Life Explained, Part Thirty-Three: Snail

The sight of an empty snail shell in the garden or on the sidewalk always saddens me.  What fate befell the vanished inhabitant of that husk? "Moving at a snail's pace" will no doubt expose a creature to any number of misadventures.  And so the glimmering trail ends.

I realize, dear readers, that those of you who are gardeners may see the snail as a nuisance -- a single-minded engine of destruction.  I am also aware that some among you may consider the poems that follow to be instances of the worst sort of sentimental anthropomorphization, egregious examples of the Pathetic Fallacy.

I cannot muster a reasoned response to these potential objections.  The best that I can come up with is this:  there is no accounting for taste (mine, of course).  I came across the first poem a few weeks ago, and it immediately caught my fancy.  The three poems that follow it are long-time companions of which I am quite fond.  It occurred to me that it would be nice to see all of them together in one place.  As the benevolent (I hope!) dictator of this space, I can only beg your indulgence.

                       Upon the Snail

She goes but softly, but she goeth sure;

     She stumbles not as stronger creatures do:

Her journey's shorter, so she may endure

     Better than they which do much further go.

She makes no noise, but stilly seizeth on

     The flower or herb appointed for her food,

The which she quietly doth feed upon,

     While others range, and gare, but find no good.

And though she doth but very softly go,

     However 'tis not fast, nor slow, but sure;

And certainly they that do travel so,

     The prize they do aim at they do procure.

John Bunyan, A Book for Boys and Girls, or, Country Rhymes for Children (1686).

"Gare" (line 8) is glossed by one editor as "stare about."  Other editors (primarily in the 19th century) substitute "glare" in its place, apparently presuming that there was a misprint in the original text of 1686.  The adjectival form of "gare" means "eager, covetous, desirous of wealth."  OED. Given that Bunyan's book of children's poems was intended to edify, I would like to suggest (with absolutely no authority) that it would be nice to think of "gare" as meaning "to look about covetously."  Which a wise snail would never do, of course.

Charles Ginner (1878-1952), "Hartland Point from Boscastle" (1941)

It is the combination of self-sufficiency and leisurely, contemplative deliberativeness that makes the snail so beguiling and so sympathetic a character, don't you think?

                        The Snail

To grass, or leaf, or fruit, or wall,
The snail sticks close, nor fears to fall,
As if he grew there, house and all
                                             Together.

Within that house secure he hides,
When danger imminent betides
Of storm, or other harm besides
                                             Of weather.

Give but his horns the slightest touch,
His self-collecting power is such,
He shrinks into his house, with much
                                             Displeasure.

Where'er he dwells, he dwells alone,
Except himself has chattels none,
Well satisfied to be his own
                                             Whole treasure.

Thus, hermit-like, his life he leads,
Nor partner of his banquet needs,
And if he meets one, only feeds
                                             The faster.

Who seeks him must be worse than blind,
(He and his house are so combin'd)
If, finding it, he fails to find
                                             Its master.

Vincent Bourne (translated by William Cowper), in H. S. Milford (editor), The Complete Poetical Works of William Cowper (Oxford University Press 1907).

A side-note:  Vincent Bourne (1695-1747) was an Englishman who wrote poetry in Latin.  Cowper was a pupil of Bourne's at Westminster School. Later in his life, Cowper translated a number of Bourne's poems, including "The Jackdaw" and "The Thracian," which have appeared here previously.

"Well satisfied to be his own/Whole treasure":  yes, that's it, exactly!

Charles Ginner, "The Aqueduct, Bath" (1928)

The subject of my previous post was the role of "wonder" in the poetry of Walter de la Mare.  Wonder certainly plays a role in de la Mare's contemplation upon the snail in the following poem.  Having said that, I recognize that every good poem, on any subject, to some degree has its source in a poet's wonder at "the beauty and strangeness of creation" (to borrow W. H. Auden's words).

                         The Snail

All day shut fast in whorled retreat
You slumber where -- no wild bird knows;
While on your rounded roof-tree beat
The petals of the rose.
The grasses sigh above your house;
Through drifts of darkest azure sweep
The sun-motes where the mosses drowse
That soothe your noonday sleep.

But when to ashes in the west
Those sun-fires die; and, silver, slim,
Eve, with the moon upon her breast,
Smiles on the uplands dim;
Then, all your wreathèd house astir,
Horns reared, grim mouth, deliberate pace,
You glide in silken silence where
The feast awaits your grace.

Strange partners, Snail!  Then I, abed,
Consign the thick-darked vault to you,
Nor heed what sweetness night may shed
Nor moonshine's slumbrous dew.

Walter de la Mare, The Fleeting and Other Poems (Constable 1933).

The entire poem is lovely, but my favorite lines are these:  "While on your rounded roof-tree beat/The petals of the rose."  What a beautiful image and thought.  It is enough to make you envy a snail's life.

Charles Ginner, "Lancaster from Castle Hill Terrace" (1947)

"Strange partners, Snail!"  Yes, you and I and the snail and all else in the World are strange (and beautiful) partners during our short time together on earth.  "The divinest blessings are the commonest -- bestowed everywhere."  So says Walt Whitman.  (Richard Maurice Bucke (editor), Notes and Fragments: Left by Walt Whitman (1899), page 49.)

        Considering the Snail

The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
has darkened the earth's dark.  He
moves in a wood of desire,

pale antlers barely stirring
as he hunts.  I cannot tell
what power is at work, drenched there
with purpose, knowing nothing.
What is a snail's fury?  All
I think is that if later

I parted the blades above
the tunnel and saw the thin
trail of broken white across
litter, I would never have
imagined the slow passion
to that deliberate progress.

Thom Gunn, My Sad Captains (Faber and Faber 1961).

"The slow passion/to that deliberate progress."  Can we speak of a snail's passion?  Yes, of course.  Why not?

Charles Ginner, "The Punt in the Mill Stream"

Life Explained, Part Thirty-Two: "A Single Grain Of Rice Falling -- Into The Great Barn"

Human beings tend to believe that the times in which they live are unique or unprecedented.  This belief is particularly prevalent among the social engineers (politicians, scientists, assorted busybodies, and their ilk) who put their faith in Progress.  Truisms come in handy at this point.  There is nothing new under the sun.  The more things change, the more things stay the same.

The technological baubles of each successive "Modern Age" mean nothing. The human emotions that swirl within our hearts and minds and souls have not altered a whit in centuries.  When I wander through, say, The Greek Anthology or Robert Herrick's Hesperides I come across local peculiarities that mark out the age in which the poems were written.  But the clearest impression I take away is this:  They are the same as us.

Frederick William Hayes, "Cwm Silyn" (c. 1880)

Thus, twelve centuries ago, a Chinese poet spoke for us all, the living and the dead.  Nothing has changed.

            Climbing the Ling-Ying Terrace and Looking North

Mounting on high I begin to realize the smallness of Man's Domain;
Gazing into distance I begin to know the vanity of the Carnal World.
I turn my head and hurry home -- back to the Court and Market,
A single grain of rice falling -- into the Great Barn.

Po Chu-i (772-846) (translated by Arthur Waley), in One Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918).

Frederick William Hayes, "A Waterfall" (c. 1880)

"A single grain of rice falling -- into the Great Barn."  I cannot claim to have lived in a manner that reflects the wisdom implicit in that line.  I doubt that I ever will.  But it is something to aspire to.  In the meantime, I am happy to jettison (to the best of my limited ability) any notions of uniqueness or novelty in myself or in my times and embrace truisms (which are, after all, true).

                         The Truisms

His father gave him a box of truisms
Shaped like a coffin, then his father died;
The truisms remained on the mantelpiece
As wooden as the playbox they had been packed in
Or that other his father skulked inside.

Then he left home, left the truisms behind him
Still on the mantelpiece, met love, met war,
Sordor, disappointment, defeat, betrayal,
Till through disbeliefs he arrived at a house
He could not remember seeing before.

And he walked straight in; it was where he had come from
And something told him the way to behave.
He raised his hand and blessed his home;
The truisms flew and perched on his shoulders
And a tall tree sprouted from his father's grave.

Louis MacNeice, Solstices (Faber and Faber 1961).  MacNeice's father was a cleric who eventually became a bishop in the Church of Ireland.  He died in 1942, when MacNeice was 34.

MacNeice's poetry generally has a sardonic streak running through it.  But there are times when it gives way, at least in part, and for a moment only.

Frederick William Hayes, "Rock and Mountains" (c. 1880)

                 Realizing the Futility of Life

Ever since the time when I was a lusty boy
Down till now when I am ill and old,
The things I have cared for have been different at different times,
But my being busy, that has never changed.
Then on the shore -- building sand-pagodas.
Now, at Court, covered with tinkling jade.
This and that -- equally childish games,
Things whose substance passes in a moment of time!
While the hands are busy, the heart cannot understand;
When there is no Attachment, Doctrine is sound.
Even should one zealously strive to learn the Way,
That very striving will make one's error more.

Po Chu-i (translated by Arthur Waley), in One Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918).

The final four lines have a distinct Taoist and Buddhist component, particularly the concepts of non-attachment and "the Way."  However, it should be noted that these sorts of truths are not limited to Taoism or Buddhism.

Sand-pagodas or sand-castles:  it is all the same.

Frederick William Hayes, "Rocks in the Colwyn" (c. 1881)

Life Explained, Part Thirty-One: "Shall Then A Point In A Point Be So Vain As To Triumph In A Silly Point's Adventure?"

As I see it, Elizabethan poetry can be divided into three general categories. First, there are poems praising the poet's beloved in effusive language sprinkled with clever conceits.  Second, there are poems bemoaning the inconstancy of the poet's former beloved.  In this case, the poet either (1) professes his or her undying love, and begs the former beloved to reconsider, or (2) excoriates the perfidious former beloved in a fashion that makes any sort of reconciliation out of the question.

The third category consists of poems about our fate as human beings.  To wit:  meditations upon the transience and brevity of Life and/or upon the ever-lurking specter of Death.  Memento mori and all that.  Pithy explanations of Life.

The following poem (which originated as a song) belongs to the third category.  Although it has been attributed to Thomas Campion, that attribution is likely incorrect.  A. E. H. Swaen, "The Authorship of 'What if a day,' and Its Various Versions," Modern Philology, Volume IV, No. 3 (January 1907).  Thus, the author is best identified as Anonymous.

Evan Charlton (1904-1984), "Early Morning" (1956)

What if a day, or a month, or a year
     Crown thy desire with a thousand sweet contentings;
Cannot the chance of a night or an hour
     Cross thy delight with as many sad tormentings?
                    Fortune, honour, beauty, youth,
                         Are but blossoms dying;
                    Wanton pleasures, doting love,
                         Are but shadows flying.
                              All our joys
                              Are but toys,
                         Idle thoughts deceiving.
                              None have power
                              Of an hour
                         In their lives' bereaving.

Earth's but a point to the world; and a man
     Is but a point to the earth's compared centre.
Shall then a point in a point be so vain
     As to triumph in a silly point's adventure?
                    All is hazard that we have,
                         Here is no abiding;
                    Days of pleasure are but streams
                         Through fair meadows gliding.
                              Weal or woe,
                              Time doth go,
                         In time is no returning.
                              Secret fates
                              Guide our states
                         Both in mirth and mourning.

Anonymous, in Norman Ault (editor), Elizabethan Lyrics (1949).

The first published version of the poem appeared in 1566.  The version above is from a manuscript dating from approximately 1599.  "The world" (line 15) is used in the sense of "the material universe; the cosmos."  OED.

Yes, something to bear in mind:  we are all, each and every one of us, nothing but "silly points" in the universe, endearingly intent upon our "adventures."

Evan Charlton, "Hotel Garden"

Life Explained, Part Thirty: "The Human Condition"

Howard Nemerov's "The End of the Opera," which appeared in my previous post, may prompt one to think about the relationship between Life and Art, between the real and the imagined.  (Warning to self:  this is sounding too highfalutin' already, isn't it?)  But that's just a thought.  One should be wary of dragging philosophical musings into the reading of a poem.  It is better to approach these things obliquely via another poem.

                           Rene Magritte, "La Condition Humaine" (1933)

           The Human Condition

In this motel where I was told to wait,
The television screen is stood before
The picture window.  Nothing could be more
Use to a man than knowing where he's at,
And I don't know, but pace the day in doubt
Between my looking in and looking out.

Through snow, along the snowy road, cars pass
Going both ways, and pass behind the screen
Where heads of heroes sometimes can be seen
And sometimes cars, that speed across the glass.
Once I saw world and thought exactly meet,
But only in a picture by Magritte.

A picture of a picture, by Magritte,
Wherein a landscape on an easel stands
Before a window opening on a land-
scape, and the pair of them a perfect fit,
Silent and mad.  You know right off, the room
Before that scene was always an empty room.

And that is now the room in which I stand
Waiting, or walk, and sometimes try to sleep.
The day falls into darkness while I keep
The TV going; headlights blaze behind
Its legendary traffic, love and hate,
In this motel where I was told to wait.

Howard Nemerov, The Blue Swallows (1967).

                  Adam Bruce Thomson, "Still Life at a Window" (c. 1944)

Now, having just warned myself about (1) being too highfalutin' and (2) the dangers of bringing philosophy to bear in the reading of a poem, I would like to offer a few thoughts from the ever-lovable (and, alas, usually accurate) Arthur Schopenhauer:

"[T]he same external events and circumstances affect each of us quite differently; and indeed with the same environment each lives in a world of his own.  For a man is directly concerned only with his own conceptions, feelings, and voluntary movements; things outside influence him only in so far as they give rise to these.  The world in which each lives depends first on his interpretation thereof and therefore proves to be different to different men.  Accordingly, it will result in being poor, shallow, and superficial, or rich, interesting, and full of meaning."

Arthur Schopenhauer (translated by E. F. J. Payne) , Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume 1 (1851), page 316.

Having dug myself into this hole, I'm afraid that I'm going to dig deeper by letting Ludwig Wittgenstein have the final word:

"The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man."

Ludwig Wittgenstein (translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness), Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, from Proposition 6.43 (1921).

                                    William Bernard Adeney (1878-1966)
                                                      "The Window"

Life Explained, Part Twenty-Nine: "Where Lies The Land To Which The Ship Would Go?"

The image of life as a sea voyage -- pleasurable or painful, paradisal or hellish, aimless or purposeful -- has its origins in antiquity.  As one might expect, Explanations of Life abound.

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861) was a friend of Matthew Arnold's. Hence, he would have been familiar with the somewhat bleak sea-vision presented by Arnold in "To Marguerite -- Continued":  "Yes! in the sea of life enisled . . . We mortal millions live alone."  In the following untitled poem, Clough offers a sea-vision that may not be as bleak as Arnold's -- at least, for example, there is a prospect of companionship.  The only catch is that the voyage appears to lack a destination (or a port of embarkation, for that matter).

                                         Emily Carr, "Seascape" (c. 1935)

Where lies the land to which the ship would go?
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.
And where the land she travels from?  Away,
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

On sunny noons upon the deck's smooth face,
Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace!
Or, o'er the stern reclining, watch below
The foaming wake far widening as we go.

On stormy nights when wild north-westers rave,
How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave!
The dripping sailor on the reeling mast
Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past.

Where lies the land to which the ship would go?
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.
And where the land she travels from?  Away,
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

Arthur Hugh Clough, Poems (1879).

Of course, some would say that a destination is beside the point.  For instance, C. P. Cavafy in "Ithaka":

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery. . . .

C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems: Revised Edition (translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard) (Princeton University Press 1992).

                                          Emily Carr, "Sky" (1935-1936)

Life Explained, Part Twenty-Eight: "Pain Comes From The Darkness/And We Call It Wisdom. It Is Pain."

The middle of summer may seem like an odd time to offer up the following poem by Randall Jarrell (1914-1965), given its frigid setting.  However, it popped into my head for some reason, and it is, I think, a poem fit for any season.

Jarrell is now perhaps best known as a critic of poetry.  His criticism is free of the jargon, theory, and political agendas that taint most contemporary criticism.  He displays a deep knowledge of, and a devotion to, poetry. (There was a time, believe it or not, when criticism was written out of love.) He wrote perceptive essays on, among others, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, W. H. Auden, and Robert Graves.  His observations are still incisive and thought-provoking more than half-a-century later.

His poetry has suffered from some neglect in recent years (with the exception of "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner," which has long been a standard anthology piece).  However, he wrote a number of fine poems that deserve greater attention.

I first encountered the following poem in my younger years, and I was quite taken with it at the time.  Reading it now, I find that, well, I am still quite taken with it, but perhaps for less romantic, more prosaic, reasons.  As I have noted before, rereading poems is always a good idea, since you are not the same person that you were when you last read them, whether the interval is months, years, or decades.

                              Richard Eurich, "The Frozen Tarn" (1940)

                              90 North

At home, in my flannel gown, like a bear to its floe,
I clambered to bed; up the globe's impossible sides
I sailed all night -- till at last, with my black beard,
My furs and my dogs, I stood at the northern pole.

There in the childish night my companions lay frozen,
The stiff furs knocked at my starveling throat,
And I gave my great sigh:  the flakes came huddling,
Were they really my end?  In the darkness I turned to my rest.

-- Here, the flag snaps in the glare and silence
Of the unbroken ice.  I stand here,
The dogs bark, my beard is black, and I stare
At the North Pole . . .
                                         And now what?  Why, go back.

Turn as I please, my step is to the south.
The world -- my world spins on this final point
Of cold and wretchedness:  all lines, all winds
End in this whirlpool I at last discover.

And it is meaningless.  In the child's bed
After the night's voyage, in that warm world
Where people work and suffer for the end
That crowns the pain -- in that Cloud-Cuckoo-Land

I reached my North and it had meaning.
Here at the actual pole of my existence,
Where all that I have done is meaningless,
Where I die or live by accident alone --

Where, living or dying, I am still alone;
Here where North, the night, the berg of death
Crowd me out of the ignorant darkness,
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).

Well, what can I say?  Jarrell himself called it "a pessimistic poem."  But there you have it.  The Larkinite in me is drawn to the final two lines: "Pain comes from the darkness/And we call it wisdom.  It is pain."  If I came across those lines not knowing of "90 North," I would swear that Larkin had written them.  Jarrell wrote the poem in 1941, when Larkin was 19 years old, so Jarrell's harrowing expedition preceded Larkin's later exploration of the same territory.

                Douglas Percy Bliss, "Urban Garden Under Snow" (c. 1946)

Life Explained, Part Twenty-Seven: Dreams

What would we do without our dreams?  Waking or sleeping, they are always with us.  Of course, there is a school of thought (sometimes espoused by the Chinese and Japanese Taoist and Buddhist poets) that life itself is nothing but a dream.  Consider Chuang Tzu's butterfly dream:  did Chuang Tzu dream that he was a butterfly?  Or did the butterfly dream that it was Chuang Tzu?  Or, for instance, this:

The vicissitudes of this world are like the movements of the clouds.
Fifty years of life are nothing but one long dream.
Sparse rain:  in my desolate hermitage at night,
Quietly I clutch my robe and lean against the empty window.

Ryokan (translated by John Stevens), One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan (1977).

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

Perhaps one definition of a human being is "the creature that dreams."  But, in our current "civilization" -- in particular, its political and entertainment and "social science" worlds -- the dreams that are being peddled are at once shallow and frightening.  Although we cannot stop dreaming, we should beware of dreaming dreams that are not our own.

                      Dreams

The farmers are walking about
in their soggy fields.  Inside their heads
a pleasant sun shines on crops without weeds.

In a house across the road a young man
plays a piano, aware of Bach and Bartok
listening indulgently to his blundering counterpoint.

And the dog asleep in a doorway twitches
his forepaws.  He's chasing
the fattest hare in Midlothian.

Dreams fly everywhere.  They creep
into minds whose owners have slammed them shut.
That boy's lungs are full of them.

Sometimes they come true and the world stares
at a new great painting or a body by the wayside
with chopped off hands.

The dreams of sleep dissolve when the window whitens
and the dreams of daylight swarm in with a passport to heaven
in one hand and a passport to hell in the other.

And sweet berries grow over the graves
of all of us or a white stone marks the place
which is the end of dreams, and of hell, and of heaven.

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

                           Lucien Pissarro, "High View, Fishpond" (1915)

Life Explained, Part Twenty-Six: "World-Strangeness"

I suspect that, at one time or another, each of us has felt the "world-strangeness" that William Watson (1858-1935) writes of in the following poem.  Of course, feeling "world-strangeness" on a daily basis may be a sign that one does not have an adequate purchase on reality.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for a spell of "world-strangeness" now and then.  It may prompt one to look at the world afresh  -- as if you were a castaway on an unknown island, seeing things for the first time, free of everydayness.

                James McIntosh Patrick (1907-1998), "The Artist's Studio"

       World-Strangeness

Strange the world about me lies,
   Never yet familiar grown --
Still disturbs me with surprise,
   Haunts me like a face half known.

In this house with starry dome,
   Floored with gemlike plains and seas,
Shall I never feel at home,
   Never wholly be at ease?

On from room to room I stray,
   Yet my Host can ne'er espy,
And I know not to this day
   Whether guest or captive I.

So, between the starry dome
   And the floor of plains and seas,
I have never felt at home,
   Never wholly been at ease.

William Watson, Wordsworth's Grave and Other Poems (1890).  A side-note: "World-Strangeness" was apparently set to music by Ivor Gurney in 1925 or thereabouts.  However, I have never discovered a recording of Gurney's setting of the poem.

                          Stanhope Forbes, "The Harbour Window" (1910)

Life Explained, Part Twenty-Five: "The Hedgehog"

A sweet-smelling garden at night.  Beneath the stars, a hedgehog makes its rounds.  Enough in themselves to provide a perfectly suitable Explanation of Life.

                  The Hedgehog

The garden is mysterious at night
And scented! and scented! in the night of stars.
The hedgehog snuffles somewhere among leaves,
Just by the arch-way.  So it is with time
-- Mute night and then a voice that says nothing,
Busying itself, complaining and insisting:
When this has end, silence will come again.

C. H. Sisson, Collected Poems (Carcanet 1998).

                              Robin Tanner, "Wren and Primroses" (1935)

To think of Time as a hedgehog making its patient, imperturbable way through a garden, beneath a starry sky, is a fine image indeed, and is quite comforting.

"Those of us who have allowed our minds to be besotted by the pressure of personal affairs, who perhaps are wasting our time in amassing wealth that we can never hope to enjoy, might well have our folly corrected by an accidental glimpse of this self-contained individualist in his shirt of thorns moving out of the cavernous shadows of some cool odorous flower-bed.

Through the trembling leaves of the garden trees the summer stars shine bright on the outlandish back of the small quadruped, impressing the conscious intelligence with a clear comprehension of the wealth of earth-poetry revealed by the mere existence of so fabulous an urchin directing its activities by the light of the Milky Way."

Llewelyn Powys, "Hedgehogs."

                                    Paul Drury, "March Morning" (1933)

Life Explained, Part Twenty-Four: "I Move Along Again, Towards The Exit"

We are often advised to take heed of the old saw "life is a journey, not a destination."  I can see that this homily perhaps has some merit.  Still, when I hear it repeated, I think:  "Well, yes, but a destination does in fact await us."  And what might that destination be?  Each of us ought to know the answer to that.

This is where Philip Larkin comes in handy.  Jolly old Philip is always more than happy to fill in these sorts of blanks, and I confess that I usually agree with his answers.

                . . . For the rooms grow farther, leaving
Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear
Of taken breath, and them crouching below
Extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is.  This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground.

This bit of reality appears in the final stanza of "The Old Fools," one of Larkin's more scarifying efforts.  (Scarifying, but true, of course.)  Perhaps a gayer facade will make this particular piece of news more palatable. Norman MacCaig had, in general, a more sanguine view of things than Larkin did -- although, like Larkin, he never averted his eyes.  He just makes things sound better.

  

                             Mary Dawson Elwell, "The Front Door" (1940)

          Double Journey

Move along! the driver shouts.
Move along there!

All day I've been doing that.
All my life I've been doing that.

Somewhere about me I have
the traveller's permit
given to me by my mother.

The bus halts.  Some people get off.
I'll never see them again.

Some people get on.
I move along
to make room for them.

The place I know I'm going to
approaches.  I move along again,
towards the exit.

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

That's much better:  a municipal bus ride (in lieu of "extinction's alp") sounds very pleasant indeed.  A. E. Housman's lines fit right in:  "Crossing alone the nighted ferry/With the one coin for fee."

                                              Mary Dawson Elwell
           "Bedroom, Bar House, Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire" (1935)

Life Explained, Part Twenty-Three: "They Are Not Long, The Days Of Wine And Roses"

Christina Rossetti and Ernest Dowson lived in wholly different Victorian worlds.  She was a devout Anglican who lived a quiet, somewhat reclusive life.  He was the quintessential 1890s Decadent figure:  a dissipated poet who wandered between London and Paris, dead at the age of 32.

Dowson wrote what are perhaps the two best-known poems of the Nineties:  "Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae" ("I am not the man I was under kind Cynara's rule" is one translation of the title, which is from Horace's Odes, IV.i.3) and "Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam" ("the short span of our life forbids us to indulge in long-term hope" is one translation of the title, which is from Horace's Odes, I.iv.15).

Despite the differences between Rossetti and Dowson, Rossetti's "One Certainty" (which appeared in my previous post) and Dowson's "Vitae summa brevis" have, I think, much in common.

                         James McIntosh Patrick, "A City Garden" (1940)

Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
          Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
          We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
          Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
          Within a dream.

Ernest Dowson, Verses (1896).

Dowson lacked the religious comfort that Rossetti had.  Still, the way he puts it, the prospect of what awaits us after the "One Certainty" does not seem frightening.  Our fate seems peaceful, restful:  "Out of a misty dream/Our path emerges for a while, then closes/Within a dream."  He sounds like a Taoist or a Buddhist.

     A temporary lodging
on this side of the road all
     must go, in the end.

To recover the time he rested,
The traveller hastens on.

Shinkei (1406-1475) (translated by Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen), Heart's Flower: The Life and Poetry of Shinkei (Stanford University Press 1994).

                                 Karl Hagedorn, "Winter Sunshine" (1932)

Life Explained, Part Twenty-Two: "One Certainty"

Christina Rossetti had what some might call a fatalistic (and what others might call a realistic) view of our time on Earth.  I thought of the following sonnet because of the phrase "twilight grey" in its final line -- an admittedly tenuous affinity with my previous post on Arthur Symons's fondness for the words "grey" and "twilight."

But there is much more afoot in Rossetti's poem than "twilight grey."  I am among those who find Rossetti's view of life to be realistic, not fatalistic. On the other hand, supposing that she is indeed fatalistic, there is a great deal to be said for fatalistic beauty (accompanied by an Explanation of Life).

         Adam Bruce Thomson (1885-1976), "From My Bedroom Window"

                    One Certainty

Vanity of vanities, the Preacher saith,
     All things are vanity.  The eye and ear
     Cannot be filled with what they see and hear.
Like early dew, or like the sudden breath
Of wind, or like the grass that withereth,
     Is man, tossed to and fro by hope and fear:
     So little joy hath he, so little cheer,
Till all things end in the long dust of death.
Today is still the same as yesterday,
     Tomorrow also even as one of them;
And there is nothing new under the sun:
Until the ancient race of Time be run,
     The old thorns shall grow out of the old stem,
And morning shall be cold and twilight grey.

Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862).  Lines 1-3 and 11 have their source in Chapter 1 of the Book of Ecclesiastes (King James Version).

Yes, I know, the poem may elicit a "Whew!"  Perhaps it is not the thing to start the day with.  But Rossetti is more adept than even world-class fatalists such as, say, Thomas Hardy or A. E. Housman (although Housman comes close to her) at delivering a grim message in a soothing fashion.  To wit:  "Like early dew, or like the sudden breath/Of wind."  Or: "The old thorns shall grow out of the old stem."  Or even this:  "Till all things end in the long dust of death."  (All those lovely monosyllables!) The prospect (nay, the "certainty") of our mortality has never seemed so . . . reassuring?  Comforting?

                  Adam Bruce Thomson, "Still Life at a Window" (c. 1944)

Life Explained, Part Twenty-One: "We Are On A Kind Of Stair"

We have previously heard Christina Rossetti ask of Life:  "Does the road wind up-hill all the way?"  Ian Hamilton takes a similar view of things in the following poem.

                           Steps

Where do we find ourselves?  What is this tale
With no beginning and no end?
We know not the extremes.  Perhaps
There are none.
We are on a kind of stair.  The world below
Will never be regained; was never there
Perhaps.  And yet it seems
We've climbed to where we are
With diligence, as if told long ago
How high the highest rung.
Alas:  this lethargy at noon,
This interfered-with air.

Ian Hamilton, Sixty Poems (Faber and Faber 1998).

In an interview, Hamilton noted that the poem "starts off with a line from Emerson."  The London Review of Books (January 24, 2002).  In fact, much of the poem echoes the opening sentences of Emerson's essay "Experience":

"Where do we find ourselves?  In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none.  We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight.  But the Genius which, according to the old belief, stands at the door by which we enter, and gives us the lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strongly, and we cannot shake off the lethargy now at noonday."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: Second Series (1844).

Hamilton wrote a poem titled "Larkinesque" about a couple's divorce proceedings (and their annoying solicitors).  I hear a Larkinian note as well in the final two lines of "Steps," particularly in the phrase "interfered-with air." (With a nod to Emerson for "lethargy at noon," which has its source in his "the lethargy now at noonday.")

                                     Eric Ravilious, "Beachy Head" (1939)

Life Explained, Part Twenty: "The Solvers"

I have previously posted Elizabeth Jennings's poem "Answers," which begins:

I kept my answers small and kept them near;
Big questions bruised my mind but still I let
Small answers be a bulwark to my fear.

The following poem by James Reeves considers the role of questions and answers in Life.  To wit:  what if one sets out to be a solver of puzzles and then discovers that there are no solutions, or, perhaps, that there is nothing to be solved?

                          The Solvers

Invalids and other hotel residents
Unpuzzle themselves with patience-cards and jigsaws.
Crosswords engage saloon passengers at sea.
Philosophers invent puzzles with answers.
Each knows that what he is trying can be done.
Not all enjoy such comfort of assurance.
I, watching the backs of houses and of books,
Work away at my mind, fitting the pieces,
Pairing the cards, rejecting words.
So sitting, I become suddenly conscious
Of playing patience with crooked pieces,
While solving an incomplete jigsaw with words
In the precise non-language of a dream.
Some of the pieces fit, some of the cards match,
Only some of the pieces and the cards are lost.
I have tried to play it according to the rules,
Only the rules they sent are in Chinese.
Is it too late, I ask, to start again?
Or will extinction, when it comes, surprise me
Sorting the pieces, working out the clues?

James Reeves, The Questioning Tiger (1964).

                            Franklin Carmichael, "Cranberry Lake" (1931)

Life Explained, Part Nineteen: "One Into Darkening Hills Leads On, And One Toward Distant Seas"

I find Walter de la Mare's poetry to be at its best when he abandons the late-Victorian diction of much of his verse.  Although he was close to Edward Thomas, and greatly valued Thomas's poetry, he seldom used the straightforward (but deep) approach that Thomas and Robert Frost embarked upon.  Nonetheless, de la Mare's poetry is still enjoyable.

The following poem is more plain-spoken, and I can almost hear a trace of Thomas in it.  (And not simply because it shares the same scene as "Adlestrop.")  As to the subject:  I suppose that journeys and way-stations on those journeys lend themselves to larger considerations.

                 The Railway Junction

From here through tunnelled gloom the track
Forks into two; and one of these
Wheels onward into darkening hills,
And one toward distant seas.

How still it is; the signal light
At set of sun shines palely green;
A thrush sings; other sound there's none,
Nor traveller to be seen --

Where late there was a throng.  And now,
In peace awhile, I sit alone;
Though soon, at the appointed hour,
I shall myself be gone.

But not their way:  the bow-legged groom,
The parson in black, the widow and son,
The sailor with his cage, the gaunt
Gamekeeper with his gun,

That fair one, too, discreetly veiled --
All, who so mutely came, and went,
Will reach those far nocturnal hills,
Or shores, ere night is spent.

I nothing know why thus we met --
Their thoughts, their longings, hopes, their fate:
And what shall I remember, except --
The evening growing late --

That here through tunnelled gloom the track
Forks into two; of these
One into darkening hills leads on,
And one toward distant seas?

Walter de la Mare, The Fleeting and Other Poems (1933).

                                Spencer Gore, "Letchworth Station" (1912)

Life Explained, Part Eighteen: "An Aimless Unallayed Desire"

I confess that I tend to think of Matthew Arnold as a staid Victorian:  the inspector of schools, the prescriptive author of Culture and Anarchy, the long-winded poet of "Empedocles on Etna," et cetera.  But I should know better.  In fact, his poetry has surprising moments of passion and directness.  For instance, the following poem sounds like something that Thomas Hardy could have written in the early 20th century.

                        Destiny

Why each is striving, from of old,
To love more deeply than he can?
Still would be true, yet still grows cold?
-- Ask of the Powers that sport with man!

They yoked in him, for endless strife,
A heart of ice, a soul of fire;
And hurled him on the Field of Life,
An aimless unallayed Desire.

Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems (1852).

Kenneth Allott, who edited and annotated The Poems of Matthew Arnold (1965), believes that Arnold wrote "Destiny" in 1849 or 1850, when he was 27 or 28 years old.  For an interesting investigation of Arnold's poetic career, I recommend Ian Hamilton's A Gift Imprisoned: The Poetic Life of Matthew Arnold (Bloomsbury 1998).  Nicholas Murray's A Life of Matthew Arnold (Hodder & Stoughton 1996) is also excellent.    

Although I have posted the following poem once before, I think that reading it in conjunction with "Destiny" may throw some light upon both poems.  (It is untitled.)

Below the surface-stream, shallow and light,
Of what we say we feel -- below the stream,
As light, of what we think we feel -- there flows
With noiseless current strong, obscure and deep,
The central stream of what we feel indeed.

The poem was published in The Cornhill Magazine in November of 1869, but it was never reprinted in any of the collections of Arnold's poetry that were published in his lifetime.

                                        Gilbert Spencer, "Allotments"

Life Explained, Part Seventeen: "And Still The Interrogation Is Going On"

The following poem by Edwin Muir (1887-1959) has its origin in an incident that took place in post-World War II Czechoslovakia.  At the time, Muir was serving as the director of the British Council in Prague.  In much of his poetry, Muir portrayed life as having an underlying mythic timelessness about it.  Thus, this poem seems to suggest more than a simple encounter with border guards.

                           The Interrogation

We could have crossed the road but hesitated,
And then came the patrol;
The leader conscientious and intent,
The men surly, indifferent.
While we stood by and waited
The interrogation began.  He says the whole
Must come out now, who, what we are,
Where we have come from, with what purpose, whose
Country or camp we plot for or betray.
Question on question.
We have stood and answered through the standing day
And watched across the road beyond the hedge
The careless lovers in pairs go by,
Hand linked in hand, wandering another star,
So near we could shout to them.  We cannot choose
Answer or action here,
Though still the careless lovers saunter by
And the thoughtless field is near.
We are on the very edge,
Endurance almost done,
And still the interrogation is going on.

Edwin Muir, The Labyrinth (1949).

                              Tristram Hillier, "Barns in Winter" (1943)

Life Explained, Part Sixteen: "Balloonland"

In my previous post, I considered the danger of Schadenfreude.  Any number of old saws counsel caution on that front.  At this very moment, each of us is skating on thin ice, each of us is at risk of having our bubble burst, et cetera.  The cracking of the ice or the bursting of the bubble may be self-inflicted or may be a matter of Fate, but humility seems well-advised.  Consider the following whimsical (perhaps too whimsical for some) poem by Christopher Reid.

          Balloonland

In Balloonland
everyone
is given a balloon
the day they are born.

Freshly blown-up
and with the knot tightly done,
a big balloon
is put into their hand.

A few words are spoken
by way of ceremony:
'This is your balloon,
the balloon of your destiny!
You are its guardian.
Do you understand?'

And it's no use arguing.
Red, blue or green,
yellow, purple or orange,
that's their balloon
and no one else's.
They are the owner.

So as time goes on
they watch their balloon
with increasing anxiety.
Can it be shrinking?
Is it less shiny?
What's that hissing sound?
Did they do something wrong?

Futile questions!
Some balloons
pop the day they are given,
others last aeons
just getting more wizened.
If you're looking for a reason,
goes one of Balloonland's
wisest sayings,
then apply your own pin.

Christopher Reid, In the Echoey Tunnel (Faber and Faber 1991).

                            Stanley Spencer, "The Roundabout" (1923)

Life Explained, Part Fifteen: "Footnotes On Happiness"

I once suggested that A. S. J. Tessimond was a "neglected" poet.  However, thoughtful readers pointed out that he had recently been the subject of a feature on BBC Radio 4, and that a new edition of his Collected Poems was to be published in 2010.  Thus, I am happy to report that I was wrong.

Here is a poem by Tessimond that perhaps qualifies as an Explanation of Life, or at least that part of Life known as "happiness."  The tone of the poem -- wittily undeceived and cheerfully rueful -- is typical of Tessimond.  I am reminded of Louis MacNeice and Philip Larkin.  (But then, I tend to look for Larkin and MacNeice everywhere, I suppose.)

                              Footnotes on Happiness

Happiness filters
Out through a crack in the door, through the net's reticulations.
But also in.

The old cat Patience
Watching the hole with folded paws and quiet tail
Can seldom catch it.

Timetables fail.
It rarely stands at a certain moment a certain day
At a certain bus-stop.

You cannot say
It will keep an appointment, or pass the same street corner twice.
Nor say it won't.

Lavender, ice,
Camphor, glass cases, vacuum chambers hermetically sealed,
Won't keep it fresh.

It will not yield
Except to the light, the careless, the accidental hand,
And easily bruises.

It is brittle as sand.
It is more and less than you hoped to find.  It has never quite
Your own ideas.

It shows no spite
Or favour in choosing its host.  It is, like God,
Casual, odd.

A. S. J. Tessimond, Voices in a Giant City (1947).

An aside: Tessimond rhymes the second line of the first stanza with the first line of the second stanza (and so on through all eight stanzas) -- a clever touch that ties the "footnotes" together.

                Charles Mahoney, "Still Life with Landscape" (1959)                 

Life Explained, Part Fourteen: "A Form Of Epitaph"

The following poem is by Laurence Whistler (1912-2000), who started out as a poet and later became a glass engraver (although he did not give up poetry).  His brother was the artist Rex Whistler (1905-1944), who is perhaps best known for his book illustrations.  The poem is wonderfully humorous, but -- like the best humorous poems -- goes beyond laughs.

                    A Form of Epitaph

Name in block letters   None that signified
Purpose of visit   Barely ascertained
Reasons for persevering   Hope -- or pride
Status before admission here   Regained
Previous experience   Nil, or records lost
Requirements   Few in fact, not all unmet
Knowledge accumulated   At a cost
Plans   Vague    Sworn declaration   Not in debt

Evidence of departure   Orthodox
Country of origin   Stateless then, as now
Securities where held   In one wood box
Address for future reference   Below

Is further time desired?   Not the clock's
Was permit of return petitioned?   No

Laurence Whistler, Audible Silence (1961).  The poem is -- lovely touch! -- a sonnet.

                                                  Laurence Whistler
                                       Window in St. Nicholas Church
                                                  Moreton, Dorset