint that seemed my own;
This notch, not of my doing,
Misled me to my ruin.

It baffles me to puzzle out the clew,
Which must be skill, or craft, or luck in you:
Unless, indeed, it be
Natural affinity.