Waves And Robins

I am a slow reader.  When I hear someone say they finished reading a novel last week, I am impressed.  All I can say in response is that I read a few poems last week.  In saying this, I don't intend to sound precious or pedantic.  It's simply the ways things have worked out.

As I have suggested before, a poem -- like a painting -- needs time to develop.  In repose.  I have never been one to rush through art museums: looking at too many paintings makes my head spin.  Likewise with poetry: I don't see the point in reading wide swathes of poetry at a time.  One poem per sitting is my rule of thumb -- even for two-line poems.

John Brett

"Golden Prospects, St Catherine's Well, Land's End, Cornwall" (1881)

Reading poetry is a perambulation, not a race.  Thus, for instance, I continue to leisurely work my way through the poems of Walter de la Mare, discovering small gems.

     Never More, Sailor

Never more, Sailor,
Shalt thou be
Tossed on the wind-ridden,
Restless sea.
Its tides may labour;
All the world
Shake 'neath that weight
Of waters hurled:
But its whole shock
Can only stir
Thy dust to a quiet
Even quieter.
Thou mock'st at land
Who now art come
To such a small
And shallow home;
Yet bore the sea
Full many a care
For bones that once
A sailor's were.
And though the grave's
Deep soundlessness
Thy once sea-deafened
Ear distress,
No robin ever
On the deep
Hopped with his song
To haunt thy sleep.

Walter de la Mare, The Listeners and Other Poems (1912).

Of course, countless poems have been written about seafarers coming to rest at last on land, there to spend eternity.  "Home is the sailor, home from sea . . ."  Et cetera.

Ah, yes, but what about this?

No robin ever
On the deep
Hopped with his song
To haunt thy sleep.

I could not read those four lines and then move on straightaway to another poem.  I needed a day or so to let them rest, and quietly revolve, in my mind. I fell to sleep remembering them.  I am certainly not recommending this approach for everyone.  Others are no doubt more industrious, and out for bigger game.  I prefer daydreaming as I wander down by-ways.

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

If we let poems take their time, detours and diversions may offer themselves up.  De la Mare's sailor home from the sea got me to thinking of the numerous wonderful poems in The Greek Anthology about the sea-side graves of mariners.  For instance:

Though smiling calms should smooth the glassy seas,
Or the light ruffling of the western breeze
Should skim their surface, with no venturous prow
Will I the dreary waste of waters plough.
By sad experience warn'd I tempt no more
The swelling billows and the tempest's roar.

Leonidas (translated by William Shepherd), in Henry Wellesley (editor), Anthologia Polyglotta: A Selection of Versions in Various Languages, Chiefly from The Greek Anthology (1849), page 301.

Or:

Hail, shipwreck'd corse!  accuse not from the grave,
     The ocean, but the winds, that wrought thy doom:
They wreck'd thee; while the gentle salt-sea wave
     Bore thee to land, to thy parental tomb.

Julianus (translated by Henry Wellesley), Ibid, page 78.

And:

This is a sailor's, that a peasant's tomb:
'Neath sea and land there lurks one common doom.

Plato (translated by Richard Coxe), Ibid, page 234.

John Brett, "The Land's End, Cornwall" (1880)

And what of that lovely robin, haunting (peacefully) the sleep of the sailor? I was reminded of a wonderful poem by Robert Herrick that appeared here in May.

                 To Robin Red-breast

Laid out for dead, let thy last kindness be
With leaves and moss-work for to cover me:
And while the Wood-nymphs my cold corpse inter,
Sing thou my Dirge, sweet-warbling Chorister!
For Epitaph, in Foliage, next write this:
     Here, here the Tomb of Robin Herrick is.

Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648).

And so a simple poem led to a nice stroll, a stroll during which our frenetic modern world was entirely absent.  Have no fear!  It will still be there when you return.

John Brett, "Forest Cove, Cardigan Bay" (1883)

Voices

I have written before about the impassivity and reticence of the World.  If someone tells you that they "hear voices," you are likely to view their claim with skepticism (or, most likely, with concern for their well-being).  Still, I'm perfectly willing to lend an ear to any intimations that the Impassive is willing to whisper to me.

Today, as I sat in the sun, I listened to the wind high up in the pines.  There is a scientific explanation for the sound of the wind in the pines, its ebb and flow.  Of course there is.  Something to do with the velocity of moving air and the resistance of boughs.  But Science merely provides descriptions of the World.  It has nothing to do with intimation.

Ludwig Wittgenstein hits the nail on the head:

"At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.

So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate.

And they both are right and wrong.  But the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear terminus, whereas the modern system makes it appear as though everything were explained."

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (translated by C. K. Ogden), Propositions 6.371 and 6.372 (1921) (italics in original).

Those four sentences explain the central error of the modern age.  And its emptiness.

John Brett, "Caernarvon" (1875)

                              Dumb

"A voice!  A voice!"  I cried.  No music stills
     The craving heart that would an answer find;
     No song of birds, no murmuring of the wind,
     No -- not that awful harmony of mind,
The silent stars, above the silent hills.

Mary Coleridge, in Theresa Whistler (editor), The Collected Poems of Mary Coleridge (Rupert Hart-Davis 1954).

I suspect that Coleridge's use of the word "awful" (line 4) is in the older, now lost, sense of "solemnly impressive; sublimely majestic."  OED.

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

Throughout his life, Wallace Stevens argued for the primacy of the Imagination over Reality, believing that the Imagination is what makes us human.  Hence, one would not expect Stevens to be listening for voices from out of the World.  But he had his moments.

     To the Roaring Wind

What syllable are you seeking,
Vocalissimus,
In the distances of sleep?
Speak it.

Wallace Stevens, Harmonium (1923).

These moments occurred more often as Stevens aged.  A bit of doubt began to creep in.  Consider, for example, the three opening stanzas of "The Region November" (my oft-revisited "November poem"):

It is hard to hear the north wind again,
And to watch the treetops, as they sway.

They sway, deeply and loudly, in an effort,
So much less than feeling, so much less than speech,

Saying and saying, the way things say
On the level of that which is not yet knowledge . . .

John Brett, "St Ives Bay" (1878)

             Out There

Do they ever meet out there,
The dolphins I counted,
The otter I wait for?
I should have spent my life
Listening to the waves.

Michael Longley, The Ghost Orchid (Jonathan Cape 1995).

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

Perspective, Part Thirteen: No Choice In The Matter

Something obvious:  in the aftermath of the sad and painful events that life inevitably brings our way, one may gain some perspective on what really matters during our time above ground.  Which is not to say, mind you, that the gaining of perspective outweighs, or completely compensates for, the pain and sadness.  No, I'm not willing to go that far.  I need to think that one over for a while (and live longer) before I accept that proposition.

I'm reminded of the final five lines of Randall Jarrell's "90 North" (which appeared here in full a few years ago):

I see at last that all the knowledge

I wrung from the darkness -- that the darkness flung me --
Is worthless as ignorance:  nothing comes from nothing,
The darkness from the darkness.  Pain comes from the darkness
And we call it wisdom.  It is pain.

Randall Jarrell, Blood for a Stranger (1942).

My view is not as bleak as Jarrell's:  I'm simply offering his view for what it is worth.  I'd say that, while I don't wish to engage in wishful thinking, I'm willing to learn while I'm here, with sadness and pain as part of the package.  Not that I have any choice in the matter, of course.

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

This much I do know:  one mustn't be seduced by the many Siren songs of false security the winds waft to us.

                              Money

Quarterly, is it, money reproaches me:
          'Why do you let me lie here wastefully?
I am all you never had of goods and sex.
          You could get them still by writing a few cheques.'

So I look at others, what they do with theirs:
          They certainly don't keep it upstairs.
By now they've a second house and car and wife:
          Clearly money has something to do with life

-- In fact, they've a lot in common, if you enquire:
          You can't put off being young until you retire,
And however you bank your screw, the money you save
          Won't in the end buy you more than a shave.

I listen to money singing.  It's like looking down
          From long french windows at a provincial town,
The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad
          In the evening sun.  It is intensely sad.

Philip Larkin, High Windows (Faber and Faber 1974).

The final four lines are, I think, among Larkin's finest:  that inimitable plain-spoken and elegant combination of matter-of-fact honesty and sheer beauty that he often achieves as a poem comes to an end.  Of course, I say this as one who loves Larkin's poetry.  Others may find that the lines exemplify exactly what they don't like about him.  Perhaps one test of whether Larkin is your cup of tea is how you react to:  "It is intensely sad."

John Brett, "Forest Cove, Cardigan Bay" (1883)

Yes, better pain and sadness -- for they are direct evidence of love and affection -- than false security.

                 Remembering Golden Bells

Ruined and ill -- a man of two score;
Pretty and guileless -- a girl of three.
Not a boy -- but still better than nothing:
To soothe one's feeling -- from time to time a kiss!
There came a day -- they suddenly took her from me;
Her soul's shadow wandered I know not where.
And when I remember how just at the time she died
She lisped strange sounds, beginning to learn to talk,
Then I know that the ties of flesh and blood
Only bind us to a load of grief and sorrow.
At last, by thinking of the time before she was born,
By thought and reason I drove the pain away.
Since my heart forgot her, many days have passed
And three times winter has changed to spring.
This morning, for a little, the old grief came back,
Because, in the road, I met her foster-nurse.

Po Chu-i (772-846) (translated by Arthur Waley), in Arthur Waley, Chinese Poems (1946).

Do not be taken in by Po Chu-i's affectation of a gruff manner in a few places in the poem:  he is never one to wear his heart on his sleeve, and he is always wary of sentiment.  For instance, I think we know that this is whistling in the dark:  "By thought and reason I drove the pain away."  As is this:  "my heart forgot her."  Hardly.

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

At Sea

I've been put in a maritime mood by the seaside grave poems from The Greek Anthology that have appeared in my recent posts.  But the two poems I have in mind are neither funereal nor littoral: they take us out on to the deep with the living.

John Brett, "Falmouth Harbour, 13 July 1883" (1883)

First, an untitled poem by A. E. Housman:

There pass the careless people
     That call their souls their own:
Here by the road I loiter,
     How idle and alone.

Ah, past the plunge of plummet,
     In seas I cannot sound,
My heart and soul and senses,
     World without end, are drowned.

His folly has not fellow
     Beneath the blue of day
That gives to man or woman
     His heart and soul away.

There flowers no balm to sain him
     From east of earth to west
That's lost for everlasting
     The heart out of his breast.

Here by the labouring highway
     With empty hands I stroll:
Sea-deep, till doomsday morning,
     Lie lost my heart and soul.

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

"Plummet" (line 5) is "a piece of lead or other heavy material attached to a line, used for measuring the depth of water; a sounding lead."  OED.  (But the more commonly-used sense of "a rapid fall; an instance of plummeting rapidly" is perhaps invoked by implication.)  "Sain" (line 13) means "to bless . . . esp. in collocation with save" or "to secure by prayer or enchantment from evil influence."  Ibid.  These two senses derive from the primary meaning:  "to make the sign of the cross on (a thing or person) in token of consecration or blessing; or for the purpose of exorcizing a demon, warding off the evil influences of witches, poison, etc." Ibid.

I like the way Housman works his sea imagery into the poem without being too insistent about it.  But, at the end, he brings it to the fore beautifully: "Sea-deep . . . lie lost my heart and soul" is wonderful.

John Brett, "Christmas Morning, 1866" (1868)

I've never been able to figure out the following poem.  I'll attempt to excuse my thickheadedness by positing that it is a poem of evocative atmosphere, with no "plot" per se.  Which, come to think of it, may be exactly the point. At any rate, I do know this: it sounds good.

                         Absences

Rain patters on a sea that tilts and sighs.
Fast-running floors, collapsing into hollows,
Tower suddenly, spray-haired.  Contrariwise,
A wave drops like a wall: another follows,
Wilting and scrambling, tirelessly at play
Where there are no ships and no shallows.

Above the sea, the yet more shoreless day,
Riddled by wind, trails lit-up galleries:
They shift to giant ribbing, sift away.

Such attics cleared of me!  Such absences!

Philip Larkin, The Less Deceived (The Marvell Press 1955).

Interestingly, Larkin chose "Absences" when he was asked to select a poem to be included in an anthology titled Poet's Choice (Dial Press 1962). Larkin, who was usually not given to explicating his own work, wrote this as an introduction to the poem:

"I suppose I like 'Absences' (a) because of its subject matter -- I am always thrilled by the thought of what places look like when I am not there; (b) because I fancy it sounds like a different, better poet rather than myself. The last line, for instance, sounds like a slightly unconvincing translation from a French symbolist.  I wish I could write like this more often.

Incidentally, an oceanographer wrote to me pointing out that I was confusing two kinds of wave, plunging waves and spilling waves, which seriously damaged the poem from a technical viewpoint.  I am sorry about this, but do not see how to amend it now."

Philip Larkin, "Poet's Choice," in Further Requirements: Interviews, Broadcasts, Statements and Book Reviews 1952-85 (edited by Anthony Thwaite) (Faber and Faber 2001), page 17.

"I am always thrilled by the thought of what places look like when I am not there."  Part of me thinks that Larkin is pulling our leg.  But, then, think about it . . .

John Brett, "A North-West Gale off the Longships Lighthouse" (1873)

R. S. Thomas By The Sea: "The Look Of Those Who Have Come Safely Home"

Whether deserved or not, R. S. Thomas has a reputation for not being the life of the party.  This may be due to the fact that he preferred silence and solitude to noise.  I cannot fault him for this.  (Silence is of great significance in Thomas's poetry -- particularly the huge silence of God.  Thomas, an Anglican priest, pondered that silence all his life.)

As always, we should be wary of caricatures.  For instance, Thomas found his way to the sea, and brought this back.

                            Abersoch

There was that headland, asleep on the sea,
The air full of thunder and the far air
Brittle with lightning; there was that girl
Riding her cycle, hair at half-mast,
And the men smoking, the dinghies at rest
On the calm tide.  There were people going
About their business, while the storm grew
Louder and nearer and did not break.

Why do I remember these few things,
That were rumours of life, not life itself
That was being lived fiercely, where the storm raged?
Was it just that the girl smiled,
Though not at me, and the men smoking
Had the look of those who have come safely home?

R. S. Thomas, Tares (1961).

Abersoch is located on the Lleyn (Llyn) Peninsula in Wales.  Although Thomas mostly abandoned traditional forms and rhyme after his first two books, he did thereafter write a number of 14-line poems that resemble sonnets.  This is one of them.

                     John Brett, "The Garrison Walk, St. Mary's" (1873)

"Consider The Grass Growing": Patrick Kavanagh

The fields that I pass through on my daily walk are now full of deep-green wild grasses -- things are no longer matted and tangled and grey.  A small item amid the news of the world, but one that bears attending to.

          Consider the Grass Growing

Consider the grass growing
As it grew last year and the year before,
Cool about the ankles like summer rivers
When we walked on a May evening through the meadows
To watch the mare that was going to foal.

Patrick Kavanagh, Selected Poems (1996).  Kavanagh wrote the poem in 1943.

                                  John Brett, "The River Dart" (1866)

By The Sea: "Peace -- A Study"

C. S. Calverley (1831-1884) wrote verse parodies and light verse.  The following poem is often found in anthologies of "comic" verse, and the clerk in the poem is thus regarded as a comic figure.  But I beg to differ.  I confess that all my sympathies lie with the clerk, and that I feel nothing but goodwill toward him.  This no doubt puts me at cross-purposes with "authorial intention" and, moreover, suggests that I am slow on the uptake.  That may be so.  But I like the clerk.  And I feel a kinship with him.

                       Peace
                     A study

He stood, a worn-out City clerk --
  Who'd toil'd, and seen no holiday,
For forty years from dawn to dark --
   Alone beside Caermarthen Bay.

He felt the salt spray on his lips;
   Heard children's voices on the sands;
Up the sun's path he saw the ships
   Sail on and on to other lands;

And laugh'd aloud.  Each sight and sound
   To him was joy too deep for tears;
He sat him on the beach, and bound
   A blue bandana round his ears,

And thought how, posted near his door,
   His own green door on Camden Hill,
Two bands at least, most likely more,
   Were mingling at their own sweet will

Verdi with Vance.  And at the thought
   He laugh'd again, and softly drew
That Morning Herald that he'd bought
   Forth from his breast, and read it through.

(An aside: it has been suggested that line 10 is intended to be an echo of the final line of Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood":  "Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.")

                                          John Brett (1831-1902)
         "The British Channel Seen From The Dorsetshire Cliffs" (1871)