"The Sun, Of Whose Terrain We Creatures Are": Charles Madge

As I have noted before, when Philip Larkin compiled The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse (1973), he had a knack for finding the best poems of lesser-known poets.  The following poem, which appears in the anthology, is by Charles Madge (1912-1996).  Madge was a "Thirties Poet," and his poems (as well as a prose piece related to his "Mass-Observation" project) appeared in Geoffrey Grigson's journal New Verse.

Madge's "Solar Creation" was published in 1937.  This is only speculation, but I wonder whether the poem was somewhere in the back of Larkin's mind when he wrote "Solar" in 1964.

                         Solar Creation

The sun, of whose terrain we creatures are,
Is the director of all human love,
Unit of time, and circle round the earth

And we are the commotion born of love
And slanted rays of that illustrious star
Peregrine of the crowded fields of birth,

The crowded lanes, the market and the tower
Like sight in pictures, real at remove,
Such is our motion on dimensional earth.

Down by the river, where the ragged are,
Continuous the cries and noise of birth,
While to the muddy edge dark fishes move

And over all, like death, or sloping hill,
Is nature, which is larger and more still.

Charles Madge, The Disappearing Castle (1937).

These days, we usually see "peregrine" in tandem with "peregrine falcon," but it does stand on its own.  The OED defines the word as "a pilgrim; a traveller in a foreign country.  Also: an emigrant; an exile."  A side-note:  although it may not be immediately apparent, the poem is a sonnet with an unusual rhyme-scheme.

                 Alfred Buckham, "Aerial View of Edinburgh" (c. 1920)  

How To Live, Part Five: "Better A Wrecked Life Than A Life So Aimless"

Today, Christina Rossetti offers a word of advice on How to Live.  To wit:  darkness lies before us; thus, we had best not live our life as a "pastime."  (Easier said than done, I know.)  The Oxford English Dictionary defines "pastime" as  "a diversion or recreation which serves to pass the time agreeably. . . . Also: a practice commonly indulged in." 

                              Pastime

A boat amid the ripples, drifting, rocking;
Two idle people, without pause or aim;
While in the ominous West there gathers darkness
            Flushed with flame.

A hay-cock in a hay-field backing, lapping,
Two drowsy people pillowed round about;
While in the ominous West across the darkness
            Flame leaps out.

Better a wrecked life than a life so aimless,
Better a wrecked life than a life so soft:
The ominous West glooms thundering, with its fire
            Lit aloft.

The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti (edited by William Michael Rossetti) (1904).  "Better a wrecked life" took me aback when I first read it:  it did not seem "Victorian."  But that only shows that I underestimated Victorian poetry at the time.

                                 John Constable, "Old Sarum" (1834)

"The Lattermath Will Be A Fine One": Edward Thomas

"Lattermath" is, I think, a lovely word.  The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as follows:  "The 'latter' mowing; the aftermath.  Also, the crops then reaped."  Edward Thomas fashioned a beautiful sonnet around the word.  The poem is untitled.

It was upon a July evening.
At a stile I stood, looking along a path
Over the country by a second Spring
Drenched perfect green again.  'The lattermath
Will be a fine one.'  So the stranger said,
A wandering man.  Albeit I stood at rest,
Flushed with desire I was.  The earth outspread,
Like meadows of the future, I possessed.

And as an unaccomplished prophecy
The stranger's words, after the interval
Of a score years, when those fields are by me
Never to be recrossed, now I recall,
This July eve, and question, wondering,
What of the lattermath to this hoar Spring?

                                         Howard Phipps, "Eggardon"

Thomas wrote the poem in the summer of 1916, after he had enlisted in the army, but before he was posted to France, where he died in April of 1917 at Arras.  Given these facts, there may be an understandable tendency for us -- who know the "lattermath" that actually awaited him -- to bring some sentimentality to the poem.  (Something that I readily confess to.)  However, the poem stands fully on its own as a beautiful meditation on the pasts, presents, and futures that we all ponder, regret, and hope for.  Thomas is indeed "wondering" about his own "lattermath," but, like any timeless poet, he speaks for us all.

                                  Howard Phipps, "Malacombe Bottom"

Euphrasy: "The Land Of Life To Look At And Explore"

I had never seen the word "euphrasy" until I came across it in this poem by Siegfried Sassoon:

                    Euphrasy

The large untidy February skies --
Some cheerful starlings screeling on a tree --
West wind and low-shot sunlight in my eyes --
   Is this decline for me?

The feel of winter finishing once more --
Sense of the present as a tale half told --
The land of life to look at and explore --
   Is this, then, to grow old?

Common Chords (1950).  Sassoon wrote the poem in 1949, at the age of 63.

                                      Stanley Roy Badmin, "February"

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "euphrasy" is "a plant, Euphrasia officinalis, formerly held in high repute for its medicinal virtues in the treatment of diseases of the eye."  "Eye-bright" is "the popular name of the plant."  The OED states that "euphrasy" may be used figuratively, and provides an example from Frederick Faber's Bethlehem (1865):  "Eyes which have been touched with the special euphrasy of heaven."  A few years after encountering Sassoon's poem, I discovered that Walter de la Mare, who was a friend of Sassoon's, also wrote a poem titled "Euphrasy."  It appears in de la Mare's 1938 collection, Memory and Other Poems.

                                                Euphrasy/Eye-Bright

Life Explained, Part Two: "Life Is A Long Discovery, Isn't It?"

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) could be a bit sardonic at times.  (Perhaps I am understating the case.)  Let's just say that he viewed the world with the proverbial gimlet eye.  But a  humorous gimlet eye.  Please bear this in mind as you consider the explanation of Life offered by him in the following poem:

                      Discovery

Life is a long discovery, isn't it?
You only get your wisdom bit by bit.
If you have luck you find in early youth
How dangerous it is to tell the Truth;
And next you learn how dignity and peace
Are the ripe fruits of patient avarice.
You find that middle life goes racing past.
You find despair: and, at the very last,
You find as you are giving up the ghost
That those who loved you best despised you most.

As a coda to "Discovery," please consider the following poem, which, I admit, doesn't exactly support my contention that Belloc had a fun-loving side:

                 From the Latin (but not so pagan)

Blessed is he that has come to the heart of the world and is humble.
He shall stand alone; and beneath
His feet are implacable fate, and panic at night, and the strumble
Of the hungry river of death.

(By the way, the Oxford English Dictionary lists only one instance of the use of "strumble" in this sense:  Belloc's poem.) 

To do Belloc justice, I feel compelled to demonstrate that he did, indeed, have a sense of humor.  Here is (I believe) the best political poem ever written -- one which applies to all places at all times, even though it was written in the context of a parliamentary election in England:

                   On a General Election

The accursed power which stands on Privilege
(And goes with Women, and Champagne and Bridge)
Broke -- and Democracy resumed her reign:
(Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne).

In other words, Belloc beat Pete Townshend to the punch by 50 years or so:  "Meet the new boss.  Same as the old boss."

                                       William-Adolphe Bouguereau
                                "Orestes Pursued by the Furies" (1862)

"Repose"

I am fond of the word "repose."  I trace this fondness back to the following poem by R. S. Thomas:

        Period

It was a time when wise men
Were not silent, but stifled
By vast noise.  They took refuge
In books that were not read.

Two counsellors had the ear
Of the public.  One cried 'Buy'
Day and night, and the other,
More plausibly, 'Sell your repose.'

R. S. Thomas, Collected Poems: 1945-1990 (1993).

"Sell your repose" has been rattling around inside me for years (together with the entire poem - it is one of those poems you automatically have by heart the second or third time that you read it.)

Then, recently, I read this poem by James Reeves (one of my "neglected poets"):

        Repose

Repose is in simplicities.
Perhaps the mind has leaves like trees,
Luxuriant in the sensual sun
And tossed by wind's intricacies,
And finds repose is more than grief
When failing light and falling leaf
Denote that winter has begun.

James Reeves, Collected Poems (1974).

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "repose" as "the state of being quietly inactive or relaxed, or of being free from care, anxiety, or other disturbances; ease, serenity."  (Sense 2.a.)  But perhaps I prefer Sense 2.b, which the OED designates as "obsolete":  "peace of mind."