Thanks, Rachel, for reminding me about this great song of the head and the heart by Mumford & Sons...
Apart from this song probably being at the back of my mind - I featured it on the blog in February - my poem head or heart may also have been influenced by a beautiful sonnet by Christina Rossetti...
A Birthday
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
Although we tend, poetically and romantically, to associate feelings with the heart, such emotions - like all human sentiments, thoughts, desires and actions - have their seat in the head, or, more specifically, the brain. And, whereas we tend to correlate the left hemisphere of the brain with logic, linear reasoning and numerical calculation, and the right hemisphere with more creative, intuitive and lateral thinking, our feelings and emotions are in fact bilaterally controlled. In other words, perhaps we are naturally predisposed to achieve that difficult balance between head and heart. Having said this, it doesn't seem to prevent most of us falling off the tightrope with unerring frequency.
