Companions

I am, as the saying goes, "a dog person."  But I have been extremely fond of quite a few cats in my time.  For instance, there is George, the orange cat who lives down the block.  Three or four evenings a week he strolls through the back garden at around seven o'clock, feigning (or is he feigning?) indifference.  If his presence is not noticed and acknowledged, he will quietly sit outside the French doors, staring inside, until he is duly greeted for the evening.  After a brief conversation, he will go his way, leaving no promises in his wake.

Thus, it is not an either/or matter for me.  I am unashamedly sentimental about the dogs and cats I have known.  Anthropomorphism bothers me not when it comes to these wonderful beings.  And I am perplexed by, and wary of, anyone who expresses indifference to them.

As W. H. Auden suggests, each occupies a distinctive place in our lives.

Dog    The single creature leads a partial life,
            Man by his mind, and by his nose the hound;
            He needs the deep emotions I can give,
            I scent in him a vaster hunting ground.

Cats    Like calls to like, to share is to relieve  
            And sympathy the root bears love the flower;
            He feels in us, and we in him perceive
            A common passion for the lonely hour.

Cats    We move in our apartness and our pride
            About the decent dwellings he has made:
Dog    In all his walks I follow at his side,
            His faithful servant and his loving shade.

W. H. Auden, Poem V in "Ten Songs," Collected Poems (Random House 1976).  The poem is untitled.  It was written in 1939.

Duncan Grant, "Girl at the Piano" (1940)

The contemplative detachment of cats is one of their attractive characteristics.  Again, whether this is feigned or not, I am not able to say. While dogs are certainly capable of contemplation, detachment is not one of their strong suits.

Imagine the word "dog" substituted for "cat" in the following haiku.  It just doesn't feel right.

     The peony;
A silver cat;
     A golden butterfly.

Buson (1716-1784) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 3: Summer-Autumn (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 295.

Likewise, a dog wouldn't fit in a tableau such as this.

     The Cat and the Sea

It is a matter of a black cat
On a bare cliff top in March
Whose eyes anticipate
The gorse petals;

The formal equation of
A domestic purr
With the cold interiors
Of the sea's mirror.

R. S. Thomas, Poetry for Supper (Rupert Hart-Davis 1958).

Philip Connard (1875-1958), "Jane, Evelyn, James and Helen" (1913)

There comes a time in each of our lives when we turn to our faithful companion, feline or canine, and say something along the lines of:  "Well, at least you love me."  Or:  "Well, at least you understand me."  And your companion will look directly into your eyes and say, wordlessly:  "Of course I do."

     The Cat Says --

The Cat says,
And so say I,
Love is a winter fire,
And a summer lawn.
Love is a sharp claw,
Love is a pricked ear,
Love is a strong wind blowing at night
And a light sleep without fear.

I say,
And the Cat says too,
Love is a warm plumage
And a scented wine.
Love is a mackerel sky,
Love is the moon in a well,
Love is a feather the midnight owl lets fall,
And all oceans in a shell.

Sylvia Townsend Warner, New Collected Poems (edited by Claire Harman) (Fyfield Books/Carcanet 2008).

Some among us may find this sort of thing preposterous, sentimental, childlike.  Not I.  I suppose one's views depend upon how many dogs and cats one has been acquainted with.  I'm reminded of something that Arthur Symons wrote about his dog Api:  "It is enough to say that the eyes would be human, if human beings could concentrate so much of themselves into their eyes."

John Aldridge (1905-1983), "Lady with Cat"

This last part is difficult, for the memories of past companions come rushing.  "At first we seek to forget sorrow, to drown it in noise or oblivion; but gradually it comes back and takes hold of us and becomes our guest. Unbidden, we accept it, and recollection sits down with it by our hearth, an old friend."  Arthur Symons, "For Api," Collected Works, Poems: Volume Three (1924).

Yes, so one hopes, but still . . .

     Parting from a Cat

Whoever says farewell,
Has, for acquaintance, Death:
Small death, maybe, but still
Of all things dreaded most.
Yesterday I lost
An old, exacting friend
Who for ten years had haunted
My labours like a ghost,
Making my days enchanted
With feline airs and fancies.
Time, no doubt, will send
Some solace; and I know
Memory enhances
The half-companionship
Which is the most that can
Exist between cat and man.
But even so, I mourn
With a miniature grief
That won't relax its grip
Whichever way I turn,
Seeking to forget
My unimportant pet,
And that all life is brief.

Richard Church, The Inheritors: Poems 1948-1955 (Heinemann 1957).

Edward Bawden, "Roses and Rue" (1986)

"Constellated Daisies"

Before I return to dust I intend to read all 947 of Thomas Hardy's poems. (James Gibson has numbered them for us in his 1976 edition of Hardy's Complete Poems.)  Mind you, I say this with a sense of excitement and anticipation, not with a sense of obligation.

I suspect that many of those who love Hardy's poetry feel as I do:  no matter how long you have been reading him, there is always the expectation that, upon turning the page, a new discovery awaits you.  Part of me wishes that I will never reach the end:  I like the fact that uncharted territory lies before me.

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

Thus, for instance, I recently came across the following poem for the first time.  It turns out that one line of it fits well with the astronomical theme of my previous post.  And a lovely line it is.

               The Rambler

I do not see the hills around,
Nor mark the tints the copses wear;
I do not note the grassy ground
And constellated daisies there.

I hear not the contralto note
Of cuckoos hid on either hand,
The whirr that shakes the nighthawk's throat
When eve's brown awning hoods the land.

Some say each songster, tree, and mead --
All eloquent of love divine --
Receives their constant careful heed:
Such keen appraisement is not mine.

The tones around me that I hear,
The aspects, meanings, shapes I see,
Are those far back ones missed when near,
And now perceived too late by me!

Thomas Hardy, Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses (1909).

Many people know Hardy's poetry only through the anthology pieces:  e.g., "During Wind and Rain," "The Darkling Thrush," "The Convergence of the Twain," "Channel Firing," "The Oxen," et cetera.  But Hardy's depth, expansiveness, and charm only become apparent if one immerses oneself in the hundreds of poems that fill in the interstices of his universe -- and it is indeed an entire universe.

Like those hundreds of other poems, "The Rambler" states a truth about life; a small truth, perhaps, but one we all have felt.  (Which is not to say that it is meant to instruct or to edify.  Hardy was above all an intent and penetrating onlooker, not a moral instructor.)  In addition (for one reader, at least), it contains a beautiful image that, once seen, can never be forgotten: "constellated daisies."  In Hardy's poetry, there is no end of these small, beautiful, and humanly truthful revelations.

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

"Constellated daisies" brings to mind a poem by Andrew Young that has appeared here before, but is worth revisiting (even if it is not the daisy time of year).  Heavenly bodies again make an appearance.

                     Daisies

The stars are everywhere to-night,
Above, beneath me and around;
They fill the sky with powdery light
And glimmer from the night-strewn ground;
For where the folded daisies are
In every one I see a star.

And so I know that when I pass
Where no sun's shadow counts the hours
And where the sky was there is grass
And where the stars were there are flowers,
Through the long night in which I lie
Stars will be shining in my sky.

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

Harald Sohlberg, "Flower Meadow in the North" (1905)

"The Aspens At The Cross-Roads Talk Together"

Long-time readers of this blog may have noticed that, when Robert Frost's name comes up, I am likely to think of Edward Thomas.  And vice-versa. Thus, not surprisingly, Frost's "Tree at My Window" (which appeared in my previous post) got me to thinking about one of my favorite poems by Thomas.

Again, the subject is talking trees.  Please note the final stanza and, in particular, the final line, which are pure Thomas and pure Frost.  It is easy to understand why, after Thomas's death, Frost wrote:  "Edward Thomas was the only brother I ever had."  The stanza provides, I think, a great deal of insight into the characters of both men.

                    Edward Bawden, "The Temple of Concord, Audley End"

                           Aspens

All day and night, save winter, every weather,
Above the inn, the smithy, and the shop,
The aspens at the cross-roads talk together
Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top.

Out of the blacksmith's cavern comes the ringing
Of hammer, shoe, and anvil; out of the inn
The clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing --
The sounds that for these fifty years have been.

The whisper of the aspens is not drowned,
And over lightless pane and footless road,
Empty as sky, with every other sound
Not ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode,

A silent smithy, a silent inn, nor fails
In the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom,
In tempest or the night of nightingales,
To turn the cross-roads to a ghostly room.

And it would be the same were no house near.
Over all sorts of weather, men, and times,
Aspens must shake their leaves and men may hear
But need not listen, more than to my rhymes.

Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves
We cannot other than an aspen be
That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves,
Or so men think who like a different tree.

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

                                 Edward Bawden, "Craigievar Castle"

Thomas wrote "Aspens" in July of 1915.  It was among a set of poems that he sent to Frost that month.  In a letter to Thomas commenting on the poems, Frost wrote:  "Your last poem 'Aspens' seems the loveliest of all." Selected Letters of Robert Frost (1964), page 185.

Thomas also sent a copy of the poem to Eleanor Farjeon.  After receiving her comments on the poem, Thomas wrote back to her on July 21, 1915:

"About 'Aspens' you missed just the turn that I thought essential.  I was the aspen.  'We' meant the trees and I with my dejected shyness.  Does that clear it up, or do you think in rereading it that I have not emphasized it enough?"

Eleanor Farjeon, Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years (Oxford University Press 1958), pages 152-153.

A final note:  "the night of nightingales" is very risky, but very lovely.

                                 Edward Bawden, "The Bell Inn" (1939)

"To Fling His Soul Upon The Growing Gloom"

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)

"Perpetual Seed"

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"

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)

A Tuft Of Kelp, Birds, And A Cat

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)

"The Living Branches Won't Let It Fall": Norman MacCaig And Patrick MacDonogh

We have had our usual share of wind storms this winter.  In the still-leafless woods that I pass through on my walks, fallen upper limbs lie cradled in the lower branches.  Norman MacCaig (1910-1996) has written of this.

               In Memoriam

On that stormy night
a top branch broke off
on the biggest tree in my garden.

It's still up there.  Though its leaves
are withered black among the green
the living branches
won't let it fall.

Norman MacCaig, Collected Poems (Chatto & Windus 1990).

MacCaig's poem brings to mind a poem by Patrick MacDonogh, a poem that I have posted before.  However, it is a good idea to circle back now and then.

                              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 (The Gallery Press 2001).

                         Edward Bawden, "Garden by Moonlight" (1954)

"Humbug Still Walks Our Land On Stilts"

When it comes to politics, I try to keep my mouth shut.  I will simply say that, although I am an American, I trace my political principles (such as they are) back to Edmund Burke.  Samuel Johnson said of Burke:

If a man were to go by chance at the same time with Burke under a shed to shun a shower, he would say, "this is an extraordinary man."  If Burke should go into a stable to see his horse dressed, the ostler would say, "we have had an extraordinary man here."

James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (conversation between Johnson and Boswell on May 15, 1784).  Johnson was not usually given to such praise.  He seems to have had a great fondness for Burke.  (They did disagree about the unruly American colonies, however.)   

As for contemporary politicians (including all current presidents, prime ministers, premiers, and potentates), the following poem by W. R. Rodgers suffices:

                    The Pier

Only a placid sea, and
A pier where no boat comes,
But people stand at the end
And spit into the water,
Dimpling it, and watch a dog
That chins and churns back to land.

I had come here to see
Humbug embark, deported,
Protected from the crowd.
But he has not come today.
And anyway there is no boat
To take him.  And no one cares.
So Humbug still walks our land
On stilts, is still looked up to.

W. R. Rodgers, Awake! and Other Poems (1941).

                                Edward Bawden, "Newhaven" (1935)