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| Edmund de Waal, Covered Jar (via) |
Upon Julia's Clothes
Whenas in silks my Julia goes, Then, methinks, how sweetly flows The liquefaction of her clothes! Next, when I cast mine eyes and see That brave vibration each way free, —O how that glittering taketh me!
Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
This analysis brings out the fishing motifs in the poem. "The sestet is therefore not so much about love-longing as it is about confusion and ambivalence toward women, toward sex and toward sexuality. Julia's clothes captivate the poet, yes, but he's a poor fish, unwillingly enthralled.
"Would it be possible to guess, strictly on the basis of this poem, that the author was a clergyman and a lifelong bachelor?"
In The White Road, Edmund de Waal quotes the first verse in relation to glazing of porcelains - "glaze is the clothing for the clay body". "Think of a glaze covering a body," he writes. "The fit is couture, neither a sense of constriction, nor one of too much latitude, just easy movement."
De Waal goes on to dwell briefly on possible problems with pots and glazes: lopsidedness, distortion, fissures, fragments of adherent clay; running of glaze, pinholing, rivulates of arrested glaze, scaling off.
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