First Known When Lost

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

2012-01-29T00:10:00.000-08:00

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)

"When The Grey Moth Night Drew Near"

2012-01-27T00:10:00.000-08:00

"Twilight" and "grey" are two of Arthur Symons's favorite words. This is not surprising given the oftentimes ethereal and, well, twilit ambience of much of the "Decadent" poetry of the 1890s. However, unlike many Decadent poets, Symons wrote a fair number of poems which have a natural setting (as opposed to being set in, say, an absinthe bar or some other seedy night-time establishment).

On Inishmaan (Isles of Aran)

In the twilight of the year,
Here, about these twilight ways,
When the grey moth night drew near,
Fluttering on a faint flying,
I would linger out the day's
Delicate and moth-grey dying.

Grey, and faint with sleep, the sea
Should enfold me, and release,
Some old peace to dwell with me.
I would quiet the long crying
Of my heart with mournful peace,
The grey sea's, in its low sighing.

Arthur Symons, Images of Good and Evil (1899). Symons includes a note to the poem stating that it was written at Tillyra Castle on August 13, 1896. The phrase "some old peace" in line 9 reappears in "By the Pool at the Third Rosses," which was written at Rosses Point, Sligo, on September 1, 1896: "some old peace I had forgotten" (line 19).

"On Inishmaan" is, I suppose, quintessential 1890s poetry: "I would quiet the long crying/Of my heart with mournful peace," et cetera. (Which, to my mind, is not necessarily a bad thing.) Most importantly, however, one line makes it all worthwhile: "When the grey moth night drew near." (And, close behind, "the day's/Delicate and moth-grey dying.") Yes, it is dreamy and "Decadent," but it sounds lovely.

Spencer Gore, "View from a Window" (1909)

Twilight

The pale grey sea crawls stealthily
Up the pale lilac of the beach;
A bluer grey, the waters reach
To where the horizon ends the sea.

Flushed with a tinge of dusky rose,
The clouds, a twilit lavender,
Flood the low sky, and duskier
The mist comes flooding in, and flows

Into the twilight of the land,
And darkness, coming softly down,
Rustles across the fading sand
And folds its arms about the town.

Arthur Symons, Amoris Victima (1897). Symons notes that the poem was written in Dieppe (of course!) on August 22, 1895. Earlier in his career, Symons wrote a three-poem sequence titled "Colour Studies," the first poem of which is titled "At Dieppe." I think that "Twilight" also qualifies as a "Colour Study" of Dieppe.

Spencer Gore, "Letchworth" (1912)

A. E. Housman: Three Variations On A Theme

2012-01-25T00:10:00.000-08:00

The two great themes of A. E. Housman's poetry are love (unrequited, or requited and lost) and death (or, put differently, the fleeting nature of life). These subjects are addressed in verse that some may find "old-fashioned" or "quaint." And it is certainly true that, even though his final collection was published in 1922 (the year in which Eliot's The Waste Land was published), Housman was not a "Modernist."

For my money, Kingsley Amis appropriately responds to quibbles about Housman's poetry:

"Of course I think it ungrateful and wrong that Housman should never have been conventionally admitted as a great English poet, one of the greatest since Arnold, but not so surprising when you consider some of the people who have been so admitted. What are the objections to him? . . . His themes are restricted: I started to make a list of them until it occurred to me that the same objection would exclude from the canon Milton, Herbert, Pope, Wordsworth, Keats. . . . He turns his back on the modern world: next question. He made no technical innovations: get out of my sight."

Kingsley Amis, The Amis Anthology: A Personal Choice of English Verse (1988), pages 331-332.

The theme of the following three poems is love, and they are tied together by similar imagery. The first poem was published while Housman was alive. The other two were published posthumously. As is the case with most of Housman's poems, they are untitled.

The half-moon westers low, my love,
And the wind brings up the rain;
And wide apart lie we, my love,
And seas between the twain.

I know not if it rains, my love,
In the land where you do lie;
And oh, so sound you sleep, my love,
You know no more than I.

A. E. Housman, Poem XXVI, Last Poems (1922).

Lest one think that this is technically a "simple" poem, one should consider Housman's use of assonance, consonance, and alliteration both within a given line, and across lines. The fact that the moon is a "half-moon" is not a matter of happenstance. And consider this as well: is the absent lover in another land? Or is he or she dead? Or, just possibly, is he or she now sleeping in the same bed as the speaker of the poem?

Doris Boulton-Maude, "The Garden Window" (c. 1940)

The following two poems are expanded versions (not strictly translations) by Housman of a poem by Sappho.

The weeping Pleiads wester,
And the moon is under seas;
From bourn to bourn of midnight
Far sighs the rainy breeze:

It sighs from a lost country
To a land I have not known;
The weeping Pleiads wester,
And I lie down alone.

A. E. Housman, Poem X, More Poems (1936).

"Bourn" in this instance probably means "a bound, a limit" or, perhaps, "a boundary" (OED). According to Bulfinch, "the Pleiads were daughters of Atlas, and nymphs of Diana's train. One day Orion saw them and became enamoured and pursued them. In their distress they prayed to the gods to change their form, and Jupiter in pity turned them into pigeons, and then made them a constellation in the sky." Thomas Bulfinch, The Age of Fable (1855).

The rainy Pleiads wester,
Orion plunges prone,
The stroke of midnight ceases,
And I lie down alone.

The rainy Pleiads wester
And seek beyond the sea
The head that I shall dream of,
And 'twill not dream of me.

Ibid, Poem XI.

Doris Boulton-Maude, "Mayes Farm, Sandon" (c. 1940)

Snow, Concluded

2012-01-23T00:10:00.000-08:00

The snow that we received earlier this week has mostly vanished. However, the remaining bright white patches upon the lawns (which stay green all winter long in our temperate climate) and in the hollows of the open fields (grey-brown underlaid with green) are lovely. All of which evokes the titles, at least, of the following two poems.

Wet Snow

White tree on black tree,
Ghostly appearance fastened on another,
Called up by harsh spells of this wintry weather
You stand in the night as though to speak to me.

I could almost
Say what you do not fail to say; that's why
I turn away, in terror, not to see
A tree stand there hugged by its own ghost.

Ewen McCaig, The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009).

John Nash, "Winter Scene"

Hedges Freaked with Snow

No argument, no anger, no remorse,
No dividing of blame.
There was poison in the cup -- why should we ask
From whose hand it came?

No grief for our dead love, no howling gales
That through darkness blow,
But the smile of sorrow, a wan winter landscape,
Hedges freaked with snow.

Robert Graves, New Poems (1962).

John Nash, "Melting Snow at Wormingford" (1962)

"In The Gloom Of Whiteness, In The Great Silence Of Snow"

2012-01-21T00:10:00.000-08:00

Edward Thomas wrote the following poem on January 7, 1915. According to R. George Thomas, "the child in the poem is the poet's younger daughter, Myfanwy." R. George Thomas (editor), The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas (Oxford University Press 1981), page 135.

Snow

In the gloom of whiteness,
In the great silence of snow,
A child was sighing
And bitterly saying: 'Oh,
They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,
The down is fluttering from her breast.'
And still it fell through that dusky brightness
On the child crying for the bird of the snow.

Edna Longley (editor), Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books 2008).

Harald Sohlberg, "Winter, Hvalsbakken" (1926)

In her annotation to the poem, Edna Longley states that "the idea is traditional, as in the riddle of the snow and the sun, which begins: 'White bird featherless/Flew from Paradise.'" Ibid, page 175. Longley also notes that the image appears in the "December: Christmass" section of John Clare's Shepherd's Calendar:

And some to view the winter weathers
Climb up the window seat wi glee
Likening the snow to falling feathers
In fancy's infant extacy
Laughing wi superstitious love
Oer visions wild that youth supplyes
Of people pulling geese above
And keeping christmass in the skyes.

(Spelling and punctuation (or the lack thereof) are as they appear in Clare's original manuscript.) I have previously discussed Thomas's admiring discussion of Clare's poem "Love lies beyond the tomb." Perhaps Thomas had the above passage in mind when he wrote "Snow."

But, beyond its historical sources, the poem shows Thomas's acute attentiveness to the world around us, and his ability to memorably describe what he sees. Those of us fortunate enough to have experienced a snowfall will likely agree that these phrases are right on the mark: "the gloom of whiteness"; "the great silence of snow"; "that dusky brightness." In one sense, the phrases may seem deceptively commonplace; we may say: "Yes, of course, that's exactly what it is like." But it is the function of the ("true and not feigning") poet to tell us what we all know (or ought to know), but have not yet seen.

Harald Sohlberg, "Mainstreet, Roros" (1904)

Snow

2012-01-19T00:10:00.000-08:00

Today, we have had an unusually heavy snowfall for this part of the world. Unfortunately, it will disappear in a few days. But, there it is, for now: the world transformed. If you live near the Arctic Circle, do you ever lose this sense of wonder?

Explicit Snow

First snow is never all the snows there were
Come back again, but novel in the sun
As though a newness had but just begun.

It does not fall as rain does from nowhere
Or from that cloud spinnakered on the blue,
But from a place we feel we could go to.

As a great actor steps, not from the wings,
But from the play's extension -- all he does
Is move to the seen from the mysterious --

And his performance is the first of all --
The snow falls from its implications and
Stages pure newness on the uncurtained land.

And the hill we've looked out of existence comes
Vivid in its own language; and this tree
Stands self-explained, its own soliloquy.

Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009).

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), "Mount Yuga, Bizen Province"

Snow

And so at last it has come. Quietly.
Has quietly come and changed everything.
This, as we watch, is what we always say:
"It changes everything. Now we can live."
And we all want to walk out into it.
Walk out into it, at night, and look up,
Thinking that this world is a simple world
While all around us it never ceases.
We can walk for miles down an empty road
And see it swirl down beneath each streetlight.
We can turn and watch our path disappear.
And it continues to quietly come.
It has come, at last, and changed everything.

sip (Written in Tokyo a long time ago.)

Utagawa Hiroshige, "Snow Falling on a Town"

Snowfall

2012-01-17T00:10:00.000-08:00

As I began my afternoon walk yesterday, I could see a snow squall out on Puget Sound, approaching from the northwest. Towards the end of the walk, it overtook me from behind with a sweeping hiss. Just like that, a swirling white world.

In the following poem, Stanley Cook (1922-1991) takes an antic view of what falling snow might consist of. Perhaps our new-fangled floating electronic world has rendered Cook's vision quaintly obsolete. I think not.

Douglas Percy Bliss (1900-1984), "Snow at Sheen"

Snowfall

A bitter wind is tidying the attic of the sky,
Tearing the past into little pieces of snow
That dodge in three dimensions. Unable to read
So many bits, I can but guess
They are codings, receipts and final demands
For income tax, insurance and rates,
Or threats to take it out or cut it off
And make you wait and pay to have it back;
Banker's orders you were asked to sign
And haven't to save the treasurer and covenants
You haven't signed either to save him money;
A list of dates of the century's rarer pennies
And a parody, satirising Social Security,
Of the twenty-third psalm; instructions
To sharpen the mower that had you had at the time
Would have saved your tipping the binmen to take it away,
The good reports the children had from school
And a list of pages to look at (Penguin edition)
For character and use of symbolism;
Directions for reaching a wedding once you have left
M62, forms of voting for people
You didn't know or didn't like or liked still less
When you read their guff -- supposing you did --
And apparently didn't vote for anyway, holiday ads.
A flurry of testimonials, too faded to use
In case you imagined at your age
Anyone would offer you another job,
Mixes opaquely to obscure the view;
Bits of a letter melt upon an eyelash.
All about you the bushes, every branch
As stuck with white as a park-keeper's spike,
Retain the litter, the lightly falling debris
Scattering as far as the eye and the mind's eye can see.

Stanley Cook, Woods Beyond a Cornfield: Collected Poems (Smith/Doorstop Books 1995).

Douglas Percy Bliss, "A London Square in Winter" (1941)

Skating On Thin Ice, Revisited

2012-01-15T00:10:00.000-08:00

Edmund Blunden's exhortation to continue skating despite the darkness beneath us is echoed by A. S. J. Tessimond. Tessimond's darkness is of a more psychological sort -- his life was not haunted by the horrors that Blunden experienced in the trenches -- but his advice bears consideration.

Skaters' Waltz

'. . . So tempting to let freeze
One's deepest, darkest pools
And learn to skim with ease
Thin ice; for who but fools

Dive into who-knows-what?'
'But if the ice by chance
Breaks?' 'But if not, if not?
And how it glitters! Dance!'

A. S. J. Tessimond, Selection (1958).

Andreas Schelfhout, "Skaters and a Horse-Sledge" (1857)

The topic of skating inevitably brings to mind (at this point I ask my younger readers to please bear with me) my favorite Jethro Tull song. (Owen Wilson's line from the movie Armageddon just popped into my head: "I'll tell you one thing that really drives me nuts, is people that think that Jethro Tull is just a person in the band.") The song is "Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day" (from the album War Child, which was released in -- ah, Time! -- 1974). It was written, and is sung by, the inimitable Ian Anderson. This is from the third verse:

And as you cross the circle line
The ice-wall creaks behind
You're a rabbit on the run.
And the silver splinters fly
In the corner of your eye
Shining in the setting sun.

Andreas Schelfhout, "Skating in Holland" (1846)

Skating On Thin Ice

2012-01-13T00:10:00.000-08:00

Given his experiences in the First World War, Edmund Blunden had a much keener appreciation of what lies beneath the ice than most of us ever will. But he was a kindly man, and he would not, I think, have held our innocence against us. Thus, he gives us the following poem, which is both a warning and an exhortation.

The Midnight Skaters

The hop-poles stand in cones,
The icy pond lurks under,
The pole-tops steeple to the thrones
Of stars, sound gulfs of wonder;
But not the tallest there, 'tis said,
Could fathom to this pond's black bed.

Then is not death at watch
Within those secret waters?
What wants he but to catch
Earth's heedless sons and daughters?
With but a crystal parapet
Between, he has his engines set.

Then on, blood shouts, on, on,
Twirl, wheel and whip above him,
Dance on this ball-floor thin and wan,
Use him as though you love him;
Court him, elude him, reel and pass,
And let him hate you through the glass.

Edmund Blunden, English Poems (1925).

Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraten, "Skating Scene" (17th century)

On the subject of skating at night, the following passage from John Cheever's journals comes to mind:

"Skating one afternoon at the Newberrys'. The end of a very cold winter day. The ice, contracting in the cold, made a noise like thunder. Walking up the frozen field to the house we could hear it thundering. We went back that night. There was no one else on the pond. The G.s' dog was barking. There was no moon and the ice was black. It seemed, skating out into the center of the pond, that the number of stars I could see was multiplied. They seemed as thickly sown as a rush of snowflakes. As I skated back to the end of the pond, the number seemed to diminish. I was confounded. It could have been the whiskey and the wine. It could have been my utter ignorance of cosmology."

Robert Gottlieb (editor), The Journals of John Cheever (1991), page 3.

Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraten
"A View of the Regulierspoort, Amsterdam, in Winter" (17th century)

"I Heard The Sighing Of The Reeds"

2012-01-11T00:22:00.000-08:00

Among the "Decadent" poets of the 1890s, my favorite is Arthur Symons (1865-1945). Like the others, he wrote his fair share of poems about the lamp-lit, absinthe-tinged world that is usually associated with the Nineties. However, he also wrote a number of fine poems that, although they reflect the Decadent penchant for world-weariness coupled with dreaminess, provide lovely descriptions of places that he visited.

In particular, he is a wonderful poet of the sea-side. Not surprisingly, he wrote quite a few poems set in Dieppe, a favorite haunt of the Decadents. He also wrote poems about places on the coasts of England, Wales, and Ireland. Symons identified the following poem as having been written on September 1, 1896, at Rosses Point, which is located in County Sligo, Ireland. Rosses Point, Rosses Upper, and Rosses Lower are three villages (or townlands) on a peninsula in Sligo Bay. Hence the phrase "the Third Rosses" in the title of the poem.

By the Pool at the Third Rosses

I heard the sighing of the reeds
In the grey pool in the green land,
The sea-wind in the long reeds sighing
Between the green hill and the sand.

I heard the sighing of the reeds
Day after day, night after night;
I heard the whirring wild ducks flying,
I saw the sea-gull's wheeling flight.

I heard the sighing of the reeds
Night after night, day after day,
And I forgot old age, and dying,
And youth that loves, and love's decay.

I heard the sighing of the reeds
At noontide and at evening,
And some old dream I had forgotten
I seemed to be remembering.

I hear the sighing of the reeds:
Is it in vain, is it in vain
That some old peace I had forgotten
Is crying to come back again?

Arthur Symons, Images of Good and Evil (1899).

Christopher Nevinson (1889-1946), "The Old Harbour"

Symons wrote an essay about the time that he spent in Sligo. The essay contains the following passage:

"And if you go a little in from the sea-edge, over the green lands, you will come to a great pool, where the waters are never troubled nor the reeds still; but there is always a sighing of wind in the reeds, as of a very gentle and melancholy peace."

Arthur Symons, "In Sligo: Rosses Point and Glencar," Cities and Sea-Coasts and Islands (1918).

I presume that he is writing about the same reeds and the same pool that appear in the poem, and it is interesting to see how the poetry goes beyond the prose. The poem is built upon repetition, both of phrase and of rhyme. First, of course, "I heard the sighing of the reeds" begins each of the first four stanzas, changing to "I hear the sighing of the reeds" in the final stanza. Further, in the first three stanzas, "sighing" in the middle of the first line rhymes with the final word of the third line.

In addition, consider the repetition of sounds in "the whirring wild ducks" (line 7) and "the sea-gull's wheeling flight" (line 8). Consider also "day after day, night after night" in line 6, followed later by "night after night, day after day" in line 10, and "some old dream I had forgotten" in line 15, followed later by "some old peace I had forgotten" in line 19. And, finally, notice line 18: "is it in vain, is it in vain." The poem is an embodiment of the sound and the movement of the reeds (and of the wind and the sea).

Christopher Nevinson, "Silver Estuary" (c. 1925-1927)

"To Mend A World You Had Not Made"

2012-01-09T00:10:00.000-08:00

My posts in the new year have all been, by chance, bird-themed. Hence, a change of subject may be in order. However, R. S. Thomas's "A Marriage" prompted a memory of the following poem by Michael Roberts (1902-1948), in which birds once again make an appearance.

Poem for Elsa

That day the blue-black rook fell pitifully dead
You wept and stormed, tossing your lovely head,
Hurling commiseration into broken skies
That wept and wept, vainly as any eyes.

You pitifully wept, nor would be comforted
Till a bedraggled robin chirped unfed
Begging for comfort-crumbs, and sought your aid
To mend a world you had not made.

You who compassionately wept, be with me still,
Though the wind lash the dark, the wooded hill;
The hand that let the wild wet creature ache
Moulded the heart that grieves, but shall not break.

Michael Roberts, Collected Poems (1958).

C. F. A. Voysey (1857-1941), Wallpaper/Textile Design

I suspect that some may find the poem to be too "sentimental" (i.e., a dead rook, a bedraggled robin, a weeping child). In fact, Roberts was not a sentimental type. He is probably best known now as an anthologist who championed the political poetry of the Thirties. In addition to writing poetry, he wrote prose works about science, philosophy, and politics (including an early study of T. E. Hulme). Of course, this does not mean that he was incapable of writing a sentimental poem.

But, come to think of it, what of it? After all, Roberts has written about something that actually occurred, a type of incident that I wager most of us have experienced in our lives. If one is moved by such an incident, does that make one "sentimental"? And I am sure that most of us (I would hope) have experienced pity. Of course, a sea of ink has been spilled on the subject of pity by those who attempt to "analyze" exactly what it is, and to speculate on exactly what it means to feel pity. Pshaw!

C. F. A. Voysey, "The House That Jack Built" (1929)

"We Met Under A Shower Of Bird-Notes"

2012-01-07T00:10:00.000-08:00

As I noted in my previous post, R. S. Thomas and Mildred E. Eldridge (he called her "Elsi") were married for over 50 years. As the old saw goes, none of us can ever know (or should presume to know) what goes on inside a couple's marriage. However, I will nonetheless hazard a guess that 50 years of living with R. S. (as he refers to himself in his autobiographical piece "Neb," which translates into English from Welsh as "no-one") may not have always been a bed of roses or a walk in the park or a piece of cake (take your pick).

Mildred E. Eldridge, "Forest Friends" (1980)

Eldridge died in 1991. A year after her death, Thomas's collection Mass for Hard Times was published. It bears the following dedication: "To the Memory of My Wife, M. E. Eldridge, 1909-1991." The collection includes the following poem. Thomas subsequently placed the poem at the end of his Collected Poems. No other poem from Mass for Hard Times was included in the Collected Poems.

Mildred E. Eldridge
"Study of a Redpoll; Study of a Stonechat" (1975)

A Marriage

We met
under a shower
of bird-notes.
Fifty years passed,
love's moment
in a world in
servitude to time.
She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
'Come,' said death,
choosing her as his
partner for
the last dance. And she,
who in life
had done everything
with a bird's grace,
opened her bill now
for the shedding
of one sigh no
heavier than a feather.

R. S. Thomas, Collected Poems (1993).

Mildred E. Eldridge
"Study of a Turtle Dove at Bardsey"

This is one of those poems that I am reluctant to say anything about for fear of destroying it. (Although this is true of any good poem, isn't it?) At the risk of sounding fuzzy-minded, sentimental, and romantic, I'm afraid that my "literary analysis" of the poem begins and ends with this: it took my breath away when I first read it 18 or so years ago, and it took my breath away when I read it today. Others, of course, may feel differently.

Mildred E. Eldridge, "Musicians and Bee-Keepers" (c. 1950s)

"A Blackbird Singing"

2012-01-05T00:10:00.000-08:00

Thomas Hardy's frail thrush flinging his soul upon the gloom brings to mind R. S. Thomas's blackbird.

Thomas was a devoted bird-watcher. Although he seldom travelled abroad, he did go on bird-watching excursions to Denmark (where he "had a chance . . . to enquire about Kierkegaard, the Danish theologian [nice piece of wit and/or understatement, that!], although he did not get time to find his grave"), and, later, to France and Spain. In France, after he and his companion were spotted getting out of their car carrying binoculars, "officers from the air force arrived and arrested them for spying! The rest of the day was spent answering silly questions from the air force and the police, who had come all the way from Bordeaux to cross-examine these two dangerous men!" R. S. Thomas, "Neb" ("No-one"), in Autobiographies (translated from the Welsh by Jason Walford Davies) (1997), page 68.

Mildred E. Eldridge
"Birds on the Seashore" (c. 1950s)

A Blackbird Singing

It seems wrong that out of this bird,
Black, bold, a suggestion of dark
Places about it, there yet should come
Such rich music, as though the notes'
Ore were changed to a rare metal
At one touch of that bright bill.

You have heard it often, alone at your desk
In a green April, your mind drawn
Away from its work by sweet disturbance
Of the mild evening outside your room.

A slow singer, but loading each phrase
With history's overtones, love, joy
And grief learned by his dark tribe
In other orchards and passed on
Instinctively as they are now,
But fresh always with new tears.

R. S. Thomas, Song at the Year's Turning (1955).

Mildred E. Eldridge, "Rain on the Hill" (1936)

R. S. Thomas and Mildred E. Eldridge were married for over 50 years. She died in 1991. He died in 2000. I intend to look at "A Marriage," his wonderful poem about her, in a future post.

"To Fling His Soul Upon The Growing Gloom"

2012-01-03T00:10:00.000-08:00

As I have observed on more than one occasion, each generation believes that it is living in a time in which the world is going to Hell in a handbasket. (The Baby Boom Generation -- of which, alas, I am a member -- is particularly prone to self-regarding, self-aggrandizing delusions about its historical uniqueness and importance.) Thus, some may look upon the coming year with a bit of trepidation. I respectfully suggest that, in order to gain some perspective, they have a gander at, say, Herodotus.

Reading the poetry of Thomas Hardy also gives one a sense of perspective. Hardy dated the following poem "31 December 1900," and it is directed at the turning of the century, not simply the turning of the year.  Yet, it provides a reminder that -- along with Human Nature -- we will always have thrushes (in some form or another) with us.

           The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
        When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
        The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
        Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
        Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
        The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
        The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
        Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
        Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
        The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
        Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
        In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
        Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
        Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
        Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
        His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
        And I was unaware.

Thomas Hardy, Poems of the Past and the Present (1901).

Evelyn Dunbar, "Winter Garden" (c. 1929-1937)

Several times each year, I figuratively slap myself on the forehead and say: "Why do I always forget how good Hardy is?" This occurs either after I have stumbled upon a wonderful poem unknown to me among his 940-or-so poems, or, alternatively, after I have revisited a familiar poem and am struck anew by its excellence.

"The Darkling Thrush" is one of Hardy's most-anthologized, best-known poems. Thus, it is easy to take for granted. But then something new hits you. For me, this time, it was these lines: "Had chosen thus to fling his soul/Upon the growing gloom." "Gloom" is endemic in Hardy's poetry, so its appearance comes as no surprise. No, what struck me this time around was "fling his soul." These are the moments that bring one back to Hardy.

Edward Bawden, "Lindsell Church, Essex" (1959)

"The Seasons Flit Like Linnets, And Years Whirl Past Like Planets"

2012-01-01T00:10:00.000-08:00

I think that the following poem by Norman Nicholson provides a fitting start to the New Year. I confess that I have never been a big fan of New Year's Eve celebrations. (I know, I know: "Killjoy!") I do, however, like the bigger picture that Nicholson provides.

For the New Year

The stars wheel past the windows
Like flocks of winter sparrows;
The bell clangs out the hours,
And frost sparkles like stars,
And the wind blows up the dawn
With spring behind it and rain
And the spikes of daffodils
And June on fire in the hills.
The apples crowd the bough
Beneath the frosty Plough,
And autumn snow is blown
White as the harvest moon
On currant and raspberry cane.
And the wild ganders fly
Nightly across the sky.
The seasons flit like linnets,
And years whirl past like planets,
And the earth's orbit mars
The changeless map of stars.
The splintered light which now
Gently probes my eye
Is of a star that burned
When the Scots fired the land,
When the Norsemen robbed the dales
And hacked their names on the fells,
Or when the iceberg lakes
Elbowed among the rocks
And carried the Devil's stone
To the hill above the town,
Where through my dormer bay
Drizzles the Milky Way.

Norman Nicholson, Five Rivers (1944).

Harald Sohlberg, "Winter Night in the Mountains" (1924)

Lists, Part Seven: As The Year Comes To A Close

2011-12-30T00:10:00.000-08:00

As the year comes to a close, we are encouraged to come up with resolutions that will help us to straighten up and fly right in the new year. I'm afraid that my resolutions are the usual prosaic suspects: fewer words are better (i.e., don't add to the cacophony); simpler is better; kindness is better. All of which will be broken within the next 15 minutes or so.

But here is one that I hope might have a longer duration: pay closer attention. The following poem by Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006) provides a good start.

Green Waters

Green Waters
Blue Spray
Grayfish

Anna T
Karen B
Netta Croan

Constant Star
Daystar
Starwood

Starlit Waters
Moonlit Waters
Drift

Ian Hamilton Finlay, in The Bloodaxe Book of 20th Century Poetry (Edna Longley, editor) (2000).

Richard Eurich, "Dorset Cove" (1939)

Some Preliminary Definitions

Your life:
A collection of facts;
A succession of desires;
A whirl of thoughts.

Your death:
Abiding;
Unfathomable.

The world around you:
An intractable paradise.

sip

Richard Eurich, "Coast Scene with Rainbow" (1952-1953)

How to Live, Part Fourteen: "Compare And Contrast"

2011-12-28T00:10:00.000-08:00

I am writing this in the oak-dotted and, sometimes, vineyard-covered hills of the Central Coast of California. In the afternoon, quail visit a bird feeder out on a lawn. Skittish but purposeful, they scurry and stop, scurry and stop, a perfectly choreographed head-bobbing group.

The following poem by Norman MacCaig seems apt. I would perhaps be open to charges of simple-mindedness if I were to suggest that the poem provides a wholly practical piece of advice on How to Live. Yet, there is a truth circling about, in a good-humored way.

Compare and Contrast

The great thinker died
after forty years of poking about
with his little torch
in the dark forest of ideas,
in the bright glare of perception,
leaving a legacy of fourteen books
to the world
where a hen disappeared
into six acres of tall oats
and sauntered unerringly
to the nest with five eggs in it.

Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009).

Frances Hodgkins, "Wings over Water" (1931-1932)

A poem by Michael Longley may be apt as well.

Out There

Do they ever meet out there,
The dolphins I counted,
The otter I wait for?
I should have spent my life
Listening to the waves.

Michael Longley, The Ghost Orchid (1995).

Frances Hodgkins, "The Weir"

"Christmastide"

2011-12-26T00:10:00.000-08:00

As we are still in "Christmastide" as traditionally defined, the following poem by Thomas Hardy remains in season. It is worth a chuckle to see gloomy T. H. greeted with stubborn good will when he least expects it.

A lesson for us all, some might say.

Christmastide

The rain-shafts splintered on me
As despondently I strode;
The twilight gloomed upon me
And bleared the blank high-road.
Each bush gave forth, when blown on
By gusts in shower and shower,
A sigh, as it were sown on
In handfuls by a sower.

A cheerful voice called, nigh me,
'A merry Christmas, friend!' --
There rose a figure by me,
Walking with townward trend,
A sodden tramp's, who, breaking
Into thin song, bore straight
Ahead, direction taking
Toward the Casuals' gate.

Thomas Hardy, Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928).

"The Casuals' gate" was an entry to the "Union House" (the workhouse) in Dorchester. "In Hardy's time any 'casual' (pauper or tramp) could apply to the police for a ticket, with which he would be admitted for supper, a bed, and breakfast." J. O. Bailey, The Poetry of Thomas Hardy: A Handbook and Commentary (1970), page 581.

Robin Tanner, "Christmas" (1929)

R. S. Thomas On Christmas, Part Two

2011-12-24T00:10:00.000-08:00

I have decided that R. S. Thomas's Christmas poetry deserves a second visit. A side-note: I find it interesting that most of his Christmas poems (at least the ones that I have been able to find) are in the two-stanza, eight-line form found in the following poems and in the three poems that appeared in my previous post. It is probably merely a matter of coincidence, and may simply be a reflection of his laconic personality.

Carol

What is Christmas without
snow? We need it
as bread of a cold
climate, ermine to trim

our sins with, a brief
sleeve for charity's
scarecrow to wear its heart
on, bold as a robin.

R. S. Thomas, Later Poems (1983).

James Fletcher Watson, "Winter in Norfolk" (1956)

Christmas Eve

Erect capital's arch;
decorate it with the gilt edge
of the moon. Pave the way to it
with cheques and with credit --

it is still not high enough
for the child to pass under
who comes to us this midnight
invisible as radiation.

R. S. Thomas, No Truce with the Furies (1995).

William Ratcliffe, "Beehives in the Snow, Sweden" (1913)

Nativity

The moon is born
and a child is born,
lying among white clothes
as the moon among clouds.

They both shine, but
the light from the one
is abroad in the universe
as among broken glass.

R. S. Thomas, Experimenting with an Amen (1986).

Winifred Nicholson, "Rooks, Hyacinth and Snow" (c. 1935)

R. S. Thomas On Christmas

2011-12-22T00:10:00.000-08:00

The word that comes to mind when I think of R. S. Thomas is fierce. However, having said that, I feel that I have fallen into the stereotypical view of Thomas as The World's Grumpiest Poet. To wit, the man who was peremptory when not silent, living in an unheated stone cottage on the coast of Wales. To my mind, this makes him, well, a human being. And, of course, there's this: his poetry is often graceful and beautiful.

Thomas's fierceness is reflected in his lifelong battle with God. This battle consisted of Thomas stubbornly waiting upon God's equally stubborn silence, with Thomas commenting upon this state of affairs in his poems. The battle was made a great deal more piquant by the fact that Thomas served as an Anglican priest for 42 years, ministering to rural parishes in Wales (the subject of another of his love-hate relationships).

All of this leads to a seasonal note: over the years, Thomas wrote a number of lovely Christmas poems. How shall I describe the poems? A bit fierce, yes, but withal lovely. A selection follows.

Song

I choose white, but with
Red on it, like the snow
In winter with its few
Holly berries and the one

Robin, that is a fire
To warm by and like Christ
Comes to us in his weakness,
But with a sharp song.

R. S. Thomas, H'm (1972).

John Aldridge, "Winter" (1947)

Blind Noel

Christmas; the themes are exhausted.
Yet there is always room
on the heart for another
snowflake to reveal a pattern.

Love knocks with such frosted fingers.
I look out. In the shadow
of so vast a God I shiver, unable
to detect the child for the whiteness.

R. S. Thomas, No Truce with the Furies (1995).

John Nash, "The Garden in Winter" (1967)

Lost Christmas

He is alone, it is Christmas.
Up the hill go three trees, the three kings.
There is a star also
Over the dark manger. But where is the Child?

Pity him. He has come far
Like the trees, matching their patience
With his. But the mind was before
Him on the long road. The manger is empty.

R. S. Thomas, Young and Old (1972).

Adrian Paul Allinson (1890-1959)
"Landscape with Trees, a Lake and a Village"

A Christmas Robin, Out Of Season

2011-12-20T00:10:00.000-08:00

Robert Graves is adept at putting a twist on things. Thus, the Christmas robin in the following poem is, in fact, a February robin. Still, the out-of-season robin reawakens all that is (to borrow from a well-known song) merry and bright about the holiday. But it also brings in tow (to borrow from a well-known tale) the spectre of an uncertain future.

The Christmas Robin

The snows of February had buried Christmas
Deep in the woods, where grew self-seeded
The fir-trees of a Christmas yet unknown,
Without a candle or a strand of tinsel.

Nevertheless when, hand in hand, plodding
Between the frozen ruts, we lovers paused
And 'Christmas trees!' cried suddenly together,
Christmas was there again, as in December.

We velveted our love with fantasy
Down a long vista-row of Christmas trees,
Whose coloured candles slowly guttered down
As grandchildren came trooping round our knees.

But he knew better, did the Christmas robin --
The murderous robin with his breast aglow
And legs apart, in a spade-handle perched:
He prophesied more snow, and worse than snow.

Robert Graves, Collected Poems (1938).

Harald Sohlberg, "A View of Vestfold" (1909)

Hemlocks And Peacocks: "Turning In The Wind, Turning As The Flames Turned In The Fire"

2011-12-18T00:10:00.000-08:00

R. S. Thomas's "Winter" reminded me of one of Wallace Stevens's finest poems. It is a poem that Stevens wrote in his dandyish, rococo earlier years, and it exhibits some of the verbal playfulness of that time. However, it also has the simplicity of statement that marks his wonderful late poetry (i.e., the poems that he wrote when he was in his seventies). Which is not to say that the poem is "simple." Stevens is rarely easy. But the poem may change the way you think of hemlocks and peacocks.

Domination of Black

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry -- the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks.
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

Wallace Stevens, Harmonium (1923).

Here is something that may be worth considering: might the peacocks have something to do with A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts? And how does The Candle a Saint fit in?

Jan Griffier the Elder, "Dutch Snow Scene with Skaters" (c. 1695)

Winter

2011-12-16T00:10:00.000-08:00

I intend to visit R. S. Thomas's Christmas poems next week, but, for now, the following poem by him is a nice companion piece to Norman Nicholson's "December Song," which appeared in my previous post. (If nothing else, they both contain robins.)

Winter

Evening. A fire
in the grate and a fire
outside, where a robin
is burning. How they both
sing, offering a friendship
unacceptable to the hand
that is as vulnerable to the one
as it is treacherous to the other.

Ah, time, enemy of their music,
reducing fuel to feathers, feathers
to ash, it was, but a moment ago,
spring in this tinder: flames
in flower that are now embers
on song's hearth.
The leaves fall
from a dark tree, brimming
with shadow, fall on one who,
as Borges suggested,
is no more perhaps than the dream God
in his loneliness is dreaming.

R. S. Thomas, Mass for Hard Times (Bloodaxe Books 1992).

Alfred Munnings, "From My Bedroom Window" (1930)

I have little knowledge of the works of Borges, so I do not know the source of the reference made by Thomas at the end of the poem. However, I once read something by Borges (I cannot recall if it was a poem, a story, or an essay) in which he referred to Chuang Tzu's parable of the butterfly. The parable has some affinity, I think, with what Thomas writes about in the final three lines of the poem. However, I have no idea if this is what Thomas had in mind.

Burton Watson translates Chuang Tzu's parable as follows:

"Once Chuang Tzu dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Chuang Tzu. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Tzu. But he didn't know if he was Chuang Tzu who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Tzu."

Burton Watson (translator), The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (1968).

Eugene Jansson, "Hornsgatan by Night" (1902)

"December Song"

2011-12-14T00:10:00.000-08:00

With frost on the roofs in the mornings, it feels like winter has arrived. It is nice to see the bare, intricate branches of the trees against the sky again. Not to mention the snowmen, reindeer, Santa Clauses, and (occasionally) penguins standing on the porches and lawns, aglow from within. The world is as it ought to be: clear and sharp and cheerful. For a while, for a while.

Douglas Percy Bliss, "Urban Garden under Snow" (c. 1946)

December Song

On the eaves
A robin sings, with berry eyes
And breast redder than the dead leaves
Dangling his notes like beads,
A luminous, tinkling string.
A robin sings in the evening,
Under smoky December skies --
And so would I sing.

In the sky
A star shines on the kerb of day.
The waking night from light-bleared eye
With one clear, glowing tear is weeping,
Dipping its lids to mine.
A star shines in the dusk,
Not frosted yet by the Milky Way --
And so would I shine.

Norman Nicholson, Rock Face (1948).

Douglas Percy Bliss
"Winter Landscape, Liberton, Edinburgh" (c. 1925)

Frost, Blossoms, Snow, And Moonlight

2011-12-12T00:25:00.000-08:00

I am fond of the following poem by W. H. Davies (1871-1940). It often comes to mind at this time of year.

Nailsworth Hill

The Moon, that peeped as she came up,
Is clear on top, with all her light;
She rests her chin on Nailsworth Hill,
And, where she looks, the World is white.

White with her light -- or is it Frost,
Or is it Snow her eyes have seen;
Or is it Cherry blossom there,
Where no such trees have ever been?

W. H. Davies, Complete Poems (1963).

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), "Full Moon at Seba"

Over the past few months, when reading Chinese and Japanese poetry, I have been coming across images of frost and blossoms and snow and moonlight being confused. From China, here is a poem by Li Po:

Still Night Thoughts

Moonlight in front of my bed --
I took it for frost on the ground!
I lift my eyes to watch the mountain moon,
lower them and dream of home.

Li Po (translated by Burton Watson), The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century (1984).

The following poem is by Po Chu-i:

Village Night

Gray gray of frosty grasses, insects chirp-chirping;
south of the village, north of the village, no sign of travelers.
Alone I go out in front of the gate, gazing over the fields;
in the bright moonlight, buckwheat blossoms are like snow.

Po Chu-i (translated by Burton Watson), Ibid.

Utagawa Hiroshige
"Reflected Moon, Sarashima"

From Japan, here is a poem by Kokan Shiren (1278-1345):

Winter Moon

Opening the window at midnight, the night air cold,
Garden and roof a gleaming white,
I go to the verandah, stretch out my hand to scoop up some snow --
Didn't I know that moonlight won't make a ball?

Kokan Shiren (translated by David Pollack), Zen Poems of the Five Mountains (1985).

And, finally, from Ryokan:

Fresh morning snow in front of the shrine.
The trees! Are they white with peach blossoms
Or white with snow?
The children and I joyfully throw snowballs.

Ryokan (translated by John Stevens), One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan (1977).

Utagawa Hiroshige
"Catching Fish by Moonlight on the Tama River"

History

2011-12-10T00:10:00.000-08:00

With the impending demise of the Euro (and, possibly, of the EU) and with the U.S.A.'s own debt piper to be paid sooner or later, we are being told that we live in "historic" times. I think not. What is "historic" about having to pay one's bills? What is "historic" about politicians (presumed, with an excess of charity on our part, to be adults) throwing tantrums and jumping up and down like children who cannot have their way? What is "historic" about yet another utopian Ponzi scheme coming to grief?

No. The times are not "historic."

History Lesson

history -- I tried to
explain it to the stones
they were silent

then I turned to the trees
the leaves kept nodding at me

then I tried the garden
it gave me a gentle smile

history consists
it said of four seasons
spring summer
autumn and winter

now winter is drawing near.

Sandor Kanyadi (translated from Hungarian by George Gomori and Clive Wilmer), The Times Literary Supplement (April 30, 2004).

Charles Napier (and students), "Slaithwaite Moonrakers" (1940)

Crofter

Last thing at night
he steps outside to breathe
the smell of winter.

The stars, so shy in summer,
glare down
from a huge emptiness.

In a huge silence he listens
for small sounds. His eyes
are filled with friendliness.

What's history to him?
He's an emblem of it
in its pure state.

And proves it. He goes inside.
The door closes and the light
dies in the window.

Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009).

Charles Napier (and students), "Marsden Cuckoo" (1938)

For further perspective on "history," you may wish to take a look at Patrick Kavanagh's "Epic" and Thomas Hardy's "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations.'"

Charles Napier (and students), "Linthwaite Leadboilers" (1940)

Farewell To Autumn (For This Year): Robert Frost And Saigyo

2011-12-08T00:10:00.000-08:00

It is time to call a halt to further musings on the meaning of autumn, what with the voices of Bing Crosby and Perry Como in the air and a Christmas tree in the living room. Thus, I shall give the last word(s) on autumn to Robert Frost and Saigyo (1118-1190).

In Hardwood Groves

The same leaves over and over again!
They fall from giving shade above
To make one texture of faded brown
And fit the earth like a leather glove.

Before the leaves can mount again
To fill the trees with another shade,
They must go down past things coming up.
They must go down into the dark decayed.

They must be pierced by flowers and put
Beneath the feet of dancing flowers.
However it is in some other world
I know that this is the way in ours.

Robert Frost, A Boy's Will (1913).

Charles Mahoney, "Allegory of Autumn" (1932)

Every single thing
Changes and is changing
Always in this world.
Yet with the same light
The moon goes on shining.

Saigyo (translated by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite), The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse (1964).

Anthony Day, "Autumn Fenland" (1961)

"Reluctance" Revisited: "All The Leaves Want To Go"

2011-12-06T00:10:00.000-08:00

The following poem by Norman MacCaig perhaps bears consideration in conjunction with Robert Frost's "Reluctance."

Autumn

Wanting to go,
all the leaves want to go
though they have achieved
their kingly robes.

Weary of colours,
they think of black earth,
they think of
white snow.

Stealthily, delicately
as a safebreaker
they unlock themselves
from branches.

And from their royal towers
they sift silently down
to become part of
the proletariat of mud.

Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009).

When it comes to our leafy fate, I opt for "reluctance" rather than "wanting to go." But, in the end, it is a matter of six of one, half a dozen of the other, isn't it?

Samuel Palmer, "The White Cloud" (c. 1833-1834)

A lonely four-mat hut --
All day no one in sight.
Alone, sitting beneath the window,
Only the continual sound of falling leaves.

Ryokan (translated by John Stevens), One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan (1977).

Samuel Palmer, "The Harvest Moon" (c. 1833)

"Reluctance"

2011-12-04T00:10:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of October, I posted the following thought by Edward Thomas on the beauty of autumn: "The sight of such perfection as is many times achieved before the end awakens the never more than lightly sleeping human desire of permanence." (Edward Thomas, The South Country (1909), page 272.) Now, at the end of autumn, it is appropriate to hear from Robert Frost (who, after Thomas's death in France, wrote that Thomas was "the only brother I ever had"). It turns out, not surprisingly, that they shared similar thoughts about the season.

Elizabeth Kenyon, "The Meadows, Higham Church"

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Robert Frost, A Boy's Will (1913).

(A side-note: Frost gives us one of his trademark confounding endings, doesn't he? To wit: where did "the end/Of a love or a season" come from? I thought that this was a pleasant meditation on the end of autumn. How and when did "love" enter the picture?)

Elizabeth Kenyon, "The River Stour from Stratford St Mary"

"A Lowly Hope, A Height That Is But Low"

2011-12-02T00:10:00.000-08:00

It is time to leave the sandy shores (and deserts) of Time and Mortality. However, before we depart, I cannot resist a visit to two sea-side poems by Christina Rossetti.

Birchington Churchyard

A lowly hill which overlooks a flat,
Half sea, half country side;
A flat-shored sea of low-voiced creeping tide
Over a chalky weedy mat.

A hill of hillocks, flowery and kept green
Round Crosses raised for hope,
With many-tinted sunsets where the slope
Faces the lingering western sheen.

A lowly hope, a height that is but low,
While Time sets solemnly,
While the tide rises of Eternity,
Silent and neither swift nor slow.

William Michael Rossetti (editor), The Poetical Works of Christina Rossetti (1904).

Birchington is located in Kent. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti's brother, was buried in All Saints Churchyard in Birchington in April of 1882. Rossetti wrote the poem that same month. There are many fine things about the poem, my favorite being "A lowly hope, a height that is but low." (Note the anticipatory "lowly hill" in the first line, "low-voiced creeping tide" in the third line, and "Round Crosses raised for hope" in the sixth line.) And then, just when you think that it couldn't get much better, comes this: "Silent and neither swift nor slow." (And "a hill of hillocks" is no small thing either.)

John Nash, "Sand Dunes and Rocky Coast"

One Sea-Side Grave

Unmindful of the roses,
Unmindful of the thorn,
A reaper tired reposes
Among his gathered corn:
So might I, till the morn!

Cold as the cold Decembers,
Past as the days that set,
While only one remembers
And all the rest forget, --
But one remembers yet.

Ibid.

In a note to the poem, William Rossetti writes: "It would seem to most people that these lines also relate to Birchington; my belief, however, is that they relate to Hastings, where Charles Cayley lies buried." Charles Cayley proposed to Christina Rossetti in 1866, but she declined. It is speculated that she loved Cayley, but did not wish to marry him because he was an agnostic, while she was a devout "High Church" Anglican. He died in 1883. The poem was written in the spring of 1884.

John Nash, "Norfolk Coast"

"Houses Will Build Themselves And Tombstones Rewrite Names On Dead Men's Graves"

2011-11-30T00:10:00.000-08:00

Perhaps this shifting sands business is not a one-way street. Perhaps the scattered remains of Ozymandias and Soulac's buried minster are not the end of the story. The following poem by Andrew Young (1885-1971) is about a sandy place in the north of Scotland.

Culbin Sands

Here lay a fair fat land;
But now its townships, kirks, graveyards
Beneath bald hills of sand
Lie buried deep as Babylonian shards.

But gales may blow again;
And like a sand-glass turned about
The hills in a dry rain
Will flow away and the old land look out;

And where now hedgehog delves
And conies hollow their long caves
Houses will build themselves
And tombstones rewrite names on dead men's graves.

Andrew Young, Collected Poems (1960).

The fate of the townships, kirks, and graveyards was, according to the Forestry Commission of Scotland, sealed by the great storm of 1694. In later years, a forest was planted to arrest the sands. Much of the forest was felled during the First World War to provide framing and duckboards for the trenches. The trees have now grown back. So, who knows what might happen? The thought that one day "tombstones [will] rewrite names on dead men's graves" is an appealing one.

John Nash, "Incoming Tide"

"The Salt Wind": Two Poems

2011-11-28T00:10:00.000-08:00

Eugene Lee-Hamilton's "Soulac" (which appeared in my previous post) contains the lines: ". . . as the salt winds sweep/The restless hillocks of ill-bladed sand." "Salt winds" reminded me of a poem by Norman MacCaig that contains the phrase "salt wind." MacCaig's poem, like "Soulac," is about the passing of time, but the perspective is different. Although aging and mortality are acknowledged, there is a lovely recognition of the life that accompanies them.

Old Poet

The alder tree
shrivelled by the salt wind
has lived so long
it has carried and sheltered
its own weight
of nests.

Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009).

Samuel Palmer, "A Farm in Kent" (c. 1826-1832)

There is something to be said for brevity and directness (bearing in mind that they do not preclude depth and implication and suggestiveness). The Chinese and Japanese poets come to mind. In fact, "Old Poet" sounds as though it could have been written by, say, Wang Wei or Ryokan. We should also remember, for example, that Edward Thomas wrote a number of fine four-line and eight-line poems.

Thom Gunn, in an excellent essay on the poetry of Thomas Hardy, makes an observation that merits thinking about in connection with brevity and directness. Gunn notes approvingly the absence of "rhetoric" in Hardy's poetry, contrasting it with "the strain of all that rhetorical striving" in Yeats's poetry. Gunn writes: "Rhetoric is a form of pretence, of making something appear bigger or more important than you know it is." Thom Gunn, "Hardy and the Ballads," The Occasions of Poetry (North Point Press 1985), pages 104-105.

As one might expect, poems that are brief and direct tend to be short on rhetoric. "Old Poet" is, I think, a wonderful example of a great deal being accomplished in a small space, without rhetoric.

John Nash, "Wintry Evening, a Pond"

"Soulac"

2011-11-26T00:10:00.000-08:00

The poetic conceit that we are all fated to vanish beneath the shifting sands of time is a hoary one. Shelley's "Ozymandias" is perhaps the best-known example of the type: ". . . boundless and bare/The lone and level sands stretch far away." And so on. However, when it comes to our sandy fate, I prefer the following poem by Eugene Lee-Hamilton (1845-1907), which is more about living than about death and oblivion.

Soulac

A strange square house, all battered, used to stand
Upon the Gascon coast, where sparse pines keep
A doubtful footing, as the salt winds sweep
The restless hillocks of ill-bladed sand.

A house? it was the bell-loft, Norman-plann'd,
Of long-lost Soulac's minster, buried deep
In sand, which Ocean never seized to heap
In its eternal battle with the land.

All else was gone: fit image of the fate
That overtakes the rich and stately pile
Which, arch on arch, life's early dreams create.

The real slowly clogs it, nave and aisle,
Transept and apse; and we are glad, if late,
Some humble vestige shelters us awhile.

Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Sonnets of the Wingless Hours (1894).

W. E. Leadley, "Driftwood" (1960)

How To Live, Part Thirteen: "Five Minutes"

2011-11-24T00:10:00.000-08:00

As has always been the case, the World is going to Hell in a handbasket. Billions -- nay, trillions -- of Euros and Dollars are discussed in emergency conclaves. As if they were real. As if they were a matter of Life and Death. Eleventh hour solutions that are not really solutions are proclaimed. Meanwhile . . .

Five Minutes at the Window

A boy, in loops and straights, skateboards
down the the street. In number 20
a tree with lights for flowers
says it's Christmas.

The pear tree across the road shivers
in a maidenly breeze. I know
Blackford Pond will be
a candelabra of light.

A seagull tries over and over again
to pick up something on the road.
Oh, the motorcars.
And a white cat sits halfway up a tree.
Why?

Trivia. What are trivia?
They've blown away my black mood.
I smile at the glass of freesias on the table.
My shelves of books say nothing
but I know what they mean.
I'm back in the world again
and am happy in spite of
its disasters, its horrors, its griefs.

Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2005). MacCaig wrote the poem in January of 1991, when he was eighty.

Osmund Caine (1914-2004), "Washing at No. 25, Kingston"

There is, of course, another way to look at things . . .

Five Minutes

'I'm having five minutes,' he said,
Fitting the shelter of the cobble wall
Over his shoulders like a cape. His head
Was wrapped in a cap as green
As the lichened stone he sat on. The winter wind
Whined in the ashes like a saw,
And thorn and briar shook their red
Badges of hip and haw;
The fields were white with smoke of blowing lime;
Rusty iron brackets of sorel stood
In grass grey as the whiskers round an old dog's nose.
'Just five minutes,' he said;
And the next day I heard that he was dead,
Having five minutes to the end of time.

Norman Nicholson, The Pot Geranium (1954).

Osmund Caine, "The Hoby Effigies, Bisham Church"

Lists, Part Six: "The Candle A Saint"

2011-11-22T00:10:00.000-08:00

I confess that the following list by Frank Ormsby leaves me a bit perplexed. But, no matter: the poem sounds lovely and, in addition, provides a good piece of advice.

Under the Stairs

Look in the dark alcove under the stairs:
a paintbrush steeped in turpentine, its hairs

softening for use; rat-poison in a jar;
bent spoons for prising lids; a spare fire-bar;

the shaft of a broom; a tyre; assorted nails;
a store of candles for when the light fails.

Frank Ormsby, A Store of Candles (1977).

Samuel Palmer, "The Lonely Tower" (1879)

Wallace Stevens was fond of candles. For instance, consider this: what would the night be -- in fact, what would the whole of the universe be -- without a candle? Your own particular candle. Keeping "a store of candles" is indeed a wise idea.

The Candle a Saint

Green is the night, green kindled and apparelled.
It is she that walks among astronomers.

She strides above the rabbit and the cat,
Like a noble figure, out of the sky,

Moving among the sleepers, the men,
Those that lie chanting green is the night.

Green is the night and out of madness woven,
The self-same madness of the astronomers

And of him that sees, beyond the astronomers,
The topaz rabbit and the emerald cat,

That sees above them, that sees rise up above them,
The noble figure, the essential shadow,

Moving and being, the image at its source,
The abstract, the archaic queen. Green is the night.

Wallace Stevens, Parts of a World (1942).

For more on "the topaz rabbit and the emerald cat," you may wish to visit Stevens's "A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts," where you will be introduced to a "fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk" and a rabbit "that fills the four corners of night."

Samuel Palmer, "The Weary Ploughman" (1858)

"Time, To Make Me Grieve, Part Steals, Lets Part Abide": Two Poems On The Same Theme

2011-11-20T00:10:00.000-08:00

After Thomas Hardy's death in 1928, A. S. J. Tessimond wrote the following poem:

Thomas Hardy

Our faltering posthumous tributes can only lie . . .
Our words, remembering his, are somehow shy . . .
Being already immortal -- strange he should die!

A. S. J. Tessimond, Collected Poems (1985).

Tessimond later wrote a poem that seems to echo one of Hardy's better-known poems. On the other hand, it may simply be the case that the two poets visited the same theme entirely by chance.

First, Hardy's poem:

I Look Into My Glass

I look into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, 'Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!'

For then, I, undistrest
By hearts grown cold to me,
Could lonely wait my endless rest
With equanimity.

But Time, to make me grieve,
Part steals, lets part abide;
And shakes this fragile frame at eve
With throbbings of noontide.

Thomas Hardy, Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898). Several commentators have suggested that the poem may have its origin in a passage from Hardy's diary dated October 18, 1892 (Hardy was 52 at the time): "I look in the glass. . . . Why should a man's mind have been thrown into such close, sad, sensational, inexplicable relations with such a precarious object as his own body!" (Leave it to Hardy to kick against a basic fact of human existence, some might say.)

William MacLeod
"Trinity Square, London, with Ruins of London Wall" (1948)

Here is Tessimond's poem:

Age

Do men grow wholly old;
Unknowing, tire of living;
Grow deaf as pulse grows faint;
Dream and in dreams depart?

Or do they wake, feel cold
And hear -- a salt sea grieving
In landlocked, long complaint --
The all-too-youthful heart?

A. S. J. Tessimond, Voices in a Giant City (1947). I think that "a salt sea grieving/In landlocked, long complaint" is a fine image. (But, of course, that may be my age showing!)

William MacLeod, "London Wall and St Giles Cripplegate" (1941)

"The Region November" Revisited

2011-11-18T00:10:00.000-08:00

Things have turned from bright red and gold to rust and russet. Today, as I walked through a grove of mostly empty trees, their trunks creaked and their branches clacked in the wind. The grey swirls amidst the hills on the other side of Puget Sound may have been mist or may have been snow flurries.

It is, therefore, a perfect day to revisit one of my favorite Wallace Stevens poems. To those loyal (and much appreciated!) readers who were here last November, I beg your indulgence. But any good poem is worth revisiting, isn't it? Here's one way to look at it (perhaps): are you the same person that you were a year ago?

The Region November

It is hard to hear the north wind again,
And to watch the treetops, as they sway.

They 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.
It is like a critic of God, the world

And human nature, pensively seated
On the waste throne of his own wilderness.

Deeplier, deeplier, loudlier, loudlier,
The trees are swaying, swaying, swaying.

Wallace Stevens, "Late Poems," Collected Poetry and Prose (The Library of America 1997). Stevens wrote "The Region November" in the last year or so of his life. It was first published in 1956, the year after his death at the age of 75.

Christopher Nevinson, "View of the Sussex Weald" (c. 1927)

"Like Noiseless Snow, Or As The Dew Of Night"

2011-11-16T00:10:00.000-08:00

The idea that we have been put on Earth in order to find "happiness" is a quaint notion. I think that a state of equanimity, mixed with mild contentment, combined with a lively curiosity, is the best that one can hope for. But how does one arrive there? Good question. Perhaps chance (or, better, putting oneself in the way of chance) has something to do with it.

The Coming of Good Luck

So good luck came, and on my roof did light,
Like noiseless snow, or as the dew of night:
Not all at once, but gently, as the trees
Are by the sunbeams tickled by degrees.

Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648).

Laura Knight, "Changing Weather, Southport" (1949)

Herrick also cautions us:

Few Fortunate

Many we are, and yet but few possess
Those fields of everlasting happiness.

Robert Herrick, Ibid.

Laura Knight, "Wheatfield" (c. 1953)

On the subject of good luck, I had a small bit of it yesterday. I went to a teriyaki restaurant to have lunch. As I paid for my meal, I noticed a plastic tray on the counter on which various condiments had been placed. The tray was white, and was decorated with painted roses. I noticed some writing in its upper right-hand corner. I leaned over, and read this:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.

Wouldn't Robert Herrick be pleased to know that his poetry can still be found (in a teriyaki shop in Seattle, in the State of Washington, in the United States of America!) 363 years later?

Laura Knight, "Cornfield" (c. 1953)

The Shadow: Three Variations On A Theme

2011-11-14T00:10:00.000-08:00

The following poem (which I have posted before) has long been a favorite of mine. It is a slight poem, but something about it -- the combination of humor and truth? -- has kept it embedded in my memory, and I often return to it.

Things to Come

The shadow of a fat man in the moonlight
Precedes me on the road down which I go;
And should I turn and run, he would pursue me:
This is the man whom I must get to know.

James Reeves, The Questioning Tiger (1964).

Harriet Backer, "By Lamplight" (1890)

About a year ago, I came across the following poem by Edward Shanks (1892-1953). The poem may be too archaic or quaint in diction for some tastes, but it caught my eye given my affection for "Things to Come."

The Shadow

Death, would I feared not thee,
But ever can I see
Thy mutable shadow thrown
Upon the walls of Life's warm, cheerful room.
Companioned or alone,
I feel the presence of that following gloom,
Like one who vaguely knows
Behind his back the shade his body throws --
'Tis not thy shadow only, 'tis my own!

I face towards the light
That rises fair and bright
Over wide fields asleep,
But still I know that stealthy darkness there
Close at my heels doth creep,
My ghostly company, my haunting care;
And if the light be strong
Before my eyes, through pleasant hours and long,
Then, then, the shadow is most black and deep.

Edward Shanks, The Island of Youth and Other Poems (1921). There is something to be said for brevity. (A quality that I admire more and more with age!) On the other hand, Shanks's observation that "the shadow is most black and deep" when the sun is brightest is very fine indeed.

Norman Rowe, "Garden with Chairs" (1978)

Of course, brevity is the stock-in-trade of Japanese and Chinese poets, who can always teach us a thing or two about cutting to the chase.

"If it be so,
so be it!" Having said thus,
why the hurry?

For the shadow trails the light,
implacably, indifferent to men.

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

Edvard Munch, "Starry Night" (1893)

"Jigsaw"

2011-11-12T00:10:00.000-08:00

A. S. J. Tessimond's poetry can be a bit sardonic. He is particularly caustic when it comes to the follies of what we now call "popular culture." However, two things save him from misanthropy and bitterness. First, he has a romantic side. Glimpses of love, beauty, and hope appear just when you think that he doesn't have it in him. More importantly, he does not exempt himself from his gimlet-eyed view of the world. One senses that he knows all too well the behavior that he describes in his poems.

Jigsaw

This one can understand but cannot act,
Defeated by detachment and division.
That one can act but cannot understand,
Defeated by desire and concentration.
This one can gain and grasp but not enjoy,
Defeated by his haste and heat and hardness;
And that one can enjoy but not acquire,
Defeated by his softness and self-loving.
And so the half-man seeks the one he is not,
The friend or lover moving where he cannot,
The other terminal, the arc's completion,
The periscope with which to see round corners,
The one who still may someday, somewhere, somehow
Lead him across the frontiers of forbidden
Land, to a world reversed, looking-glass country
Beyond this bondage and beyond this boredom
Of this too known, too own world, this round narrow
Room here behind the mouth and nose and eyes.

A. S. J. Tessimond, Voices in a Giant City (1947).

This idea of searching for the ideal self or the ideal land is a subject that Tessimond also visited in "Where?"

Emily Carr
"Light Swooping Through" (c. 1938)

"The Wake Vanishing Behind A Boat That Has Rowed Away At Dawn"

2011-11-10T00:10:00.000-08:00

Although this is my favorite season, my recent spate of posts containing bitter-sweet autumn poems is starting to get to me. Despite the fact that we have made barely a dent in the cornucopia (sorry, I couldn't resist) of autumnal verse, a brief respite is in order. I feel a need for perspective.

Alas, the "perspective" that I have hit upon has a bitter-sweet air of its own. To wit: the whole of Life (the World, Nature, Existence, "everything that is the case," et cetera) is, after all, a matter of "here today, gone tomorrow," isn't it? Yet, if one presents that truism in a beautiful fashion, it is (for me at least) comforting. (And, oh yes, bitter-sweet.)

Eliot Hodgkin, "Dead Leaves and Birds' Eggs" (1963)

To what
Shall I compare the world?
It is like the wake
Vanishing behind a boat
That has rowed away at dawn.

Sami Manzei (8th century) (translated by Edwin Cranston), A Waka Anthology, Volume 1: The Gem-Glistening Cup (Stanford University Press 1993).

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

Like dew that vanishes,
like a phantom that disappears,
or the light cast
by a flash of lightning --
so should one think of oneself.

Ikkyu (1394-1481) (translated by Steven Carter), Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (Stanford University Press 1991).

Eliot Hodgkin "Eight Feathers" (1957)

Our life in this world --
to what shall I compare it?
It's like an echo
resounding through the mountains
and off into the empty sky.

Ryokan (1758-1831) (translated by Steven Carter), Ibid.

Eliot Hodgkin, "Two Large Flints" (1963)

"Desire For Something None Can Say"

2011-11-08T00:47:00.000-08:00

I once suggested that A. S. J. Tessimond (1902-1962) was a "neglected poet," but was later pleased to learn, through the help of readers, that Bloodaxe Books re-published his Collected Poems last year, and that he was the subject of a feature on BBC Radio 4 in April of that year. In the following poem Tessimond provides a fine (if melancholy) view of autumn in the city (in this case, London).

Autumn

Already men are brushing up
Brown leaves around the saddened parks.
At Marble Arch the nights draw in
Upon expounders of Karl Marx.

By the Round Pond the lovers feel
Heavier dews, and grow uneasy.
Elderly men don overcoats,
Catch cold -- sniff -- become hoarse and wheezy.

Grey clouds streak across chill white skies.
Refuse and dirty papers blow
About the gutters. Shoppers hurry,
Oppressed by vague autumnal woe.

The cats that pick amongst the empty
Gold Flake boxes, sniffing orts
From frowsy fish-shops, seem beruffled,
Limp of tail and out of sorts.

Policemen are pale and fin-de-siecle.
The navvy's arm wilts and relaxes.
With more than usual bitterness
Bus-drivers curse impulsive taxis.

A general malaise descends:
Desire for something none can say.
And autumn brings once more the pangs
Of this our annual decay!

A. S. J. Tessimond, Morning Meeting (1980).

Cyril Edward Deakins, "Suffolk Scarecrow" (1984)

"Perpetual Seed"

2011-11-06T00:10:00.000-07:00

The three Victorian grave poems that appeared in my previous post reminded me of the following poem by Joan Barton. Although Barton is not a Victorian poet, the poem (which is dated "November 1931") has a Victorian mood to it (particularly the closing lines, which sound as though they could have been written by Christina Rossetti).

Rest Eternal

I shall not forget that place
Where the dead were:
Only the rain, the rain,
No-one astir,
None with me when I found
The church in its fallow ground;

Oh there was nothing there
But nettles and rain and grass,
So tangled you could not tell
Where the churchyard was,
And below in the plain
Grey fields and fields of rain.

Only the ebony rooks
Into the early light
Out of the ebony trees
Silent took flight.
I was afraid to hear
A voice in my ear.

No sound but a rook on the wing,
And of endless summer rain
The vasty whispering,
Yet close to my ear again,
(No stir from the tangled weed),
I heard, "Perpetual seed,"
And still, "Perpetual seed."

Joan Barton, The Mistress and Other Poems (1972).

As I have noted previously, Barton's poetry deserves greater attention. She wrote few poems (which, in my view, is often a good sign), but those that she wrote are worth seeking out. Her collection A House Under Old Sarum: New and Selected Poems (1981) includes poems from The Mistress and Other Poems, as well as additional poems written after its publication.

Edward Bawden, "The Churches of All Saints and St Mary's,
Great Melton, Norfolk" (1966)

"The Bourne"

2011-11-04T00:10:00.000-07:00

It was a rare Victorian poet who did not write at least one poem about the plot of earth towards which we are headed. A melancholy prospect, it would seem. Yet, more than a few of the poets take the view that our shared destination is one in which peace, quiet, and rest await us at last. Take heart! (Or so they say.)

The Bourne

Underneath the growing grass,
Underneath the living flowers,
Deeper than the sound of showers:
There we shall not count the hours
By the shadows as they pass.

Youth and health will be but vain,
Beauty reckoned of no worth:
There a very little girth
Can hold round what once the earth
Seemed too narrow to contain.

William Rossetti (editor), The Poetical Works of Christina Rossetti (1904).

Edward Bawden, "Lindsell Church, Essex" (1956)

Epitaph

He roamed half round this world of woe,
Where toil and labour never cease;
Then dropped one little span below,
In search of Peace.

And now to him mild beams and showers,
All that he needs to grace his tomb,
From loneliest regions, at all hours,
Unsought-for come.

Aubrey de Vere (1814-1902), Poems (1855).

Edward Bawden, "The Canmore Mountain Range" (1950)

Spring Song

Dance, yellows and whites and reds, --
Lead your gay orgy, leaves, stalks, heads
Astir with the wind in the tulip-beds!

There's sunshine; scarcely a wind at all
Disturbs starved grass and daisies small
On a certain mound by a churchyard wall.

Daisies and grass be my heart's bedfellows
On the mound wind spares and sunshine mellows:
Dance you, reds and whites and yellows!

Robert Browning, The New Amphion (1886).

John Everett Millais, "The Vale of Rest" (1858-1859)

"The Knight In The Wood"

2011-11-02T00:10:00.000-07:00

The following poem is a little-known poem that was written by a little-known poet. However, I think that it says something important about art (in the broad sense of any creative activity, including poetry). I hope that I do not sound too high-falutin', but I am not interested in art that cannot tell us something about what it means to be a human being, and, perhaps, how to get through an ordinary day in a sensitive, dignified manner. (In other words, no dead sheep suspended in formaldehyde-filled glass tanks for me, thank you.) But enough. The poem says it much better than I can.

The Knight in the Wood

The thing itself was rough and crudely done,
Cut in coarse stone, spitefully placed aside
As merest lumber, where the light was worst
On a back staircase. Overlooked it lay
In a great Roman palace crammed with art.
It had no number in the list of gems,
Weeded away long since, pushed out and banished,
Before insipid Guidos over-sweet,
And Dolce's rose sensationalities,
And curly chirping angels spruce as birds.
And yet the motive of this thing ill-hewn
And hardly seen did touch me. O, indeed,
The skill-less hand that carved it had belonged
To a most yearning and bewildered heart,
There was such desolation in its work;
And through its utter failure the thing spoke
With more of human message, heart to heart,
Than all these faultless, smirking, skin-deep saints;
In artificial troubles picturesque,
And martyred sweetly, not one curl awry --
Listen; a clumsy knight who rode alone
Upon a stumbling jade in a great wood
Belated. The poor beast with head low-bowed
Snuffing the treacherous ground. The rider leant
Forward to sound the marish with his lance.
You saw the place was deadly; that doomed pair,
The wretched rider and the hide-bound steed
Feared to advance, feared to return -- That's all!

John Leicester Warren, Rehearsals: A Book of Verses (1870). (A note on line 25: a "marish" is a marsh. According to the OED, the word is "now poetic, archaic, and regional.") An aside: the "Listen" at the beginning of line 21 is, I think, a very fine (and affecting) touch.

Charles Mahoney (1903-1968), "The Artist's Hand"

"Reciprocity"

2011-10-31T00:10:00.000-07:00

Today was windy, and leaves fell by the thousands. Rather than pleading "Slow, slow!" (like Robert Frost), I thought: "Stop, stop! Not yet!" To no avail, of course. Another instance of the World's impassivity, a topic that I visited a few months ago.

A poem by John Drinkwater (1882-1937) seems apt. Although Drinkwater is now known only for the much-anthologized "Moonlit Apples" ("moonlit apples of dreams . . . moon-washed apples of wonder"), he did write other poems that are worth remembering.

Reciprocity

I do not think that skies and meadows are
Moral, or that the fixture of a star
Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees
Have wisdom in their windless silences.
Yet these are things invested in my mood
With constancy, and peace, and fortitude,
That in my troubled season I can cry
Upon the wide composure of the sky,
And envy fields, and wish that I might be
As little daunted as a star or tree.

John Drinkwater, Tides (1917).

Gilbert Adams, "The Cotswolds from Park Leys" (1958)

"Condemn'd To Hope's Delusive Mine"

2011-10-29T00:10:00.000-07:00

The role that hope plays in our lives is a subject to which Samuel Johnson often recurred. For instance, his poem "On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet" begins:

Condemn'd to hope's delusive mine,
As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blasts, or slow decline,
Our social comforts drop away.

On July 20, 1767, he wrote to Hester Thrale: "I suppose it is the condition of humanity to design what never will be done, and to hope what never will be obtained." Boswell reports the following remarks made by Johnson in April of 1775: "He asserted, that the present was never a happy state to any human being; but that, as every part of life, of which we are conscious, was at some point of time a period yet to come, in which felicity was expected, there was some happiness produced by hope."

The following poem by James Henry (1798-1876) reminds me of Johnson's thoughts on hope. The idea of an ever-longed for, but ever-receding, dream landscape is one we may all be familiar with (a different landscape for each of us, of course).

Old Man

At six years old I had before mine eyes
A picture painted, like the rainbow, bright,
But far, far off in th' unapproachable distance.
With all my childish heart I longed to reach it,
And strove and strove the livelong day in vain,
Advancing with slow step some few short yards
But not perceptibly the distance lessening.
At threescore years old, when almost within
Grasp of my outstretched arms the selfsame picture
With all its beauteous colors painted bright,
I'm backward from it further borne each day
By an invisible, compulsive force,
Gradual but yet so steady, sure, and rapid,
That at threescore and ten I'll from the picture
Be even more distant than I was at six.

James Henry, Poems Chiefly Philosophical (1856).

Adrian Paul Allinson (1890-1959), "The Cornish April"

"The Hundred Last Leaves Stream Upon The Willow"

2011-10-27T00:10:00.000-07:00

In November of 1916, Edward Thomas sent a draft of "The Long Small Room" to Eleanor Farjeon. After receiving her comments on the poem, Thomas wrote back:

"I am worried about the impression the willow made on you. As a matter of fact I started with that last line as what I was working to. I am only fearing it has a sort of Japanesy suddenness of ending. But it is true, whether or not it is a legitimate switch to make."

Edward Thomas to Eleanor Farjeon (letter postmarked November 15, 1916), in Eleanor Farjeon, Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years (1958), page 221.

The Long Small Room

The long small room that showed willows in the west
Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled,
Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed
What need or accident made them so build.

Only the moon, the mouse and the sparrow peeped
In from the ivy round the casement thick.
Of all they saw and heard there they shall keep
The tale for the old ivy and older brick.

When I look back I am like moon, sparrow and mouse
That witnessed what they could never understand
Or alter or prevent in the dark house.
One thing remains the same -- this my right hand

Crawling crab-like over the clean white page,
Resting awhile each morning on the pillow,
Then once more starting to crawl on towards age.
The hundred last leaves stream upon the willow.

Edna Longley (editor), Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (2008).

William Ratcliffe, "Cottage Interior" (1920)

The final line that Thomas worried about is, of course, beautiful. It was certainly well worth "working to" once Thomas had found it. After all, it passed his ultimate test, the test that causes us to remember his poetry: "it is true." And the line does, to use his words, give the poem something of a "Japanesy suddenness of ending." (I would also suggest that the ending is reminiscent of a number of Chinese poems from the T'ang Dynasty.) It is not likely that Thomas had any translations of Ryokan's poetry available to him, but the following poems perhaps provide a hint of what he was speaking of.

My gate has been unbolted for many days,
Yet no sign of anyone entering the peaceful garden.
The rainy season is over, green moss is all around;
Slowly the oak leaves float to earth.

John Stevens (translator), One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan (1977).

Returning to my hermitage after filling my rice bowl,
Now only the gentle glow of twilight.
Surrounded by mountain peaks and thinly scattered leaves;
In the forest a winter crow flies.

Ibid.

Norman Clark, "From an Upstairs Window" (c. 1969)

"Dance Of The Macabre Mice"

2011-10-25T00:10:00.000-07:00

I do my best to keep politicians out of my consciousness. The admixture of self-importance and childishness is laughable and breathtaking, but vexing. (Particularly in heads of state.) However, you cannot avoid them entirely. The best that you can do is keep them in perspective and in their place. As follows.

Dance of the Macabre Mice

In the land of turkeys in turkey weather
At the base of the statue, we go round and round.
What a beautiful history, beautiful surprise!
Monsieur is on horseback. The horse is covered with mice.

This dance has no name. It is a hungry dance.
We dance it out to the tip of Monsieur's sword,
Reading the lordly language of the inscription,
Which is like zithers and tambourines combined:

The Founder of the State. Whoever founded
A state that was free, in the dead of winter, from mice?
What a beautiful tableau tinted and towering,
The arm of bronze outstretched against all evil!

Wallace Stevens, Ideas of Order (1936).

Eliot Hodgkin, "Chiswick Park in the Fog" (1948)

"Slow, Slow!"

2011-10-23T00:10:00.000-07:00

Of course, autumn is not autumn without Robert Frost. Earlier this month, I quoted Frost's friend Edward Thomas on the season: "Now, now is the hour; let things be thus; thus for ever; there is nothing further to be thought of; let these remain. And yet we have a premonition that remain they must not for more than a little while." (Edward Thomas, The South Country (1909), page 272.) Thomas wrote his thoughts, and Frost wrote the following poem -- which independently echoes Thomas's thoughts -- before the two first met on October 6, 1913.

October

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost --
For the grapes' sake along the wall.

Robert Frost, A Boy's Will (1913).

In 1913, Thomas's prose and Frost's poetry still contained archaisms -- Romantic and Victorian -- that would pretty much disappear in Frost's newer poetry and in Thomas's yet-to-be-written poetry. There is always a danger of over-dramatizing (and over-sentimentalizing) the fateful (in a wondrous sense) meeting of Frost and Thomas, and their all-too-brief friendship, cut short by Thomas's death in France. But I do think that the year or so that they were able to spend together -- walking and talking -- led to a stripping away and a paring down that is characteristic of their best work.

John Nash, "Autumn, Berkshire" (1951)

"Clouds Beyond Clouds Above Me, Wastes Beyond Wastes Below"

2011-10-21T00:10:00.000-07:00

Stanley Cook's "View" (which appeared in my previous post) brings to mind a poem by a poet who, like Cook, was a resident of Yorkshire. I am thinking of the setting of Cook's poem: a vista in Yorkshire "as the threatened snow descends,/Blanking the view." But I am thinking as well of the poem's conclusion: resuming -- alone -- a conversation "that ended unhappily years ago/And whose unhappiness you know you had better bear."

Charles Cundall, "Mills and Moors" (1932)

The following untitled poem shares a similar setting, but it also shares (perhaps) the feeling that "you had better bear" something, whether you want to or not.

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow,
And the storm is fast descending
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

Clement Shorter (editor), The Complete Poems of Emily Bronte (1908).

Cecil Gordon Lawson, "Barden Moor, Yorkshire" (1881)

"You Hear Yourself Resume For A Word Or Two The Conversation That Ended Unhappily Years Ago"

2011-10-19T00:10:00.000-07:00

Over the years, Hugo Williams has written three separate poems bearing the same title: "Everyone Knows This." That phrase comes to mind when I think of the following poem by Stanley Cook, which moves in one direction, but takes a turn at the end.

View

Here in the North, often at the end
Of an uphill road the houses open out
To a view, like finding a hole in the roof.
Some attic or chimney pot is silhouetted
Marking the final foothold on the sky.
The wind combs out grey tugs of cloud
And as the threatened snow descends,
Blanking the view, sometimes you hear yourself
Resume for a word or two the conversation
That ended unhappily years ago
And whose unhappiness you know you had better bear.

Stanley Cook, Woods Beyond a Cornfield: Collected Poems (1995).

At one time, I thought that the conclusion of "View" seemed out of place given what comes before. But I now think that it makes perfect sense. Why? Because (to borrow from Hugo Williams) "everyone knows this." I cannot presume to speak for you, Gentle Reader, but I have had a few of these solitary, one-sided, unexpectedly resumed conversations. And, as a matter of fact, it is sometimes an unwonted, suddenly-opened view in an otherwise nondescript place on an otherwise nondescript day that calls them to life. (On the other hand, perhaps I am completely off base and "Everyone Does Not Know This." Which means that I should be worried about talking to myself as I wander the streets in search of views!)

As for the final line: "And whose unhappiness you know you had better bear." Well, that is another matter altogether, isn't it? Best left for another time.

Douglas Percy Bliss, "Urban Garden Under Snow" (c. 1946)

"Autumn Evening"

2011-10-17T00:10:00.000-07:00

Today was one of those "golden clear-blue autumn days" (to quote Steve Forbert's song "Search Your Heart" from Streets of this Town). But these bright days are becoming ever shorter.

Autumn Evening

Autumn is easy, when disappointed leaves make scenes
At parting for ever from perennial boughs,
When naked laburnums in small front gardens pose
Their glistening limbs obliquely in the chilly rain.
Summer, too beautiful to appreciate,
Prints many yellow copies of defeat;
The brown sensations blow about the street
Or, thrown away by the wind, obstruct the grates.
But most in the earlier evenings someone's face
Flares for a moment at a match, or the lamplight
Cleans the darkness from a smudgy bough:
It is myself, and the mind descends like night
With infinite possibilities of truth
Upon the terraces that have taken place.

Stanley Cook, Woods Beyond a Cornfield: Collected Poems (1995). Stanley Cook (1922-1991) was born in Yorkshire and worked as a teacher there for most of his life. His poems contain an interesting mixture of both the urban and rural features of the area. Thus, for example, you find poems by him titled "M1 at Woolley Edge" and "Leaving Huddersfield by the A616." His poetry deserves a wider audience.

I cannot say that I have ever fully puzzled out the last three lines of "Autumn Evening." The final line -- "upon the terraces that have taken place" -- I find particularly elusive. What are "the terraces"? Serried rows of houses in a Yorkshire town? The empty boughs of trees? Or something more abstract? Or none of the above? But the line is beautiful whether or not I know exactly what it means. I am content to leave it at that.

Algernon Newton, "The Surrey Canal, Camberwell" (1935)

"The Last Orphan Leaf Of Naked Tree"

2011-10-15T00:10:00.000-07:00

By posting the following poem, it is not my intention to take sides in the evergreen dogs versus cats contest. (I have likely exposed my preferences in a previous post, although I am certainly fond of cats as well.) Rather, I find the image in the first three lines to be both clever and seasonally apt. (And I do think that it is a fine dog poem, unexpectedly coming from an eccentric poet who is probably best known for his obsession with death.)

Howard Phipps, "Shepherd's Walk"

Sonnet: To Tartar, a Terrier Beauty

Snow-drop of dogs, with ear of brownest dye,
Like the last orphan leaf of naked tree
Which shudders in bleak autumn; though by thee,
Of hearing careless and untutored eye,
Not understood articulate speech of men,
Nor marked the artificial mind of books,
-- The mortal's voice eternized by the pen, --
Yet hast thou thought and language all unknown
To Babel's scholars; oft intensest looks,
Long scrutiny o'er some dark-veined stone
Dost thou bestow, learning dead mysteries
Of the world's birth-day, oft in eager tone
With quick-tailed fellows bandiest prompt replies,
Solicitudes canine, four-footed amities.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849), Poems (1851).

Tirzah Garwood, "The Dog Show" (1930)

In Boughs: Stars, Planets, And A Wasp Trap

2011-10-13T00:10:00.000-07:00

Quite some time ago, I remarked upon Walter de la Mare's fondness for the word "lovely." His friend Edward Thomas was fond of the word as well.

The Wasp Trap

This moonlight makes
The lovely lovelier
Than ever before lakes
And meadows were.

And yet they are not,
Though this their hour is, more
Lovely than things that were not
Lovely before.

Nothing on earth,
And in the heavens no star,
For pure brightness is worth
More than that jar,

For wasps meant, now
A star -- long may it swing
From the dead apple-bough,
So glistening.

Edna Longley (editor), Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (2008).

Eliot Hodgkin, "Six Cape Gooseberries" (1954)

However, what brought me back to "The Wasp Trap" was not the word "lovely," but the thought of stars and planets in the boughs of trees. Another instance of one thing leading to another.

Stars and Planets

Trees are jars for them: water holds its breath
To balance them without smudging on its delicate meniscus.
Children watch them playing in their heavenly playground;
Men use them to lug ships across oceans, through firths.

They seem so twinkling-still, but they never cease
Inventing nursery rhymes and huge explosions
And migrating in mathematical tribes over
The steppes of space at their outrageous ease.

It's hard to think that the earth's one --
This poor sad bearer of wars and disasters
Rolls-Roycing round the sun with its load of gangsters,
Attended only by the loveless moon.

Norman MacCaig, Trees of Strings (1977).

Eliot Hodgkin, "Leaves" (1941-1942)

Under Trees, Revisited

2011-10-11T00:10:00.000-07:00

Today, while on my afternoon walk, I was wishing for a long canopy of leaves as the rain moved ashore from the west. But I had already moved out of the woods into the open fields. In any case, waiting out the rain beneath the trees, however pleasant, is not really an option in this part of the world: once the rain starts, it may go on for hours. Or days. Or weeks, for that matter.

Alcaic

Out in the deep wood, silence and darkness fall,
down through the wet leaves comes the October mist;
no sound, but only a blackbird scolding,
making the mist and the darkness listen.

Peter Levi, Collected Poems 1955-1975 (1976). A note: the "alcaic stanza" was a Greek and, later, Latin verse form consisting of four lines and having complicated syllabic and metrical requirements (which I no longer remember).

Eliot Hodgkin, "A Clearing in the Wood" (1942)

The Elms

Air darkens, air cools
And the first rain is heard in the great elms
A drop for each leaf, before it reaches the ground
I am still alive.

John Fuller, Poems and Epistles (1973).

"The Elms" calls to mind a poem by James Wright (1927-1980). The poem is often thought of as a classic of a certain type of early-1960s American poetry. It was published in 1963.

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's
Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

James Wright, The Branch Will Not Break (1963). An aside: being a native Minnesotan, I have long had a sentimental attraction to this poem, even though I do not recall ever having been in Pine Island (which I am certain is lovely).

Paul Nash, "The Stackyard" (c. 1925)

Dahlias In Autumn

2011-10-09T00:10:00.000-07:00

As age works away at my memory -- names, places, and dates are the usual victims -- I find that, for some reason, I have not yet lost the poems that I have read over the years. I am certainly not claiming that they are all there, line by line, waiting to be brought up at will. Far from it. Rather, titles or images or lines unexpectedly reappear by association with something else.

Today, on my afternoon walk, I saw a pair of large pink and creamy-white dahlias bending towards the ground, not long for this autumn world. And then I remembered the title of the following poem. I have not read the poem for at least 10 years, probably longer. But here it is again, brought back by the sight of two beautiful, unseasonable dahlias.

Giant Decorative Dahlia

It is easy enough to love flowers but these
had never appealed to me before, so
out of proportion above my garden's
other coloured heads and steady stems.

This spring though, in warm soil, I set
an unnamed tuber, offered cheap, and,
when August came and still no sign,
assumed the slugs had eaten it.

Suddenly it showed;
began to grow, became a small tree.
It was a race between the dingy bud
and the elements. It has beaten
the frost, rears now three feet above
the muddled autumn bed, barbaric petals
pink quilled with tangerine, turning
its great innocent face towards me
triumphantly through the damp afternoon.

I could not deny it love if I tried.

Molly Holden (1927-1981), To Make Me Grieve (1968).

Charles Ginner, "Dahlias and Cornflowers" (1929)

Lest one think that "love" is too strong a word for one's feelings towards a giant decorative dahlia, I shall refer you back to Patrick Kavanagh's "The Hospital": "Nothing whatever is by love debarred." And to Stevie Smith's "Oh Grateful Colours, Bright Looks!": "Seize colours quick, heap them up while you can."

Charles Ginner, "Still Life with Flowers" (c. 1920)

"St Luke's Summer"

2011-10-07T00:10:00.000-07:00

Until I read the following poem by Norman Nicholson, I was not aware of the term "St Luke's Summer." I then learned that it refers to a period of unseasonably warm weather occurring around the time of St Luke's feast day: October 18. The unexpected arrival of a St Luke's Summer (or, as it was called in the Scandinavian and Lutheran Minnesota of my youth, Indian Summer) ups the already bitter-sweet ante of autumn, doesn't it?

St Luke's Summer

The low sun leans across the slanting field,
And every blade of grass is striped with shine
And casts its shadow on the blade behind,
And dandelion clocks are held
Like small balloons of light above the ground.

Beside the trellis of the bowling green
The poppy shakes its pepper-box of seed;
Groundsel feathers flutter down;
Roses exhausted by the thrust of summer
Lose grip and fall; the wire is twined with weed.

The soul, too, has its brown October days --
The fancy run to seed and dry as stone,
Rags and wisps of words blown through the mind;
And yet, while dead leaves clog the eyes,
Never-predicted poetry is sown.

Norman Nicholson, Rock Face (1948).

Paul Nash, "Swan Song" (c. 1928)

"Down Autumn Tunnels, Under Yellow Leaves, Long Avenues"

2011-10-05T00:10:00.000-07:00

Ah, well! We are now under the spell of autumn. The season of joyous melancholy and melancholic joyousness is upon us. Where does one begin?

"The scent is that of wood-smoke, of fruit and of some fallen leaves. This is the beginning of the pageant of autumn, of that gradual pompous dying which has no parallel in human life, yet draws us to it with sure bonds. It is a dying of the flesh, and we see it pass through a kind of beauty which we can only call spiritual, of so high and inaccessible a strangeness is it. The sight of such perfection as is many times achieved before the end awakens the never more than lightly sleeping human desire of permanence. Now, now is the hour; let things be thus; thus for ever; there is nothing further to be thought of; let these remain. And yet we have a premonition that remain they must not for more than a little while."

Edward Thomas, The South Country (1909), page 272.

The final three sentences bring to mind some lines from Wallace Stevens's "This Solitude of Cataracts," a poem that is (at least partially) about the "lightly sleeping human desire of permanence."

He wanted to feel the same way over and over.

He wanted the river to go on flowing the same way,
To keep on flowing. He wanted to walk beside it,

Under the buttonwoods, beneath a moon nailed fast.

Wallace Stevens, The Auroras of Autumn (1950).

William Bernard Adeney, "Tunley Bottom" (c. 1920)

Under Trees

Yellow tunnels under the trees, long avenues
Long as the whole of time:
A single aimless man
Carries a black garden broom.
He is too far to hear him
Wading through the leaves, down autumn
Tunnels, under yellow leaves, long avenues.

Geoffrey Grigson, Collected Poems: 1924-1962 (1963).

Cecil Gordon Lawson, "Cheyne Walk, Chelsea" (1870)

"I Clutch The Memory Still, And I Have Measured Everything With It Since"

2011-10-03T00:10:00.000-07:00

I recently posted Seamus Heaney's "The Peninsula," which ends with the following stanza:

And drive back home, still with nothing to say
Except that now you will uncode all landscapes
By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,
Water and ground in their extremity.

Seamus Heaney, Door into the Dark (1969).

The idea that certain landscapes seen on certain days end up staying with us, and thereafter serve as a sort of reference point throughout our lives, is one that Derek Mahon has considered as well. The following poem was first published in 1968. Thus, it is not unlikely that Mahon and Heaney were separately writing along similar lines within a year or so of each other.

Thinking of Inis Oirr in Cambridge, Mass.

A dream of limestone in sea-light
Where gulls have placed their perfect prints.
Reflection in that final sky
Shames vision into simple sight;
Into pure sense, experience.
Atlantic leagues away tonight,
Conceived beyond such innocence,
I clutch the memory still, and I
Have measured everything with it since.

Derek Mahon, Collected Poems (1999). The poem first appeared in Mahon's Night-Crossing (1968) under the title "Recalling Aran." Inis Oirr (anglicized as "Inisheer") is one of the Aran Islands.

Richard Eurich, "Eddystone Light" (1974)

"Fall, Leaves, Fall"

2011-10-01T00:10:00.000-07:00

The Brontes are not usually thought of as a happy-go-lucky bunch. Bleak, empty Yorkshire moors and tragedy come to mind, of course. I suppose that the following untitled poem by Emily Bronte fits the stereotypical image of the family. On the other hand, it may appeal to those of us who are fond of autumn, with all of its mixed messages.

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me,
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night's decay
Ushers in a drearier day.

Clement Shorter (editor), The Complete Poems of Emily Bronte (1908).

Trevor Makinson, "Street Scene" (1948)

Perhaps 20 or so years before Emily Bronte wrote her poem, on the other side of the world a Japanese Zen monk also wrote of autumn.

The wind has brought
enough fallen leaves
To make a fire.

Ryokan (translated by John Stevens), in One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan (1977).

A. Y. Jackson, "October Evening" (1934)

"You Will Not Arrive But Pass Through"

2011-09-29T00:10:00.000-07:00

Seamus Heaney's "Postscript" (which appeared in my previous post) is paired in my mind with an earlier poem of his. I think that I am fond of the two poems because they remind me of a long-ago autumn day -- clear, windy, and charmed -- spent driving along the west coast of the Isle of Skye.

It was one of those unwonted days (we all have them) when you realize at the time that you will never forget what passes. This realization is accompanied (for me, at least) by a poignant pang. At what? You know: the relentless and remorseless march of time and all that.

But enough. The day will never disappear.

The Peninsula

When you have nothing more to say, just drive
For a day all round the peninsula.
The sky is tall as over a runway,
The land without marks so you will not arrive

But pass through, though always skirting landfall.
At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill,
The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable
And you're in the dark again. Now recall

The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log,
That rock where breakers shredded into rags,
The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,
Islands riding themselves out into the fog

And drive back home, still with nothing to say
Except that now you will uncode all landscapes
By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,
Water and ground in their extremity.

Seamus Heaney, Door into the Dark (Faber and Faber 1969).

William Monk, "Sunburst Over the Mountains of Donegal" (c. 1906)

"When The Wind And The Light Are Working Off Each Other"

2011-09-27T00:10:00.000-07:00

For the past few days, autumn squalls have been quickly moving through from the west. Puget Sound has alternated between bright-blue and white-capped and milky-grey and white-capped. At times, yellow shafts of sunlight angle down through the ragged, travelling clouds. I was reminded of the following poem by Seamus Heaney.

Postscript

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

Seamus Heaney, The Spirit Level (Faber and Faber 1996).

Rockwell Kent, "Seascape" (c. 1933)

Life Explained, Part Twenty-One: "We Are On A Kind Of Stair"

2011-09-25T00:10:00.000-07:00

We have previously heard Christina Rossetti ask of Life: "Does the road wind up-hill all the way?" Ian Hamilton takes a similar view of things in the following poem.

Steps

Where do we find ourselves? What is this tale
With no beginning and no end?
We know not the extremes. Perhaps
There are none.
We are on a kind of stair. The world below
Will never be regained; was never there
Perhaps. And yet it seems
We've climbed to where we are
With diligence, as if told long ago
How high the highest rung.
Alas: this lethargy at noon,
This interfered-with air.

Ian Hamilton, Sixty Poems (Faber and Faber 1998).

In an interview, Hamilton noted that the poem "starts off with a line from Emerson." The London Review of Books (January 24, 2002). In fact, much of the poem echoes the opening sentences of Emerson's essay "Experience":

"Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight. But the Genius which, according to the old belief, stands at the door by which we enter, and gives us the lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strongly, and we cannot shake off the lethargy now at noonday."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: Second Series (1844).

Hamilton wrote a poem titled "Larkinesque" about a couple's divorce proceedings (and their annoying solicitors). I hear a Larkinian note as well in the final two lines of "Steps," particularly in the phrase "interfered-with air." (With a nod to Emerson for "lethargy at noon," which has its source in his "the lethargy now at noonday.")

Eric Ravilious, "Beachy Head" (1939)

Memory: "There Is Nothing To Be Frightened Of"

2011-09-23T00:10:00.000-07:00

I intended to move from the subject of love to the subject of memory. But, as it happens, the three poems that I had in mind turn out to have (perhaps not surprisingly) a waft of love about them.

George Charlton
"The Churchyard at Leonard Stanley, Gloucestershire: Spring" (1942)

First, the antipodes:

Memory

Is Memory most of miseries miserable,
Or the one flower of ease in bitterest hell?

William Rossetti (editor), The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Volume I (1886).

Of course, the answer to Rossetti's question is: "It depends."

George Charlton
"The Churchyard at Leonard Stanley: Summer" (1942)

Next, a rare short poem by Robert Bridges (he usually tended to go on at greater length).

Ghosts

Mazing around my mind like moths at a shaded candle,
In my heart like lost bats in a cave fluttering,
Mock ye the charm whereby I thought reverently to lay you,
When to the wall I nail'd your reticent effigys?

Robert Bridges, October and Other Poems (1920).

"Reticent effigys" is the fine thing here, isn't it? As is the idea of nailing them to the wall. As is the idea that one could believe for a moment that they might be "reverently" laid to rest. Fat chance.

George Charlton
"The Churchyard at Leonard Stanley: Autumn" (1942)

And, finally, something that may hold out some hope.

In the Blindfold Hours

In the blindfold hours,
in the memory wars,
don't fool yourself it never happened,
that you never loved her.
Don't degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.

Go to the window. Listen to the trees.
It is only air we live in.
There is nothing to be frightened of.

Hugo Williams, Dock Leaves (1994).

George Charlton
"The Churchyard at Leonard Stanley: Winter" (1942)

"And Myself, Too, If I Could Find Where It Lay Hidden And It Proved Kind"

2011-09-21T00:10:00.000-07:00

I would like to stay with the subject of love a moment longer. I have been thinking about a couple of things written by Edward Thomas. In February of 1916, Thomas was in the army, but he was still stationed in England. He periodically sent drafts of his poems to his wife Helen. He sent her some poems which mentioned love, and she expressed concern that the poems were about another woman. On February 24, Thomas wrote to her:

"As to the other verses about love you know that my usual belief is that I don't and can't love and haven't done for something near 20 years. You know too that you don't think my nature really compatible with love, being so clear and critical. You know how unlike I am to you, and you know that you love, so how can I? That is if you count love as any one feeling and not something varying infinitely with the variety of people."

R. George Thomas (editor), Edward Thomas: Selected Letters (1995), page 119.

Of course, this must have been a difficult passage for Helen Thomas to read. But it would have been out-of-character for Thomas to have written anything but the truth to her.

Kenneth Macqueen, "Waves and Reef" (1945)

On April 9, 1916 -- exactly a year prior to his death at the battle of Arras -- Thomas wrote the following untitled poem:

And you, Helen, what should I give you?
So many things I would give you
Had I an infinite great store
Offered me and I stood before
To choose. I would give you youth,
All kinds of loveliness and truth,
A clear eye as good as mine,
Lands, waters, flowers, wine,
As many children as your heart
Might wish for, a far better art
Than mine can be, all you have lost
Upon the travelling waters tossed,
Or given to me. If I could choose
Freely in that great treasure-house
Anything from any shelf,
I would give you back yourself,
And power to discriminate
What you want and want it not too late,
Many fair days free from care
And heart to enjoy both foul and fair,
And myself, too, if I could find
Where it lay hidden and it proved kind.

Edna Longley (editor), Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (2008).

The final two lines are classic Thomas, and are an excellent instance of something that I have remarked upon before in connection with his poetry (and that of Frost and Larkin): the giving and then the taking away. Or, to use Larkin's fine observation about Thomas's poetry (which, again, I have mentioned before): "The poetry of almost infinitely-qualified states of mind."

Kenneth Macqueen, "Summer Sky" (c. 1935)

Two Further Variations On A Theme

2011-09-19T00:10:00.000-07:00

I have remarked previously that I don't mind circling back on my tracks. Thus, I beg the pardon of any loyal (and, of course, greatly appreciated) readers for retracing my steps to the following two poems, which have appeared here before. The theme of love (love with a somewhat melancholy cast, I admit) brought them to mind, and I believe that they go well with Elizabeth Jennings's "Delay" and Richard Church's "Be Frugal."

Love Without Hope

Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher
Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter,
So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly
Singing about her head, as she rode by.

Robert Graves, The Welchman's Hose (1925).

It is quite an accomplishment to express so much about love in a four-line poem: joy, exaltation, giddiness, longing, despair, and loss (and whatever else you might think of) all rolled into one. I never tire of this poem.

Paul Nash, "Nest of the Siren" (1930)

To Not Love

One looked at life in the prince style, shunning pain.
Now one has seen too much not to fear more.
Apprehensive, it seems, for all one loves,
One asks only to not love, to not love.

James Reeves, Subsong (1969).

"To Not Love" may be too bleak for some. I avoid biographical "explanations" of poems. However, it may (I emphasize may) be helpful to know that James Reeves's wife Mary died in 1966 at the age of 56 after a long illness. Notice the effort to maintain distance and control by the use of "one" in each line of the poem. (In contrast, Reeves uses "I" for the speaker in many of the other poems collected in Subsong.) Then notice how the distance and the control seem to dissolve with the revealing repetition in the final line: "One asks only to not love, to not love."

Paul Nash, "Lupins and Cactus" (1927)

"Be Frugal In The Gift Of Love"

2011-09-17T00:10:00.000-07:00

One of the nice things about poetry is that one thing leads to another. Elizabeth Jennings's poem "Delay" ends with this lovely line: "And love arrived may find us somewhere else." I had been thinking about the line over the past couple of days. And then the following poem by Richard Church (1893-1972) arrived out of the past.

Be Frugal

Be frugal in the gift of love,

Lest you should kindle in return

Love like your own, that may survive

Long after yours has ceased to burn.

For in life's later years you may

Meet with the ghost of what you woke

And shattered at a second stroke.

God help you on that fatal day.

Richard Church, The Solitary Man (1941).

In mid-20th century England, Richard Church was what used to be called "a man of letters." He and his work are now mostly forgotten, I fear. I have spent some time with his poetry over the years, and there are several quiet, fine poems like "Be Frugal" to be found there. I am not suggesting that his work should displace that of the "Major Poets." However, I now find that it is individual poems, not poets, that are most important to me. I first read "Be Frugal" perhaps 20 (or is it 30?) years ago. Now it unaccountably returns and delights me once again.

Ethelbert White, "Early Spring" (1919)

"The Star's Impulse Must Wait For Eyes To Claim It Beautiful"

2011-09-15T00:10:00.000-07:00

I presume that most of us have had thoughts similar to those expressed by Louis MacNeice in "Star-gazer" (which appeared in my previous post). I am wilfully ignorant of science, but the idea of starlight travelling through the ages to arrive here before our eyes is of interest to me as a mortal. The thought that tonight's starlight left its various homes untold years before I was born is wonderful, sad, and somehow comforting. As is the thought that starlight leaving its homes tonight will arrive here untold years after I am gone.

Likewise, the possibility of some sort of connection between time-travelling starlight and love is of great interest. Even though it is not scientifically provable. This, of course, is the business of poetry.

Delay

The radiance of that star that leans on me
Was shining years ago. The light that now
Glitters up there my eye may never see,
And so the time lag teases me with how

Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent. The star's impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.

Elizabeth Jennings, Poems (1953).

Robin Tanner, "The Plough" (1973)

In A Train, Part Two: "Star-gazer"

2011-09-13T00:10:00.000-07:00

I can easily picture Louis MacNeice -- that urbane and questioning figure -- deep in thought in a smoke-filled train. Perhaps he is on his way to Holyhead to catch a boat to Ireland. (In fact, R. S. Thomas has written about encountering W. B. Yeats on that route: "Memories of Yeats Whilst Travelling to Holyhead.") Or perhaps he is headed to western Scotland and the Hebrides. And, sure enough, MacNeice did write his share of train poems, among them "Corner Seat," "Train to Dublin," and "Trains in the Distance." I think that this is my favorite.

Star-gazer

Forty-two years ago (to me if to no one else
The number is of some interest) it was a brilliant starry night
And the westward train was empty and had no corridors
So darting from side to side I could catch the unwonted sight
Of those almost intolerably bright
Holes, punched in the sky, which excited me partly because
Of their Latin names and partly because I had read in the textbooks
How very far off they were, it seemed their light
Had left them (some at least) long years before I was.

And this remembering now I mark that what
Light was leaving some of them at least then,
Forty-two years ago, will never arrive
In time for me to catch it, which light when
It does get here may find that there is not
Anyone left alive
To run from side to side in a late night train
Admiring it and adding noughts in vain.

Louis MacNeice, Collected Poems (1966).

Given the circumstances of its composition, "Star-gazer" inevitably has a bitter-sweet air about it. MacNeice wrote it in January of 1963. He died unexpectedly of pneumonia in September of that year, just short of his 56th birthday.

Trevor Makinson, "Maryhill Goods Yard"

In A Train, Part One: "But Tell Me How Your Schemes Work Out, My Fellow"

2011-09-11T00:10:00.000-07:00

It is a commonplace that travelling by train is more conducive to observation and to contemplation than travelling by, say, car or airplane. Not surprisingly, therefore, a great store of poetry exists that has its origins in someone gazing out of the window of a train at the passing world, or in someone sizing up his or her fellow passengers (which may, in the end, lead to a sizing up of himself or herself).

In the Train

She is the passenger with restless eyes
Who twists the ticket in her black-gloved fingers.
None knows what calculation, what surmise
Disturb her as the train jerks on or lingers.
Above the eyes her brow is smooth and yellow.
'I grant,' her silence says, 'that all I planned
Has been like something graven in the sand,
But tell me how your schemes work out, my fellow.'

James Reeves, Collected Poems, 1929-1974 (1974).

Thomas Henslow Barnard (1898-1992), "Still Life"

How To Live, Part Twelve: "If One's Heart Is Broken Twenty Times A Day . . ."

2011-09-09T01:01:00.000-07:00

At times, the sadness of Ivor Gurney's poetry makes me wince. His pain is so palpable that I sometimes feel like turning away. But it is crucial to recognize that his poetry is not the sort of trivial and self-regarding "confessional" poetry that we moderns have come to know.

In particular, although there can be a note of complaint in Gurney's poetry, I rarely sense self-pity (a noisome staple of "confessional" poetry). Through all of his sorrow and his pain, Gurney behaves like an adult. There is something to be learned from this.

Daily

If one's heart is broken twenty times a day,
What easier thing than to fling the bits away,
But still one gathers fragments, and looks for wire,
Or patches it up like some old bicycle tire.

Bicycle tires fare hardly on roads, but the heart
Has an easier time than rubber, they sheathe a cart
With iron, so lumbering and slow my mind must be made,
To bother the heart and to teach things and learn it its trade.

Ivor Gurney, Selected Poems (edited by George Walter) (1996).

"Daily" was originally published in the January, 1924, issue of The London Mercury under the title "Old Tale." Whether "Old Tale" was Gurney's own first title, or whether it was invented by J. C. Squire, the editor of The London Mercury, I do not know. Part of me prefers "Old Tale" over "Daily."

Samuel Palmer, "A Hilly Scene" (c. 1826)

"Now It Is September And The Web Is Woven. The Web Is Woven And You Have To Wear It."

2011-09-07T00:10:00.000-07:00

Today was beautiful: warm and bright and cloudless cornflower blue. But the wind is now of autumn. And the yellow and angled light is of autumn. Something is incipient.

Recently, I gently questioned R. S. Thomas's assertion that Wallace Stevens's "one season was late fall." However, I did acknowledge that some of my favorite poems by Stevens are set in autumn. Here is one that is set in early fall. Today's weather -- "what is there here but weather, what spirit/Have I except it comes from the sun?" -- brought it to mind.

The Dwarf

Now it is September and the web is woven.
The web is woven and you have to wear it.

The winter is made and you have to bear it,
The winter web, the winter woven, wind and wind,

For all the thoughts of summer that go with it
In the mind, pupa of straw, moppet of rags.

It is the mind that is woven, the mind that was jerked
And tufted in straggling thunder and shattered sun.

It is all that you are, the final dwarf of you,
That is woven and woven and waiting to be worn,

Neither as mask nor as garment but as a being,
Torn from insipid summer, for the mirror of cold,

Sitting beside your lamp, there citron to nibble
And coffee dribble . . . Frost is in the stubble.

Wallace Stevens, Parts of a World (1942).

John Nash, "Autumn" (1933)

Variations On A Theme

2011-09-05T00:10:00.000-07:00

One of the joys of poetry is encountering a new poem that calls up a poem you had nearly forgotten. The unanticipated connection multiples your pleasure: not only have you gained the new poem, but you have also gained the implications that arise out of the echoes of the old poem.

I recently found this poem by Hugo Williams:

The Accident

The cricket ball lingered an eternity
in the patch of blue sky
before returning eventually to earth.

I was standing with outstretched arms
when the full force of the future
hit me in the mouth.

Hugo Williams, Dock Leaves (1994).

"The Accident" brought to mind one of the small gems discovered by Philip Larkin and included by him in The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse (1973). I know little about Michael Ivens (1924-2001), the writer of the following poem. However, I did come across a harrumphing obituary in The Guardian, which is harrumphingly titled: "Michael Ivens: Champion of the Libertarian Right and Business Freedom." The Guardian is reliably hilarious in its harrumphing, and the obituary, contrary to The Guardian's hopes, prompted me to think to myself: "I like the cut of this man's jib. He seems to have been remarkably thoughtful, clear-headed, and free of cant. No wonder The Guardian seems to have taken a dislike to him."

But, back to poetry:

First Day at School

First day at school
the large boy
kindly
hurled my ball
with amazing skill
high over the roof

soaring out of sight
out of my prosaic life

Unstintingly
I gave him
my admiration

As others have done
when their respect
money
virginity
honour hope and lives
have been hurled
triumphantly out of sight

Michael Ivens, Private and Public (1968).

Thomas Saunders Nash, "Still Life" (1929)

Life As A Work Of Art, Part Two: "The Cast Is Large. There Isn't Any Plot."

2011-09-03T00:10:00.000-07:00

The poetry of Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) can be too acerbic for some, but I find it entertaining. (For a more lyrical, less cynical side of Belloc, I recommend his prose works Hills and the Sea, The Old Road, and The Path to Rome.) I was introduced to Belloc via the following sonnet, which employs Shakespeare's "all the world's a stage" as a starting point for another view of Life as a theatrical entertainment.

The world's a stage. The trifling entrance fee
Is paid (by proxy) to the registrar.
The Orchestra is very loud and free
But plays no music in particular.
They do not print a programme, that I know.
The cast is large. There isn't any plot.
The acting of the piece is far below
The very worst of modernistic rot.

The only part about it I enjoy
Is what was called in English the Foyay.
There will I stand apart awhile and toy
With thought, and set my cigarette alight;
And then -- without returning to the play --
On with my coat and out into the night.

Hilaire Belloc, Complete Verse (1991).

Eugene Jansson, "Hornsgatan by Night" (1902)

Lists, Part Five: "A Quilt Of Quilt Names To Keep You Warm In The Dark"

2011-09-01T00:10:00.000-07:00

As I have mentioned previously, Michael Longley is a master of lists. His collection The Weather in Japan contains several poems that have quilts as their subject. (An aside: Longley is fond of transposing Homeric scenes into the modern world. Thus, Longley's lists sometimes bring to mind Homer's list of Greek ships in The Iliad.)

The Yellow Teapot

When those who had eaten at our table and drunk
From the yellow teapot into the night, betrayed you
And told lies about you, I cried out for a curse
And wrote a curse, then stitched together this spell,
A quilt of quilt names to keep you warm in the dark:

Snake's Trail, Shoo Fly, Flying Bats, Spider Web,
Broken Handle, Tumbling Blocks, Hole in the Barn
Door, Dove at the Window, Doors and Windows,
Grandmother's Flower Garden, Sun Dial, Mariner's
Compass, Delectable Mountains, World without End.

Michael Longley, The Weather in Japan (2000).

J. E. H. MacDonald, "Rowanberries" (1922)

Life As A Work Of Art, Part One: "Written, Directed By And Starring . . ."

2011-08-30T00:10:00.000-07:00

The poetic conceit that life may be compared to a work of art -- most commonly, a play -- is an old one: Shakespeare's "all the world's a stage" being perhaps the best-known example. But Sir Walter Raleigh tried his hand at the comparison as well: "What is our life? A play of passion . . ." As, later, did Walter Savage Landor:

Plays

Alas, how soon the hours are over,
Counted us out to play the lover!
And how much narrower is the stage,
Allotted us to play the sage!

But when we play the fool, how wide
The theatre expands; beside,
How long the audience sits before us!
How many prompters! what a chorus!

John Forster (editor), The Works of Walter Savage Landor (1846).

Charles Ginner, "The Winged Faun" (1926)

The conceit continues to be visited in our time, and is often expanded to include novels, movies, and other entertainments. The following poem is by James Simmons (1933-2001).

Written, Directed by and Starring . . .

The scripts I used to write for the young actor --
me -- weren't used. And now I couldn't play
the original parts and, as director,
I'd turn myself, if I applied, away.

My break will come; but now the star's mature
his parts need character and 'love' is out.
He learns to smile on birth and death, to endure:
it's strange I keep the old scripts lying about.

Looking them over I've at times forgot
they've never been put on. I seem to spend
too much time reading through a final shot
where massed choirs sing, they kiss, and then THE END.

It's hard to start upon this middle phase
when my first period never reached the screen,
and there's no end now to my new screen-plays,
they just go on from scene to scene to scene.

The hero never hogs the screen because
his wife, his children, friends, events intrude.
When he's not on the story doesn't pause --
not if he dies. I don't see why it should.

James Simmons, Late But In Earnest (1967).

John Lavery, "The Countess of Oxford and Asquith,
The Wharf, Sutton Courtenay" (1925)

"Beyond All This, The Wish To Be Alone"

2011-08-28T00:10:00.000-07:00

Ah, the allure of solitude. But it is likely that, after a stretch of being alone, we will long for company. Even Montaigne found that, for reasons other than mere loneliness, retirement to a life of solitude was not all that it was cracked up to be:

"Lately when I retired to my home, determined so far as possible to bother about nothing except spending the little life I have left in rest and seclusion, it seemed to me I could do my mind no greater favor than to let it entertain itself in full idleness and stay and settle in itself, which I hoped it might do more easily now, having become weightier and riper with time.

But I find -- Ever idle hours breed wandering thoughts (Lucan) -- that, on the contrary, like a runaway horse, it gives itself a hundred times more trouble than it took for others, and gives birth to so many chimeras and fantastic monsters, one after another, without order or purpose, that in order to contemplate their ineptitude and strangeness at my pleasure, I have begun to put them in writing, hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of itself."

Michel de Montaigne, "Of Idleness," Essays (translated by Donald Frame) (1588).

Yet, a romantic notion about the pleasures of solitude persists, and I would be disingenuous if I claimed not to share that notion. Hence, I confess that something like this appeals to me (even though I have never been a fan of D. H. Lawrence):

Delight of Being Alone

I know no greater delight than the sheer delight of being alone
It makes me realise the delicious pleasure of the moon
that she has in travelling by herself: throughout time,
or the splendid growing of an ash-tree
alone, on a hill-side in the north, humming in the wind.

D. H. Lawrence, Last Poems (1932).

J. A. G. Acke "In the Stockholm Archipelago" (1910)

But, when it comes to the putative joys of being alone, Lawrence cannot (needless to say) hold a candle to Philip Larkin. And thus, as is so often the case for me (which, I acknowledge, is surely a sign of some sort of malign pathology), I shall give the last word to Mr. Larkin (who, as always, is brutally honest, appalling, and, alas, correct -- after a fashion).

Wants

Beyond all this, the wish to be alone:
However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards
However we follow the printed directions of sex
However the family is photographed under the flagstaff --
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.

Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs:
Despite the artful tensions of the calendar,
The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites,
The costly aversion of the eyes from death --
Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs.

Philip Larkin, The Less Deceived (1955).

When, decades ago, I first read "Wants," I was taken with "the wish to be alone" business. Now, however, I think that the finest part of the poem is this: "The costly aversion of the eyes from death."

Charles Ginner, "Dahlias and Cornflowers" (1929)

A Matter Of Perspective

2011-08-26T01:15:00.000-07:00

Yes, whether speaking of the state of civilization or the state of our own soul, we should keep things in perspective, as the old saw goes. Yet, sooner or later, you end up on the beach, or in the field, or on the threshold of the house. And this, of course, is as it should be.

Under the Mountain

Seen from above
The foam in the curving bay is a goose-quill
That feathers . . . unfeathers . . . itself.

Seen from above
The field is a flap and the haycocks buttons
To keep it flush with the earth.

Seen from above
The house is a silent gadget whose purpose
Was long since obsolete.

But when you get down
The breakers are cold scum and the wrack
Sizzles with stinking life.

When you get down
The field is a failed or a worth-while crop, the source
Of back-ache if not heartache.

And when you get down
The house is a maelstrom of loves and hates where you --
Having got down -- belong.

Louis MacNeice, Holes in the Sky (1948).

Henry Lamb, "Fecamp Harbour" (1937)

Life Explained, Part Twenty: "The Solvers"

2011-08-24T00:10:00.000-07:00

I have previously posted Elizabeth Jennings's poem "Answers," which begins:

I kept my answers small and kept them near;
Big questions bruised my mind but still I let
Small answers be a bulwark to my fear.

The following poem by James Reeves considers the role of questions and answers in Life. To wit: what if one sets out to be a solver of puzzles and then discovers that there are no solutions, or, perhaps, that there is nothing to be solved?

The Solvers

Invalids and other hotel residents
Unpuzzle themselves with patience-cards and jigsaws.
Crosswords engage saloon passengers at sea.
Philosophers invent puzzles with answers.
Each knows that what he is trying can be done.
Not all enjoy such comfort of assurance.
I, watching the backs of houses and of books,
Work away at my mind, fitting the pieces,
Pairing the cards, rejecting words.
So sitting, I become suddenly conscious
Of playing patience with crooked pieces,
While solving an incomplete jigsaw with words
In the precise non-language of a dream.
Some of the pieces fit, some of the cards match,
Only some of the pieces and the cards are lost.
I have tried to play it according to the rules,
Only the rules they sent are in Chinese.
Is it too late, I ask, to start again?
Or will extinction, when it comes, surprise me
Sorting the pieces, working out the clues?

James Reeves, The Questioning Tiger (1964).

Franklin Carmichael, "Cranberry Lake" (1931)

A Tuft Of Kelp, Birds, And A Cat

2011-08-22T00:10:00.000-07:00

An obvious point: in poetry, a great deal can be accomplished in a small space. Another obvious point: in poetry, a great deal can be accomplished with commonplace objects. In my dotage, these features are assuming greater importance.

Who knows why certain poems stay with you and others disappear? For some reason, the following poems have hung around. I believe that they are fine instances of poems in which much is accomplished in a short time with what might seem to be trivial objects.

The Tuft of Kelp

All dripping in tangles green,
Cast up by a lonely sea,
If purer for that, O Weed,
Bitterer, too, are ye?

Herman Melville, John Marr and Other Sailors (1888).

One is tempted to read the course of Melville's life back into the poem: the early praise and fame; the criticism and neglect that followed; and, finally, the decades of obscurity. (John Marr and Other Sailors was privately printed by Melville in an edition of 25 copies.) But is such a reading necessary? The poem can just as easily be about each of us. And it can just as easily be about . . . a tuft of kelp.

Kenneth Macqueen
"Receding Tide, Near Coolum, Queensland" (c. 1940-1950)

The following untitled poem is by Trumbull Stickney (1874-1904).

Sir, say no more.
Within me 't is as if
The green and climbing eyesight of a cat
Crawled near my mind's poor birds.

George Cabot Lodge, et al. (editors), The Poems of Trumbull Stickney (1905).

Again, one is tempted to read the course of Stickney's life back into the poem: he died at the age of 30 of a brain tumor, and this fragment was one of the last things that he wrote. But, again, it can just as easily be about each of us.

Edward Bawden, "Emma Nelson by the Fire" (1987)

How To Live, Part Eleven: "Waving Adieu, Adieu, Adieu"

2011-08-20T00:10:00.000-07:00

Pondering the merits of a "careful" life versus a "carefree" life is all well and good, but, in the end, it is a side-show and a subplot, isn't it? I don't deny that it is a serious business, this choosing of a "lifestyle" (a horrible 20th-century word), but there is an underlying and overarching and all-encompassing certainty out there . . .

Waving Adieu, Adieu, Adieu

That would be waving and that would be crying,
Crying and shouting and meaning farewell,
Farewell in the eyes and farewell at the centre,
Just to stand still without moving a hand.

In a world without heaven to follow, the stops
Would be endings, more poignant than partings, profounder,
And that would be saying farewell, repeating farewell,
Just to be there and just to behold.

To be one's singular self, to despise
The being that yielded so little, acquired
So little, too little to care, to turn
To the ever-jubilant weather, to sip

One's cup and never to say a word,
Or to sleep or just to lie there still,
Just to be there, just to be beheld,
That would be bidding farewell, be bidding farewell.

One likes to practice the thing. They practice,
Enough, for heaven. Ever-jubilant,
What is there here but weather, what spirit
Have I except it comes from the sun?

Wallace Stevens, Ideas of Order (1936).

Godfrey Miller, "Triptych with Figures" (c. 1944-1950)

How To Live, Part Ten: "A Life Reprehensibly Perfect"

2011-08-18T00:10:00.000-07:00

The following poem by Philip Larkin provides a good companion piece to Frank Ormsby's "My Careful Life." As one might expect, jolly old Philip suggests that a careless, ostensibly rebellious and romantic life may be every bit as hollow as a careful life. This would seem to lead to what some might call a characteristic Larkinian conclusion: we are doomed either way.

But might there be more going on here? As is often the case (and, as I have noted before, he shares this quality with Robert Frost and Edward Thomas), Larkin gets cagey with us at the end of the poem. Something is given; something is taken back. Maybe, come to think of it, the choice is not between "careful" and "careless." Perhaps, in the end, there is no choice at all. One should remember what Larkin said about the poetry of Edward Thomas: "The poetry of almost infinitely-qualified states of mind, so well paralleled by his verse."

Poetry of Departures

Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.

And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detest my room,
Its specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said

He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me stay
Sober and industrious.
But I'd go today,

Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren't so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.

Philip Larkin, The Less Deceived (1955).

William Ratcliffe, "Attic Room" (1918)

How To Live, Part Nine: "My Careful Life"

2011-08-16T00:10:00.000-07:00

I tend to be a "belt-and-suspenders" type of person. Hence, a poem about a "careful life" (whether that poem be humorous or deadly serious) is likely to be just my cup of tea. After a certain amount of time on earth (or Earth), you begin to let go of things, don't you? And you wonder why some things (which now seem laughable and/or appalling) once seemed important. Yes, there is much to be said for a careful life. But not wholly careful.

My Careful Life

My careful life says: 'No surrender.
Not an inch.' Sometimes I wonder

what thrills the darkness as I pass
the scented gardens of excess

or pause in the twilight to condemn
the parked cars rocking in the lane.

But still my life cries: 'Work and save.
Rise early. Stay home after five

and pull the curtains. They are blessed
-- prudent, abstemious -- who resist.

All things in moderation. Share
nothing. Be seemly and austere.'

My careful life sighs: 'Love? Forget it!
Avoid what is sexually transmitted.

The "wasteful virtues," I'm afraid,
earn nothing. They put you in the red.

Samaritans get mugged. Be wise.
Pass watchfully on the other side.

Your youth was stainless. Now your joy'll
be the middle years full of self-denial,

and an old age as ripe and warm
as is commensurate with decorum.'

Frank Ormsby, A Northern Spring (1986). A note regarding Lines 15 and 16: the introductory poem to W. B. Yeats's collection Responsibilities (1914) contains the line: "Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun."

Jeffrey Smart, "Newtown Oval" (1961)

Lists, Part Four: "Field Names"

2011-08-14T00:10:00.000-07:00

My introduction to English field names came through a chapter in George Ewart Evans's Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay (1956), a book about the now-vanished life of rural Suffolk. Much later, I came across the following poem by Clive Sansom (1910-1981). Perhaps the poem provides another approach to the topic of the wordlessness (but not silence) of the World -- and our own use of words as a response.

Field Names

Our name-givers loved the World and loved the Word:
These two delights are only an ell apart.
Coupling, they gave birth to those field names
That map the earth in the language of the heart:

'Wooden Cabbage', 'Three Men's Field',
'Charity Bottom', 'Doom',
'Perrymans', 'God's Blessing Green',
'Fishponds' and 'Bramble Coomb'.
'Reddleman's', Bedlam', 'Dancing Hill',
'Troy Town', and 'Starvecrow Land',
'Lottery', 'Drummer's Castle', 'Fleet',
'Crocker's Knap', 'Flower-in-Hand'. . . .

Lavish as wildflowers in a Dorset hedgerow,
Fragrant as their names before the botanists came,
They startle the lawyers' deeds with their heart-language
And stake, in some fragment of England, their loving claim.

Clive Sansom, Dorset Village (1962).

John Aldridge, "Stubble Field, Thaxted" (1968)

"The Cool Web"

2011-08-12T00:10:00.000-07:00

If the World is either reticent or mute, we humans, for our part, do not know when to shut up. Lao Tzu's well-known dictum is a good starting point: "Those who know do not talk. Those who talk do not know." Perhaps. Po Chu-i puts Lao Tzu in humorous perspective for us (the translation is by Arthur Waley):

Lao Tzu

"Those who speak know nothing;
Those who know are silent."
Those words, I am told,
Were spoken by Lao Tzu.
If we are to believe that Lao Tzu
Was himself one who knew,
How comes it that he wrote a book
Of five thousand words?

Robert Graves suggests that yakking may serve a purpose. But at a cost.

The Cool Web

Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.

But we have speech, to chill the angry day,
And speech, to dull the rose's cruel scent.
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.

There's a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.

But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,
Throwing off language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children's day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad no doubt and die that way.

Robert Graves, Poems, 1914-1926 (1927).

Norman Rowe, "Span" (1985)

"I Only Came For Speech Of Beech And Beck -- I Only Came For Speech"

2011-08-10T00:10:00.000-07:00

In view of my previous post on the wordlessness or wordiness -- take your pick -- of the wind (and, for that matter, of the World in general), the following poem may be pertinent. That being said, I have always felt that I have never fully grasped its meaning. But (as I am wont to say), it sounds lovely. Which, in this instance, may be the point.

I have presumed (perhaps wrongly) that the title refers to the musical composition of that name, defined by the OED as "a species of musical composition in which the different parts take up the same subject one after another, either at the same or at a different pitch, in strict imitation." For musical illiterates such as I, Wikipedia helpfully states that a "round" such as "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" or "Frere Jacques" is a type of canon. Now that I can understand.

Canon
Beside the paper-mill at
Burneside, Westmorland

I only spoke to see the tree
In flood -- I only spoke to see.

I only looked to hear the weir
In song -- I only looked to hear.

I listened just to tell the yel-
low rag -- I listened just to tell

The yellow ragtail how to show
And teach the yellow ragwort how

I only came for speech of beech
And beck -- I only came for speech.

Norman Nicholson, The Pot Geranium (1954).

Charles Ginner, "The Rib, Standon" (1939)

"What Syllable Are You Seeking, Vocalissimus, In The Distances Of Sleep?"

2011-08-08T00:10:00.000-07:00

A few poems onward from "The Wind Shifts," Wallace Stevens again considers the wind in the poem that brings Harmonium to a close. Although the poem is brief, it encapsulates a recurring theme in Stevens's poetry: how do we make our way in a World (or, as Stevens preferred, in a Reality) that is beautiful, but mute?

To the Roaring Wind

What syllable are you seeking,
Vocalissimus,
In the distances of sleep?
Speak it.

Wallace Stevens, Harmonium (1923).

This brings to mind a poem by Robert Nye about the wind, and its words.

Words on the Wind

I heard a voice calling
"Do not be afraid
For blessed is he
Who is what he was
Before he was made."

They came on the wind
Those singular words
And on the wind went.
Perhaps all it was
Was the calling of birds?

Perhaps all there is
Is the calling of birds
As they're blown on the wind
And we just mistake it
For singular words?

God knows I don't know
But now night is falling
I am what I was
Before I was made,
And this is my calling.

Robert Nye, The Rain and the Glass: 99 Poems, New and Selected (Greenwich Exchange 2005).

Eric Ravilious, "Two Women in a Garden" (1933)

"This Is How The Wind Shifts"

2011-08-06T00:10:00.000-07:00

I have often stated (ad nauseam by now, I fear) that I prefer the late poetry of Wallace Stevens to his early poetry, with its "Tum-ti-tum,/Ti-tum-tum-tum" ("Ploughing on Sunday") and "But ki-ki-ri-ki/Brings no rou-cou,/No rou-cou-cou" ("Depression Before Spring"). That being said, there is a sparer, more direct (please notice that I say "more direct," not "direct"), and less rococo style sitting side-by-side with these floridities. For instance, "The Snow Man," "Anecdote of the Jar," "Domination of Black,""The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad," and "The Death of a Soldier" (to name a few) appear in either the original (1923) or the supplemented (1931) Harmonium.

I place the following poem in the "sparer" category. Which is not to say that I have ever made head or tail of it. But it sounds lovely. And I think I get the drift.

The Wind Shifts

This is how the wind shifts:
Like the thoughts of an old human,
Who still thinks eagerly
And despairingly.
The wind shifts like this:
Like a human without illusions,
Who still feels irrational things within her.
The wind shifts like this:
Like humans approaching proudly,
Like humans approaching angrily.
This is how the wind shifts:
Like a human, heavy and heavy,
Who does not care.

Wallace Stevens, Harmonium (1923).

James Bateman, "The Pool, Blockley, Gloucestershire" (1926)

"Art Is Not Life": R. S. Thomas And Wallace Stevens

2011-08-04T00:10:00.000-07:00

I recently posted Wallace Stevens's "This Solitude of Cataracts," which begins with these four lines:

He never felt twice the same about the flecked river,
Which kept flowing and never the same way twice, flowing

Through many places, as if it stood still in one,
Fixed like a lake on which the wild ducks fluttered.

The third line perhaps shares an affinity with a poem by R. S. Thomas, who wrote more than a few fine poems about streams and rivers.

Return

Taking the next train
to the city, yet always returning
to his place on a bridge
over a river, throbbing

with trout, whose widening
circles are the mandala
for contentment. So will a poet
return to the work laid

on one side and abandoned
for the voices summoning him
to the wrong tasks. Art
is not life. It is not the river

carrying us away, but the motionless
image of itself on a fast-
running surface with which life
tries constantly to keep up.

R. S. Thomas, Later Poems (1983).

I haven't looked into what R. S. Thomas thought about Wallace Stevens, but I should. Thomas did write a poem titled "Wallace Stevens," so he was familiar with his poetry. This is the final stanza:

There was no spring in his world.
His one season was late fall;
The self ripe, but without taste.
Yet painfully on the poem's crutch
He limped on, taking despair
As a new antidote for love.

R. S. Thomas, "Wallace Stevens," in The Bread of Truth (1963).

"His one season was late fall." Hmmm . . . I'm not so sure about that. Many of my favorite Stevens poems are indeed set in autumn. But some might think of him as the poet of winter: "The Course of a Particular" and, of course, "The Snow Man." Or "deep January": "No Possum, No Sop, No Taters." And then there is March: "Vacancy in the Park" and "Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself." And July: "July Mountain." As well as August: "A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts."

Pekka Halonen, "The River Bank" (1897)

Life Explained, Part Nineteen: "One Into Darkening Hills Leads On, And One Toward Distant Seas"

2011-08-02T00:10:00.000-07:00

I find Walter de la Mare's poetry to be at its best when he abandons the late-Victorian diction of much of his verse. Although he was close to Edward Thomas, and greatly valued Thomas's poetry, he seldom used the straightforward (but deep) approach that Thomas and Robert Frost embarked upon. Nonetheless, de la Mare's poetry is still enjoyable.

The following poem is more plain-spoken, and I can almost hear a trace of Thomas in it. (And not simply because it shares the same scene as "Adlestrop.") As to the subject: I suppose that journeys and way-stations on those journeys lend themselves to larger considerations.

The Railway Junction

From here through tunnelled gloom the track
Forks into two; and one of these
Wheels onward into darkening hills,
And one toward distant seas.

How still it is; the signal light
At set of sun shines palely green;
A thrush sings; other sound there's none,
Nor traveller to be seen --

Where late there was a throng. And now,
In peace awhile, I sit alone;
Though soon, at the appointed hour,
I shall myself be gone.

But not their way: the bow-legged groom,
The parson in black, the widow and son,
The sailor with his cage, the gaunt
Gamekeeper with his gun,

That fair one, too, discreetly veiled --
All, who so mutely came, and went,
Will reach those far nocturnal hills,
Or shores, ere night is spent.

I nothing know why thus we met --
Their thoughts, their longings, hopes, their fate:
And what shall I remember, except --
The evening growing late --

That here through tunnelled gloom the track
Forks into two; of these
One into darkening hills leads on,
And one toward distant seas?

Walter de la Mare, The Fleeting and Other Poems (1933).

Spencer Gore, "Letchworth Station" (1912)