bold text

Question

Strange damps--full of the eyes of many men, crowded with life borne in upon a lull....Oh, I was young, I could turn again to you, most definite and most beautiful, and taste the stuff of half-remeber dreams, sweet and new on your  mouth......there was a tanging in the midnight air--silence was dead and sound not yet awoken-Life cracked like ice!--one brilliant note and there, radiant and pale, you stood...and spring had broken. (The icicles were short upon the roofs and the changeling city swooned.)Our thoughts were frosty mist along the eaves; our two ghosts kissed, high on the long, mazed wires---eerie half-laughter echoes here and leaves only a fatuous sigh for young desires; regret has followed after things she loved, leaving the great husk. Would you explain the bold text?Thank you

Marius Hancu · Accepted Answer

Indicate the source, this might help the respondents.

This Side of Paradise
by
F. Scott Fitzgerald
http://www.fullbooks.com/This-Side-of-Paradise5.html

Clive · Answer

Hi,

Can you have a try first? There must be some parts of this that you have ideas about.

Best wishes, Clive

BW2/3 · Answer

Here is the entire poem.

LOOKING BACKWARD

July sweltered out with a last hot week, and Amory in another surge of
unrest realized that it was just five months since he and Rosalind had
met. Yet it was already hard for him to visualize the heart-whole boy
who had stepped off the transport, passionately desiring the adventure of
life. One night while the heat, overpowering and enervating, poured into
the windows of his room he struggled for several hours in a vague effort
to immortalize the poignancy of that time.

The February streets, wind-washed by night, blow full of strange
half-intermittent damps, bearing on wasted walks in shining sight
wet snow plashed into gleams under the lamps, like golden oil
from some divine machine, in an hour of thaw and stars.

Strange damps--full of the eyes of many men, crowded with life
borne in upon a lull. . . . Oh, I was young, for I could turn
again to you, most finite and most beautiful, and taste the stuff
of half-remembered dreams, sweet and new on your mouth.

. . . There was a tanging in the midnight air--silence was dead and
sound not yet awoken--Life cracked like ice!--one brilliant note
and there, radiant and pale, you stood . . . and spring had broken.
(The icicles were short upon the roofs and the changeling city
swooned.)

Our thoughts were frosty mist along the eaves; our two ghosts
kissed, high on the long, mazed wires--eerie half-laughter echoes
here and leaves only a fatuous sigh for young desires; regret has
followed after things she loved, leaving the great husk.

It was a poem written by Amory who was the main character in the book. He loved a girl who did not like him because he had no money. Then they broke up. I assumed this poem expressing his sorrow and painful he was.

Here are words I still have trouble to get it.

1)Strange damps--full of the eyes of many men, crowded with life
borne in upon a lull.

2)one brilliant note and there

Thank you

bold text

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions