"On, On Let Us Skate Past The Sleeping Willows Dusted With Snow"

Over the past few posts I have inadvertently stumbled into a sort of contemplation of Life and Fate from a cosmic perspective.  It all began innocently enough with Christina Rossetti's "Love hath a name of Death." From there, one thing led to another.

A return to Earth is in order.  Perhaps an ice-skating excursion with Charlotte Mew (following our earlier excursions with Edmund Blunden and A. S. J. Tessimond) will do the trick.  Although, come to think of it, Mew is not exactly the jolly, happy-go-lucky ice-skating type . . .

                             Eliot Hodgkin, "Six Cape Gooseberries" (1954)

                              Smile, Death

Smile, Death, see I smile as I come to you
Straight from the road and the moor that I leave behind,
Nothing on earth to me was like this wind-blown space,
Nothing was like the road, but at the end there was a vision or a face
               And the eyes were not always kind.

    Smile, Death, as you fasten the blades to my feet for me,
On, on let us skate past the sleeping willows dusted with snow;
Fast, fast down the frozen stream, with the moor and the road and the
  vision behind,
    (Show me your face, why the eyes are kind!)
And we will not speak of life or believe in it or remember it as we go.

Charlotte Mew, The Rambling Sailor (1929).  Please note that line 8 is a single line, but the length limitations of this format do not permit it to appear as a single line.  The other (somewhat idiosyncratic) line indentations are Mew's own.

                    Eliot Hodgkin, "Feathers and Hyacinth Heads" (1962)

In a note to the poem, John Newton (the editor and annotator of Mew's Complete Poems) states:  "This poem and 'Moorland Night' are perhaps the poems of Mew's that show the clearest signs of her enthusiasm for Emily Bronte's poetry."  Charlotte Mew, Complete Poems (edited by John Newton) (Penguin 2000).  I would venture to say that, in "Smile, Death," Mew gives Bronte a run for her money when it comes to gloomy moorland meditations.

In any case, I suppose that we have now returned to Earth from the cosmos, after a fashion.

                             Eliot Hodgkin, "Seven Brussels Sprouts" (1955)

"You Are A Little Soul, Carrying Around A Corpse, As Epictetus Used To Say"

In "From far, from eve and morning" (which appeared in my previous post), A. E. Housman suggests that we are transient souls inhabiting bodies "knit" out of "the stuff of life" that has blown here from "yon twelve-winded sky."  It is only a matter of time before we make our "endless way" back out into "the wind's twelve quarters."  All of this seems reminiscent of an observation made by Epictetus (as recounted by Marcus Aurelius):  "You are a little soul, carrying around a corpse, as Epictetus used to say."  Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV.41 (translated by W. A. Oldfather).

The phrase "a little soul" brings to mind a poem by James Reeves.  The poem seems to fit well with Housman's poem, as well as with Epictetus's remark.

         Animula

No one knows, no one cares --
An old soul
In a narrow cottage,
A parlour,
A kitchen,
And upstairs
A narrow bedroom,
A narrow bed --
A particle of immemorial life.

James Reeves, Poems and Paraphrases (1972).

                      William Victor Higgins, "New Mexico Skies" (1943)

Reeves may have taken his title from the poem that the Emperor Hadrian (76-138) purportedly composed on his death bed.  The poem begins: "Animula vagula blandula."  "Animula" is often translated as "little soul."

Hadrian's poem has been translated hundreds of times.  A few versions of the first line follow.  "My little wand'ring sportful Soule."  (John Donne, 1611.)  "My soul, my pleasant soul and witty."  (Henry Vaughan, 1652.) "Poor little, pretty, fluttering thing."  (Matthew Prior, 1709.)  "Ah! gentle, fleeting, wav'ring sprite."  (Lord Byron, 1806.)  "Little soul so sleek and smiling." (Stevie Smith, 1966.)  Adrian Poole and Jeremy Maule (editors), The Oxford Book of Classical Verse in Translation (1995), pages 508-509.

"Animula" is also the title of one of T. S. Eliot's "Ariel Poems."  Eliot's poem begins:  "Issues from the hand of God, the simple soul."

 

                 William Victor Higgins, "Mountains and Valleys" (c. 1921)

"For A Breath I Tarry Nor Yet Disperse Apart"

Christina Rossetti's line "Love hath a name of Death" serves as an appropriate epigraph to the following poem by A. E. Housman.  The poem appears in Housman's A Shropshire Lad, which was published in 1896. Although Housman was certainly not a "Decadent" 1890s poet, the poem also shares common ground with Ernest Dowson's "Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam" and Arthur Symons's "The Soul's Progress."

From far, from eve and morning
    And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
    Blew hither:  here am I.

Now -- for a breath I tarry
    Nor yet disperse apart --
Take my hand quick and tell me,
    What have you in your heart.

Speak now, and I will answer;
    How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind's twelve quarters
    I take my endless way.

A. E. Housman, Poem XXXII, A Shropshire Lad (1896).

                          Carel Weight (1908-1997), "House by the Road"

The poem, like many of Housman's poems, may not be as simple as it first seems.  On the one hand, it fits within the "narrative" of A Shropshire Lad (if, in fact, there is a "narrative," which is a matter of debate):  it appears to present another episode of unrequited (or requited, but lost) love. In addition, it evokes the second of Housman's two great themes:  the fleeting nature of life (i.e., "they are not long, the days of wine and roses," to use Dowson's line).

But stating the "themes" of the poem in such a fashion does not do justice to its power.  There is much more afoot.  In the first stanza, Housman creates an atmosphere of universality and of timelessness:  "From far, from eve and morning/And yon twelve-winded sky,/The stuff of life to knit me/Blew hither:  here am I."  One realizes what a miracle it is (regardless of whether or not one holds any religious beliefs) that we exist here, at this moment, on Earth.

This leads directly to the sense of urgency that drives the poem:  "Now -- for a breath I tarry/Nor yet disperse apart --/Take my hand quick and tell me,/What have you in your heart."  ("Disperse apart" is a curious phrase, yet it is entirely apt.)  The desire to establish some connection with another human being before proceeding again on one's "endless way" (into oblivion) seems to go well beyond romantic love, whether requited or unrequited.

But that is one view, and one view only.  Better yet:  please disregard everything I just said.  The poem speaks for itself.

                               Carel Weight, "I Live Here" (c. 1953-1954)

"Love Hath A Name Of Death"

Christina Rossetti's melancholy can be oddly seductive.  Take the following untitled poem by her:  it is far from cheerful, and its message -- "everything passes and vanishes" (to borrow from William Allingham, Rossetti's fellow Victorian poet) -- could be seen as hackneyed.  (To the same extent that truth is hackneyed, I suppose.)  But, ah, the first line!

          Osmund Caine, "Wedding at Twickenham Parish Church" (1944)

Love hath a name of Death:
He gives a breath
And takes away.
Lo we beneath his sway
Grow like a flower;
To bloom an hour,
To droop a day,
And fade away.

Christina Rossetti, The Complete Poems (Penguin 2001).  The poem first appeared in Rossetti's short story "Commonplace," which was published in 1870.

"Love hath a name of Death" is the sort of line that can only be destroyed by "explication" or "exegesis."  Some might say that this sort of assertion is the lazy way out.  I think not.  Nevertheless, I readily confess to being simple-minded.  Hence, my commentary on the line begins and ends with this:  "It leaves me speechless."  (Which is a variation on my other highest form of "literary" praise:  "It takes my breath away.")  So, there you have it:  "Love hath a name of Death."

                      Osmund Caine, "The Washing at No. 25, Kingston"

"Long And Sluggish Lines"

There are quite a few magnolia trees in my neighborhood.  At this time of year, the large, furry buds begin to emerge.  Wallace Stevens mentions yet-to-awaken magnolias in the following poem -- one of his wonderful late poems, written in his seventies.  It is set in "the pre-history of February."

                    Long and Sluggish Lines

It makes so little difference, at so much more
Than seventy, where one looks, one has been there before.

Wood-smoke rises through trees, is caught in an upper flow
Of air and whirled away.  But it has been often so.

The trees have a look as if they bore sad names
And kept saying over and over one same, same thing,

In a kind of uproar, because an opposite, a contradiction,
Has enraged them and made them want to talk it down.

What opposite?  Could it be that yellow patch, the side
Of a house, that makes one think the house is laughing;

Or these--escent--issant pre-personae:  first fly,
A comic infanta among the tragic drapings,

Babyishness of forsythia, a snatch of belief,
The spook and makings of the nude magnolia?

. . . Wanderer, this is the pre-history of February.
The life of the poem in the mind has not yet begun.

You were not born yet when the trees were crystal
Nor are you now, in this wakefulness inside a sleep.

Wallace Stevens, "The Rock," Collected Poetry and Prose (The Library of America 1997).

                         John Aldridge (1905-1983), "February Afternoon"

Stevens's observation that the trees "kept saying over and over one same, same thing" brings to mind his poem "The Region November" (the loveliness of which I have touted on more than one occasion).  In that poem, the trees

. . . sway, deeply and loudly, in an effort,
So much less than feeling, so much less than speech,

Saying and saying, the way things say
On the level of that which is not yet knowledge:

A revelation not yet intended.

Wallace Stevens, "Late Poems," Ibid.

I will hazard the guess that Stevens wants us to know that we need to move beyond the iterations of the trees, which, though beautiful and real, are nothing in themselves.  And what enables us to move beyond the "saying" of the trees?  "The life of the poem in the mind."

It is important to recognize that, in Stevens's world, "poem" has a definition that goes well beyond "verse":  throughout Stevens's poetry, "poem" means the imagination interacting with the world and the world interacting with the imagination.  Back and forth, back and forth.  The title of another of his late poems perhaps sums this up:  "Reality Is an Activity of the Most August Imagination."  (And we mustn't forget "A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts.")

                           John Aldridge, "Beslyn's Pond, Great Bardfield"

"The Soul's Progress"

Please bear with me as I stay in the 1890s a moment longer.  Ernest Dowson's "Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam" is reminiscent of "The Soul's Progress," a sonnet by Dowson's fellow Decadent, Arthur Symons (he of "grey" and "twilight").  Symons's poem was published in 1889, seven years prior to the publication of "Vitae summa brevis."  I am not suggesting that "The Soul's Progress" was a direct influence on Dowson.  However, the two poems do, I think, show the common dreamy world inhabited by the Decadents.

                     Ethelbert White, "The Farm by the Brook" (1928-1929)

                  The Soul's Progress

It enters life it knows not whence; there lies
A mist behind it and a mist before.
It stands between a closed and open door.
It follows hope, yet feeds on memories.
The years are with it, and the years are wise;
It learns the mournful lesson of their lore.
It hears strange voices from an unknown shore,
Voices that will not answer to its cries.

Blindly it treads dim ways that wind and twist;
It sows for knowledge, and it gathers pain;
Stakes all on love, and loses utterly.
Then, going down into the darker mist,
Naked, and blind, and blown with wind and rain,
It staggers out into eternity.

Arthur Symons, Days and Nights (1889).

Come to think of it, Symons, like Dowson, echoes Christina Rossetti, a non-Decadent if ever there was one.  "Stakes all on love, and loses utterly" is perhaps a line that Rossetti would particularly sympathize with.

                          Ethelbert White, "Edge of the Village" (1924)

Life Explained, Part Twenty-Three: "They Are Not Long, The Days Of Wine And Roses"

Christina Rossetti and Ernest Dowson lived in wholly different Victorian worlds.  She was a devout Anglican who lived a quiet, somewhat reclusive life.  He was the quintessential 1890s Decadent figure:  a dissipated poet who wandered between London and Paris, dead at the age of 32.

Dowson wrote what are perhaps the two best-known poems of the Nineties:  "Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae" ("I am not the man I was under kind Cynara's rule" is one translation of the title, which is from Horace's Odes, IV.i.3) and "Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam" ("the short span of our life forbids us to indulge in long-term hope" is one translation of the title, which is from Horace's Odes, I.iv.15).

Despite the differences between Rossetti and Dowson, Rossetti's "One Certainty" (which appeared in my previous post) and Dowson's "Vitae summa brevis" have, I think, much in common.

                         James McIntosh Patrick, "A City Garden" (1940)

Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
          Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
          We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
          Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
          Within a dream.

Ernest Dowson, Verses (1896).

Dowson lacked the religious comfort that Rossetti had.  Still, the way he puts it, the prospect of what awaits us after the "One Certainty" does not seem frightening.  Our fate seems peaceful, restful:  "Out of a misty dream/Our path emerges for a while, then closes/Within a dream."  He sounds like a Taoist or a Buddhist.

     A temporary lodging
on this side of the road all
     must go, in the end.

To recover the time he rested,
The traveller hastens on.

Shinkei (1406-1475) (translated by Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen), Heart's Flower: The Life and Poetry of Shinkei (Stanford University Press 1994).

                                 Karl Hagedorn, "Winter Sunshine" (1932)

Life Explained, Part Twenty-Two: "One Certainty"

Christina Rossetti had what some might call a fatalistic (and what others might call a realistic) view of our time on Earth.  I thought of the following sonnet because of the phrase "twilight grey" in its final line -- an admittedly tenuous affinity with my previous post on Arthur Symons's fondness for the words "grey" and "twilight."

But there is much more afoot in Rossetti's poem than "twilight grey."  I am among those who find Rossetti's view of life to be realistic, not fatalistic. On the other hand, supposing that she is indeed fatalistic, there is a great deal to be said for fatalistic beauty (accompanied by an Explanation of Life).

         Adam Bruce Thomson (1885-1976), "From My Bedroom Window"

                    One Certainty

Vanity of vanities, the Preacher saith,
     All things are vanity.  The eye and ear
     Cannot be filled with what they see and hear.
Like early dew, or like the sudden breath
Of wind, or like the grass that withereth,
     Is man, tossed to and fro by hope and fear:
     So little joy hath he, so little cheer,
Till all things end in the long dust of death.
Today is still the same as yesterday,
     Tomorrow also even as one of them;
And there is nothing new under the sun:
Until the ancient race of Time be run,
     The old thorns shall grow out of the old stem,
And morning shall be cold and twilight grey.

Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862).  Lines 1-3 and 11 have their source in Chapter 1 of the Book of Ecclesiastes (King James Version).

Yes, I know, the poem may elicit a "Whew!"  Perhaps it is not the thing to start the day with.  But Rossetti is more adept than even world-class fatalists such as, say, Thomas Hardy or A. E. Housman (although Housman comes close to her) at delivering a grim message in a soothing fashion.  To wit:  "Like early dew, or like the sudden breath/Of wind."  Or: "The old thorns shall grow out of the old stem."  Or even this:  "Till all things end in the long dust of death."  (All those lovely monosyllables!) The prospect (nay, the "certainty") of our mortality has never seemed so . . . reassuring?  Comforting?

                  Adam Bruce Thomson, "Still Life at a Window" (c. 1944)