"Fall Leaves Fall"

In this part of the world, autumn has thus far been benign, wistful and benign.  The winds have rattled the casements now and then.  And for some reason the term "polar vortex" (whatever that means) has captured the imagination of the media.  But the final ever-so-slight step has not yet been taken.

There are those who revel in that final step.  Or so they say.

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

Emily Bronte, in Janet Gezari (editor), Emily Bronte: The Complete Poems (Penguin 1992).

The text above is as it appears in Bronte's manuscript, untitled and without punctuation.  The poem was not published until 1910.  It often appears in editions of Bronte's poems and in anthologies with punctuation added by modern editors.  For instance:

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 (1910).

Being used to the punctuated version of the poem, the unpunctuated version seemed a bit odd when I first encountered it in the Penguin edition.  But I now prefer it:  the lack of punctuation seems to create a force and a flow that fit well with the emotion expressed in the poem.  One senses the rush of feelings.

Rex Vicat Cole (1870-1940), "The Mill" (1922)

I had never thought of the following poem in conjunction with Bronte's poem.  But, by chance, I read them a few days apart recently, and I was struck by the similarities.  But I may be mistaken.

            My November Guest

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
     Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
     She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
     She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted gray
     Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
     The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
     And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
     The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
     And they are better for her praise.

Robert Frost, A Boy's Will (1913).  (A side-note:  in my previous post, I mentioned that, when A Boy's Will  was first published, Frost included, in the table of contents, a one sentence gloss for each poem.  His gloss for "My November Guest" was:  "He is in love with being misunderstood.")

I am not suggesting that there is any intentional echoing of Bronte by Frost.  I have no idea whether he was even aware of the poem.  Rather, I am thinking of "my Sorrow."  I'd say that "my Sorrow" is something that the two of them had in common.

Rex Vicat Cole, "Landscape with Farm" (c. 1938)

Finally, although I remain firm in my oft-stated position that it is unfair to pigeonhole Thomas Hardy as a "pessimist," he can conjure up a dark and stormy Dorset autumn night that is every bit as harrowing and portentous as a dark and stormy Bronte Yorkshire moor autumn night.

                 Night-Time in Mid-Fall

It is a storm-strid night, winds footing swift
          Through the blind profound;
     I know the happenings from their sound;
Leaves totter down still green, and spin and drift;
The tree-trunks rock to their roots, which wrench and lift
The loam where they run onward underground.

The streams are muddy and swollen; eels migrate
          To a new abode;
     Even cross, 'tis said, the turnpike-road;
(Men's feet have felt their crawl, home-coming late):
The westward fronts of towers are saturate,
Church-timbers crack, and witches ride abroad.

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

Rex Vicat Cole, "Sompting Church, Sussex"

Stepping Stones

As I have remarked before (stating the obvious, I realize), one of the pleasures of reading poetry is the way in which one poem leads to another. One can take a long journey through the ages and across the globe by letting one poem hand you off to the next poem.  But it will not be a straight-lined journey, for you will find yourself heading off on diverting detours.  Thus, for instance, the following untitled poem by A. E. Housman carries echoes of at least two other poems.

The night is freezing fast,
     To-morrow comes December;
          And winterfalls of old
Are with me from the past;
     And chiefly I remember
          How Dick would hate the cold.

Fall, winter, fall; for he,
     Prompt hand and headpiece clever,
          Has woven a winter robe,
And made of earth and sea
     His overcoat for ever,
          And wears the turning globe.

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

"Winterfall" (line 3) does not appear in The Oxford English Dictionary.  A lovely word.

William Anstice Brown, "Autumn" (1981)

The second stanza of Housman's poem brings to mind a poem by William Wordsworth (of which I have sung the praises on more than one occasion).

A slumber did my spirit seal;
     I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
     The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
     She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
     With rocks, and stones, and trees.

William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads, with Other Poems (1800).

Several commentators have noticed the parallels between the two poems, but no one knows whether Housman's echo of Wordsworth was conscious or subconscious.

William Anstice Brown, "Spring" (1981)

And, in a different direction, "fall, winter, fall" in the first line of the second stanza leads us to this:

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

Emily Bronte, The Complete Poems (edited by Janet Gezari) (Penguin 1992).  The poem is unpunctuated, as it appears in Bronte's manuscript.  It was not published during her lifetime.

Whether Housman used "fall leaves fall" as a model for "fall, winter, fall" we do not know.  It is likely mere happenstance, which is just as well:  I am not suggesting that somebody should write an academic paper on "The Influence of Emily Bronte on A. E. Housman."  God forbid!  No, I am simply suggesting that, for purposes of our poetic journey, these sorts of serendipities can carry us from one place to the next.

William Anstice Brown, "In Purley Meadow, Sherborne, Dorset" (1979)

"Far Away Is The Land Of Rest"

In my last two posts, I have spent some time (too much, no doubt) on the subject of whether the term "melancholy" appropriately describes Christina Rossetti's poetry.  Well, then, what are we to make of the poetry of Emily Bronte?  I confess that I am a stranger to the fiction of the Bronte sisters, but I am fond of Emily Bronte's poetry.  Given the literary and cinematic freight that this ill-fated family now carries with it -- empty (except for two lovers), dark, windswept moors -- "melancholy" is a word that inescapably springs to mind in connection with anything written by the trio.

Still, one comes up against the usual choice (which has been noted here on more than one occasion):  one person's "melancholia" or "pessimism" is another person's "realism" or "truth."  Consider, for instance, the following untitled poem by Emily Bronte.

                        Isaac Cooke (1846-1922), "The Crater of Snowdon"

Far away is the land of rest
Thousand miles are stretched between
Many a mountain's stormy crest
Many a desert void of green

Wasted worn is the traveller
Dark his heart and dim his eye
Without hope or comforter
Faltering faint and ready to die

Often he looks to the ruthless sky
Often he looks o'er his dreary road
Often he wishes down to lie
And render up life's tiresome load

But yet faint not mournful man
Leagues on leagues are left behind
Since your sunless course began
Then go on to toil resigned

If you still despair control
Hush its whispers in your breast
You shall reach the final goal
You shall win the land of rest

Emily Bronte, The Complete Poems (edited by Janet Gezari) (Penguin 1992).  (The poem was in manuscript form at the time of Bronte's death. This accounts for the lack of punctuation.  It was first published in 1910.)

             Isaac Cooke, "Showers on the Way to Goat's Water, Coniston"

Well, that may be melancholy.  Bronte wrote the poem in October of 1837. Christina Rossetti wrote the following poem in June of 1858.  She could not have known of Bronte's poem since, as noted above, it was not published until 1910.

                       Up-Hill

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
     Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
     From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
     A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
     You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
     Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
     They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
     Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
     Yea, beds for all who come.

Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862).

               Isaac Cooke, "Showers Over Low Water, Old Man, Coniston"

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

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

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

                             Eliot Hodgkin, "Six Cape Gooseberries" (1954)

                              Smile, Death

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

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

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

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

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

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

                             Eliot Hodgkin, "Seven Brussels Sprouts" (1955)

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

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)

"Fall, Leaves, Fall"

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)