Fireflies And Stars

I once lived in Japan for a year, so I can attest to the fact that the summer heat there can be a stun to the senses.  But, as is usually the case in life, there are compensations.  Thus, for instance, I soon came to share the fondness of the Japanese for cicadas (semi) and fireflies (hotaru), two inhabitants of the "other worlds" that I referred to in my previous post.

When I think back on that summer, what often comes to mind is the constant shrill cry of the semi and the sight of dozens of hotaru floating above the grass beside a river that I sometimes walked along in the evening.  I will save the cicadas for another occasion.  Today I would like to consider the fireflies.

As one might expect, fireflies often find their way into haiku.

     The first fire-fly!
It was off, away, --
     The wind left in my hand.

Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 3: Summer-Autumn (Hokuseido 1952), page 214.

     A fire-fly flitted by:
"Look!" I almost said, --
     But I was alone.

Taigi (1709-1772) (translated by R. H. Blyth), Ibid, page 216.

     Here and there,
The night-grass is green
     From the fire-flies.

Hojo (translated by R. H. Blyth), Ibid, page 218.

The first two haiku capture wonderfully the childlike joy I suspect most of us have felt when we come upon fireflies.  "Look!"  And then the urge to chase after them.  But the third haiku is something else entirely.  About it, I will keep my mouth shut and let it speak for itself.

Eugene Jansson, "View from Kattgrand" (1894)

Of course, the fascination with fireflies knows no boundaries of time or space.  In the final sentences of his last published work, John Ruskin writes:

"We . . . walked together that evening on the hills above [Siena], where the fireflies among the scented thickets shone fitfully in the still undarkened air.  How they shone! moving like fine-broken starlight through the purple leaves.  How they shone! through the sunset that faded into thunderous night as I entered Siena three days before, the white edges of the mountainous clouds still lighted from the west, and the openly golden sky calm behind the Gate of Siena's heart, with its still golden words, 'Cor magis tibi Sena pandit,' and the fireflies everywhere in sky and cloud rising and falling, mixed with the lightning, and more intense than the stars."

John Ruskin, Praeterita: Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts Perhaps Worthy of Memory in My Past Life, Volume III (1900), pages 181-182 (italics in original).  Ruskin translated "Cor magis tibi Sena pandit" as follows:  "More than her gates, Siena opens her heart to you."  John Ruskin, Val d'Arno (1890 edition), page 26.

It is lovely that Ruskin ended his literary endeavors with this image of the fireflies of Tuscany.  The image haunted him.  Here it is again, in an earlier work:

"The Dominican convent is situated at the bottom of the slope of olives, distinguished only by its narrow and low spire; a cypress avenue recedes from it towards Florence . . . No extended prospect is open to it; though over the low wall, and through the sharp, thickset olive leaves, may be seen one silver gleam of the Arno, and, at evening, the peaks of the Carrara mountains, purple against the twilight, dark and calm, while the fire-flies glance beneath, silent and intermittent, like stars upon the rippling of mute, soft sea."

John Ruskin, On the Old Road, Volume I, Part 1 (1885), pages 112-113.

Harald Sohlberg, "Night" (1904)

And now, from Japan and Italy, onward to New England.

               Fireflies in the Garden

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.

Robert Frost, West-Running Brook (1928).

This is vintage Frost:  inflation combined with deflation.  And perhaps (although I may be mistaken) there is one of those Frostian ambiguities. To wit:  what does "start" mean in "Achieve at times a very star-like start"?  A "start" as in a "beginning"?  Or a "start" as in a "sudden involuntary movement of the body, occasioned by surprise, terror, joy or grief, or the recollection of something forgotten"?  OED.  But I may simply be slow on the uptake (as well as being in violation of my own oft-stated strictures about over-interpreting poems).

Eugene Jansson, "Riddarfjarden, Stockholm" (1898)

To close, here is Ruskin once more, in a letter written from Pistoia:

"I have just come in from an evening walk among the stars and fireflies. One hardly knows where one has got to between them, for the flies flash, as you know, exactly like stars on the sea, and the impression to the eye is as if one was walking on water.  I was not the least prepared for their intense brilliancy.  They dazzled me like fireworks, and it was very heavenly to see them floating, field beyond field, under the shadowy vines."

John Ruskin, Letter to John James Ruskin (May 28, 1845), in E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (editors), The Works of John Ruskin: Library Edition, Volume XXXV (Praeterita and Dilecta), page 562, footnote 1.

Harald Sohlberg, "Midsummer Night"

"Isles Of Paradise"

Yearning is one of the defining characteristics of the poems written by the Decadent poets of the 1890s.  I will state at the outset that I find nothing wrong with yearning per se.  It is the twin of hope (albeit with more of an edge of desire and longing), which Samuel Johnson was wont to identify as an essential feature of what it means to be human.

For me, at least, the yearning of the Nineties poets is yearning at its best. Resigned, yes; melancholy, yes; but, for the most part, not querulous.  This is in contrast to our modern world, in which the yearning is whiny, and all about things.  The Decadent poets were not materialists.  Their yearning was romantic and spiritual and aesthetic.  I cannot fault them for this.  Did they sometimes take their yearning too far?  Perhaps.  But better that than, say, placing one's faith in Science and Progress and Politics.  We can all see where that has gotten us.

Harald Sohlberg, "Midsummer Night" (c. 1910)

                 Vanitas

Beyond the need of weeping,
     Beyond the reach of hands,
May she be quietly sleeping,
     In what dim nebulous lands?
Ah, she who understands!

The long, long winter weather,
     These many years and days,
Since she, and Death, together,
     Left me the wearier ways:
And now, these tardy bays!

The crown and victor's token:
     How are they worth to-day?
The one word left unspoken,
     It were late now to say:
But cast the palm away!

For once, ah once, to meet her,
     Drop laurel from tired hands:
Her cypress were the sweeter,
     In her oblivious lands:
Haply she understands!

Yet, crossed that weary river,
     In some ulterior land,
Or anywhere, or ever,
     Will she stretch out a hand?
And will she understand?

Ernest Dowson, Verses (1896).

Yes, it all seems -- to use Dowson's own words -- "dim" and "nebulous," doesn't it?  Who is "she"?  I haven't a clue.  The practical-minded among us will say "bosh!" or "humbug!"  Not I.

Harald Sohlberg, "Night" (1904)

On the other hand, we mustn't think that the late-19th century was all of a piece.  Consider, for instance, this:

I have trod the upward and the downward slope;
I have endured and done in days before;
I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope;
And I have lived and loved, and closed the door.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896).

One is not likely to think of Stevenson as a dreamy Nineties aesthete. There is a note of fortitude sounded here which one seldom finds in the Decadent poets.  Bear in mind that Stevenson, given his poor health, was always staring Death in the face.  He is certainly entitled to invoke some Decadent fatalism and melancholy.  And perhaps he does, just a bit:  "I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope."  But overall the tone is resolute -- similar to that of his "Requiem" (which has appeared here previously):  "Glad did I live and gladly die,/And I laid me down with a will."

Moreover, Stevenson was willing to allow for the attainment, however brief, of Paradise on Earth.

Fair Isle at Sea -- thy lovely name
Soft in my ear like music came.
That sea I loved, and once or twice
I touched at isles of Paradise.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Poems (1916).  The "fair Isle at Sea" is Samoa.

A small poem, a slight poem some might say, but I can never get over its loveliness.

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

"Those Modest Gods Touch Us -- Touch Us And Move On"

I will never be able to repay the kindness and comfort that have been provided to me by so many of you since my previous post.  I have never intended to make this blog about myself, but, because I feel a kinship with those who visit here, I wouldn't have felt right leaving things unsaid.  I am deeply moved by the response I have received, and I can never thank you enough.

Stephen McKenna, "Foliage" (1983)

Here is a poem I sought out over the past few days.

                Shinto

When sorrow lays us low
for a second we are saved
by humble windfalls
of mindfulness or memory:
the taste of a fruit, the taste of water,
that face given back to us by a dream,
the first jasmine of November,
the endless yearning of the compass,
a book we thought was lost,
the throb of a hexameter,
the slight key that opens a house to us,
the smell of a library, or of sandalwood,
the former name of a street,
the colors of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date we were looking for,
the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,
a sudden physical pain.

Eight million Shinto deities
travel secretly throughout the earth.
Those modest gods touch us --
touch us and move on.

Jorge Luis Borges (translated by Hoyt Rogers), in Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Poems (edited by Alexander Coleman) (Viking 1999).

Cecil Gordon Lawson, "Cheyne Walk, Chelsea" (1870)

". . . we are saved/by humble windfalls/of mindfulness or memory."

     My beloved friend
You and I had a sweet talk,
Long ago, one autumn night.
     Renewing itself,
The year has rumbled along,
That night still in memory.

Ryokan (1758-1831) (translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa), in The Zen Poems of Ryokan (Princeton University Press 1981).

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

"The Silent Friendship Of The Moon"

Today, I was tempted to go off on a tangent about the Crimean War.  You know:  the one that ended in 1856.  I might have found a way to work in Alfred, Lord Tennyson.  But a sudden weariness came over me.  Thus, let us instead consider the moon, which remains pretty much the same after 158 years:  still presiding over we humans, who remain pretty much the same after 158 years, with only a superficial outward change in appearances and appliances.

Which is no cause for concern, by the way.  What I worry about are the people who believe we have changed since 1856.  The moon knows otherwise.

Harald Sohlberg, "Moonlight, Nevlunghavn" (1922)

                       The Moon

There is such loneliness in that gold.
The moon of the nights is not the moon
Whom the first Adam saw.  The long centuries
Of human vigil have filled her
With ancient lament.  Look at her.  She is your mirror.

Jorge Luis Borges (translated by Willis Barnstone), in Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Poems (edited by Alexander Coleman) (Viking 1999).

I suppose that the poem violates John Ruskin's strictures about the use of the pathetic fallacy in poetry (although I'm not certain he was consistent in his thinking on the matter).  Personally, as much as I admire Ruskin, I don't see the pathetic fallacy as such a bad thing.  If Borges perceives the moon as being filled with "ancient lament," I don't see why not.  It makes perfect sense to me.

Winifred Nicholson, "The Hunter's Moon" (1955)

I am also quite willing to accept the silent friendship of the moon, even if she is filled with ancient lament.

                       The Limit

The silent friendship of the moon
(I misquote Virgil) has kept you company
since that one night or evening
now lost in time, when your restless
eyes first made her out for always
in a patio or a garden since gone to dust.
For always?  I know that someday someone
will find a way of telling you this truth:
"You'll never see the moon aglow again.
You've now attained the limit set for you
by destiny.  No use opening every window
throughout the world.  Too late.  You'll never find her."
Our life is spent discovering and forgetting
that gentle habit of the night.
Take a good look.  It could be the last.

Jorge Luis Borges (translated by Alan Trueblood), Ibid.

How nice to see Borges use the word "destiny."  A very unmodern word, wouldn't you say?  It suggests something beyond ourselves, and thus makes us nervous.  Destiny?  Fate?  Soul?  "The vale of Soul-making"?  Of what relevance are they when we have Science and Progress at our disposal?

Paul Nash, "The Pyramids in the Sea" (1912)

I think the following poem captures our affinity and reciprocity with the moon very well.  In his quiet way, over hundreds of poems, Walter de la Mare often surprises us with these small gems.

                    Moonlight

The far moon maketh lovers wise
     In her pale beauty trembling down,
Lending curved cheeks, dark lips, dark eyes,
     A strangeness not her own.
And, though they shut their lids to kiss,
     In starless darkness peace to win,
Even on that secret world from this
     Her twilight enters in.

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

Frank Ormond (1897-1988), "Moonrise, Stanford Dingley"

"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)

Winter Moon, With Planet

I am ignorant of the seasonal progress of the moon and the other heavenly bodies across the night sky.  I really ought to make a study of these things, especially since time is running out on ventures of this sort.  But I prefer to remain in the dark (so to speak), and to be pleasantly surprised by what happens overhead.  Ignorant, yes, but surprised.

This week, for instance, I saw something wonderful in the southwest quarter of the evening sky.  The day had been cold and clear.  The sun had just set beyond the Olympic Mountains into the unseen Pacific.  A waxing crescent moon had risen.  Below it, at about a 45-degree angle to the left, was a brilliant point of light.  At first I thought the point of light was an airplane above the horizon.  But it didn't move.  Was it a planet or a star?  I had no idea.

The two of them together -- the crescent of white and the point of white -- were beautiful and remote and noble and cold.  Of course, that's just a human perspective -- an unnecessary commentary.  I later discovered (the Wonders of the Internet) that the brilliant point of light was Venus.  Not that it matters, mind you.  A star would have sufficed.

Harald Sohlberg, "Night" (1904)

Yesterday, I came across the following haiku.  It somehow seems to relate to what I saw in the evening sky, although I'm not sure why.

     The previous owner:
I know it all, --
     Down to the very cold he felt.

Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 4: Autumn-Winter (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 168.

The haiku appears at the end of the following prose passage:

"Yearning for a shelter where I could enjoy a fleeting dream, I rented a house at the foot of Ueno Hill even though it was as tiny as a snail's shell. The previous resident, perhaps to relieve the boredom of life, had planted a morning glory and had it climb up the fence.  The flower was now dead, and only its seeds lay scattered on the ground.  The scene looked more forlorn now than in autumn; the seeds, it seemed to me, were like someone's tears.  Near the entrance to the house was a tiny patch of cultivated land where some vegetable appears to have been sown.  Soft green sprouts were emerging out of the ground, though snow still remained nearby.  Were they to be used for rice cake on the auspicious New Year's morning?

Pasted on the wall were good luck banners to keep thieves away from the house.  Hanging above the cooking stove was a sacred rope shaped like a daikon radish, believed to protect the house from fire.  A pine branch offered to the kitchen god still kept the living color of green, though it had fallen sideways on the altar.  All those things suggested the previous resident had planned to live here forever.  Yet he was now gone without a trace, as if he had vanished in the clouds or in the mountains.  Could there be such a thing as a permanent home anywhere on this earth?  After a little while, someone else will be saying what I am saying now."

Kobayashi Issa (translated by Makoto Ueda), in Makoto Ueda, Dew on the Grass: The Life and Poetry of Kobayashi Issa (Brill 2004).

Harald Sohlberg, "Midsummer Night" (c. 1910)

And this seems to follow naturally, although, again, I'm not sure why.

            An Old Man's Winter Night

All out-of-doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping here, he scared it once again
In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept.  The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.

Robert Frost, Mountain Interval (1916).

Among many marvelous things, this always catches me:  "concerned with he knew what."

Harald Sohlberg, "A View of Vestfold" (1909)

"Acquainted With The Night"

Edward Thomas's "Out in the Dark" concludes with the following stanza:

How weak and little is the light,
All the universe of sight,
Love and delight,
Before the might,
If you love it not, of night.

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

I suggested in my previous post that "if you love it not" is quintessential Thomas.  It is also one of those phrases that sounds like quintessential Robert Frost.  After Thomas's death, Frost once referred to him as "the only brother I ever had."  There are lines and stanzas -- even entire poems -- that sound as if they could have been written by either of them.

This has to do with the beauty of the words, but it also has to do with the use to which the words are put.  Often, this use entails the sort of wondrous, seemingly out-of-the-blue twist embodied in "if you love it not": a twist that flows back through the entire poem and gives it -- suddenly -- a breadth and depth that can take your breath away.

           Harald Sohlberg, "Winter Night in the Mountains" (1918-1924)

          Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Robert Frost, West-Running Brook (1928).

Thomas and Frost were both well-acquainted with the night.  Night means darkness -- literally and figuratively; outside and inside.  But, remember: "if you love it not . . ."  

            Harald Sohlberg, "Winter Night in the Mountains" (1911-1914)

Christmas, Part Two: "Earth Grown Old"

Christina Rossetti's best-known poem is usually sung or listened to, not read.  I suspect that many of those who sing or listen to the verses are not aware that they were written by Rossetti.  Here is the first stanza of the poem:

In the bleak mid-winter
   Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
   Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
   Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
   Long ago.

Christina Rossetti, "A Christmas Carol," in Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress and Other Poems (1875 edition).  The lines "Snow had fallen, snow on snow,/Snow on snow" are particularly lovely, I think.

The poem was first published in a periodical in 1872.  Rossetti died in 1894.  In 1906, Gustav Holst set the poem to music.

                  Harald Sohlberg (1869-1935), "Mainstreet, Roros" (1904)

The line "Earth stood hard as iron" in the first stanza of "A Christmas Carol" seems to lead naturally to another seasonal poem by Rossetti.

                    Advent

Earth grown old, yet still so green,
          Deep beneath her crust of cold
Nurses fire unfelt, unseen:
          Earth grown old.

          We who live are quickly told:
Millions more lie hid between
          Inner swathings of her fold.

When will fire break up her screen?
          When will life burst thro' her mould?
Earth, earth, earth, thy cold is keen,
          Earth grown old.

Christina Rossetti, Verses (1893).

As I have mentioned on other occasions, a significant amount of Rossetti's poetry consists of devotional verse.  "Advent" falls within that category. Who are the "millions" who "lie hid between/Inner swathings of her fold"? I presume that they may be those who (to quote from another Rossetti poem) are "sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over."  Beyond that, I am not qualified to opine on the "meaning" of the poem.  Rossetti has a mystical strain that gives much of her religious verse a riddling quality. And one often senses that her non-theological world lies somewhere between the lines as well.

                             Harald Sohlberg, "A View of Vestfold" (1909)

"In The Gloom Of Whiteness, In The Great Silence Of Snow"

Edward Thomas wrote the following poem on January 7, 1915.  According to R. George Thomas, "the child in the poem is the poet's younger daughter, Myfanwy."  R. George Thomas (editor), The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas (Oxford University Press 1981), page 135.

                  Snow

In the gloom of whiteness,
In the great silence of snow,
A child was sighing
And bitterly saying:  'Oh,
They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,
The down is fluttering from her breast.'
And still it fell through that dusky brightness
On the child crying for the bird of the snow.

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

                         Harald Sohlberg, "Winter, Hvalsbakken" (1926)

In her annotation to the poem, Edna Longley states that "the idea is traditional, as in the riddle of the snow and the sun, which begins:  'White bird featherless/Flew from Paradise.'"  Ibid, page 175.  Longley also notes that the image appears in the "December: Christmass" section of John Clare's Shepherd's Calendar:

And some to view the winter weathers
Climb up the window seat wi glee
Likening the snow to falling feathers
In fancy's infant extacy
Laughing wi superstitious love
Oer visions wild that youth supplyes
Of people pulling geese above
And keeping christmass in the skyes.

(Spelling and punctuation (or the lack thereof) are as they appear in Clare's original manuscript.)  I have previously discussed Thomas's admiring discussion of Clare's poem "Love lies beyond the tomb."  Perhaps Thomas had the above passage in mind when he wrote "Snow."

But, beyond its historical sources, the poem shows Thomas's acute attentiveness to the world around us, and his ability to memorably describe what he sees.  Those of us fortunate enough to have experienced a snowfall will likely agree that these phrases are right on the mark:  "the gloom of whiteness"; "the great silence of snow"; "that dusky brightness."  In one sense, the phrases may seem deceptively commonplace;  we may say:  "Yes, of course, that's exactly what it is like."  But it is the function of the ("true and not feigning") poet to tell us what we all know (or ought to know), but have not yet seen.

                               Harald Sohlberg, "Mainstreet, Roros" (1904)

"The Seasons Flit Like Linnets, And Years Whirl Past Like Planets"

I think that the following poem by Norman Nicholson provides a fitting start to the New Year.  I confess that I have never been a big fan of New Year's Eve celebrations.  (I know, I know:  "Killjoy!")  I do, however, like the bigger picture that Nicholson provides.

           For the New Year

The stars wheel past the windows
Like flocks of winter sparrows;
The bell clangs out the hours,
And frost sparkles like stars,
And the wind blows up the dawn
With spring behind it and rain
And the spikes of daffodils
And June on fire in the hills.
The apples crowd the bough
Beneath the frosty Plough,
And autumn snow is blown
White as the harvest moon
On currant and raspberry cane.
And the wild ganders fly
Nightly across the sky.
The seasons flit like linnets,
And years whirl past like planets,
And the earth's orbit mars
The changeless map of stars.
The splintered light which now
Gently probes my eye
Is of a star that burned
When the Scots fired the land,
When the Norsemen robbed the dales
And hacked their names on the fells,
Or when the iceberg lakes
Elbowed among the rocks
And carried the Devil's stone
To the hill above the town,
Where through my dormer bay
Drizzles the Milky Way.

Norman Nicholson, Five Rivers (1944).

               Harald Sohlberg, "Winter Night in the Mountains" (1924)

A Christmas Robin, Out Of Season

Robert Graves is adept at putting a twist on things.  Thus, the Christmas robin in the following poem is, in fact, a February robin.  Still, the out-of-season robin reawakens all that is (to borrow from a well-known song) merry and bright about the holiday.  But it also brings in tow (to borrow from a well-known tale) the spectre of an uncertain future.

                 The Christmas Robin

The snows of February had buried Christmas
Deep in the woods, where grew self-seeded
The fir-trees of a Christmas yet unknown,
Without a candle or a strand of tinsel.

Nevertheless when, hand in hand, plodding
Between the frozen ruts, we lovers paused
And 'Christmas trees!' cried suddenly together,
Christmas was there again, as in December.

We velveted our love with fantasy
Down a long vista-row of Christmas trees,
Whose coloured candles slowly guttered down
As grandchildren came trooping round our knees.

But he knew better, did the Christmas robin --
The murderous robin with his breast aglow
And legs apart, in a spade-handle perched:
He prophesied more snow, and worse than snow.

Robert Graves, Collected Poems (1938).

                            Harald Sohlberg, "A View of Vestfold" (1909)

Stars And Daisies: Andrew Young And Harald Sohlberg

"Flower Meadow in the North" was painted by Harald Sohlberg (1869-1935) in 1905, when he was staying at Gullikstad, Norway.  It is in the collection of the Nasjonalgalleriet in Oslo.  Sohlberg is one of many fine Scandinavian landscape painters of the 19th and early-20th centuries.  As an introduction to these artists, I recommend Torsten Gunnarsson's Nordic Landscape Painting in the Nineteenth Century (1998) and A Mirror of Nature: Nordic Landscape Painting, 1840-1910 (2006), by Gunnarsson and others.   

I featured "Flower Meadow in the North" in a previous post, and I thought of it again when reading the following poem by Andrew Young (1885-1971):

                         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 (1960).  "Daisies" in turn brings to mind two lines from Young's "The Ruined Chapel":

And headstones lie so deep in grass
They follow dead men to their graves.

Andrew Young, Collected Poems (1960).