Perspective, Part Sixteen: Continuity

I am writing this at twilight on the north shore of Lake Superior.  The water stretches away, like a sea, to the south.  Enough sunlight remains to turn the scattered, oval-shaped clouds out over the lake a pinkish-grey, set against a pale blue background.  The sky on the far horizon is pinkish-grey as well, with a tinge of yellow.  In the distance, small snow squalls move across the lake from north to south, grey curtains of flurries sweeping over the dark water.

Here is how I had thought to begin this post:  "The News of the World has been particularly horrifying recently."  But then I looked out the window.

Yes, the News of the World has been particularly horrifying recently. Witnessing evil at work is always dispiriting.  (Yes, evil.  There is no other word for it.  And any attempt to "explain" or "contextualize" or "excuse" or "justify" it on theological, historical, political, economic, or any other grounds makes one complicit in the evil.)

I looked out the window and I thought of a gift I came across earlier this week:

An Epitaph upon a Young Married Couple,
               Dead and Buried Together

To these, whom Death again did wed,
This grave's their second marriage-bed;
For though the hand of Fate could force,
'Twixt soul and body, a divorce,
It could not sunder man and wife,
'Cause they both lived but one life.
Peace, good reader.  Do not weep.
Peace, the lovers are asleep.
They, sweet turtles, folded lie
In the last knot that love could tie.
And though they lie as they were dead,
Their pillow stone, their sheets of lead,
(Pillow hard, and sheets not warm)
Love made the bed; they'll take no harm;
Let them sleep:  let them sleep on,
Till this stormy night be gone,
And the eternal morrow dawn;
Then the curtains will be drawn
And they wake into a light,
Whose day shall never die in night.

Richard Crashaw, Delights of the Muses (1648).  A side-note:  the final line has an alternative reading:  "Whose day shall never sleep in night."

Roger Fry, "The Cloister" (1924)

Fortunately for us, evil can never harm Richard Crashaw and his young married couple, for they are imperishable.  I harbor no illusions:  evil, and its ever-mutating tyrants of a day, will always be with us.  But so will Crashaw's "sweet turtles."

Think of it:  after nearly four centuries, you and I have just helped to preserve and prolong the beauty of Crashaw's poem and the love of the young married couple.  Evil has no say in the matter.  The continuity of the human spirit is something that evil can never understand, and can never touch.

Who could have known that, three hundred years after Richard Crashaw, Philip Larkin would come along?

            An Arundel Tomb

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd --
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read.  Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time.  Snow fell, undated.  Light
Each summer thronged the glass.  A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground.  And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth.  The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings (Faber and Faber 1964).

I have talked about "An Arundel Tomb" in a previous post, so I will not discuss its particulars on this occasion.  But I do wonder whether Larkin knew of Crashaw's poem.  Given his knowledge of English poetry, he likely did.  However, I prefer to think that Larkin knew nothing of the "young married couple," the "sweet turtles," and that he independently echoed, and provided his own lovely elaborations upon, Crashaw's theme.

Roger Fry, "La Salle des Caryatides in the Louvre"

Those who traffic in evil are members of the human race, but they know nothing of humanity.  They know nothing of love.  They cannot conceive of, and thus can never harm, the uncountable and continuous streams of life, seen and unseen, that the rest of us create and perpetuate on a daily basis.

     Love Lives Beyond the Tomb

     Love lives beyond
The tomb, the earth, which fades like dew!
     I love the fond,
The faithful, and the true.

     Love lives in sleep,
The happiness of healthy dreams:
     Eve's dews may weep,
But love delightful seems.

     Tis seen in flowers,
And in the morning's pearly dew;
     In earth's green hours,
And in the heaven's eternal blue.

     Tis heard in Spring
When light and sunbeams, warm and kind,
     On angel's wing
Bring love and music to the mind.

     And where is voice,
So young, so beautiful, and sweet
     As Nature's choice,
Where Spring and lovers meet?

     Love lives beyond
The tomb, the earth, the flowers, and dew.
     I love the fond,
The faithful, young and true.

John Clare, in Edmund Blunden and Alan Porter (editors), John Clare: Poems Chiefly from Manuscript (Cobden-Sanderson 1920).

"Peace, good reader."

Roger Fry, "The Church at Ramatuelle" (1922)

Perspective, Part Fifteen: Beetles

Yesterday was one of those expansive April days.  The slate-grey waters of Puget Sound were silver-ribboned and cloud-shadowed.  Across the fields, the young yellow-green leaves of the deciduous trees stood forth against the dark green boughs of the evergreens. The phrase "Pied Beauty" came to mind, thus:

                           Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things --
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced -- fold, fallow, and plough;
      And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                                    Praise him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, in W. H. Gardner and N. H. MacKenzie (editors), The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Oxford University Press, Fourth Edition, 1967).  "Brinded" (line 2) is not a misprint: it is an "early form of 'brindled,' streaked."  Ibid, page 269.

John Inchbold, "The Moorland (Dewar-stone, Dartmoor)" (1854)

While the expansiveness of the day drew me outward and upward, I still had thought for the ground beneath my feet.  At this time of year it seems alive -- warm with life.  Lines from John Drinkwater's "The Wood," which appeared here a few months ago, are apt:

While everywhere, above me, underfoot,
And haunting every avenue of leaves,
Was mystery, unresting, taciturn.

Caught up in our own small worlds, we need to spare a thought now and then for the countless worlds above, around, and below us.

John Inchbold, "Anstey's Cove, Devon" (1854)

                              Worlds

Through the pale green forest of tall bracken-stalks,
Whose interwoven fronds, a jade-green sky,
Above me glimmer, infinitely high,
Towards my giant hand a beetle walks
In glistening emerald mail; and as I lie
Watching his progress through huge grassy blades
And over pebble boulders, my own world fades
And shrinks to the vision of a beetle's eye.

Within that forest world of twilight green
Ambushed with unknown perils, one endless day
I travel down the beetle-trail between
Huge glossy boles through green infinity . . .
Till flashes a glimpse of blue sea through the bracken asway,
And my world is again a tumult of windy sea.

Wilfrid Gibson, Neighbours (1920).

Gibson's beetle-world brings to mind the opening stanza of Geoffrey Scott's "All Our Joy Is Enough":

All we make is enough
Barely to seem
A bee's din,
A beetle-scheme --
Sleepy stuff
For God to dream:
Begin.

John Inchbold, "Bolton Abbey" (1853)

Perspective, Part Fourteen: Artful Dodges

It is impossible for us to be objective about ourselves.  How could it be otherwise?  We have been pent up in our cocoon of body, mind, and soul since we first emerged, bawling, into the world.  The most that we can hope for is a smidgen of self-awareness.  If we are attentive, and try our hardest, this smidgen of self-awareness may be accompanied by humility about ourselves and kindness towards others.

Joseph Conrad, that wise man, offers us this:

"If one looks at life in its true aspect then everything loses much of its unpleasant importance and the atmosphere becomes cleared of what are only unimportant mists that drift past in imposing shapes.  When once the truth is grasped that one's own personality is only a ridiculous and aimless masquerade of something hopelessly unknown the attainment of serenity is not very far off."

Joseph Conrad, Letter to Edward Garnett (March 23, 1896), in Edward Garnett, Letters from Joseph Conrad, 1895-1924 (1928), page 46.

And this:

"No man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge."

Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900), page 84.

Yes, recognition of our own follies and self-deceptions is a necessary precursor to any serenity we may be able to arrive at in life.  And it is wonderful that Conrad speaks of attaining "serenity," not "happiness."

Robin Tanner, "The Gamekeeper's Cottage" (1928)

The above thoughts were prompted by coming across the following poem:

               'Incomprehensible'

Engrossed in the day's 'news', I read
Of all in man that's vile and base;
Horrors confounding heart and head --
Massacre, murder, filth, disgrace:
Then paused.  And thought did inward tend --
On my own past, and self, to dwell.

Whereat some inmate muttered, 'Friend,
If you and I plain truth must tell,
Everything human we comprehend,
     Only too well, too well!'

Walter de la Mare, Inward Companion: Poems (1950).

Each and every day we encounter the "incomprehensible" via the media and incorrectly conclude, as the saying goes, "Now I've seen it all!"  No, we have not seen it all, and we never will see it all, given the by turns lovely and nasty inventiveness of human beings.

De la Mare's neat trick is the movement from "incomprehensible" in the title to "comprehend" in line 9:  from "beyond the reach of intellect or research; unfathomable" (OED) (i.e., the daily horrors of the news)  to "to take in, comprise, include, contain" (OED) (i.e., us).  And, once the movement is made, one is in turn compelled to revisit "incomprehensible," which now turns out to refer not just to the contents of the daily news, but to each of us individually -- body, mind, and soul.

Robin Tanner, "Wiltshire Woodman" (1929)

All of this merits a return to the lovely three-sentence prose statement by Czeslaw Milosz.

                                                  Learning

To believe you are magnificent.  And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent.  Enough labor for one human life.

Czeslaw Milosz (translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass), Road-side Dog (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998), page 60.

Robin Tanner, "Martin's Hovel" (1927)

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)

Perspective, Part Twelve: Distance

Today, I've had two poems circling around each other.  I've been doing my best not to pin them down.  I have no desire to concoct an "explanation" for why they have appeared beside one another.  However, at one point a single word floated up:  distance.  And then I told myself to stop thinking.

Eric Hesketh Hubbard (1892-1957), "The Cuckmere Valley, East Sussex"

          Tinker's Wife

I saw her amid the dunghill debris
Looking for things
Such as an old pair of shoes or gaiters.
She was a young woman,
A tinker's wife.
Her face had streaks of care
Like wires across it,
But she was supple
As a young goat
On a windy hill.

She searched on the dunghill debris,
Tripping gingerly
Over tin canisters
And sharp-broken
Dinner plates.

Patrick Kavanagh, Ploughman and Other Poems (1936).

Anne Isabella Brooke, "Wharfedale from above Bolton Abbey" (1954)

     The grasses of the garden,
They fall,
     And lie as they fall.

Ryokan (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 4: Autumn-Winter (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 366.

I have no idea what distance has to do with any of this.  And I don't want to seem coy or pretentious by bringing it up.  I'm not harboring any secrets. I'm merely reporting what happened.

Bertram Priestman, "Kilnsey Crag, Wharfedale, Yorkshire" (1929)

Perspective, Part Eleven: "His Heart Is Tranquil, From It Springs A Dreamy Watchfulness Of Tranquil Things"

Perhaps I am deluding myself -- or whistling past the graveyard -- but I believe that, apart from aching joints, growing old has its compensations. For instance, humanity's fixations and follies (my own included) can be viewed from a somewhat-Olympian distance.

Mind you, I don't claim to be of a calm, disinterested, and equable temperament:  I am often moved to sorrow or dismay or anger at the latest display of humanity's diabolical capabilities and inanity.  Our perverse inventiveness is, alas, endless.  But the existence of those diabolical capabilities and of that inanity no longer comes as a surprise.  Thus it is, thus it was, and thus it always will be.

There's no great mystery here, is there?  One is best advised to attend to one's own soul.  A place to start:

                 . . . we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

Philip Larkin, "The Mower," Collected Poems (Faber and Faber 1988).

Harold Hussey, "Dove House, Hurley" (1940)

         From My Window

An old man leaning on a gate
Over a London mews -- to contemplate --
Is it the sky above -- the stones below?
     Is it remembrance of the years gone by,
     Or thinking forward to futurity
That holds him so?

Day after day he stands,
Quietly folded are the quiet hands,
Rarely he speaks.
     Hath he so near the hour when Time shall end,
     So much to spend?
What is it he seeks?

Whate'er he be,
He is become to me
A form of rest.
     I think his heart is tranquil, from it springs
     A dreamy watchfulness of tranquil things,
And not unblest.

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

Harold Hussey, "Tithe Barn near Hurley" (1940)

The following passage is apt, I think.

"One of the advantages of old age is liberty.  Pisistratus asked Solon, who opposed him, on what he grounded his liberty?  Upon my old-age, he replied, which has no longer any thing to fear.

The latter season sets us free from the tyranny of opinion.  When we are young, we think only of living in the conceit of others.  We must establish our reputations, and give ourselves an honorable place in the imagination of others; and we must even be happy in their idea.  Such happiness is not real; -- it is not ourselves we consult, but others.

In a later period, we return to ourselves, and this return has its sweets.  We begin to consult and to confide in ourselves.  We escape from fortune and from illusion.  Men have lost their prerogative of deceiving us.  We have learnt to know them, and to know ourselves; to profit from our own faults, which instruct us as much as those of others.  We begin to see our error, in having set so high a value upon men."

Marchioness de Lambert (Anne-Therese de Marguenat de Courcelles), Essays on Friendship and Old-Age (translated by Eliza Ball Hayley) (1780), pages 128-130.  I owe my awareness of this passage to Giacomo Leopardi, who quotes from it in Zibaldone (page 633; February 9, 1821).

Harold Hussey, "The Post Office, Hurley" (1940)

But I wouldn't wish to suggest that this growing old business is always a bed of roses.  A poem by Norman MacCaig provides a fitting counterpoint and caution.

     In an Edinburgh Pub

An old fellow, hunched over a half pint
I hope he's remembering.
I hope he's not thinking.

Which comes first?

Memory, as always,
Lazarus of the past --

who comes sad or joyful,
but always carrying with him
a whiff of grave clothes.

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

Harold Hussey, "The Thames near Hurley" (1940)

Perspective, Part Ten: "O Little Waking Hour Of Life Out Of Sleep!"

Cosmic facts and theories leave me cold.  My interest is not piqued when I hear a scientist proclaim in wonder that some heavenly body in the universe is x billion light years away from Earth or that our solar system constitutes x-trillionth of the total matter in the universe and that each of us in turn constitutes x-quadrillionth of the total matter in the solar system. To borrow from Walker Percy, I believe that our time is better spent figuring out how to get through an ordinary Wednesday afternoon.

Still, I understand the allure of cosmic immensity.  I have fond memories of sitting in a dark planetarium on a school trip, listening to the narrator intone about the grandeur and the mystery of the universe as the constellations spun through their seasons overhead.  And more than once I have pondered the fact that the starlight reaching our eyes tonight began its journey here hundreds or thousands of years ago.  Which means, of course, that the starlight beginning its journey tonight will arrive here long after we have turned to dust.  I have not yet decided whether these facts are edifying or frightening.  I suppose they could be both.

Algernon Newton, "The House by the Canal" (1945)

As a young man, Giacomo Leopardi was wont to take a Romantic view of our cosmic situation.  "His amusement was to count the stars as he walked."  Zibaldone, page 280 (October 16, 1820).  Or this: "A house hanging in the air suspended by ropes from a star."  Zibaldone, page 256 (October 1, 1820).  He wrote the following poem in 1819, when he was 21. (Some perspective: Keats turned 24 in that year.)

                       The Infinite

This lonely hill was always dear to me,
And this hedgerow, that hides so large a part
Of the far sky-line from my view.  Sitting and gazing,
I fashion in my mind what lie beyond --
Unearthly silences, and endless space,
And very deepest quiet; then for a while
The heart is not afraid.  And when I hear
The wind come blustering among the trees
I set that voice against this infinite silence:
And then I call to mind Eternity,
The ages that are dead, and the living present
And all the noise of it.  And thus it is
In that immensity my thought is drowned:
And sweet to me the foundering in that sea.

Giacomo Leopardi (translated by John Heath-Stubbs), in Giacomo Leopardi, Selected Prose and Poetry (edited and translated by Iris Origo and John Heath-Stubbs) (1966).

Algernon Newton, "The Regent's Park Canal, Paddington" (1930)

For comparison, here is another translation:

                           Infinity

This lonely hill was always dear to me,
and this hedgerow, which cuts off the view
of so much of the last horizon.
But sitting here and gazing, I can see
beyond, in my mind's eye, unending spaces,
and superhuman silences, and depthless calm,
till what I feel
is almost fear.  And when I hear
the wind stir in these branches, I begin
comparing that endless stillness with this noise:
and the eternal comes to mind,
and the dead seasons, and the present
living one, and how it sounds.
So my mind sinks in this immensity:
and foundering is sweet in such a sea.

Giacomo Leopardi, Canti (translated by Jonathan Galassi) (Farrar Straus Giroux 2010).

The different approaches to a phrase in lines 7 and 8 of the original ("ove per poco/Il cor non si spaura") are puzzling to this non-Italian speaker. Heath-Stubbs gives us: "then for a while/The heart is not afraid." Galassi gives us:  "till what I feel/is almost fear."  Frederick Townsend (in his 1887 translation) gives us:  "and for a moment I am calm."  The choice between "not afraid" and "almost fear" and "calm" leaves me perplexed.  I would opt for "calm" solely for emotional reasons (and with absolutely no linguistic authority), but what do I know?

Algernon Newton, "Canal Scene, Maida Vale" (1947)

Here is another way to look at cosmic immensity:  less Romantic perhaps, but dreamy and resigned (with a melancholy sigh) in a lovely 1890s fashion.

                         Epilogue

O little waking hour of life out of sleep!
When I consider the many million years
I was not yet, and the many million years
I shall not be, it is easy to think of the sleep
I shall sleep for the second time without hopes or fears.
Surely my sleep for the million years was deep?
I remember no dreams from the million years, and it seems
I may sleep for as many million years without dreams.

Arthur Symons, Images of Good and Evil (1899).

Algernon Newton, "The Surrey Canal, Camberwell" (1935)

Perspective, Part Nine: "Almost Human"

Is it possible to look at yourself objectively?  To see yourself for who you are?  Speaking for myself, I have my doubts.  Still, I like to think that I am more optimistic about the possibility than, say, La Rochefoucauld, who offers this uncharitable (but, alas, likely true) insight about us:

"Whatever discovery was made in the country of self-love, many unknown lands remain there still."

La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (1678), translated by Stuart Warner and Stephane Douard (St. Augustine's Press 2001).

Yes, as I survey the public world around us -- politicians, bureaucrats, social scientists, media mouthpieces and the lot -- I know all too well what La Rochefoucauld means.  No shortage of self-love and misplaced self-assurance there.  And no evidence of self-awareness or self-reflection either.

William Ratcliffe, "Cottage Interior" (1920)

The first tiny step is not to think that you are any different.  I have quoted Czeslaw Milosz on this topic in the past, and he bears repeating:

                                                  Learning

To believe you are magnificent.  And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent.  Enough labor for one human life.

Czeslaw Milosz, Road-side Dog (translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998).

William Ratcliffe, "The Conservatory Window"

                Almost Human

The man you know, assured and kind,
Wearing fame like an old tweed suit --
You would not think he has an incurable
Sickness upon his mind.

Finely that tongue, for the listening people,
Articulates love, enlivens clay;
While under his valued skin there crawls
An outlaw and a cripple.

Unenviable the renown he bears
When all's awry within?  But a soul
Divinely sick may be immunized
From the scourge of common cares.

A woman weeps, a friend's betrayed,
Civilization plays with fire --
His grief or guilt is easily purged
In a rush of words to the head.

The newly dead, and their waxwork faces
With the look of things that could never have lived,
He'll use to prime his cold, strange heart
And prompt the immortal phrases.

Before you condemn this eminent freak
As an outrage upon mankind,
Reflect:  something there is in him
That must for ever seek

To share the condition it glorifies,
To shed the skin that keeps it apart,
To bury its grace in a human bed --
And it walks on knives, on knives.

C. Day Lewis, Pegasus and Other Poems (1957).

William Ratcliffe, "Attic Room" (1918)

Perspective, Part Eight: "Remember Then That Also We, In A Moon's Course, Are History"

Today I saw a tall white and grey thunderhead moving across a blue sky.  It was a lovely sight.  I felt peaceful looking at it.  It is nice to know that thunderheads will be moving across a blue sky as long as I am here and long after I am gone.  At times, it all seems to make perfect sense, this passing and vanishing.

               Passage

When you deliberate the page
Of Alexander's pilgrimage,
Or say -- "It is three years, or ten,
Since Easter slew Connolly's men,"
Or prudently to judgment come
Of Antony or Absalom,
And think how duly are designed
Case and instruction for the mind,
Remember then that also we,
In a moon's course, are history.

John Drinkwater (1882-1937), Loyalties (1919).

"Easter slew Connolly's men" refers to the Easter Rising of 1916 in Ireland, and the subsequent execution of James Connolly and other participants.

William Rothenstein (1872-1945), "South-west Wind"

                    Symbols

I saw history in a poet's song,
In a river-reach and a gallows-hill,
In a bridal bed, and a secret wrong,
In a crown of thorns:  in a daffodil.

I imagined measureless time in a day,
And starry space in a wagon-road,
And the treasure of all good harvests lay
In the single seed that the sower sowed.

My garden-wind had driven and havened again
All ships that ever had gone to sea,
And I saw the glory of all dead men
In the shadow that went by the side of me.

John Drinkwater, Poems 1908-1914 (1917).

William Rothenstein, "Barn at Cherington, Gloucestershire" (1935)

Now, some might think that these two poems are commonplace observations by a little-known Georgian poet.  But consider this:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.

An argument can be made that these lines are a somewhat prosy and less mellifluous version of what Drinkwater is getting at in "Passage" and "Symbols."  The lines come from T. S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton," which was written in 1935.  Thus, Drinkwater visited the same territory nearly 20 years in advance of Eliot.  He didn't go on about the subject as long as Eliot does in "Burnt Norton," but I'm not willing to say that Drinkwater's poems are less lovely than Eliot's poem.  "Burnt Norton" is definitely more grandiose, which may or may not be a good thing.  There is something to be said for economy.

William Rothenstein, "Nature's Ramparts" (1908)

Perspective, Part Seven: "What's Little June To A Great Broken World . . . What's The Broken World To June"?

The following poem was written by Charlotte Mew when the enormity of the First World War had begun to sink in, particularly after the First and Second Battles of Ypres in the autumn of 1914 and the spring of 1915.  The first six lines are a moving evocation of the "grief" and "dread" of that time. But the final two lines turn the poem into something else entirely -- without minimizing that grief and dread.

                              June, 1915

Who thinks of June's first rose to-day?
        Only some child, perhaps, with shining eyes and rough bright hair will
                     reach it down
In a green sunny lane, to us almost as far away
        As are the fearless stars from these veiled lamps of town.
What's little June to a great broken world with eyes gone dim
From too much looking on the face of grief, the face of dread?
        Or what's the broken world to June and him
Of the small eager hand, the shining eyes, the rough bright head?

Charlotte Mew, The Rambling Sailor (1929).  The second line is a single line, but does not appear as such due to margin limitations.

The phrases "What's little June to a great broken world" and "what's the broken world to June" are marvelous in and of themselves.  But the transformation that takes place during the movement from the first phrase to the second and onward to the close of the poem is remarkable.

John Linnell, "The Windmill" (1844)

As I have noted before, Thomas Hardy was a great admirer of Charlotte Mew's poetry.  He, along with John Masefield and Walter de la Mare, took the initiative to obtain a Civil List Pension for her due to her lack of financial resources.  After learning that she had been awarded the Pension, she wrote a letter to Hardy thanking him for his efforts.  The letter reads, in part:

"It seems so generous -- unreasonable -- when -- from head to feet . . . I know myself to be unworthy of it.  I owe it to the amazing kindness of friends to most of whom I am practically a stranger -- and to the weight of great names -- with yours coming first.  I am told that I ought to be proud that you should have spoken for me -- indeed I ought -- But pride -- in that sense -- with me (I hope you will understand) -- is a sort of surprise and confusion -- a humbling but a touching thing.  What I do feel is gratitude and entire unworthiness.  And you will believe that I thank you from my heart."

Letter from Charlotte Mew to Thomas Hardy (January 1, 1924), in Betty Falkenberg, "A Letter from Charlotte Mew," PN Review, Volume 32, Number 3 (2006).

John Linnell, "Reapers, Noonday Rest" (1865)

There are interesting parallels between the final two lines of Mew's "June, 1915" and Hardy's "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'."  Hardy's poem was first published in January of 1916.  However, it was written (according to the date appended to it by Hardy) in 1915.  Thus, Mew and Hardy were thinking similar thoughts, and putting them to paper, in the same dispiriting year.  And both of them were able to pull off a difficult-to-achieve trick:  placing things into a timeless perspective without slighting the ghastliness of what was currently taking place, and without abandoning empathy for those who were immediately affected by that ghastliness.

  In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'

                        I
Only a man harrowing clods
     In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
     Half asleep as they stalk.

                        II
Only thin smoke without flame
     From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
     Though Dynasties pass.

                        III
Yonder a maid and her wight
     Come whispering by:
War's annals will cloud into night
     Ere their story die.

          1915.

Thomas Hardy, Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses (1917).

John Linnell, "Harvest Home, Sunset: The Last Load" (1853)

Perspective, Part Six: "A Lover Of Mere Privacy"

From Oklahoma to Woolwich, the World has gone about its usual business the past week.  It has ever been thus.  But the genius of our age is that we are able to view each new horror in "real time" via cell phone cameras, and then have each horror "explained" to us -- with an eye toward "preventing" such occurrences in the future -- by the usual cast of media, political, and social scientific "experts."

From these "experts," one learns that tornadoes are caused by "global warming," and that we can be rid of them by solving that particular "crisis." Yes.  Of course.  One also learns that adequately-funded educational and social programs will put an end to murder in the name of religion (which is, we are told, provoked by cultural misunderstanding on our part, which is in turn a product of our own obdurate intolerance).  Yes.  Of course.

All of this makes one yearn for a quiet, cant-free, ingenuous life.  A life far away from the explainers.

Bernard Ninnes (1899-1971), "Nancledra"

                             The Hermit

What moves that lonely man is not the boom
     Of waves that break against the cliff so strong;
Nor roar of thunder, when that travelling voice
     Is caught by rocks that carry far along.

'Tis not the groan of oak tree in its prime,
     When lightning strikes its solid heart to dust;
Nor frozen pond when, melted by the sun,
     It suddenly doth break its sparkling crust.

What moves that man is when the blind bat taps
     His window when he sits alone at night;
Or when the small bird sounds like some great beast
     Among the dead, dry leaves so frail and light;

Or when the moths on his night-pillow beat
     Such heavy blows he fears they'll break his bones;
Or when a mouse inside the papered walls,
     Comes like a tiger crunching through the stones.

W. H. Davies, The Bird of Paradise and Other Poems (1914).

Raymond James Coxon (1896-1997), "Penrhyndeudraeth"

                    A Recluse

Here lies (where all at peace may be)
A lover of mere privacy.
Graces and gifts were his; now none
Will keep him from oblivion;
How well they served his hidden ends
Ask those who knew him best, his friends.

He is dead; but even among the quick
This world was never his candlestick.
He envied none; he was content
With self-inflicted banishment.
'Let your light shine!' was never his way:
What then remains but, Welladay!

And yet his very silence proved
How much he valued what he loved.
There peered from his hazed, hazel eyes
A self in solitude made wise;
As if within the heart may be
All the soul needs for company:
And, having that in safety there,
Finds its reflection everywhere.

Life's tempests must have waxed and waned:
The deep beneath at peace remained.
Full tides that silent well may be
Mark of no less profound a sea.
Age proved his blessing.  It had given
The all that earth implies of heaven;
And found an old man reconciled
To die, as he had lived, a child.

Walter de la Mare, The Burning-Glass and Other Poems (1945).

Roger Fry, "Village in the Valley" (1926)

Perspective, Part Five: "A Handful Of Sand"

My previous post amounted to a rant of sorts about political beings.  Some perspective is in order, both for myself -- for being on a high horse -- and for political beings (left, right, or center) the world over.

               Recording Thoughts

Years ago I retired to rest,
did some modest building in this crinkle of the mountain.
Here in the woods, no noise, no trash;
in front of my eaves, a stream of pure water.
In the past I hoped to profit by opening books;
now I'm used to playing games in the dirt.
What is there that's not a children's pastime?
Confucius, Lao Tzu -- a handful of sand.

Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, Kanshi: The Poetry of Ishikawa Jozan and Other Edo-Period Poets (North Point Press 1990).

Richard Eurich, "Boats at Lyme Regis" (1937)

Or, as put differently by Geoffrey Scott:

    All Our Joy Is Enough

All we make is enough
Barely to seem
A bee's din,
A beetle-scheme --
Sleepy stuff
For God to dream:
Begin.

All our joy is enough
At most to fill
A thimble cup
A little wind puff
Can shake, can spill:
Fill it up;
Be still.

All we know is enough;
Though written wide,
Small spider yet
With tangled stride
Will soon be off
The page's side:
Forget.

Harold Monro (editor), Twentieth Century Poetry (1933).

Richard Eurich, "Lyme Regis" (1930)

Perspective, Part Four: "The Bedlam Of Time Is An Empty Bucket Rattled"

In addition to "October" (which I posted recently), Patrick Kavanagh wrote a second poem set in that month.  The second poem is more about perspective than it is about autumn.  Just as "October" is more about what it means to say "something will be mine wherever I am" than it is about autumn.  But I wouldn't entirely discount autumn's role in the poems.  The season does tend to evoke these sorts of glimpses into what is important.

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

                         October 1943

And the rain coming down, and the rain coming down!
How lovely it falls on the rick well headed,
On potato pits thatched, on the turf clamps home,
On the roofs of the byre where the cows are bedded!

And the sun shining down, and the sun shining down!
How bright on the turnip leaves, on the stubble --
Where turkeys tip-toe across the ridges --
In this corner of peace in a world of trouble.

Patrick Kavanagh, Collected Poems (edited by Antoinette Quinn) (Penguin 2004).  The poem was first published in The Irish Press on October 27, 1943.

      Kenneth Rowntree, "Underbank Farm, Woodlands, Ashdale" (1940)

Those who are "politically-" or "socially-engaged" may feel that Kavanagh is not evincing sufficient concern for a world that, in 1943, was going up in flames.  They might feel the same way if Kavanagh were alive today and wrote the same poem, titling it "October 2012."  I would respectfully disagree with them.  I confess that I am one of those who think that the term "political poetry" is a perfect example of an oxymoron.  (Whether the politics are left, right, or Martian.)  And, if I hear the words "socially-engaged poetry," I immediately run for the exit.  (Whether the "social-engagement" is left, right, or Martian.)

            Kenneth Rowntree, "Bridge End Farm, Derwent Village" (1940)

               Beyond the Headlines

Then I saw the wild geese flying
In fair formation to their bases in Inchicore,
And I knew that these wings would outwear the wings of war,
And a man's simple thoughts outlive the day's loud lying.

Don't fear, don't fear, I said to my soul:
The Bedlam of Time is an empty bucket rattled,
'Tis you who will say in the end who best battled.
Only they who fly home to God have flown at all.

Patrick Kavanagh, Ibid.  The poem was first published in The Irish Press on March 29, 1943.

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

Perspective, Part Three: "Our Windows, Too, Are Clouded Glass"

We live in a world of shameless self-promotion, overweening egotism, and dubious, spurious, and/or ill-gotten "accomplishments."  What evidence supports this assertion?  Any head-of-state that you can name.  And any "celebrity" that you can name.

Of course, this has always been the way of the world.  However, this age differs significantly from previous ages:  in our time, these people insert themselves into our consciousness in electronic ways that are pervasive and well-nigh unavoidable.  Unless, say, one chooses to repair to a yurt on an empty, wind-swept steppe somewhere in Mongolia.  (Provided that the steppe is free of cellphone towers, of course.)

In the absence of an avenue of escape, one needs perspective.  One needs to remind oneself that these sorts of people are not normal.  They have nothing to do with real life, or with our lives.  Humility and empathy are alien to them.  Thus, they would not know what to make of a poem such as the following.  Never in a million years would it occur to them that Charlotte Mew is trying to tell us something about ourselves, something that we ignore at peril to our souls.

                                       Duncan Grant, "Still Life" (1957)

                 On the Asylum Road

Theirs is the house whose windows -- every pane --
     Are made of darkly stained or clouded glass:
Sometimes you come upon them in the lane,
     The saddest crowd that you will ever pass.

But still we merry town or village folk
     Throw to their scattered stare a kindly grin,
And think no shame to stop and crack a joke
     With the incarnate wages of man's sin.

None but ourselves in our long gallery we meet,
     The moor-hen stepping from her reeds with dainty feet,
          The hare-bell bowing on his stem,
Dance not with us; their pulses beat
     To fainter music; nor do we to them
               Make their life sweet.

The gayest crowd that they will ever pass
     Are we to brother-shadows in the lane:
Our windows, too, are clouded glass
     To them, yes, every pane!

Charlotte Mew, The Farmer's Bride (1916).

                                Duncan Grant, "Girl at the Piano" (1940)

Perspective, Part Two: An Entire Range, A Single Peak

I wonder:  is it possible to view oneself (or, "one's self") objectively?  I think not.  There is an inherent and inescapable conflict of interest, isn't there?  I suspect that such objectivity is attainable only by the holy (in a mystical, non-sectarian sense) or the mad.  (Perhaps "and/or" rather than "or" is more appropriate in such a case.)

It is somewhat akin to trying to imagine yourself dead.

                 F. H. Glasbury, "Sunshine and Shadow in Epping Forest"

   Written on the Wall at Xilin Temple

Regarded from one side, an entire range;
     from another, a single peak.
Far, near, high, low, all its parts
     different from the others.
If the true face of Mount Lu
     cannot be known,
It is because the one looking at it
     is standing in its midst.

Su Tung-P'o (Su Shih) (1037-1101), in Beata Grant (translator), Mount Lu Revisited: Buddhism in the Life and Writings of Su Shih (University of Hawaii Press 1994).

                        Tom Gentleman, "Balfron, the Field Bridge" (1922)

                      Distance

One's "sense of self" is a curious thing:
Compare the slights you think you have suffered
With those you have visited upon others.
Ah!  then a sudden wind rattles the doors --
As if the world had a life of its own.

sip (March 2011).

                       Ethelbert White, "Sun Through the Wood" (c. 1932)

Perspective, Part One: "O Little Waking Hour Of Life Out Of Sleep!"

"Eternity is not length of life but depth of life" -- the epitaph discovered by Charlotte Mew on a child's gravestone in a rural churchyard -- got me to thinking about all of those dreamy, death-haunted poems written by the poets of the 1890s.  I recently posted Ernest Dowson's "Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam," which contains the quintessential Decadent statement on the matter:  "Out of a misty dream/Our path emerges for a while, then closes/Within a dream."

The following poem by Arthur Symons is reminiscent of Dowson's poem. But, in addition, it -- like the epitaph found by Mew -- helps to put things into perspective.

              Tristram Hillier, "Snails" (from Shell Nature Studies) (1957)

                            Epilogue

O little waking hour of life out of sleep!
When I consider the many million years
I was not yet, and the many million years
I shall not be, it is easy to think of the sleep
I shall sleep for the second time without hopes or fears.
Surely my sleep for the million years was deep?
I remember no dreams from the million years, and it seems
I may sleep for as many million years without dreams.

Arthur Symons, Images of Good and Evil (1899).

Of course, one might be prompted to respond:  "That is all very well and good, assuming you have a soul!"

              Tristram Hillier, "Fossils" (from Shell Nature Studies) (1957)