Ephemeral

As ever, spring arrives in fits and starts.  On a sunny day, there seems to be no stopping it:  the deep green lawns and fields are bordered with purple, yellow, white, and red.  The next day, a cold wind settles in.  Up in the grey sky, the branches -- budding, but still empty of leaves -- click and clatter, and the thick limbs groan.  A lone goose passes overhead, calling.  Where has its flock gone?  Out on a wide meadow, a group of crows stand in a circle, quarreling.

Yet, as I noted in my previous post, a threshold has been crossed:  the cherry trees have begun to blossom.  You may recall, dear readers, that I am wont to visit A. E. Housman at cherry blossom time.  To wit:  "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now/Is hung with bloom along the bough . . ."  But I have been reading Horace's odes recently, so this year a translation by Housman of one of the odes will take the place of my old standby.

                        Diffugere Nives

The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws
     And grasses in the mead renew their birth,
The river to the river-bed withdraws,
     And altered is the fashion of the earth.

The Nymphs and Graces three put off their fear
     And unapparelled in the woodland play.
The swift hour and the brief prime of the year
     Say to the soul, Thou wast not born for aye.

Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of spring
     Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers
Comes autumn, with his apples scattering;
     Then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs.

But oh, whate'er the sky-led seasons mar,
     Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams:
Come we where Tullus and where Ancus are,
     And good Aeneas, we are dust and dreams.

Torquatus, if the gods in heaven shall add
     The morrow to the day, what tongue has told?
Feast then thy heart, for what thy heart has had
     The fingers of no heir will ever hold.

When thou descendest once the shades among,
     The stern assize and equal judgment o'er,
Not thy long lineage nor thy golden tongue,
     No, nor thy righteousness, shall friend thee more.

Night holds Hippolytus the pure of stain,
     Diana steads him nothing, he must stay;
And Theseus leaves Pirithoüs in the chain
     The love of comrades cannot take away.

A. E. Housman, in Archie Burnett (editor), The Poems of A. E. Housman (Oxford University Press 1997).  This is the seventh ode of Book IV of the Odes.  "Diffugere nives" are the opening words of Horace's Latin text, and may be translated as "the snow disperses" or "the snow melts."

One can understand why this poem appealed to Housman.  There is a lovely anecdote about Housman and the poem.  The anecdote has appeared here before, but it is worth revisiting.

"During my time at Cambridge, I attended [Housman's] lectures for two years.  At five minutes past 11 he used to walk to the desk, open his manuscript, and begin to read.  At the end of the hour he folded his papers and left the room.  He never looked either at us or at the row of dons in the front.  One morning in May, 1914, when the trees in Cambridge were covered with blossom, he reached in his lecture Ode 7 in Horace's Fourth Book, 'Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis.'  This ode he dissected with the usual display of brilliance, wit, and sarcasm.

"Then for the first time in two years he looked up at us, and in quite a different voice said:  'I should like to spend the last few minutes considering this ode simply as poetry.'  Our previous experience of Professor Housman would have made us sure that he would regard such a proceeding as beneath contempt.  He read the ode aloud with deep emotion, first in Latin and then in an English translation of his own.  'That,' he said hurriedly, almost like a man betraying a secret, 'I regard as the most beautiful poem in ancient literature,' and walked quickly out of the room.

"A scholar of Trinity (since killed in the War), who walked with me to our next lecture, expressed in undergraduate style our feeling that we had seen something not really meant for us.  'I felt quite uncomfortable,' he said.  'I was afraid the old fellow was going to cry.'"

Mrs. T. W. Pym, Letter to The Times (May 5, 1936), in Richard Gaskin, Horace and Housman (Palgrave Macmillan 2013), page 12.

Gilbert Spencer (1892-1979), "From My Studio" (1959)

The snow has vanished and the cherry blossoms (soon to flutter down in a drift of petals, alas!) have arrived.  But this is never the end of "change and chancefulness" (Thomas Hardy, "The Temporary the All"), is it?  How could it be otherwise?  Why would we expect it to be otherwise?  (With the exception, in my case, of wishing to spend Eternity lying in the grass on a never-ending late summer or early autumn afternoon, looking up into the green-leaved, sun-and-shadow-mottled, wind-swaying boughs of a tree.)

Marcus Aurelius has wise words for us:  "How ridiculous, and like a stranger is he, who is surprised at any thing which happens in life!" (Marcus Aurelius (translated by Francis Hutcheson and James Moor), Meditations, Book XII, Section 13.)  Spring is here.  But not for long.  Anything is possible.

                                Kinsale

The kind of rain we knew is a thing of the past --
deep-delving, dark, deliberate you would say,
browsing on spire and bogland; but today
our sky-blue slates are steaming in the sun,
our yachts tinkling and dancing in the bay
like racehorses.  We contemplate at last
shining windows, a future forbidden to no one.

Derek Mahon, Collected Poems (The Gallery Press 1999).

Derwent Lees (1885-1931), "Aldbourne" (1915)

Recently, the robins have changed their tune.  The flat, matter-of-fact chirping of the short winter days has been replaced by song.  From all directions, from out of the fields and the bushes and the trees, come the voices of the unseen singers.  The music continues into the night.

  Flowers and Moonlight on the Spring River

The evening river is level and motionless --
The spring colours just open to their full.
Suddenly a wave carries the moon away
And the tidal water comes with its freight of stars.

Yang-ti (Seventh Century A.D.) (translated by Arthur Waley), in Arthur Waley, One Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (Constable 1918), page 92.

Trevor Makinson, "Maryhill Goods Yard"

Resting Place

Given the subject matter of this post, a disclaimer may be appropriate:  I am not, at the moment, brooding over mortality.  Actually, I am feeling quite cheerful.  "There will be dying, there will be dying,/but there is no need to go into that."

Yet, come to think of it, the two are not mutually exclusive, are they?  It is possible to be cheerful and, at the same time, to brood over (or at least be mindful of) mortality.  In fact, that may be an ideal state of being.  But I am not that wise.  Hence, this post is simply a matter of one thing leading to another.

          To the Passenger

If I lie unburied Sir,
These my Reliques, pray inter.
'Tis religion's part to see
Stones or turfs to cover me.
One word more I had to say;
But it skills not; go your way;
He that wants a burial room
For a Stone, has Heaven his Tomb.

Robert Herrick, Poem 821, Hesperides (1648).

"Passenger" means "passer-by" in this context.  Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly (editors), The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, Volume II (Oxford University Press 2013), page 724.  "It skills not" (line 6) means "it doesn't matter."  Ibid.  I presume that "wants" (line 7) means "lacks" in this context.  Herrick italicizes the final line, which, in accordance with his usual practice, signifies a quotation or a paraphrase from a classical source.  It has been suggested that the source is Lucan, Pharsalia, 7.819, as quoted (and translated) by Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy (Second Partition, Section 3, Member 5, Subsection 1):  "the Canopy of heaven covers him that hath no tomb."  Ibid.

Claude Hayes, "Evensong" (1903)

The thought of having Heaven (or the heavens) as one's tomb puts me in mind of the many touching epigrams about the deaths of unfortunate mariners that are contained in The Greek Anthology.  Most often, the mariner's comrades, or a stranger who happens upon the washed-up corpse while walking along the shore, are able to bury the mariner and erect a monument to his memory.  However, sometimes the seafarer remains for ever lost at sea.

No dust, no paltry marble for his grave
Has Erasippus, but the wide sea wave.
For with his ship he sank.  His bones decay --
But where, the cormorant alone can say.

Glaucus (translated by Goldwin Smith), in Henry Wellesley, Anthologia Polyglotta: A Selection of Versions in Various Languages, Chiefly from the Greek Anthology (1849), page 70.

Here is a prose translation of the epigram:

"Not dust nor the light weight of a stone, but all this sea that thou beholdest is the tomb of Erasippus; for he perished with his ship, and in some unknown place his bones moulder, and the seagulls alone know them to tell."

Glaucus (translated by J. W. Mackail), in J. W. Mackail, Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology (1906), page 156.

Henry Anthony (1817-1886), "Evensong" (1873)

Wars on distant frontiers are a constant presence in classical Chinese poetry, and the prospect of a lonely death far from home and family is the theme of many poems.

                         Ch'i-yü-ko

Man -- pitiful insect,
out the gate with fears of death in his breast,
a corpse fallen in narrow valleys,
white bones that no one gathers up.

Anonymous (circa 6th to 7th century) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century (Columbia University Press 1971), page 63.  The meaning of the phrase "Ch'i-yü-ko" is "uncertain."  Ibid, page 62.  The poem "was written to be sung."  Ibid.

Classical Greek and Chinese poetry share a surface matter-of-factness and simplicity that is underlaid by, and intertwined with, great emotion.  There is a dignity, seemliness, and reticence to this combination that makes the poetry extremely moving.  This may explain why the long-dead Greek and Chinese poets seem to be speaking directly to us, and for us.  We moderns are not so articulate, nor are we so wise.  We have forgotten a great deal.

James Webb, "A Bit of Sussex" (1877)

As I have remarked in the past, one of the wonderful things about reading poetry is how one poem can become a stepping stone to another.  The final line of the following poem has stayed with me for years.  I thought of it after I read Herrick's lines "He that wants a burial room/For a stone, has Heaven his Tomb."

                    A Dead Mole

Strong-shouldered mole,
That so much lived below the ground,
Dug, fought and loved, hunted and fed,
For you to raise a mound
Was as for us to make a hole;
What wonder now that being dead
Your body lies here stout and square
Buried within the blue vault of the air?

Andrew Young, in Leonard Clark (editor), The Collected Poems of Andrew Young (Rupert Hart-Davis 1960).

"Buried within the blue vault of the air."  Well, what can you say about that? Nothing need be said, but I will say something anyway:  this is why we read poetry.

James Northbourne, "Evening" (1913)

In this context, I cannot help but think of one of my favorite poems.  It has appeared here on more than one occasion, but its final two lines are particularly apt.

Happy were he could finish forth his fate
     In some unhaunted desert, most obscure
From all societies, from love and hate
     Of worldly folk; then might he sleep secure;
Then wake again, and give God ever praise,
     Content with hips and haws and bramble-berry;
In contemplation spending all his days,
     And change of holy thoughts to make him merry;
Where, when he dies, his tomb may be a bush,
Where harmless robin dwells with gentle thrush.

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, in Norman Ault (editor), Elizabethan Lyrics (1949).

When all is said and done, being untombed is not necessarily a fate to be dreaded.  The thought of being "buried within the blue vault of the air" does not trouble me.  If only cormorants or seagulls know where my bones lie, I have no objection.  A resting place "where harmless robin dwells with gentle thrush" sounds peaceful and lovely.  Like most everything, it is all a matter of perspective.  There are other considerations.

                              On Himself

Some parts may perish; die thou canst not all:
The most of thee shall scape the funeral.

Robert Herrick, Poem 554, Hesperides (1648).  "Scape" appears in the original.  The final line may be an echo of Horace (Odes, Book III, Ode 30): "I shall not all die, and a large part of me will escape the Goddess of Death."  Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly (editors), The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, Volume II, page 675.

Henry Anthony, "A Country Churchyard"

The Golden Mean

In a recent post I opined that, as one ages, things drop away.  For instance, the daily news of the world gives us plenty to be alarmed and incensed about, but it no longer seems worth the trouble.  The catalogue of horrors and absurdities has ever been thus:  not just last week or last year, but for centuries, millennia.  Why expend energy on it?  Our putative "progress" as a species is a nice fairy tale.  Mind you, this is not an argument for cynicism or misanthropy.  That the world is a madhouse does not relieve us of our duty to behave decently.

And, of course, there is still the matter of getting through an ordinary Wednesday afternoon.  Perhaps this is why I have become fonder and fonder of Horace and Robert Herrick in my senescence.  They are both oases of beautifully conveyed good sense.

Wise they, that, with a cautious fear,
Not always thro' the ocean steer,
Nor, whilst they think the winds will roar,
Do thrust too near the rocky shore:
To those that choose the golden mean
The waves are smooth, the skies serene;
They want the baseness of the poor's retreat,
And envy'd houses of the great.
Storms often vex the lofty oak,
High mountains feel the thunder's stroke;
And lofty towers, when winds prevail,
Are ruin'd with a greater fall:
A breast prepar'd in either state
Or fears or hopes a change of Fate;
'Tis Jove the same that winter brings
And melts the frost by pleasing springs:
Tho' Fortune now contracts her brow,
And frowns, yet 'twill not still be so:
Apollo sometimes mirth pursues,
His harp awakes his sleepy muse,
Nor always bends his threatening bow:
When Fortune sends a stormy wind,
Then show a brave and present mind;
And when with too indulgent gales
She swells too much, then furl thy sails.

Horace (translated by Thomas Creech), Odes, Book II, Ode 10, in Thomas Creech, The Odes, Satires, and Epistles of Horace (1684).

"The golden mean."  This sort of thing is regarded as a cliché by soi-disant sophisticated moderns.  Old, unironic, sentimental stuff.  Too obvious to bear repeating.  But would I rather read the poetry of Horace or a contemporary novel?  Next question.

Charles Parsons Knight, "Ramsey Island, Off Pembrokeshire" (1876)

I have also become increasingly fond of sea-faring metaphors for life, which are abundant in Horace and Herrick.  My time on various bodies of water has been limited to rowboats, an occasional canoe, and car ferries, but there is something about the notion of life as a sea-voyage that strikes my fancy.  Perhaps it is the timelessness of the image.  Last year I spent a great deal of time musing over the numerous lovely funereal epigrams for drowned mariners that one finds in The Greek Anthology.  And then there is this sort of thing:  "Run out the boat, my broken comrades . . . Run up the sail, my heartsick comrades . . . Put out to sea, ignoble comrades . . ." (Louis MacNeice, "Thalassa.")

                            Ship-wrack

He, who has suffer'd ship-wrack, fears to sail
Upon the seas, though with a gentle gale.

Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648).  This has been identified as a translation of line 8 in Poem 7, Book II, of Ovid's Epistulae ex Ponto.  Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly (editors), The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, Volume II (Oxford University Press 2013), page 685.

                            Safety on the Shore

What though the sea be calm?  Trust to the shore:
Ships have been drown'd, where late they danced before.

Robert Herrick, Hesperides.  It has been suggested that the source of the poem is a passage in Epistle IV of Seneca's Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales: "Do not trust her calm; in a moment the sea is in turmoil.  The same day the ships dance in the games, they are engulfed."  Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly (editors), The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, Volume II, page 577.

Charles Parsons Knight, "Falmouth Harbour" (1883)

Not surprisingly, there are echoes of Horace throughout Herrick's poetry. Thus, for example, the following poem by Herrick is reminiscent of the ode by Horace that is set forth above.

      Good Precepts, or Counsel

In all thy need, be thou possest
Still with a well-prepared breast:
Nor let the shackles make thee sad;
Thou canst but have, what others had.
And this for comfort thou must know,
Times that are ill won't still be so.
Clouds will not ever power down rain;
A sullen day will clear again.
First, peals of thunder we must hear,
Then lutes and harps shall stroke the ear.

Robert Herrick, Hesperides.

"Times that are ill won't still be so" (line 6) may have its source in Horace's lines translated by Creech as:  "Tho' Fortune now contracts her brow,/And frowns, yet 'twill not still be so."  Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly (editors), The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, Volume II, page 706.  "First, peals of thunder we must hear,/Then lutes and harps shall stroke the ear" (lines 9 and 10) may show the influence of Horace's "Apollo sometimes mirth pursues,/His harp awakes his sleepy muse,/Nor always bends his threatening bow."  Ibid.

Charles Parsons Knight, "Cawsand Bay" (1877)

Finally, out of nowhere comes this:

         Waiting Both

A star looks down at me,
And says:  "Here I and you
Stand, each in our degree:
What do you mean to do, --
          Mean to do?"

I say:  "For all I know,
Wait, and let Time go by,
Till my change come." -- "Just so,"
The star says:  "So mean I: --
          So mean I."

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

I suppose that pursuing the golden mean is to a great degree a matter of waiting.

"Everything which seems to perish merely changes.  Since you are destined to return, you ought to depart with a tranquil mind.  Mark how the round of the universe repeats its course; you will see that no star in our firmament is extinguished, but that they all set and rise in alternation.  Summer has gone, but another year will bring it again; winter lies low, but will be restored by its own proper months; night has overwhelmed the sun, but day will soon rout the night again.  The wandering stars retrace their former courses; a part of the sky is rising unceasingly, and a part is sinking."

Seneca (translated by Richard Gummere), Epistle XXXVI, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales.

Charles Parsons Knight, "The Kyles of Bute" (1893)

Spring

The magnolias are blossoming.  As are the cherries and plums and pears. "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now . . ."  But more on that in a moment.

The following ode by Horace begins as a paean to spring.  But, as is often the case, Horace uses a precisely-observed opening scene as a prelude to a wide-ranging meditation on the human condition.  This is what makes him so lovable, and his poetry so beguiling and delightful:  who knows where he will take us next?

The snows are gone, and grass returns again,
     New leaves adorn the widow trees,
The unswoln streams their narrow banks contain,
     And softly roll to quiet seas:

The decent Nymphs with smiling Graces join'd,
     Now naked dance i'th' open air,
They dread no blasts, nor fear the wind
     That wantons thro' their flowing hair.

The nimble hour that turns the circling year,
     And swiftly whirls the pleasing day,
Forewarns thee to be mortal in thy care,
     Nor cramp thy life with long delay:

The Spring the Winter, Summer wastes the Spring,
     And Summer's beauty's quickly lost,
When drunken Autumn spreads her drooping wing,
     And next cold Winter creeps in frost.

The moon, 'tis true, her monthly loss repairs,
     She straight renews her borrow'd light;
But when black Death hath turn'd our shining years,
     There follows one Eternal Night.

When we shall view the gloomy Stygian shore,
     And walk amongst the mighty dead,
Where Tullus, where Aeneas went before,
     We shall be dust, and empty shade:

Who knows if stubborn Fate will prove so kind,
     And join to this another day?
What e'er is for thy greedy heir design'd,
     Will slip his hands, and fly away:

When thou art gone, and Minos' sentence read,
     Torquatus, there is no return;
Thy fame, nor all thy learned tongue can plead,
     Nor goodness shall unseal the urn:

For chaste Hippolytus Diana strives,
     She strives, but ah! she strives in vain;
Nor Theseus' care, and pious force reprieves
     His dear Pirithous from his chain.

Horace (translated by Thomas Creech), Odes, Book IV, Ode 7, in Thomas Creech, The Odes, Satires, and Epistles of Horace (1684).  "Unswoln" (line 3) is the spelling as it appears in Creech's original translation.

The ode is addressed to Torquatus (line 30), a member of a well-known Roman family who was a lawyer by profession (hence the reference to "thy learned tongue" in line 31).  Tullus Hostilius (line 23)  is traditionally identified as the third king of Rome.  Minos (line 29) was the judge of the dead in the Underworld.  Hippolytus (line 33) was falsely accused by his stepmother Phaedra of attempting to seduce her.  He was killed by order of his father Theseus before Diana was able to disclose Phaedra's deception to Theseus.  Pirithous (line 36), accompanied by Theseus, went down to the Underworld to claim Persephone as his wife.  Theseus was able to escape with the aid of Hercules, but Pirithous remained forever imprisoned.

Lucien Pissarro, "Rade de Bormes" (1923)

Even if A. E. Housman had not been a classical scholar and a professor of Latin, one suspects that Horace's ode was the sort of thing that would catch his fancy, given his temperament.  And, sure enough, it did.

"I attended [Housman's] lectures for two years.  At five minutes past 11 he used to walk to the desk, open his manuscript, and begin to read.  At the end of the hour he folded his papers and left the room.  He never looked either at us or at the row of dons in the front.  One morning in May, 1914, when the trees in Cambridge were covered with blossom, he reached in his lecture Ode 7 in Horace's Fourth Book, 'Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis.'  This ode he dissected with the usual display of brilliance, wit, and sarcasm.

Then for the first time in two years he looked up at us, and in quite a different voice said:  'I should like to spend the last few minutes considering this ode simply as poetry.'  Our previous experience of Professor Housman would have made us sure that he would regard such a proceeding as beneath contempt.  He read the ode aloud with deep emotion, first in Latin and then in an English translation of his own.  'That,' he said hurriedly, almost like a man betraying a secret, 'I regard as the most beautiful poem in ancient literature,' and walked quickly out of the room.

A scholar of Trinity (since killed in the War), who walked with me to our next lecture, expressed in undergraduate style our feeling that we had seen something not really meant for us.  'I felt quite uncomfortable,' he said.  'I was afraid the old fellow was going to cry.'"

Mrs. T. W. Pym, Letter to The Times (May 5, 1936), in Richard Gaskin, Horace and Housman (Palgrave Macmillan 2013), page 12.

Lucien Pissarro, "The Dunmow Road from Tilty Wood" (1915)

Here is the translation that Housman read to his students in Cambridge on that May morning in 1914.

The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws
     And grasses in the mead renew their birth,
The river to the river-bed withdraws,
     And altered is the fashion of the earth.

The Nymphs and Graces three put off their fear
     And unapparelled in the woodland play.
The swift hour and the brief prime of the year
     Say to the soul, Thou wast not born for aye.

Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of spring
     Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers
Comes autumn, with his apples scattering;
     Then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs.

But oh, whate'er the sky-led seasons mar,
     Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams:
Come we where Tullus and where Ancus are,
     And good Aeneas, we are dust and dreams.

Torquatus, if the gods in heaven shall add
     The morrow to the day, what tongue has told?
Feast then thy heart, for what thy heart has had
     The fingers of no heir will ever hold.

When thou descendest once the shades among,
     The stern assize and equal judgment o'er,
Not thy long lineage nor thy golden tongue,
     No, nor thy righteousness, shall friend thee more.

Night holds Hippolytus the pure of stain,
     Diana steads him nothing, he must stay;
And Theseus leaves Pirithous in the chain
     The love of comrades cannot take away.

Horace (translated by A. E. Housman), in A. E. Housman, More Poems (1936).  "Shaws" (line 1) are groves or thickets of trees.  Ancus Marcius (line 15) (whose name Creech omits from his translation) is traditionally identified as the fourth king of Rome.

Lucien Pissarro, "The Thierceville Road, Early Spring" (1893)

We thus come to Housman's "loveliest of trees," which has appeared here before, but which is always worth revisiting at this time of year.  Reading it (well, reading any of Housman's poems) in conjunction with Horace's ode, one can understand why the ode provoked such an emotional response in Housman.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A. E. Housman, Poem II, A Shropshire Lad (1896).

Housman wrote the poem between May and July of 1895.  Archie Burnett (editor), The Poems of A. E. Housman (Oxford University Press 1997), page 320.  The date of Housman's translation of Horace's ode is unknown. However, it was first published in a periodical in 1897.  Ibid, page 426.

Lucien Pissarro, "The Garden Gate, Epping" (1894)

Partridges At Twilight And Summer Grasses

On the one hand, the news of the world counsels us, on a daily basis: Abandon all hope!  On the other hand, the modern gods of Science, Progress, and utopian political schemes whisper in our ear:  We know the Truth.  We have a plan for you.  Trust us.  Both pieces of advice are falsehoods.

Consider the messengers.  The people who deliver these messages have no heart.  The individual soul is of no interest to them.  The media?  Social scientists?  Politicians?  Those in search of heart and soul need to look elsewhere.

Where, then, should we turn?  Well, as one might expect, I'm inclined to suggest that poetry may be a good place to start.  It is not the only place, of course.  We are in search of that which is "true and not feigning," wherever we can find it.

If we start our search with poetry, we can begin at random.  We would soon discover that a poem written during the first century, B. C., in the Roman Empire, a poem written in China during the T'ang Dynasty, a poem written in Japan during the Tokugawa Shogunate in the 17th century, and a poem written in Scotland in the 20th century all say essentially the same thing about how we live.

Ian Fleming (1906-1994), "Fisher Houses, Arbroath" (1949)

Let's start with Horace, addressing his female acquaintance Leuconoe.

Ah do not strive too much to know,
     My dear Leuconoe,
What the kind gods design to do
     With me and thee.

Ah do not you consult the stars,
     Contented bear thy doom,
Rather than thus increase thy fears
     For what will come:

Whether they'll give one winter more,
     Or else make this thy last;
Which breaks the waves on Tyrrhene shore
     With many a blast.

Be wise, and drink; cut off long cares
     From thy contracted span,
Nor stretch extensive hopes and fears
     Beyond a man:

E'en whilst we speak, the Envious Time
     Doth make swift haste away;
Then seize the present, use thy prime,
     Nor trust another day.

Horace (translated by Thomas Creech), Odes, Book I, Ode 11, in Thomas Creech, The Odes, Satires, and Epistles of Horace (1684).

Critical opinion is divided as to whether Horace is providing sage advice to a young friend or wooing a prospective lover.  But, whatever his motives, the advice is clear:  carpe diem (which Creech translates as "seize the present" rather than the usual "seize the day"), for you may not be here tomorrow.

Ian Fleming, "Window on the Sea" (1965)

The post-Enlightenment belief in the perfectibility of society, and in our ever-advancing march into a promised utopian future, is, not surprisingly, accompanied by ignorance of both human nature and history on the part of the true believers.  But, should the busybodies wish to educate themselves (an unlikely prospect), they need not look far to discover what they ought to have known from the start:  for centuries, poets have been telling us exactly how human nature and history work.

                    The Ruin of the Capital of Yueh

Hither returned Kou Chien, the King of Yueh, in triumph;
He had destroyed the Kingdom of Wu.
His loyal men came home in brilliance of brocade,
And the women of the court thronged the palace
Like flowers that fill the spring --
Now only a flock of partridges are flying in the twilight.

Li Po (translated by Shigeyoshi Obata), in Shigeyoshi Obata, The Works of Li Po (E. P. Dutton 1922).

The Kingdom of Wu was conquered by the Kingdom of Yueh in the 5th century, B. C.  A century later, the Kingdom of Yueh was conquered by the Kingdom of Chu.  A century or so later the Kingdom of Chu was conquered by the Qin Dynasty . . . . .

The poem brings to mind a passage from Herodotus:

"For the cities which were formerly great, have most of them become insignificant; and such as are at present powerful, were weak in the olden time.  I shall therefore discourse equally of both, convinced that human happiness never continues long in one stay."

Herodotus (translated by George Rawlinson), in George Rawlinson, History of Herodotus, Volume 1, Book I, Section 5 (Fourth Edition 1880), page 148.

Ian Fleming, "Arbroath Harbour" (1952)

Basho wrote the following haiku in 1689, when visiting Hiraizumi, the site of a 12th century battle between two samurai clans.

     Ah!  Summer grasses!
All that remains
     Of the warriors' dreams.

Basho (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 3: Summer-Autumn (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 309.

Ian Fleming, "Arbroath Harbour" (1951)

Finally, Scotland in the 20th century brings us full circle.  Kingdoms, dynasties, clans.  An individual life.  One and the same.
                 
                   So Many Summers

Beside one loch, a hind's neat skeleton,
Beside another, a boat pulled high and dry:
Two neat geometries drawn in the weather:
Two things already dead and still to die.

I passed them every summer, rod in hand,
Skirting the bright blue or the spitting gray,
And, every summer, saw how the bleached timbers
Gaped wider and the neat ribs fell away.

Time adds one malice to another one --
Now you'd look very close before you knew
If it's the boat that ran, the hind went sailing.
So many summers, and I have lived them too.

Norman MacCaig, in Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009).

As I have noted in the past, I cannot claim to have gained any wisdom during my years on Earth.  I am not qualified to give advice on how to live. But I do know that human nature never changes.  And I also know that the World is a paradise just as it is.  At this moment.

Ian Fleming, "Fisherman's Window"

Remains

When this week began, I did not intend to devote any time to pondering the fate of my mortal remains and of my soul.  Then, mid-week, I happened upon this:

                         On Himself

Some parts may perish; die thou canst not all:
The most of Thee shall scape the funeral.

Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648).

Poetry is funny that way:  you never know where you are headed next.

As it turns out, Herrick derived his thought from two lines of one of Horace's Odes:  "I shall not all die, and a large part of me will escape the Goddess of Death." Horace, Odes, Book III, Ode XXX.  Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly (editors), The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, Volume II (Oxford University Press 2013), page 675.  Here is a verse translation:

I shall not wholly die:  large residue
Shall 'scape the queen of funerals.

Horace (translated by John Conington), in The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace (Fifth Edition 1872).

Kenneth Rowntree, "Old Toll Bar House, Ashopton" (1940)

But this was not the end of the journey.  On the opposite page, I noticed this:

                  Great Spirits Supervive

Our mortal parts may wrapt in seare-cloths lie:
Great Spirits never with their bodies die.

Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648) (italics in original).

"Supervive" means "survive."  OED.  "Seare-cloths" is a variant spelling of "cerecloth," which is defined as:  "cloth smeared or impregnated with wax or some glutinous matter:  (1) used for wrapping a dead body in; a waxed winding-sheet or a winding-sheet in general."  Ibid.

Is this whistling past the graveyard?  I have no theological agenda, nor do I have a sectarian bone to pick.  However, something has always told me that we all possess a soul (for lack of a better word -- and it is, actually, a fine word), a soul whose fate is beyond our ken.

As to the "Great Spirit" part:  well, none of us are in a position to lay claim to that epithet, are we?  Something unknown, inscrutable, and silent makes that determination.  I do know this:  if you come to believe that you are a "Great Spirit," then you most certainly are not.

Kenneth Rowntree, "The Livermore Tombs, Barnston, Essex" (1940)

Something about "Great Spirits never with their bodies die" rang a bell. When Herrick italicizes a phrase it signals that he has obtained it from another source, usually classical or Biblical.  Cain and Connolly, in their thorough annotations to Hesperides, do not, however, identify a source for this phrase.

But I have a thought.  As long-time (and much-appreciated!) readers will recall, I spent some time earlier this year wandering through The Greek Anthology.  I do not have the scholarly credentials to claim the following epigram as the source for Herrick's phrase, but it does provide an interesting parallel:

In sacred sleep here virtuous Saon lies;
'Tis ever wrong to say a good man dies.

Callimachus (translated by William Dodd), in The Hymns of Callimachus, Translated from the Greek into English Verse, with Explanatory Notes (1755).

An alternative translation:

Here Saon, wrapp'd in holy slumber, lies:
Thou canst not say, the just and virtuous dies.

Callimachus (translated by John Merivale), in Henry Wellesley (editor), Anthologia Polyglotta: A Selection of Versions in Various Languages, Chiefly from The Greek Anthology (1849).

Thus ends this week's journey.

Kenneth Rowntree, "Bridge to Cox's Farm, Ashopton" (1940)

"The Piers Are Pummelled By The Waves"

The ode by Horace that I discussed in my previous post contains an image of a tempestuous Tyrrhenian Sea in winter.  In Derek Mahon's translation of the ode, the winter is described as one that "flings the high Tyrrhenian waves on the stone piers."  Louis MacNeice uses similar imagery in his translation:  the winter "on the ramparts of rock is exhausting the battering waves."

Something about the wind-tossed Tyrrhenian waves pounding the shore seemed vaguely familiar.  At my age, these inklings sometimes remain inchoate.  However, if I wait patiently, what I am looking for may arrive unexpectedly.  I eventually remembered the following poem by W. H. Auden.

                                Richard Eurich, "Marine Harvest" (1949)

            The Fall of Rome

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

W. H. Auden, Nones (1951).  Auden wrote the poem in 1947.

I'm afraid that I have no arcane or profound parallels of any sort to draw between Auden and Horace.  I was only thinking of the waves of the Tyrrhenian Sea ("mare Tyrrhenum") crashing upon piers in winter.

                       Richard Eurich, "Coast Scene with a Rainbow" (1952)

How To Live, Part Nineteen: The New Year

I am not one for making New Year's resolutions.  But I am willing to listen to advice.  Perhaps the best-known piece of advice on How to Live was given by Horace:  carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.  In The Oxford Dictionary of Latin Words and Phrases (1998) the phrase is translated as follows:  "seize the day, trusting as little as possible to the morrow."  Yes, of course:  carpe diem.  We've all heard it before.  Like most well-meaning advice, easier said than done.

The phrase appears in Ode 11 of Book One of Horace's Odes.  As one might expect, the poem has been translated into English numerous times, with varying degrees of fidelity to the original.  The following version is by Derek Mahon.

                              How to Live

Don't waste your time, Leuconoe, living in fear and hope
of the imprevisible future; forget the horoscope.
Accept whatever happens.  Whether the gods allow
us fifty winters more or drop us at this one now
which flings the high Tyrrhenian waves on the stone piers,
decant your wine.  The days are more fun than the years
which pass us by while we discuss them.  Act with zest
one day at a time, and never mind the rest.

Derek Mahon, Selected Poems (Viking/The Gallery Press 1991).

          Osmund Caine, "Wedding at Twickenham Parish Church" (1948)

Louis MacNeice also tried his hand at it:

Do not, Leuconoe, seek to inquire what is forbidden, what
End the gods have assigned to you or to me; nor do you meddle with
Astrological numbers.  What shall arise count to your balance if
God marks down to you more winters -- or perhaps this very one is the
Last which now on the rocks wears out the fierce Mediterranean
Sea; but be wise and have wine, wine on the board, prune to a minimum
Long-drawn hopes.  While we chat, envious time threatens to give us the
Slip; so gather the day, never an inch trusting futurity.

E. R. Dodds (editor), Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice (Faber and Faber 1966).

                            Osmund Caine, "Washing at No. 25, Kingston"

I have a soft spot for the following version by Sir Thomas Hawkins (from 1625):

Strive not, Leuconoe, to know what end
The gods above to me or thee will send;
Nor with astrologers consult at all,
That thou mayst better know what can befall;
Whether thou liv'st more winters, or thy last
Be this, which Tyrrhen waves 'gainst rocks do cast.
Be wise!  drink free, and in so short a space
Do not protracted hopes of life embrace,
Whilst we are talking, envious time doth slide:
This day's thine own; the next may be denied.

Horace, The Odes, Epodes, Satires, and Epistles, Translated by the Most Eminent English Scholars and Poets (1889).

The Elizabethans, though oftentimes flowery, were pretty good at getting to the heart of the matter in a pithy, lovely fashion when they wanted to.  I am put in mind of, for instance, Robert Devereux's "Happy were he could finish forth his fate/In some unhaunted desert," which I have posted here previously.

There was something about the intrigue and the danger of the time which, I think, tended to concentrate the mind (to borrow from Samuel Johnson in another context).  I am reminded of, say, Walter Raleigh and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, writing poetry in their dungeons as they awaited their beheadings.  (A fate shared by Devereux as well.)

                      Osmund Caine, "The Hoby Effigies, Bisham Church"