Two Worlds

A politicized culture (or, more properly, "culture") inevitably tends toward puritanism: the elect and the impure.  Ever-recurring, the latest iteration of the self-anointed is upon us.  O, Tychon, god of small things, god of the humble, please grant us relief.

Earlier this week, revisiting The Complete Poems of Walter de la Mare (948 wonderful pages), I discovered this:

                           Arrogance

I saw bleak Arrogance, with brows of brass,

Clad nape to sole in shimmering foil of lead,

Stark down his nose he stared; a crown of glass

Aping the rainbow, on his tilted head.

His very presence drained the vital air;

He sate erect -- stone-cold, self-crucified;

On either side of him an empty chair;

And sawdust trickled from his wounded side.

Walter de la Mare, The Burning-Glass and Other Poems (Faber and Faber 1945).

A thought from Walter Pater comes to mind:

"Experience, already reduced to a group of impressions, is ringed round for each one of us by that thick wall of personality through which no real voice has ever pierced on its way to us, or from us to that which we can only conjecture to be without.  Every one of those impressions is the impression of the individual in his isolation, each mind keeping as a solitary prisoner its own dream of a world."

Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (Macmillan 1893), page 249.

"Each mind keeping as a solitary prisoner its own dream of a world." The temptation is great to conclude that one is wise and virtuous.  A comforting delusion.

                                           Learning

To believe you are magnificent.  And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent.  Enough labor for one human life.

Czeslaw Milosz, Road-side Dog (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998), page 60.

Joseph Farquharson (1846-1935)

"Harvesting, Forest of Birse, Aberdeenshire" (1900)

The trees are still mostly full, still mostly green.  Yesterday afternoon, in a gusty wind, their boughs tossed and roared.  The day was clear and brilliant, and dappled light and shadow turned and turned on the ground.  It could have been a summer day.  But, at intervals, lines of fallen leaves rushed along the sidewalks and the streets, carried away by the wind.

What has become of the two woolly bear caterpillars who appeared in my last post?  I encountered two more of the lovely, endearing creatures last week.  Like their companions, they were crossing a path, headed off toward the trees, full of intent, going about their appointed business.  As for humanity, we always have been, and always will be, a scold-ridden species, confused and grasping, forever meddling, never content.  Best to keep one's own counsel.  A woolly bear caterpillar.  "Everything Is Going To Be All Right."

         Mute Opinion

                    I

I traversed a dominion

Whose spokesmen spake out strong

Their purpose and opinion

Through pulpit, press, and song.

I scarce had means to note there

A large-eyed few, and dumb,

Who thought not as those thought there

That stirred the heat and hum.

                      II

When, grown a Shade, beholding

That land in lifetime trode,

To learn if its unfolding

Fulfilled its clamoured code,

I saw, in web unbroken,

Its history outwrought

Not as the loud had spoken,

But as the mute had thought.

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

David MacKay (1853-1904), "Crail at Harvest Time"

"The imperceptible movement of an invisible soul and the enormous sun."  (Philippe Jaccottet (translated by Tess Lewis), Seedtime: Notebooks, 1954-79 (Seagull Books 2013), page 159.)  There is the world.  And then there is the World.  Where does one reside?

          From My Window

An old man leaning on a gate

Over a London mews -- to contemplate --

Is it the sky above -- the stones below?

     Is it remembrance of the years gone by,

     Or thinking forward to futurity

That holds him so?

Day after day he stands,

Quietly folded are the quiet hands,

Rarely he speaks.

     Hath he so near the hour when Time shall end,

     So much to spend?

What is it he seeks?

Whate'er he be,

He is become to me

A form of rest.

     I think his heart is tranquil, from it springs

     A dreamy watchfulness of tranquil things,

And not unblest

Mary Coleridge, in Theresa Whistler (editor), The Collected Poems of Mary Coleridge (Rupert Hart-Davis  1954).

Duncan Cameron (1837-1916), "Harvest Time in Lorne" (1888)

Wind

Is there anything as peaceful and as pleasurable as the soft buffeting of a warm wind in your ears as you walk abroad on a sunny day?  A steady, yet gentle and enfolding, wind.  A blue and gold day in late spring, summer, or early autumn.  There is no reason to pine for a future Paradise:  we abide within it now.

Late in his life, A. E. Housman declared:  "In philosophy I am a Cyrenaic or egoistic hedonist, and regard the pleasure of the moment as the only possible motive of action."  A. E. Housman, letter to Houston Martin (March 22, 1936), in Archie Burnett (editor), The Letters of A. E. Housman, Volume II (Oxford University Press 2007), p. 528.  "In a world of steel-eyed death and men who are fighting to be warm," there is something to be said for Housman's philosophical inclinations.  The word "hedonism" has taken on a pejorative cast in modern times:  it has come to imply licentiousness or immorality.  But, after all, it simply means (according to The Oxford English Dictionary) "the doctrine or theory of ethics in which pleasure is regarded as the chief good, or the proper end of action."

When it comes to the beautiful particulars of the World, I am an unapologetic hedonist.  But I would hope that my pleasure is not "egoistic" (or "egotistic" either).  And I do my best (subject to constant failure) to combine my pleasure with gratitude.

Hence, for instance, the wind.

            Nobody Knows

Often I've heard the Wind sigh
     By the ivied orchard wall,
Over the leaves in the dark night,
     Breathe a sighing call,
And faint away in the silence,
     While I, in my bed,
Wondered, 'twixt dreaming and waking,
          What it said.

Nobody knows what the Wind is,
     Under the height of the sky,
Where the hosts of the stars keep far away house
     And its wave sweeps by --
Just a great wave of the air,
     Tossing the leaves in its sea,
And foaming under the eaves of the roof
          That covers me.

And so we live under deep water,
     All of us, beasts and men,
And our bodies are buried down under the sand,
     When we go again;
And leave, like the fishes, our shells,
     And float on the Wind and away,
To where, o'er the marvellous tides of the air,
          Burns day.

Walter de la Mare, Peacock Pie: A Book of Rhymes (Constable 1913).

James McIntosh Patrick (1907-1998), "A Castle in Scotland"

But hedonism remains at the surface of things.  Whereas, as de la Mare says, "we live under deep water."  This is where immanence comes in: glimmers and glimpses and inklings of something within, behind, and beyond all of those beautiful surfaces.

One either has this sense of the World or one does not.  I do not say this in a judgmental fashion, nor do I claim that those who have this sense are "wiser" or more "enlightened" than those who do not.  How we find ourselves in the World is, for each of us, a matter of mystery.  It is not a case of true or false or of right or wrong.

De la Mare again:  "Nobody Knows."  Exactly.  No explanations are necessary.  Nor are they forthcoming.  We should leave it at that.

In the meantime, we have the wind.  And poems about the wind.

                    Providence

White roses shatter, overblown,
by the breath of a little wind undone,
yet the same air passing scarcely stirs
the tall dark green perpetual firs.

John Hewitt, Scissors for a One-Armed Tailor: Marginal Verses 1929-1954 (1974)

"Providence" feels like a haiku:  a report on experience.  (To borrow from Edmund Blunden.)  However, a word such a "providence" would likely be avoided by a haiku poet.  Too subjective.  Of course, I am completely open to the possibility that what the wind does may well be "providence":  I am not in any way criticizing Hewitt's use of the word.

Hewitt, like a good haiku poet, tells us exactly what he saw.  The difference is that he gives us a hint.  A haiku poet would leave us to draw our own conclusions.  Or, better yet, would leave us to draw no conclusions at all, but only see the World as it is, or, perhaps more accurately, as the haiku poet saw it in a moment of passing time.

Enough of that.  I do not wish to create the impression that I am quibbling about "Providence":  I think it is a lovely poem.  As is this, another poem about the wind of Ireland.

                              Afterpeace

This wind that howls about our roof tonight
And tears live branches screaming from great trees
Tomorrow may have scarcely strength to ruffle
The rabbit's back to silver in the sun.

Patrick MacDonogh, Poems (edited by Derek Mahon) (The Gallery Press 2001).

James McIntosh Patrick,"Boreland Mill, Kirkmichael" (1950)

Of course, poets cannot help but bring humans into their apostrophes about the wind.  Thus, for instance, they say that the wind "sighs" or "moans" or "cries."  This is to be expected.  All poetry, all art, is an attempt to place ourselves into the World in the hope of making sense of things, however briefly.  It is not surprising that, in doing so, we see ourselves (or come upon ourselves) in the World.

Moreover, we mustn't forget that the beautiful particulars of the World include human beings.  The wind.  People.

            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 (Alfred A. Knopf 1923).

We are the wind and the wind is us.  The wind is us and we are the wind.

But we mustn't go too far.  Despite the pretensions of the so-called "Age of Enlightenment" (also, risibly, known as "the Age of Reason"), we are not the measure of the World.  Our conceit may be boundless and shameless, but we are not in a position to make claim to the wind.

This past winter and spring have been, even for this damp part of the world, unseasonably rainy.  As a consequence, the wild grasses in the meadows are more than four feet tall in places, taller than I have ever seen them.  As I pass by them on a breezy day, I am inclined to think that they are whispering as they sway, falling and rising, in the wind.  But the beauty of that sound has absolutely nothing to do with the name I place upon it.

            Thesis and Counter-Thesis

-- Love of God is love of self.
The stars and the seas are filled by precious I
Sweet as a pillow and a sucked thumb.

-- It would be most unflattering for adoring men
If the grasshopper chirping in the warm grass
Could glorify that attribute called Being
In a general manner, without referring it to his own persona.

Czeslaw Milosz, City Without a Name (1969).

James McIntosh Patrick, "Downie Mill" (1962)

As I suggested here recently, wisdom does not necessarily come with age.  I can attest to that.  But growing old does provide an opportunity to pare your life down to essentials.  Think of all the things you once thought were important and that now mean nothing.  The length of that list will depend upon the length of your time upon the earth, dear reader.

One day you will realize, out of the blue, that you have lived more years than the number of years that remain to you.  On that day, life becomes simpler.  You may turn your attention to the wind.

                                                    Autumn

Cathedral of my enchantments, autumn wind, I grew old giving thanks.

Czeslaw Milosz, Road-side Dog (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998).

James McIntosh Patrick, "Braes o' Lundie"

Days

Do we grow wiser with age?  Well, let's not get too carried away.  Speaking for myself, the only piece of wisdom that I can provisionally claim in my seventh decade above ground (and within hailing distance of a return to the dust) is this:  I realize, on a daily basis, that I am profoundly ignorant.

Yet, being aware of, and at peace with, one's ignorance is a good thing.  It is certainly not cause for self-recrimination or despair.  It relieves us of the great weight of trying to "figure things out," of trying to solve the mysteries of where we came from, why we are here, and where we are headed.  It frees us up to do what we ought to have been doing from the start:  loving, and being unceasingly grateful for, the World and all of its beautiful particulars.

Come to think of it, a strong argument can be made that living a life of love and gratitude is exactly why we are here.  All else takes care of itself.  But this is not an abstract proposition:  it is a day-to-day way of being, a matter of striving to cultivate attention and repose throughout each of our fleeting and priceless days.

                    Candles

Days to come stand in front of us
like a row of lighted candles --
golden, warm, and vivid candles.

Days gone by fall behind us,
a gloomy line of snuffed-out candles;
the nearest are smoking still,
cold, melted, and bent.

I don't want to look at them:  their shape saddens me,
and it saddens me to remember their original light.
I look ahead at my lighted candles.

I don't want to turn for fear of seeing, terrified,
how quickly that dark line gets longer,
how quickly the snuffed-out candles proliferate.

C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems (translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard) (Princeton University Press 1992).

Cavafy was horrified at the prospect of death and did not take growing old well.  Hence the tone of "Candles."  The Japanese haiku poets are, like Cavafy, aware of the situation in which we find ourselves.  However, they tend to have a more equable view of things.

     Slow days passing, accumulating, --
How distant they are,
     The things of the past!

Buson (1716-1784) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 2: Spring (Hokuseido Press 1950), page 46.

Francis Le Maistre (1859-1940), "Seascape with Two Women"

Rather than imagining that we might acquire wisdom with age, perhaps a better approach is to become adept at letting things go.  As the years and (alas!) decades speed by (populated by days), we are well-advised to disabuse ourselves of certain notions and to abandon certain conceits.  If, by some point in our life (before it is too late), we have not begun to identify and jettison these notions and conceits, all hope is lost.  Something along these lines is required:

                                                Learning

To believe you are magnificent.  And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent.  Enough labor for one human life.

Czeslaw Milosz, Road-side Dog (translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998).

While this lifelong project is underway, the days come and go.  There's no stopping them.

               Dream Days

'When you stop to consider
The days spent dreaming of a future
And say then, that was my life.'

For the days are long --
From the first milk van
To the last shout in the night,
An eternity.  But the weeks go by
Like birds; and the years, the years
Fly past anti-clockwise
Like clock hands in a bar mirror.

Derek Mahon, Selected Poems (Penguin/The Gallery Press 1991).

As Mahon observes, the days are indeed long -- "an eternity."  (Do you remember all of those never-ending afternoons in the schoolroom?)  The Japanese haiku poets, whose art is aimed at presenting a vanishing instant of experience that embodies the whole of the World and the whole of a human life, are ever aware that our fate is played out each day, moment-by-moment.

     Calm days,
The swift years
     Forgotten.

Taigi (1709-1771) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 2: Spring, page 42.

 Kathleen Wilson (d. 1936), "Thatched Cottages"

Like Cavafy, Philip Larkin was terrified of death.  But this did not prevent him from creating poems that are full of Beauty and Truth, and which celebrate the wonder and joy of being alive -- in their own Larkinesque way, of course.  Do not believe those who caricature Larkin as a dour, cranky misanthrope.  Anybody who holds this view has not taken the time to actually read Larkin's poems (or his prose).

            Days

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings (Faber & Faber 1964).

Larkin being Larkin, the second stanza is required.  But consider the first stanza.  Some may say that the line "They are to be happy in" is intended to be mordant or ironic.  It is not.  Others may say that the entire stanza is nothing more than a truism, a cliché.  In fact, it is a simple statement of truth.  An aversion to the articulation of essential truths is endemic amongst ironic moderns.

The modern urge to over-complicate life puzzles me.  "Days are where we live."  Look around.  Everything is right there in front of you.

     A night of stars;
The cherry blossoms are falling
     On the water of the rice-seedlings.

Buson (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 2: Spring, page 170.

Is there anything more beautiful and true than this?

John Anthony Park (1880-1962), "The Harbour, Polperro, Cornwall"

Another poet who is also unfairly caricatured as a dour, cranky misanthrope has this to say about how we ought to spend our days: "Life is not hurrying//on to a receding future, nor hankering after/an imagined past."  (R. S. Thomas, "The Bright Field.")  As I have noted here before, when I set out on my afternoon walk, I often remind myself:  "Stop thinking.  Just look and listen."  An abandonment of the past and the future is implicit in this admonition.  However, apart from a few fugitive moments, I always fail miserably.

                      Days and Moments

The drowsy earth, craving the quiet of night,
Turns her green shoulder from the sun's last ray;
Less than a moment in her solar flight
Now seems, alas! thou fleeting one, life's happiest day.

Walter de la Mare, Inward Companion and Other Poems (Faber and Faber 1950).

Yes, all of this daily passing and vanishing is bound to provoke an "Alas!" now and then.  Yet it seems to me that our diurnal existence is where, from moment to moment, Paradise lies.  Still, we tend to long for something more:  passing and vanishing can be hard to accept.  Here's a thought:  "If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present."  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Proposition 6.4311 (1921) (translated by C. K. Ogden).  An alternative translation is:  "If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present."  Ibid (translated by David Pears and Brian McGuinness).

Who needs Eternity?  One day is enough.

     All the long day --
Yet not long enough for the skylark,
     Singing, singing.

Bashō (1644-1694) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 2: Spring, page 195.

Giffard Hocart Lenfestey (1872-1943), "Evening, the Stream"

Humanity

The recent Brexit referendum and the ongoing presidential election campaign in the United States have got me to thinking about the politicization of daily life, a subject that I have considered here in the past. But let me be clear at the outset:  this is a non-political blog, and you will not hear any opinions from me on either Brexit or the presidential election. I am not a citizen of the United Kingdom, so Brexit is none of my business. As for the presidential election:  I intend to sit it out.

What concerns me is how the politicization of culture and of individual consciousness encourages people to adopt stereotypical, patronizing, and dehumanizing views of those who are on the other side of a political issue. This has been glaringly apparent in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, and it has been an ongoing feature of the presidential campaign.

Who among us is in a position to adopt such views?  Do those who hold these views realize that they are in fact dehumanizing themselves in the process?  They have become exactly what the politicians, political "activists," and media oversimplifiers and crisis-mongers want them to be:  political animals.

   Neither Out Far Nor In Deep

The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.

As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull.

The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be --
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.

They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?

Robert Frost, A Further Range (Henry Holt 1936.)

Be careful before you make any quick judgments on what the poem "means."  Depending upon how you read the poem, you may be a misanthrope or you may be a lover of humanity.  Or both.  Or neither.  In his fine study of Frost's poetry, Tim Kendall says this of the poem:  "This is what I can see happening, the poet tells his reader.  Make of it what you will."  Tim Kendall, The Art of Robert Frost (Yale University Press 2012), page 356.  But this much is certain:  you are standing there on the sand, dear reader, as are we all.

Osmund Caine, "Wedding at Twickenham Parish Church" (1948)

Being politicized leads to evaluating and judging the world and other human beings in terms of classes, categories, and clichés.  Never underestimate the allure of a priori conclusions.  For the politicized, everything appears to be simple and subject to explanation.  Us and them. The enlightened versus the benighted.

All of this has nothing whatsoever to do with the individual human being or with the individual human soul.

                    Balances

Because I see the world poisoned
by cant and brutal self-seeking,
must I be silent about
the useless waterlily, the dunnock's nest
in the hedgeback?

Because I am fifty-six years old
must I love, if I love at all,
only ideas -- not people, but only
the idea of people?

Because there is work to do, to steady
a world jarred off balance,
must a man meet only a fellow-worker
and never a man?

There are more meanings than those
in text books of economics
and a part of the worst slum
is the moon rising over it
and eyes weeping and
mouths laughing.

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

Gilbert Spencer

"The School on Peggy Hill, Ambleside" (1952)

Each of us has a far better opinion of ourself than we ought to.  That is a given.  A part of human nature.  But, when you add politics to the mix, the opportunities for superciliousness expand exponentially.  Vast territories of grandiosity, oversimplification, and unexamined assumptions lie open for exploration.  And you can be sure that the politicized -- left, right, and center -- will undertake the expedition.

                                                     Learning

To believe you are magnificent.  And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent.  Enough labor  for one human life.

Czeslaw Milosz, Road-side Dog (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998).

W. B. Yeats could be as supercilious as they come.  But every once in a while he experienced a moment of clarity.

                                     Paudeen

Indignant at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite
Of our old Paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind
Among the stones and thorn-trees, under morning light;
Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind
A curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thought
That on the lonely height where all are in God's eye,
There cannot be, confusion of our sound forgot,
A single soul that lacks a sweet crystalline cry.

W. B. Yeats, Responsibilities and Other Poems (Macmillan 1916).

"A single soul," yes.  Yet something else comes to mind as well.

                           Aboard a Boat, Listening to Insects

As though delighting, as though grieving, each with its own song --
an idler, listening, finds his ears washed completely clean.
As the boat draws away from grassy banks, they grow more distant,
till the many varied voices become one single voice.

Ōkubo Shibutsu (1767-1837) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, Kanshi: The Poetry of Ishikawa Jōzan and Other Edo-Period Poets (North Point Press 1990).

George Charlton, "Welsh Chapel" (1950)

I am well aware that there may be those among you who find this disquisition (diatribe?) to be supercilious in its own right.  Apathy and quietism as the world goes up in flames.  I see your point.  Ah, well, we are all in "the vale of Soul-making."  We each choose our own path.

                    Politics

You say a thousand things,
Persuasively,
And with strange passion hotly I agree,
And praise your zest,
And then
A blackbird sings
On April lilac, or fieldfaring men,
Ghostlike, with loaded wain,
Come down the twilit lane
To rest,
And what is all your argument to me?

Oh yes -- I know, I know,
It must be so --
You must devise
Your myriad policies,
For we are little wise,
And must be led and marshalled, lest we keep
Too fast a sleep
Far from the central world's realities.
Yes, we must heed --
For surely you reveal
Life's very heart; surely with flaming zeal
You search our folly and our secret need;
And surely it is wrong
To count my blackbird's song,
My cones of lilac, and my wagon team,
More than a world of dream.

But still
A voice calls from the hill --
I must away --
I cannot hear your argument to-day.

John Drinkwater, Tides (Sidgwick and Jackson 1917).

But life is more than a matter of blackbirds singing and lilacs blooming, isn't it?  Thus, please forgive me as I return once again to some of the best advice that I have come across during my time on earth:

               . . . we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

Philip Larkin, "The Mower," Collected Poems (Faber and Faber 1988).

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

Robins

As a child growing up in this country, one of the first birds that one is likely to encounter is the robin.  Perhaps this is why I retain a particular fondness for them.  Call me sentimental, but I think of the successive generations of robins I have shared the World with as lifelong companions:  wordless, but not unspoken.

As we enter another winter together, I worry about them.  How will they fare in the cold and the wind and the gloom?  But there they are in the garden, flitting about in the trees and bushes, hopping along the paths, going about the business of being robins.

                 A Robin

Ghost-grey the fall of night,
        Ice-bound the lane,
Lone in the dying light
        Flits he again;
Lurking where shadows steal,
Perched in his coat of blood,
Man's homestead at his heel,
        Death-still the wood.

Odd restless child; it's dark;
        All wings are flown
But this one wizard's -- hark!
        Stone clapped on stone!
Changeling and solitary,
Secret and sharp and small,
Flits he from tree to tree,
        Calling on all.

Walter de la Mare, The Fleeting and Other Poems (1933).

Dudley Holland, "Winter Morning" (1945)

De la Mare was writing in England, so his robin is a European robin, not an American robin -- a flycatcher, not a thrush.  But I like to think that the two share certain affinities:  a charming stolidity, staying power, and a cheerful stoicism.

And they both have their songs and notes.  Different songs and notes, of course, but perhaps the underlying message is the same.  "Synonyms for joy."

                 The Robin

Poor bird!  I do not envy thee;
Pleas'd in the gentle melody
     Of thy own song.
Let crabbed winter silence all
The winged choir; he never shall
     Chain up thy tongue:
          Poor innocent!
When I would please my self, I look on thee;
And guess some sparks of that felicity,
          That self-content.

When the bleak face of winter spreads
The earth, and violates the meads
     Of all their pride;
When sapless trees and flowers are fled,
Back to their causes, and lie dead
     To all beside:
          I see thee set,
Bidding defiance to the bitter air,
Upon a wither'd spray; by cold made bare,
          And drooping yet.

There, full in notes, to ravish all
My earth, I wonder what to call
     My dullness; when
I hear thee, pretty creature, bring
Thy better odes of praise, and sing,
     To puzzle men:
          Poor pious elf!
I am instructed by thy harmony,
To sing the time's uncertainty,
          Safe in my self.

Poor Redbreast, carol out thy lay,
And teach us mortals what to say.
     Here cease the choir
Of ayerie choristers; no more
Mingle your notes; but catch a store
     From her sweet lyre;
          You are but weak,
Mere summer chanters; you have neither wing
Nor voice, in winter.  Pretty Redbreast, sing,
          What I would speak.

George Daniel (1616-1657), "Ode XXIII," in Alexander Grosart (editor), The Poems of George Daniel, Volume II (1878) (spelling modernized).

"That self-content."  Call me an anthropomorphizer, a practitioner of the Pathetic Fallacy, but "self-content" is one of the traits that I admire in the robin.  "A robin with no Christian name ran through/The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew."  "All it knew"?  Yes, perhaps.  But:  "I am instructed by thy harmony . . . teach us mortals what to say."

Beryl Sinclair, "Winter, Regent's Park" (1941)

When I was young, we were taught to look for "the first robin of spring." But it has always seemed to me that quite a few of them stick around through the winter.  Their red-orange breasts are a welcome sight amidst the dark days, and add to the gaiety should snow arrive.  (Although I suppose that a snowfall is not necessarily a cause for celebration in the Robin-World!)  Thus, I think of robins not just as harbingers of spring, but as year-long reminders of the constancy and continuity of the World that surrounds us, a World that calls for our attention in even its humblest manifestations.

                    Winter

Clouded with snow
     The bleak winds blow,
And shrill on leafless bough
The robin with its burning breast
     Alone sings now.

     The rayless sun,
     Day's journey done,
Sheds its last ebbing light
On fields in leagues of beauty spread
     Unearthly white.

     Thick draws the dark,
     And spark by spark,
The frost-fires kindle, and soon
Over that sea of frozen foam
     Floats the white moon.

Walter de la Mare, The Listeners and Other Poems (1912).

Frederick Mitchell, "Greig Close in Winter" (1955)

Poets rhapsodize about nightingales and skylarks.  There are those among us who search the woods for cardinals, orioles, bluebirds, and others of bright plumage.  But the commonplace, quotidian robin deserves its own paean.  Please note that I do not use "commonplace" or "quotidian" in a pejorative sense.  After all, both words apply to each and every one of us, although we may like to believe otherwise.

We need to often remind ourselves of this:

                                                     Learning

To believe you are magnificent.  And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent.  Enough labor for one human life.

Czeslaw Milosz, Road-side Dog (translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998).

As I have noted here on more than one occasion, we are all in this together. We each have our offices to perform.  Who among us is the humblest?  Who among us is of importance?  Who knows?  None of us is in a position to render judgment.

                    To Robin Redbreast

Laid out for dead, let thy last kindness be
With leaves and moss-work for to cover me:
And while the wood-nymphs my cold corpse inter,
Sing thou my dirge, sweet-warbling chorister!
For epitaph, in foliage, next write this:
Here, here the tomb of Robin Herrick is.

Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648).

"Where, when he dies, his tomb may be a bush,/Where harmless robin dwells with gentle thrush."  Not a bad way to spend eternity, communing with robins and thrushes.

John Aldridge, "Winter" (1947)

Evanescence

I cannot claim to have gained any wisdom during my time on earth.  The most I have done is to recognize (vaguely) the truth of certain truisms.  And even that recognition is fitful, here and then gone.

There is one thing I do know:  "All is vanity."  This is as good a starting point as any on the journey to here-today-gone-tomorrow wisdom.  The world needs fewer people who are full of themselves.  A utopian dream, of course.  For starters, we will never be free of heads of state and politicians, will we?  Moreover, I suppose that Twitter and Facebook are here to stay. (As are blogs!)  And please don't get me started on what are called, unironically, "smartphones."  "Selfie."  End of discussion.

Although it has appeared here before, the following statement (epigram? prose poem?) by Czeslaw Milosz is always worth revisiting.

                                                 Learning

To believe you are magnificent.  And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent.  Enough labor for one human life.

Czeslaw Milosz, Road-side Dog (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998).

Albert Goodwin (1845-1932), "Lincoln" (1902)

To live in a way that embodies this sort of realization is indeed the work of a lifetime, never finished.  One would think that autumn would be enough to convince us of our evanescence.  Or rivers.

                  Thoughts on T'ien-chin Bridge

The countless great lords and statesmen of past regimes --
later ages know them merely as a list of names.
Only the water under T'ien-chin Bridge
goes on year after year, making the same sound.

Shao Yung (1011-1077) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson (editor), The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century (Columbia University Press 1984).

Albert Goodwin, "View on the Canal, Dort" (1882)

It comes in fits and starts, but, as one ages, it is possible to develop the habit of letting things go.  We carry with us a certain amount of dross that has accumulated over the years.  A great deal of that dross is bound up with vanity.  Mind you, I harbor no illusions that I will ever be free of vanity. Can we attain the repose of rivers?  Unlikely.  But weigh that attempt, quixotic though it may seem, against accepting the wares that the Modern World has to offer.

          The River

Stir not, whisper not,
Trouble not the giver
Of quiet who gives
This calm-flowing river,

Whose whispering willows,
Whose murmuring reeds
Make silence more still
Than the thought it breeds,

Until thought drops down
From the motionless mind
Like a quiet brown leaf
Without any wind;

It falls on the river
And floats with its flowing,
Unhurrying still
Past caring, past knowing.

Ask not, answer not,
Trouble not the giver
Of quiet who gives
This calm-flowing river.

Patrick MacDonogh, Poems (edited by Derek Mahon) (The Gallery Press 2001).

Albert Goodwin, "The Friars, Aylesford, Maidstone"

Will an ongoing meditation upon rivers cure us of vanity?  No.  But rivers are like the congregation of a dozen or so robins that I saw this afternoon, chattering and bobbing on a path that runs beside a meadow as the sun descended.  A gentle -- but insistent -- reminder that we need to get outside of ourselves.

                         River

Remember for me the river,
Flowing wide and cold, from beyond Sugar Island,
Still and smooth, breathing sweetness
Into still air, moving under its surface
With all the power of creation.

Remember for me the scent of sweet-grass
In Ojibway baskets,
Of meadow turf, alive with insects.

Remember for me
Who will not be able to remember.
Remember the river.

Janet Lewis, in R. L. Barth (editor), The Selected Poems of Janet Lewis (Swallow Press 2000).

Albert Goodwin, "Durham Cathedral" (1910)

Perspective, Part Fourteen: Artful Dodges

It is impossible for us to be objective about ourselves.  How could it be otherwise?  We have been pent up in our cocoon of body, mind, and soul since we first emerged, bawling, into the world.  The most that we can hope for is a smidgen of self-awareness.  If we are attentive, and try our hardest, this smidgen of self-awareness may be accompanied by humility about ourselves and kindness towards others.

Joseph Conrad, that wise man, offers us this:

"If one looks at life in its true aspect then everything loses much of its unpleasant importance and the atmosphere becomes cleared of what are only unimportant mists that drift past in imposing shapes.  When once the truth is grasped that one's own personality is only a ridiculous and aimless masquerade of something hopelessly unknown the attainment of serenity is not very far off."

Joseph Conrad, Letter to Edward Garnett (March 23, 1896), in Edward Garnett, Letters from Joseph Conrad, 1895-1924 (1928), page 46.

And this:

"No man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge."

Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900), page 84.

Yes, recognition of our own follies and self-deceptions is a necessary precursor to any serenity we may be able to arrive at in life.  And it is wonderful that Conrad speaks of attaining "serenity," not "happiness."

Robin Tanner, "The Gamekeeper's Cottage" (1928)

The above thoughts were prompted by coming across the following poem:

               'Incomprehensible'

Engrossed in the day's 'news', I read
Of all in man that's vile and base;
Horrors confounding heart and head --
Massacre, murder, filth, disgrace:
Then paused.  And thought did inward tend --
On my own past, and self, to dwell.

Whereat some inmate muttered, 'Friend,
If you and I plain truth must tell,
Everything human we comprehend,
     Only too well, too well!'

Walter de la Mare, Inward Companion: Poems (1950).

Each and every day we encounter the "incomprehensible" via the media and incorrectly conclude, as the saying goes, "Now I've seen it all!"  No, we have not seen it all, and we never will see it all, given the by turns lovely and nasty inventiveness of human beings.

De la Mare's neat trick is the movement from "incomprehensible" in the title to "comprehend" in line 9:  from "beyond the reach of intellect or research; unfathomable" (OED) (i.e., the daily horrors of the news)  to "to take in, comprise, include, contain" (OED) (i.e., us).  And, once the movement is made, one is in turn compelled to revisit "incomprehensible," which now turns out to refer not just to the contents of the daily news, but to each of us individually -- body, mind, and soul.

Robin Tanner, "Wiltshire Woodman" (1929)

All of this merits a return to the lovely three-sentence prose statement by Czeslaw Milosz.

                                                  Learning

To believe you are magnificent.  And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent.  Enough labor for one human life.

Czeslaw Milosz (translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass), Road-side Dog (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998), page 60.

Robin Tanner, "Martin's Hovel" (1927)

Perspective, Part Nine: "Almost Human"

Is it possible to look at yourself objectively?  To see yourself for who you are?  Speaking for myself, I have my doubts.  Still, I like to think that I am more optimistic about the possibility than, say, La Rochefoucauld, who offers this uncharitable (but, alas, likely true) insight about us:

"Whatever discovery was made in the country of self-love, many unknown lands remain there still."

La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (1678), translated by Stuart Warner and Stephane Douard (St. Augustine's Press 2001).

Yes, as I survey the public world around us -- politicians, bureaucrats, social scientists, media mouthpieces and the lot -- I know all too well what La Rochefoucauld means.  No shortage of self-love and misplaced self-assurance there.  And no evidence of self-awareness or self-reflection either.

William Ratcliffe, "Cottage Interior" (1920)

The first tiny step is not to think that you are any different.  I have quoted Czeslaw Milosz on this topic in the past, and he bears repeating:

                                                  Learning

To believe you are magnificent.  And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent.  Enough labor for one human life.

Czeslaw Milosz, Road-side Dog (translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998).

William Ratcliffe, "The Conservatory Window"

                Almost Human

The man you know, assured and kind,
Wearing fame like an old tweed suit --
You would not think he has an incurable
Sickness upon his mind.

Finely that tongue, for the listening people,
Articulates love, enlivens clay;
While under his valued skin there crawls
An outlaw and a cripple.

Unenviable the renown he bears
When all's awry within?  But a soul
Divinely sick may be immunized
From the scourge of common cares.

A woman weeps, a friend's betrayed,
Civilization plays with fire --
His grief or guilt is easily purged
In a rush of words to the head.

The newly dead, and their waxwork faces
With the look of things that could never have lived,
He'll use to prime his cold, strange heart
And prompt the immortal phrases.

Before you condemn this eminent freak
As an outrage upon mankind,
Reflect:  something there is in him
That must for ever seek

To share the condition it glorifies,
To shed the skin that keeps it apart,
To bury its grace in a human bed --
And it walks on knives, on knives.

C. Day Lewis, Pegasus and Other Poems (1957).

William Ratcliffe, "Attic Room" (1918)

Life As A Work Of Art, Part Four: "Heroes Of The Sub-Plot"

If Life is indeed a drama or comedy in which we are actors, I will hazard a guess that most of us see ourselves as the leading man or the leading lady in the entertainment.  James Simmons's poem "Written, Directed by and Starring . . ." comes to mind.  But what if we aren't the hero or the heroine? And, by the way, who decides?

            Heroes of the Sub-Plot

Look at us, cursed heroes of the sub-plot,
twisting our faces into plaintive masks
over the footlights -- terror, desire and glee.
For we are lost, as usual at this hour,
in a wood near the front of the stage --
cuckolds and clowns and palace functionaries,
rolling our eyes to pass the time for you
with one or two approved cross purposes.
See -- we have put on character make-up
to distract you from the sound of scenery
being shifted behind our backs.  The principals
are waiting in the wings.  Too soon
our leading man will make the winding sign
to end our moment balanced in the light.
We smudge our eye-shadow with our tears.

Hugo Williams, Writing Home (Oxford University Press 1985).

                                   David Tindle, "Mural (Panel A)" (1978)

But, be we hero or heroine (in our own minds), somebody like Keats brings us back to earth:  "Call the world if you please 'The vale of Soul-making'. Then you will find out the use of the world."  The Chinese T'ang Dynasty poets and the Japanese haiku poets possessed this knowledge (via Taoism and Buddhism) several centuries before Keats.  (Which is not to fault Keats: these messages are timeless, but it seems that we have to discover them for ourselves.)

     Journeying through the world, --
To and fro, to and fro,
     Harrowing the small field.

Basho (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 4: Autumn-Winter (Hokuseido 1952).

                                   David Tindle, "Mural (Panel B)" (1978)

For further perspective on this matter, something by Czeslaw Milosz is apt.

                                                Learning

To believe you are magnificent.  And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent.  Enough labor for one human life.

Czeslaw Milosz, Road-side Dog (translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998).

                                     David Tindle, "Mural (Panel C)" (1978)