Other Worlds

Apart from my first eleven years, I have spent my life along salt-water shores:  the Pacific Ocean, Puget Sound (an appendage of the Pacific), and the Andaman Sea (for two years).  Hence, I have gotten used to having a body of water at my shoulder.  Mind you, I am not suggesting that this is a superior way to live.  For me, it is simply a matter of happenstance, and something that I have grown accustomed to.

Still, one cannot underestimate the calming effect of having an expanse of water to look out on, whether it be bright blue and glittering, iron grey, or any of the infinite variations in between.  The sight has lightened my soul on innumerable occasions.  "Given my heart/A change of mood/And saved some part/Of a day I had rued," as Robert Frost wrote of a different landscape.

"The sea is a mirror, not only to the clouds, the sun, the moon, and the stars, but to all one's dreams, to all one's speculations. . . . The sea tells us that everything is changing and that nothing ever changes, that tides go out and return, that all existence is a rhythm; neither calm nor storm breaks the rhythm, only hastens or holds it back for a moment."

Arthur Symons, "In a Northern Bay," Cities and Sea-Coasts and Islands (1918), page 296.

Yet there is, withal, an abiding otherness to the sea.

          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).

I have often encountered tufts of kelp along the strand, high and dry amid the flotsam and jetsam, and they do have a strange and otherworldly aspect to them.  They emanate a sense of loneliness that goes beyond being out of their element.

John Brett, "The British Channel Seen from the Dorsetshire Cliffs" (1871)

The sea's impassive face may induce serenity and reverie, but that impassivity is a mask:  upon it and below it lie strangeness and mystery. Arthur Symons speaks of the sea as a mirror of the sky, but I think of the sea and the sky as parallel and complementary unfathomable worlds whose depths we can never plumb.  We mustn't be seduced or misled by Science, which is always willing to provide us with "explanations" that tell us nothing.  Scientists possess no knowledge that can touch the secrets of the sea and the sky.

                        By the Sea

Why does the sea moan evermore?
     Shut out from heaven it makes its moan,
It frets against the boundary shore;
     All earth's full rivers cannot fill
     The sea, that drinking thirsteth still.

Sheer miracles of loveliness
     Lie hid in its unlooked-on bed:
Anemones, salt, passionless,
     Blow flower-like; just enough alive
     To blow and multiply and thrive.

Shells quaint with curve, or spot, or spike,
     Encrusted live things argus-eyed,
All fair alike, yet all unlike,
     Are born without a pang, and die
     Without a pang, and so pass by.

Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress and Other Poems (1875).  Rossetti uses the word "blow" (lines 9 and 10) in its common pre-20th century sense:  "to blossom."

John Brett, "Southern Coast of Guernsey" (1875)

When I went out for a walk this past Wednesday afternoon, the sky was a dull grey-white.  I found myself wishing for a brilliant blue sky.  I then realized how misguided I was.  The world is always just what it is, and is perfect just as it is.  Who am I to cavil if it fails to meet my expectations?  I felt ungrateful.

As I walked, I noticed how lovely the deepening green boughs of the trees looked swaying against the grey sky.  The swallows paid the dull sky no mind:  they curved and dived above the tall wild grasses in the meadows, taking their evening meal.  "Sheer miracles of loveliness" indeed surround us on all sides and at all times.

                               The World Below the Brine

The world below the brine,
Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick tangle,
          openings, and pink turf,
Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the play of
          light through the water,
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes, and
          the aliment of the swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling close to
          the bottom,
The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting with
          his flukes,
The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and
          the sting-ray,
Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths,
          breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do,
The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by
          beings like us who walk this sphere,
The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1860).

Whitman and Rossetti lived in the 19th century, a time that lacked our access to the technology that now enables us to see in vivid detail the heretofore "unlooked-on bed" of "the world below the brine."  But mere seeing is not the end of the story, is it?  The wonder expressed by Whitman and Rossetti remains, for that wonder is a product of the recognition of the other mysterious beings with whom we share the world.

John Brett, "Britannia's Realm" (1880)

Today, I was given a sunny day, although I had not asked for it.  Beside the path down which I walked, I saw white field daisies, pink-purple sweet peas, and the white blossoms of blackberry bushes.  Puget Sound and the sky were blue on top of blue, merging in the distance.  Which was mirroring which?

"[A]s ecstasy is only possible to one who is conscious of the possibility of despair, so the sea, as it detaches us from the world and our safeguards and our happy forgetfulnesses, and sets us by ourselves, as momentary as the turn of a wave, and mattering hardly more to the universe, gives us, if we will take them, moments of almost elemental joy."

Arthur Symons, "In a Northern Bay," Cities and Sea-Coasts and Islands, page 297.

I would respectfully disagree with Symons to this extent:  it is not solely the sea that has the capacity to provide us with "elemental joy."  Nor would I qualify "elemental joy" with "almost."

The message of all these worlds -- earth, water, and sky -- is the same: Never take anything for granted.

     On the sandy beach,
Footprints:
     Long is the spring day.

Masaoka Shiki (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 2: Spring (Hokuseido Press 1950), page 48.

John Brett, "The Norman Archipelago (Channel Islands)" (1885)

Destinations

Upon reading the following poem for the first time, my reaction was: "What the heck is that all about?"  My next reaction was:  "What a strange and wonderful thing!"  (The "thing" referred to is the poem, not the object that provides the occasion for the poem.  Although, as you will see, that object is a strange and wonderful thing as well.)

                         The Berg
                        (A Dream)

I saw a ship of martial build
(Her standards set, her brave apparel on)
Directed as by madness mere
Against a stolid iceberg steer,
Nor budge it, though the infatuate ship went down.
The impact made huge ice-cubes fall
Sullen, in tons that crashed the deck;
But that one avalanche was all --
No other movement save the foundering wreck.

Along the spurs of ridges pale,
Not any slenderest shaft and frail,
A prism over glass-green gorges lone,
Toppled; or lace of traceries fine,
Nor pendant drops in grot or mine
Were jarred, when the stunned ship went down.
Nor sole the gulls in cloud that wheeled
Circling one snow-flanked peak afar,
But nearer fowl the floes that skimmed
And crystal beaches, felt no jar.
No thrill transmitted stirred the lock
Of jack-straw needle-ice at base;
Towers undermined by waves -- the block
Atilt impending -- kept their place.
Seals, dozing sleek on sliddery ledges
Slipt never, when by loftier edges
Through very inertia overthrown,
The impetuous ship in bafflement went down.

Hard Berg (methought), so cold, so vast,
With mortal damps self-overcast;
Exhaling still thy dankish breath --
Adrift dissolving, bound for death;
Though lumpish thou, a lumbering one --
A lumbering lubbard loitering slow,
Impingers rue thee and go down,
Sounding thy precipice below,
Nor stir the slimy slug that sprawls
Along thy dead indifference of walls.

Herman Melville, John Marr and Other Sailors (1888).

Long-time (and much-appreciated!) readers of this blog are aware by now of one of my fundamental tenets:  Explanation and explication are the death of poetry.  Hence, I do not intend to engage in any metaphysical, theological, or psychological speculations about what "The Berg" may "symbolize."  Melville's works (including, in particular, that book about a whale) have been subjected to far too much symbol-mongering.  Sometimes an iceberg is just an iceberg.  And sometimes a whale is just a whale.  More or less.

However, the lovely particulars certainly deserve our attention.  For instance, my favorite words in the poem are these:  "Hard Berg (methought)."  The capitalization of "Berg" is a fine touch.  And I love the parenthetical "methought."  "Hard Berg":  now what is that supposed to mean?

(An aside:  Melville's use of capitalized words is a topic in itself.  Consider the following passage from Chapter 112 ("The Blacksmith") of Moby-Dick: "but Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored.")

I also like the repetition and the echoing of "the infatuate ship went down" (line 5), "the stunned ship went down" (line 15), and "the impetuous ship in bafflement went down" (line 27).  "Infatuate," "stunned," and "impetuous":  what are we to make of those word choices?  And there is this intriguing final echo:  "Impingers rue thee and go down" (line 34). "Impingers" is something to mull over.

Finally, there is the pure sound of it.  "Seals, dozing sleek on sliddery ledges/Slipt never."  Or this:  "Though lumpish thou, a lumbering one --/A lumbering lubbard loitering slow."  (Such a comical description of such a portentous, menacing object.)

Samuel Bough, "Edinburgh from Leith Roads" (1854)

I presume that it is not mere happenstance that Melville elected to place the following poem immediately after "The Berg" in John Marr and Other Sailors.

                          The Enviable Isles

Through storms you reach them and from storms are free.
     Afar descried, the foremost drear in hue,
But, nearer, green; and, on the marge, the sea
     Makes thunder low and mist of rainbowed dew.

But, inland, where the sleep that folds the hills
A dreamier sleep, the trance of God, instills --
     On uplands hazed, in wandering airs aswoon,
Slow-swaying palms salute love's cypress tree
     Adown in vale where pebbly runlets croon
A song to lull all sorrow and all glee.

Sweet-fern and moss in many a glade are here,
     Where, strown in flocks, what cheek-flushed myriads lie
Dimpling in dream -- unconscious slumberers mere,
     While billows endless round the beaches die.

Herman Melville, Ibid.

Melville apparently intended to use the poem in a prose and verse narrative he tentatively titled "Rammon."  However, he never completed the larger work.  Howard Vincent (editor), Collected Poems of Herman Melville (Packard and Company 1947), pages 472-473.  In a surviving prose fragment, Rammon, "the unrobust child of Solomon's old age," develops an interest in Buddhism.  Rammon meets Tardi, a merchant who has travelled in Asia, and asks him what he knows of Buddhism:  "Fable me, then, those Enviable Isles."  Ibid, page 416.  The poem constitutes Tardi's response. The description of the Isles seems to be a blending of Melville's memories of the time he spent in the South Seas in his younger years and of a vision of Nirvana.

Samuel Bough, "Dunkirk Harbour" (1863)

What, then, is our destination?  The "hard Berg"?  "The Enviable Isles"? Or is it, perhaps, both?

Thinking about Melville's poems, another possibility occurred to me.  This option is offered to us by an Anglican vicar from Dean Prior, Devon.

     The White Island: or Place of the Blest

In this world (the Isle of Dreams)
While we sit by sorrow's streams,
Tears and terrors are our themes
                                        Reciting:

But when once from hence we fly,
More and more approaching nigh
Unto young Eternity
                                        Uniting:

In that whiter Island, where
Things are evermore sincere;
Candor here, and lustre there
                                        Delighting:

There no monstrous fancies shall
Out of hell an horror call,
To create (or cause at all)
                                        Affrighting.

There in calm and cooling sleep
We our eyes shall never steep;
But eternal watch shall keep,
                                        Attending

Pleasures, such as shall pursue
Me immortaliz'd, and you;
And fresh joys, as never too
                                        Have ending.

Robert Herrick, His Noble Numbers: or, His Pious Pieces (1647).

Samuel Bough, "Fishing Boats Running into Port: Dysart Harbour" (1854)

In John Marr and Other Sailors, "The Berg," as noted above, immediately precedes "The Enviable Isles," which is the penultimate poem in the volume.  "The Enviable Isles" is in turn followed by a closing sequence titled "Pebbles," which consists of seven short poems.  "The Sea" is the unifying element of the sequence -- "the old implacable Sea" (Poem V), "the inhuman Sea" (Poem VII).  The all-encompassing Sea?

Here is Poem II of "Pebbles":

Old are the creeds, but stale the schools,
     Revamped as the mode may veer,
But Orm from the schools to the beaches strays,
And, finding a Conch hoar with time, he delays
     And reverent lifts it to ear.
That Voice, pitched in far monotone,
     Shall it swerve?  shall it deviate ever?
The Seas have inspired it, and Truth --
     Truth, varying from sameness never.

Herman Melville, from "Pebbles," John Marr and Other Sailors.  A note: commentators suggest that "Orm" (line 3) is an allusion to a 12th-century monk who wrote a manuscript in Middle English verse consisting of homilies intended to explain biblical texts.  The manuscript is titled the "Ormulum" (after its maker).

Melville's thoughts bring to mind a poem that was written by Walt Whitman in 1888 -- the same year in which John Marr and Other Sailors was published.  Melville and Whitman were nearly exact contemporaries: both were born in 1819; Melville died in 1891; Whitman died in 1892.  It is marvelous to think of those two extraordinary American characters passing side-by-side through nearly the whole of the century.

                 The Calming Thought of All

That coursing on, whate'er men's speculations,
Amid the changing schools, theologies, philosophies,
Amid the bawling presentations new and old,
The round earth's silent vital laws, facts, modes continue.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1891-1892).

Perhaps, after all, destinations do not matter.

Samuel Bough, "Shipyard at Dumbarton" (1855)

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)