Well, it looks like Wiarton Willie was correct this year: We’re enjoying an early Spring.
I was thinking of all of the things I love about this time of year when the Alfred Tennyson line occurred to me: “In the Spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” I think the same applies to young women, too…and to we mature folks in general, as well. Then, for some unknown reason, I thought about the term, “love sick.” Where did that expression originate? I can see the connection. You’re stricken by it. It infects you. But it’s something you can get over, although I’d prefer not to do so. If unrequited, love, for some, can be very painful. Many of us have probably experienced unrequited love. In hindsight, though, would you change that experience if you could?
Looking back over one’s life and its ups and downs, Lord Tennyson’s poem is bitter in some ways. Then, there’s a blues tune called “The Thrill Is Gone.” Most of us remember it as having been done by B.B. King. These, of course, are two vastly different artists from different ages, but the feelings conveyed are timeless. They offer different messages on the end of a love affair.
Love is a risk, I think, because people are “human,” as we say. It’s an acknowledgement of the fact that people change over time and they change their minds sometimes. On one hand, why take the gamble? On the other hand, it’s worth the risk. For myself, I’ll take the risk. Here’s a brief background on Lord Tennyson and blues master Roy Hawkins:
More than any other Victorian writer, Alfred Tennyson embodied his age, both to his contemporaries and to modern readers. In his own day he was said to be, with Queen Victoria and Gladstone, one of the three most famous living persons, a reputation no other poet writing in English has ever had. Here’s an excerpt from “Locksley Hall:”
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove;
In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
A record producer discovered Roy Hawkins playing in an Oakland, California nightspot in 1948. Modern Records picked up the rights to several masters before signing Hawkins to a recording contract in 1949. Two major R&B hits resulted: 1950′s “Why Do Everything Happen to Me” and “The Thrill Is Gone” the following year. Most of us probably remember B.B. King’s rendition of the latter song. Here’s an excerpt:
The thrill is gone
It’s gone away for good
Oh, the thrill is gone baby
Baby its gone away for good
Someday I know I’ll be over it all baby
Just like I know a man should
