Revenants

It's wonderful how a poem you have long been familiar with -- a poem you think you "know" -- suddenly and unexpectedly moves you.  I have recently been browsing in The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, visiting old standbys and hoping to make new discoveries.  Among the former, I happened upon this:

                    Rondeau

Jenny kissed me when we met,

     Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief, who love to get

     Sweets into your list, put that in:

Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,

     Say that health and wealth have missed me,

Say I'm growing old, but add,

     Jenny kissed me.

Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), in Christopher Ricks (editor), The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (Oxford University Press 1987).

A nice but slight thing, one might think.  Written by someone who is not usually thought of as a poet.  It is a standard presence in anthologies of all sorts, and, once read, is likely to be passed over as the years go by.  But I had been away from it for a long time.  So I decided to stop and read it.

And, unaccountably, it struck a chord with me.  Was it the cast of light in the sky that day?  The season?  Senescence?  The state of the world?  Who knows.  But I do know that catch of breath, that heart-pause: Well, then, here is life.

George Charlton (1899-1979)

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

As you have heard me say here before, dear readers: "In poetry, one thing leads to another."  After reading "Rondeau," this presently came to mind:

                           Memory

Is Memory most of miseries miserable,

Or the one flower of ease in bitterest hell?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), in William Rossetti (editor), The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Volume I (Ellis and Scrutton 1886).

Rossetti's meditation on memory is significantly less sanguine than Hunt's lovely preservation of a passing, ostensibly prosaic moment.  (Although Hunt has no illusions about the quiddities of life.)  I suspect that Rossetti's complicated and fraught romantic life might be the source of his gloominess.  Yet, still, even "one flower of ease in bitterest hell" is something.  And, in a life, it might be enough.

George Charlton

"The Churchyard at Leonard Stanley, Gloucestershire: Summer"

If we are fortunate, in time each of us ends up with a handful of these never-fading flowers.  I am not speaking of memories in general, which rise and fall within us incessantly.  Rather, I am thinking of the select few charmed revenants of our life, the moments of timelessness and of absolute clarity which haunt us, whether we want them to or not.  The winnowing process that leads to the handful is a mystery.  We play no conscious role in that process.  Oh, yes, what remains with us comes from within us.  But these moments -- which are indeed our life -- have a life of their own.

                        Revaluation

Now I remember nothing of our love

So well as the crushed bracken and the wings

Of doves among dim branches far above --

Strange how the count of time revalues things!

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

George Charlton

"The Churchyard at Leonard Stanley, Gloucestershire: Autumn"

Are these revenants as close as we come in this World to beauty and truth?

                      While You Slept

You never knew what I saw while you slept.

We drove up a wide green stone-filled valley.

Around us were empty heather mountains.

A white river curved quickly beside us.

I thought to wake you when I saw the cairn --

A granite pillar of that country's past --

But I let you sleep without that history.

You did, however, travel through that place:

I can tell you that your eyes were at rest

As the momentous world moved beyond you,

And that you breathed in peace that quarter hour.

We seldom know what is irreplaceable.

You sang old songs for me, then fell asleep.

I worried about what you were missing.

But you missed nothing.  And I was the one who slept.

sip (Glen Coe, Scotland, c. 1986.  For JAH.)

George Charlton

"The Churchyard at Leonard Stanley, Gloucestershire: Winter"

Visitants

Everyone we have ever known remains with us.  Nothing we have ever experienced vanishes.  This is not simply a matter of our ability to retain memories, be they good or bad.  Rather, these people and these moments have a life of their own.  When these visitants have a mind to, they return.  We do not need to summon them.

                    Boats of Cane

A traveller once told
How to an inland water slanting come
Slim boats of cane from rivers of Cathay,
With trembling mast so slight,
It seemed God made them with a hand of air
To sail upon His light;
And there
Soft they unload a jar of jade and gold
In the cold dawn when birds are dumb,
And then away,
And speak no word and seek no pay,
Away they steal
And leave no ripple at the keel.

So the tale is writ;
And now, remembering you, I think of it.

Geoffrey Scott, Poems (Oxford University Press 1931).

W. G. Poole, "Plant Against a Winter Landscape" (1938)

Some may view their visitants with trepidation.  To wit:  "When the night-processions flit/Through the mind."  Yes, we are all quite familiar with those night-processions, aren't we?  I can state with assurance that they only lengthen as we grow older.

                                           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 (Heinemann 1920).

I fully understand such feelings, and I have done my fair share of shutting doors and closing the curtains on (as well as running away from) the moths, bats, and reticent (or not-so-reticent) effigys that return from out of the past.  But, in time, one comes to the conclusion that it is best to let them pay their visits.  We ought not to view our ghosts as chain-rattling, moaning Jacob Marleys.  After all, where would we be without them?  They are who we are.

                         Revaluation

Now I remember nothing of our love
So well as the crushed bracken and the wings
Of doves among dim branches far above --
Strange how the count of time revalues things!

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

Leslie Duncan, "Birchwood"

Welcoming these revenants, we might be pleasantly surprised at the keenness and the clarity of the long-vanished "spots of time" (to use Wordsworth's phrase) that they bring with them.  The immediacy can be breathtaking.  Years, decades, vanish in an instant.

                 The Woodspurge

The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
I had walked on at the wind's will, --
I sat now, for the wind was still.

Between my knees my forehead was, --
My lips drawn in, said not Alas!
My hair was over in the grass,
My naked ears heard the day pass.

My eyes, wide open, had the run
Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
Among those few, out of the sun,
The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.

From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom or even memory:
One thing then learnt remains to me, --
The woodspurge has a cup of three.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Poems (F. S. Ellis 1870).

Why do some things continually return to us, while so much else seems to vanish?  Why that moment?

                    Green Slates
                      (Penpethy)

It happened once, before the duller
     Loomings of life defined them,
I searched for slates of greenish colour
     A quarry where men mined them;

And saw, the while I peered around there,
     In the quarry standing
A form against the slate background there,
     Of fairness eye-commanding.

And now, though fifty years have flown me,
     With all their dreams and duties,
And strange-pipped dice my hand has thrown me,
     And dust are all her beauties,

Green slates -- seen high on roofs, or lower
     In waggon, truck, or lorry --
Cry out:  "Our home was where you saw her
     Standing in the quarry!"

Thomas Hardy, Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs, and Trifles (Macmillan 1925).

This is typical of Hardy, isn't it?  He once wrote of himself:  "I believe it would be said by people who knew me well that I have a faculty (possibly not uncommon) for burying an emotion in my heart or brain for forty years, and exhuming it at the end of that time as fresh as when interred."  (Thomas Hardy, The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy (edited by Michael Millgate) (Macmillan 1985), page 408.)  Hardy suggests that his "faculty" is "possibly not uncommon," but I think not:  he was remarkably conversant with the past events of his life, down to the smallest detail. From his earliest years, he was always looking.  And he forgot nothing. Although we may lack Hardy's special gift, I think we all share the ability to "exhume" moments out of our past that have long been "interred."  (A characteristic choice of words by Hardy, given his fondness for graveyards and ghosts.)

James Cowie (1886-1956), "Pastoral"

As I noted in a recent post, I never use the word "commonplace" in a pejorative sense.  The same is true of the word "prosaic."  The visitants from our past often (perhaps nearly always) move us because they arise out of, or are intertwined with, that which is commonplace or prosaic.  We have no way of knowing what moments will come to define our lives, nor what part of each moment will haunt us all our days.

The blossom of a woodspurge.  "The crushed bracken and the wings/Of doves among dim branches far above."  Green slates.  A bamboo sleeping mat.

          Bamboo Mat

I cannot bear to put away
the bamboo sleeping mat --

that first night I brought you home,
I watched you roll it out.

Yüan Chen (779-831) (translated by Sam Hamill), in Sam Hamill, Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese (BOA Editions 2000).  Yüan Chen wrote the poem after the death of his wife.

Dudley Holland (1915-1956), "Winter Morning" (1945)

"Yon Far Country"

I would like to stay in "the land of lost content" for a moment longer.

Into my heart an air that kills
     From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
     What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
     I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
     And cannot come again.

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

In my previous post, I placed this poem in apposition to the phrase "the past is a foreign country."  The "far country" referred to by Housman is the lost, irredeemable past.  In Housman's case, the defining feature of that irrecoverable past is the boundless prospect of love, a love that proved to be unrequited.

George Rose (1882-1955), "Fyfield, Essex" (c. 1951)

The "far country" of the past can be found in another poem by Housman.

Alas, the country whence I fare,
     It is where I would stay;
And where I would not, it is there
     That I shall be for aye.

A. E. Housman, More Poems (1936).  "Aye" is used in the sense of "ever, always, continually."  OED.

Housman's two poems bring to mind this:

                         Memory

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

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in William Rossetti (editor), The Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1903).

Although Housman was at pains to point out that he was not a Stoic in the Greek and Roman philosophical sense, I would suggest that he was nevertheless a lower-case stoic in terms of the expression of his emotions. He would likely find Rossetti's poem to be a bit florid.  But I think it fits.

George Rose, "Breaking the Clod"

I am also drawn back to J. L. Carr's novel A Month in the Country, which, as I have noted before, contains echoes of Housman's poetry.  Some brief background:  the story is centered on Tom Birkin, a veteran of the First World War who has received a commission to restore a Medieval wall-painting in a small church in "Oxgodby."  Here are the novel's concluding paragraphs (for those of you who have not read the book, and may wish to, there are no "spoilers" in the following passage):

"And, standing before the great spread of colour, I felt the old tingling excitement and a sureness that the time would come when some stranger would stand there too and understand.

It would be like someone coming to Malvern, bland Malvern, who is halted by the thought that Edward Elgar walked this road on his way to give music lessons or, looking over to the Clee Hills, reflects that Housman had stood in that place, regretting his land of lost content.  And, at such a time, for a few of us there will always be a tugging at the heart -- knowing a precious moment gone and we not there.

We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever -- the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face.  They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.

All this happened so long ago.  And I never returned, never wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgodby.  So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen.

But this was something I knew nothing of as I closed the gate and set off across the meadow."

J. L. Carr, A Month in the Country (1980; revised 1990).

George Rose, "The Usurper's Field"

Small Things

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "The Woodspurge" prompted me to pay closer attention to the soil as I weeded the garden yesterday.  As I recently noted in connection with the annual awakening of the ant world, there is a great deal going on at ground level, much of which escapes our notice.

Eliot Hodgkin, "The Haberdashers' Hall, 8 May 1945" (1945)

             In the Fallow Field

I went down on my hands and knees
Looking for trees,
Twin leaves that, sprung from seeds,
Were now too big
For stems much thinner than a twig.
These soon with chamomile and clover
And other fallow weeds
Would be turned over;
And I was thinking how
It was a pity someone should not know
That a great forest fell before the plough.

Andrew Young, Collected Poems (Rupert Hart-Davis 1960).

Whenever I read Andrew Young's poetry, I cannot help but feel that I have paid insufficient attention to the world around me.  The following poem provides another instance of Young teaching us how to be on the lookout for things that we might otherwise miss.

                        The Fairy Ring

Here the horse-mushrooms make a fairy ring,
     Some standing upright and some overthrown,
A small Stonehenge, where heavy black snails cling
     And bite away, like Time, the tender stone.

Andrew Young, Ibid.

Eliot Hodgkin, "Undergrowth" (1941)

"The Woodspurge Has A Cup Of Three"

I have commented previously upon two aspects of memory.  First, of all the hours that we have lived, only a small number of seemingly commonplace or nondescript moments lodge themselves in our brains, and remain subject to recall with great sensory and emotional clarity.  Of course, this means that these moments are not "commonplace" or "nondescript" at all. They leave a thread to be followed.

Second, when it comes to these exceptional moments, there are a few details that stand out from everything else.  These details no doubt caused the moment to burrow into our memory in the first place.  Again, they may seem commonplace or nondescript:  a cast of light, a sward of green, a path above the sea . . .

William Holman Hunt, "Our English Coasts (Strayed Sheep)" (1852)

               The Woodspurge

The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
I had walked on at the wind's will, --
I sat now, for the wind was still.

Between my knees my forehead was, --
My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
My hair was over in the grass,
My naked ears heard the day pass.

My eyes, wide open, had the run
Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
Among those few, out of the sun,
The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.

From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom or even memory:
One thing then learnt remains to me, --
The woodspurge has a cup of three.

William Rossetti (editor), The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Volume I (1887).

The crystal-clear, evocative quality of the woodspurge is reminiscent of "the crushed bracken and the wings/Of doves among dim branches" in Patrick MacDonogh's "Revaluation."

                    Revaluation

Now I remember nothing of our love
So well as the crushed bracken and the wings
Of doves among dim branches far above --
Strange how the count of time revalues things!

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

William Holman Hunt

"The Festival of St Swithin (The Dovecot)" (1865)

Another poem by Rossetti seems apt.

                       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 (1887).

William Holman Hunt, "The Haunted Manor" (1849)

Memory: "There Is Nothing To Be Frightened Of"

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)

"Sleeping At Last"

The funereal theme of Laurence Whistler's "A Form of Epitaph" put me in mind of a poem by Christina Rossetti.  As I have suggested previously, there is a melancholy cast to Rossetti's poetry.  She is ever aware of mortality (which is not a bad thing in my book).  The following poem is a marvel of  music, with its repetitions (it is a roundel) and its internal rhymes.

                         Sleeping at Last

Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over,
   Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past,
Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover,
         Sleeping at last.

   No more a tired heart downcast or overcast,
No more pangs that wring or shifting fears that hover,
   Sleeping at last in a dreamless sleep locked fast.

Fast asleep.  Singing birds in their leafy cover
   Cannot wake her, nor shake her the gusty blast.
Under the purple thyme and the purple clover
         Sleeping at last.

Christina Rossetti, New Poems, Hitherto Unpublished or Uncollected (edited by William Michael Rossetti) (1896).  "Sleeping at Last" was published after Rossetti's death.  There are contending views as to whether it was the final poem written by her.  The other candidate is "Heaven Overarches." 

                     Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "Christina Rossetti" (1866)

Victorian Poetry: A Confession

A confession:  I am fond of Victorian poetry.  That being said (and in order to perhaps temper your dismay, delight, or indifference), let me make clear that this fondness excludes: (1) wide swathes of Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold; (2) lengthy dramatic poems set in mythic, Arthurian, exotic, or antique lands (alas! no Proserpinas, Pomonas, or Pans!); and (3) Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll.

So, what does that leave us with?  Consider this:

                  Memory

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

Or this:

Below the surface-stream, shallow and light,
Of what we say we feel - below the stream,
As light, of what we think we feel - there flows
With noiseless current strong, obscure and deep,
The central stream of what we feel indeed.

And, finally, consider this:

The Metropolitan Underground Railway

Here were a goodly place wherein to die; --
   Grown latterly to sudden change averse,
All violent contrasts fain avoid would I
   On passing from this world into a worse.

"Memory" is by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), who is better known as a Pre-Raphaelite painter than as a poet.  "Below the surface-stream" is by Matthew Arnold.  (Although I said that my fondness excludes "wide swathes" of Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold - it does not exclude everything.)  "The Metropolitan Underground Railway" is by William Watson (1858-1935).  Despite a bit of slightly archaic diction in places, these poems seem to me to be, well, timeless - and not stereotypically "Victorian" as that term is commonly understood.  I was surprised when I first came across them.  They made me realize that there is more to "Victorian" England than meets the eye.

So, from time to time, I will treat you (or afflict you, as the case may be) with poems by the likes of William Allingham, Richard Watson Dixon, Edward Dowden, Coventry Patmore, William Renton, A. Mary F. Robinson, William Bell Scott, C. S. Calverley, John Leicester Warren, Arthur Hugh Clough, and Philip Bourke Marston. 

Before I go, I will cave in and permit one "Proserpina" (by Dante Gabriel Rossetti):