"A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal"

In my previous post, I suggested that, although poetry should not set out to edify, it does provide us with inklings of what it means to be a human being in a transitory world.  For instance (and speaking solely for myself), poetry may provide (in conjunction with the hard facts of reality) a needed slap in the face that awakens one from a sleepwalk that has been going on for weeks, months, years -- nay, decades.

I do not believe that art is life or that life is art.  But they do at times suddenly intersect.  The following poem is one of my favorite poems.  Apart from loving it for its beauty, I had blithely and arrogantly convinced myself that I had taken its lesson to heart.  As it turns out, I knew nothing, absolutely nothing.  And now I have lived it.

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).

Duncan Grant, "Window, South of France" (1928)

The third line of the final stanza of Walter de la Mare's "Fare Well" seems to be a direct echo of the first line of Wordsworth's poem.

Look thy last on all things lovely,
Every hour.  Let no night
Seal thy sense in deathly slumber
        Till to delight
Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;
Since that all things thou wouldst praise
Beauty took from those who loved them
        In other days.

Walter de la Mare, Motley and Other Poems (1918).

Paying attention -- paying loving attention -- is a duty we owe to the sad and beautiful world and to those making their way through the world with us.  A simple thing, one would think.  One would think.  But, as we all know, simple things are often easier said than done.

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

Ezra Pound seems a world away from William Wordsworth and Walter de la Mare, but he had his moments.  He wrote the following untitled poem in his younger years, before he embarked on the mad project of The Cantos.

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
                       Not shaking the grass.

Ezra Pound, Personae (1926).

Duncan Grant, "The Doorway" (1929)

"I Desired My Dust To Be Mingled With Yours Forever And Forever And Forever"

I knew nothing of Chinese poetry until I encountered the following poem by Li Po (701-762) in the mid-1970s, when I was in college.  I thought then, and I still think, that it is one of the loveliest poems that I have ever read.

Richard Eurich, "Docks at Goole, Early Morning" (1971)

          The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me.  I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
                              As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

Li Po (translated by Ezra Pound), in Ezra Pound, Cathay (1915).

Richard Eurich, "Robin Hood's Bay in Wartime" (1940)

Whatever one may think of Ezra Pound, he deserves our gratitude for having played a key role in introducing Chinese poetry to English-speaking audiences.  He, along with Arthur Waley (whose work I have commented upon before), pioneered the translation of Chinese poetry into English at the beginning of the 20th century.

In general, I tend to share Philip Larkin's view of Pound's less-than-beneficent influence on Western culture.  Pound was one of the infamous "three Ps" identified by Larkin:

"This is my essential criticism of modernism, whether perpetrated by Parker [Charlie], Pound or Picasso:  it helps us neither to enjoy nor endure. It will divert us as long as we are prepared to be mystified or outraged, but maintains its hold only by being more mystifying and more outrageous:  it has no lasting power."

Philip Larkin, All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961-1971 (Faber and Faber 1985), page 27.  Larkin includes the following footnote to the above passage:  "The reader will have guessed by now that I am using these pleasantly alliterative names to represent not only their rightful owners but every practitioner who might be said to have succeeded them."  Ibid.

However, I think that Pound did not go off the deep end poetically, philosophically, politically, and psychologically until he abandoned lyric poetry for The Cantos around 1917 or so.  Prior to that time he wrote some fine poems.  Further, his exploration of non-English poetry led him to Chinese poetry, which resulted in the beautiful translations contained in Cathay.  Although Pound has been criticized for not always being faithful to the original Chinese texts, he did bring an instinctive poetic sensibility to the translations, which is evident in "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter."

Richard Eurich, "Dorset Cove" (1939)

"I Have Been A Hazel-Tree, And They Hung The Pilot Star And The Crooked Plough Among My Leaves"

There was a time (during my college years and immediately thereafter) when I was in love with the poetry of Yeats.  I'm sure that many others have had the same experience.  A few lines can capture the essence of this youthful infatuation.  "When you are old and grey and full of sleep . . ."  "A pity beyond all telling/Is hid in the heart of love . . ."  "The trees are in their autumn beauty,/The woodland paths are dry . . ."  "And the white breast of the dim sea/And all dishevelled wandering stars."  It is easy to see why I was beguiled.

But at some point it all seemed too high-pitched.  Added to that was Yeats's penchant for self-dramatization and for oracular pronouncements based upon questionable cosmologies.  And then I discovered, in turn, Thomas Hardy, Edward Thomas, and Philip Larkin.  I immediately felt:  "This is more like real life."

Don't get me wrong:  in terms of sheer volume of beautiful and memorable poems, Yeats has few (or, perhaps, no) equals.  His poetry still delights me when I read it.  But, as the saying goes, the thrill is gone.  I am perfectly willing to concede that my falling out of love is due to a spiritual, emotional, and/or aesthetic failure on my part.  Or perhaps I just grew old. (After all, The White Album no longer means to me what it once did.)

All of this leads up to a lovely poem by Yeats -- a poem that goes well with Ezra Pound's "I stood still and was a tree amid the wood."

Samuel Palmer, "The Gleaning Field" (c. 1833)

   He Thinks of His Past Greatness when a Part
                of the Constellations of Heaven

I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young
And weep because I know all things now:
I have been a hazel-tree, and they hung
The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough
Among my leaves in times out of mind:
I became a rush that horses tread:
I became a man, a hater of the wind,
Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head
May not lie on the breast nor his lips on the hair
Of the woman that he loves, until he dies.
O beast of the wilderness, bird of the air,
Must I endure your amorous cries?

W. B. Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds (1899).

Nobody does this sort of thing better than Yeats.  I confess that I can still feel the pull.

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

"I Stood Still And Was A Tree Amid The Wood"

In "The Trees," Philip Larkin writes:  "The trees are coming into leaf/Like something almost being said."  The lines bring to mind two lines from Wallace Stevens's "The Motive for Metaphor":  ". . . you were happy in spring,/With the half colors of quarter-things."

As spring progresses, the leaves of the trees move through innumerable shades of green.  On a sunny day, the larger leaves are diaphanous, with all the variations of green taking on a tinge of sun-shot yellow.  If it is breezy, their green shadows sway and flutter against each other, flowing like a stream.

Stephen McKenna, "An English Oak Tree" (1981)

                        The Tree

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,
Knowing the truth of things unseen before;
Of Daphne and the laurel bow
And that god-feasting couple old
That grew elm-oak amid the wold.
'Twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated, and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart's home
That they might do this wonder thing;
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
And many a new thing understood
That was rank folly to my head before.

Ezra Pound, A Lume Spento (1908).

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Daphne (line 3) is transformed into a laurel tree as she is pursued by Apollo.  The "god-feasting couple old" (line 4) refers to the story of Baucis and Philemon in Metamorphoses.  The couple provided a meal to Zeus and Hermes when no one else in their village would do so. As a reward, Zeus spared their lives when he destroyed the village and its inhospitable residents.  He also granted their wish that, should one of them die, the other would die at the same time.  Much later, as they died of old age, they embraced, and as they did so they were transformed into intertwining trees:  an oak and a lime.  Pound uses "elm-oak" (line 5).

Stephen McKenna, "Foliage" (1983)