Blue

As I am wont to do, I was recently contemplating the obvious:  where would the loveliness of the world be without all of its variations on blue?  And for me, any consideration of blue begins and ends with the sky.  Isn't the blue of the sky the standard by which we judge all beauty?

What could be purer?  Or more serene?  What could hold more mystery, while at the same time providing the calm assurance that all is well?  It is hard to turn away from.  Closing the door on it seems a betrayal.  But there it remains, impassive and perfect.  It is not going anywhere.

          This Loafer

In a sun-crazed orchard
Busy with blossomings
This loafer, unaware of
What toil or weather brings,
Lumpish sleeps -- a chrysalis
Waiting, no doubt, for wings.

And when he does get active,
It's not for business -- no
Bee-lines to thyme and heather,
No earnest to-and-fro
Of thrushes:  pure caprice tells him
Where and how to go.

All he can ever do
Is to be entrancing,
So that a child may think,
Upon a chalk-blue chancing,
"Today was special.  I met
A piece of the sky dancing."

C. Day Lewis, The Room and Other Poems (Jonathan Cape 1965).

Harald Sohlberg, "Night" (1904)

A brief aside before we proceed further into blue:  C. Day Lewis's description of the butterfly's way of moving through the world is reminiscent of a poem by Robert Graves that has appeared here before.

             Flying Crooked

The butterfly, a cabbage-white,
(His honest idiocy of flight)
Will never now, it is too late,
Master the art of flying straight,
Yet has -- who knows so well as I? --
A just sense of how not to fly:
He lurches here and here by guess
And God and hope and hopelessness.
Even the aerobatic swift
Has not his flying-crooked gift.

Robert Graves, Poems 1926-1930 (1931).

As much as we may admire the single-minded and diligent bees of the world, isn't it the butterflies that charm us?

I am reminded of the Emperor Hadrian's death-bed description of his soul: animula vagula blandula.  "My little wand'ring sportful Soul."  (John Donne, 1611.)  "Poor little, pretty, fluttering thing."  (Matthew Prior, 1709.) "Ah! gentle, fleeting, wav'ring sprite."  (Lord Byron, 1806.)  A butterfly making its way, this way and that, around a garden.

Henry Moore, "Catspaws Off the Land" (1885)

"A piece of the sky dancing" naturally leads to "sky-flakes":

                    Blue-Butterfly Day

It is blue-butterfly day here in spring,
And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry
There is more unmixed color on the wing
Than flowers will show for days unless they hurry.

But these are flowers that fly and all but sing:
And now from having ridden out desire
They lie closed over in the wind and cling
Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.

Robert Frost, New Hampshire (1923).

Flowers that fly and flakes of the sky lead in turn to this lovely thought:

     A flower unknown
To bird and butterfly, --
     The sky of autumn.

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

Francis Dodd, "Ely" (1926)

It all comes back to the sky, doesn't it?  But perhaps my opening paean was too simplistic.  Robert Frost is infinitely more canny (and eloquent) about these things than I can ever hope to be.  He understands the seductiveness of the sky, but . . .

                    Fragmentary Blue

Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet) --
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

Robert Frost, New Hampshire (1923).

Frost has a point.  I ought not to get too carried away.  The sky -- perfect, but impassive -- is no place to dwell.  Our world is one of butterflies and birds and flowers.  As he says in "Birches":  "Earth's the right place for love."

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

So let us, then, keep the blue of the sky in perspective.  Yes, there are times when we look up into it and say:  I wish this moment could last for ever. Yet, here is Frost again in "Birches":  "I'd like to get away from earth awhile/And then come back to it and begin over."  Our world is one of fragmentary blue.  But not any the less lovely for that.

                  L'Oiseau Bleu

The lake lay blue below the hill.
     O'er it, as I looked, there flew
Across the waters, cold and still,
     A bird whose wings were palest blue.

The sky above was blue at last,
     The sky beneath me blue in blue.
A moment, ere the bird had passed,
     It caught his image as he flew.

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

Still, I persist in thinking that the blue of the sky remains the standard by which we judge all else.  Where would the infinite, ever-changing blues of the water be without it?  And what of the trees -- green, or gold and red, or empty -- that stand before it?

                         The Nest

Four blue stones in this thrush's nest
I leave, content to make the best
Of turquoise, lapis lazuli
Or for that matter of the whole blue sky.

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

Now I hear the water and the trees say:  Ah, but where would the blue of the sky be without us?

Gerald Dewsbury, "Sycamore and Oak" (1992)

"Love, What It Is"

What is love?  I haven't a clue.  I'd like to think that I have experienced it. But who really knows?

Call me a coward, but I tend to think that love is one of those experiences that are so intimately bound up with the essence of being human that they can only be lived, and any attempt to "explain" or "define" them is doomed to failure.  The nature of the soul, the notion of beauty, and the experience of death fall into the same category.

I am thus tempted to fall back upon my old standby in situations of this sort:  "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Proposition 7, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (translated by David Pears and Brian McGuinness) (1921).  Of course, Wittgenstein is only repeating what Taoist and Buddhist philosophers stated centuries ago. And what they say is true, you know.  (Contrary to what purveyors of Science would have you believe, all of this explaining we moderns engage in gets us nowhere.)

Claughton Pellew-Harvey, "View from the Studio" (1930)

Still, I believe that the subject of love can be approached aslant, which is where poetry comes in.  Hence, for example, I recently came across the following poems by Robert Herrick.

               Love, What It Is

Love is a circle that doth restless move
In the same sweet eternity of love.

Robert Herrick, Poem 29, Hesperides (1648).

Herrick's most recent editors suggest that the source of the poem is a traditional proverb.  Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly (editors), The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, Volume II (Oxford University Press 2013), page 519.  They also cite two lines from a masque by Ben Jonson titled "Love's Welcome at Bolsover" as a possible source:  "Love is a circle, both the first and last/Of all our actions."  Ibid.  Finally, they reference a passage from Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy:  "[Love is] circulus a bono in bonum, a round circle still from good to good; for love is the beginner and end of all our actions."  Ibid.

I next encountered this, in which "from good to good" (coincidentally or not) makes an appearance:

                         Upon Love

Love is a Circle, and an Endless Sphere;
From good to good, revolving here, and there.

Robert Herrick, Poem 839, Hesperides.

This helps to illuminate "Love, What It Is."  To some extent.  Both poems sound lovely, and feel as though they have the ring of truth.  After encountering them, I came across a third poem by Herrick which brings things together.

                    Of Love

How Love came in, I do not know,
Whether by th'eye, or ear, or no:
Or whether with the soul it came
(At first) infused with the same:
Whether in part 'tis here or there,
Or, like the soul, whole every where:
This troubles me: but I as well
As any other, this can tell;
That when from hence she does depart,
The out-let then is from the heart.

Robert Herrick, Poem 73, Hesperides.

"This troubles me" is marvelous.  And this is wonderful:  "Or whether with the soul it came/(At first) infused with the same."  As is this:  "like the soul, whole every where."  In this context, love as a circle, love as "an Endless Sphere," and love as a "sweet eternity" make perfect sense.  The final two lines are lovely, and bring us back to earth.

W. G. Poole, "Plant Against a Winter Landscape" (1938)

However, I do not wish to be reductive.  (And I do not think that Herrick is being reductive.  He simply provides us with beautiful possibilities.) Defining love destroys it.  As I say, it is best approached tangentially, at an oblique angle.

                    Love Without Hope

Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher
Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter,
So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly
Singing about her head, as she rode by.

Robert Graves, Poems (1927).

Few poems capture love's heart-pang and its internal airiness (that catch of the breath) as well as this.

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

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder."  Yes and no, experience teaches us.  But I do think that the feeling of an absence -- of a lack -- is another way of approaching love aslant.  Absence brings home what fullness is.  Or something like that.

Only the moon
high in the sky
as an empty reminder --
but if, looking at it, we just remember,
our two hearts may meet.

Saigyo (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, Saigyo: Poems of a Mountain Home (Columbia University Press 1991).  The poem is an untitled waka (five lines, with a syllable count in Japanese of 5-7-5-7-7). It is prefaced by this note:  "When I was in retirement in a distant place, I sent this to someone in the capital around the time when there was a moon."  Ibid, page 123.

     The Land with Wind in the Leaves

Distance cannot remove me from that place.
I stand half a world away and here it is:
A green sway and roar -- blue, vast, open
And refusing always to let me depart.

     Yorkshire 1987 -- Tokyo 1992

sip (Tokyo/Seattle 1992).

Richard Eurich (1903-1992), "The Window" 

Gossamer

The approach of winter has got me to thinking about the small things I will miss until spring returns.  The sudden whirr-vibration of a hummingbird -- often unseen, only heard and felt.  The kingdoms of sand painstakingly constructed by ants along the seams in the sidewalks.  Butterflies "flying crooked" (as Robert Graves puts it).  The list is not exhaustive.

And -- ah, yes -- the criss-crossing threads left by spiders as they traverse the gardens and the meadows.

            Early Morning

The path

The spider makes through the air,

Invisible,

Until the light touches it.

The path

The light takes through the air,

Invisible,

Until it finds the spider's web.

Janet Lewis, in R. L. Barth (editor), The Selected Poems of Janet Lewis (Swallow Press 2000).

Christopher Nevinson (1889-1946), "Near Leatherhead" (c. 1939)

The following poem is often characterized as one of Robert Frost's "dark" poems.  But this whole "dark Frost" versus "light Frost" dichotomy has always puzzled me.  There is darkness and lightness throughout his poetry, beginning with the first poem in his first volume.  And often in the same poem.  Here, then, is a meditation upon a spider going about its business. Dark?  Light?  Both?  Neither?  

                            Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,

On a white heal-all, holding up a moth

Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --

Assorted characters of death and blight

Mixed ready to begin the morning right,

Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --

A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,

And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,

The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?

What brought the kindred spider to that height,

Then steered the white moth thither in the night?

What but design of darkness to appall? --

If design govern in a thing so small.

Robert Frost, A Further Range (1936).

All that build-up about a calculating, perhaps malevolent, perhaps heartless Universe, and then the sleight-of-hand in the final line.  But it is not as though Frost has not warned us:

It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling
To get adapted to my kind of fooling.

Robert Frost, In the Clearing (1962).

Christopher Nevinson, "The Weir, Charenton"

I have never been able to muster a great deal of enthusiasm for the poetry of Walt Whitman.  I appreciate his cosmos-wide, visionary energy.  But he wears me out.  It is all at too high a pitch.  He reminds me of one of those insistent, often over-educated, self-styled prophets one occasionally encounters in public spaces.  But there are times when he lowers the register a bit.

                    A Noiseless Patient Spider

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect             them,

Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1881).

Whitman being who he is, "O my soul" necessarily makes an appearance. But the conceit here is a lovely one.  And the particulars are lovely as well: "filament, filament, filament" and "the ductile anchor," for instance.

Christopher Nevinson, "A Winter Landscape" (1926)

As long-time (and much-appreciated!) readers may recall, I have often commented upon the knack of Chinese and Japanese poets for getting to the heart of the matter in as few words as possible, with no loss of depth or intimation.  To wit:

Drops of dew

strung on filaments

of spider web --

such are the trappings

that deck out this world.

Saigyo (1118-1190) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, Saigyo: Poems of a Mountain Home (Columbia University Press 1991).

Christopher Nevinson, "View of the Sussex Weald" (c. 1927)

"When Have We Not Preferred Some Going Round To Going Straight To Where We Are?"

Here are the final two lines of a sonnet:

When have we not preferred some going round
To going straight to where we are?

Reading the lines in isolation, one might think that they were written by Robert Frost or Edward Thomas.  (Although I admit that, given my fondness for Frost and Thomas, I perhaps tend to hear their sound too readily.)  In fact, the lines were written by W. H. Auden.

In the year of his death, Auden wrote "A Thanksgiving," which acknowledges his debts to his poetic and philosophic mentors.  These are the first two stanzas:

     When pre-pubescent I felt
that moorlands and woodlands were sacred:
     people seemed rather profane.

     Thus, when I started to verse,
I presently sat at the feet of
     Hardy and Thomas and Frost.

W. H. Auden, Thank You, Fog (1974).  The italics are in the original.

Oliver Hall (1869-1957), "Welsh Mountains"

One of the things that Auden may have learned from Frost and Thomas is their penchant for heading off in a certain direction in a poem and then either second-guessing or reversing their course, with the second-guessing or reversal taking place at the end of the poem:  just when we think the matter has been settled, we are left scratching our heads.  This characteristic is perfectly articulated by Philip Larkin in his description (oft-quoted here) of Thomas's poetry:  "The poetry of almost infinitely-qualified states of mind."  The description applies equally well to Frost's poetry, I think.  In this connection, consider the following poem by Auden.

                            Our Bias

The hour-glass whispers to the lion's roar,
The clock-towers tell the gardens day and night
How many errors Time has patience for,
How wrong they are in being always right.

Yet Time, however loud its chimes or deep,
However fast its falling torrent flows,
Has never put one lion off his leap
Nor shaken the assurance of a rose.

For they, it seems, care only for success:
While we choose words according to their sound
And judge a problem by its awkwardness;

And Time with us was always popular.
When have we not preferred some going round
To going straight to where we are?

W. H. Auden, Another Time (1940).

In our contemporary culture, the word "bias" has taken on a predominantly negative connotation; i.e., it  has been infected with political content (hasn't nearly everything?), and is usually equated with "prejudice" or "bigotry."  But its original sense is "an inclination, leaning, tendency, bent; a preponderating disposition or propensity; predisposition towards."  OED.

Oliver Hall, "Spring" (c. 1927)

Auden also mentions Robert Graves in "A Thanksgiving."  The following poem by Graves perhaps provides a contrast to Auden's view of nature as assured and unswerving.

          Flying Crooked

The butterfly, a cabbage-white,
(His honest idiocy of flight)
Will never now, it is too late,
Master the art of flying straight,
Yet has -- who knows so well as I? --
A just sense of how not to fly:
He lurches here and here by guess
And God and hope and hopelessness.
Even the aerobatic swift
Has not his flying-crooked gift.

Robert Graves, Poems 1926-1930 (1931).

However, perhaps Graves and Auden are not so far apart after all:  the butterfly's "honest idiocy of flight" -- "his flying-crooked gift" -- is part of its unselfconscious essence.  It is no different than Auden's lion and rose.  It is we humans who add layers of complication -- which is not necessarily a bad thing, of course:  thus, for instance, to "choose words according to their sound" is a lovely and wonderful gift.

Oliver Hall, "Penrhyn Quarries" (1938)

How To Live, Part Eighteen: "In Broken Images"

I am wary of those who are preternaturally self-assured, particularly when it comes to matters of politics, philosophy, and religion.  I tend to assume that they have arrived at their level of certitude by leaving something out of account.  The question then arises:  Have they left something out of account inadvertently (through ignorance, sloth, and/or lack of curiosity) or intentionally (making them untrustworthy and/or dangerous)?

Perhaps this marks me as a cynic.  But I believe that any truth that we are fortunate enough to encounter in this world arrives in momentary flashes, not in systems, creeds, or over-arching explanations, however well-intentioned.  (And we all know where good intentions lead us, don't we?)

This may explain, at least in part, my attraction to poetry.  Although I do not believe that the purpose of poetry is to "teach" us anything, I do believe that a good poem (emphasis on good) provides an inkling of truth about Life or the World.  (But this does not mean that the purpose of poetry is to edify.  Nor does it mean that the intimation of truth embodied in a poem can be explicated or explained.)

                         Stephen McKenna, "An English Oak Tree" (1981)

                In Broken Images

He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.

Robert Graves, Poems 1929 (1929).

The approach to life suggested by Graves in the poem reminds me of his poem "Flying Crooked," which I have posted here previously.

                                     Stephen McKenna, "Foliage" (1983)

"Be Assured, The Dragon Is Not Dead"

As an oblique follow-up to my previous post (or was it a rant?) regarding the perils of "analysis," "explanation," and "busybodyness," I offer the following poem by Robert Graves.  Graves is -- needless to say -- a million times more articulate and artful than I could ever hope to be.

                    Vanity

Be assured, the Dragon is not dead
But once more from the pools of peace
Shall rear his fabulous green head.

The flowers of innocence shall cease
And like a harp the wind shall roar
And the clouds shake an angry fleece.

'Here, here is certitude,' you swore,
'Below this lightning-blasted tree.
Where once it struck, it strikes no more.

'Two lovers in one house agree.
The roof is tight, the walls unshaken.
As now, so must it always be.'

Such prophecies of joy awaken
The toad who dreams away the past
Under your hearth-stone, light forsaken,

Who knows that certitude at last
Must melt away in vanity --
No gate is fast, no door is fast --

That thunder bursts from the blue sky,
That gardens of the mind fall waste,
That fountains of the heart run dry.

Robert Graves, Poems 1914-1926 (1927).

                               Stephen Bone (1904-1958), "Ballantrae"

Given Graves's lifelong preoccupation with love, "Vanity" may simply be about the vagaries of human relationships.  However, I like to think that it has broader implications.  I find that people who display a great deal of "certitude" -- particularly about how the world ought to be -- are deluding themselves.  And are tiresome.  And are possibly dangerous (when they want to make their idea of Utopia yours as well, whether you like it or not).

Off the top of my head, only three certainties come to mind.  First: the World -- right now, this moment, as it is -- is paradise.  Second: we are all scheduled to depart from this paradise.  Third: there is a toad under the hearth-stone; be assured, the Dragon is not dead.

                                      Stephen Bone, "Arisaig" (1940s)

How To Live, Part Fifteen: "A Just Sense Of How Not To Fly"

I am ignorant when it comes to the identity of butterflies.  Don't get me wrong: I think that butterflies are lovely.  But I don't know their names. Today, while out for a walk, I nearly collided with a creamy white-yellow one that was being blown about in the wind.  Was it perhaps a cabbage-white?  I wouldn't know.  But I like to think it was.

            Flying Crooked

The butterfly, a cabbage-white,
(His honest idiocy of flight)
Will never now, it is too late,
Master the art of flying straight,
Yet has -- who knows so well as I? --
A just sense of how not to fly:
He lurches here and here by guess
And God and hope and hopelessness.
Even the aerobatic swift
Has not his flying-crooked gift.

Robert Graves, Poems 1926-1930 (1931).

                              Paul Nash, "Oxenbridge Pond" (1927-1928)

Butterflies are tricky to watch, aren't they?  All that flitting and fluttering, all those sudden turns and reversals, are enough to make you dizzy.  But Graves is right:  flying crooked is a gift (within a destiny).

                                      Paul Nash, "Mimosa Wood" (1926)

Snow, Concluded

The snow that we received earlier this week has mostly vanished. However, the remaining bright white patches upon the lawns (which stay green all winter long in our temperate climate) and in the hollows of the open fields (grey-brown underlaid with green) are lovely.  All of which evokes the titles, at least, of the following two poems.

               Wet Snow

White tree on black tree,
Ghostly appearance fastened on another,
Called up by harsh spells of this wintry weather
You stand in the night as though to speak to me.

I could almost
Say what you do not fail to say; that's why
I turn away, in terror, not to see
A tree stand there hugged by its own ghost.

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

                                           John Nash, "Winter Scene"

          Hedges Freaked with Snow

No argument, no anger, no remorse,
       No dividing of blame.
There was poison in the cup -- why should we ask
       From whose hand it came?

No grief for our dead love, no howling gales
       That through darkness blow,
But the smile of sorrow, a wan winter landscape,
       Hedges freaked with snow.

Robert Graves, New Poems (1962).

                       John Nash, "Melting Snow at Wormingford" (1962)

A Christmas Robin, Out Of Season

Robert Graves is adept at putting a twist on things.  Thus, the Christmas robin in the following poem is, in fact, a February robin.  Still, the out-of-season robin reawakens all that is (to borrow from a well-known song) merry and bright about the holiday.  But it also brings in tow (to borrow from a well-known tale) the spectre of an uncertain future.

                 The Christmas Robin

The snows of February had buried Christmas
Deep in the woods, where grew self-seeded
The fir-trees of a Christmas yet unknown,
Without a candle or a strand of tinsel.

Nevertheless when, hand in hand, plodding
Between the frozen ruts, we lovers paused
And 'Christmas trees!' cried suddenly together,
Christmas was there again, as in December.

We velveted our love with fantasy
Down a long vista-row of Christmas trees,
Whose coloured candles slowly guttered down
As grandchildren came trooping round our knees.

But he knew better, did the Christmas robin --
The murderous robin with his breast aglow
And legs apart, in a spade-handle perched:
He prophesied more snow, and worse than snow.

Robert Graves, Collected Poems (1938).

                            Harald Sohlberg, "A View of Vestfold" (1909)

Two Further Variations On A Theme

I have remarked previously that I don't mind circling back on my tracks. Thus, I beg the pardon of any loyal (and, of course, greatly appreciated) readers for retracing my steps to the following two poems, which have appeared here before.  The theme of love (love with a somewhat melancholy cast, I admit) brought them to mind, and I believe that they go well with Elizabeth Jennings's "Delay" and Richard Church's "Be Frugal."

                      Love Without Hope

Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher
Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter,
So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly
Singing about her head, as she rode by.

Robert Graves, The Welchman's Hose (1925).

It is quite an accomplishment to express so much about love in a four-line poem:  joy, exaltation, giddiness, longing, despair, and loss (and whatever else you might think of) all rolled into one.  I never tire of this poem.

                                    Paul Nash, "Nest of the Siren" (1930)

                          To Not Love

One looked at life in the prince style, shunning pain.
Now one has seen too much not to fear more.
Apprehensive, it seems, for all one loves,
One asks only to not love, to not love.

James Reeves, Subsong (1969).

"To Not Love" may be too bleak for some.  I avoid biographical "explanations" of poems.  However, it may (I emphasize may) be helpful to know that James Reeves's wife Mary died in 1966 at the age of 56 after a long illness.  Notice the effort to maintain distance and control by the use of "one" in each line of the poem.  (In contrast, Reeves uses "I" for the speaker in many of the other poems collected in Subsong.)  Then notice how the distance and the control seem to dissolve with the revealing repetition in the final line:  "One asks only to not love, to not love."

                                   Paul Nash, "Lupins and Cactus" (1927)

"The Cool Web"

If the World is either reticent or mute, we humans, for our part, do not know when to shut up.  Lao Tzu's well-known dictum is a good starting point:  "Those who know do not talk.  Those who talk do not know." Perhaps.  Po Chu-i puts Lao Tzu in humorous perspective for us (the translation is by Arthur Waley):

                  Lao Tzu

"Those who speak know nothing;
Those who know are silent."
Those words, I am told,
Were spoken by Lao Tzu.
If we are to believe that Lao Tzu
     Was himself one who knew,
How comes it that he wrote a book
     Of five thousand words?

Robert Graves suggests that yakking may serve a purpose.  But at a cost.

                        The Cool Web

Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.

But we have speech, to chill the angry day,
And speech, to dull the rose's cruel scent.
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.

There's a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.

But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,
Throwing off language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children's day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad no doubt and die that way.

Robert Graves, Poems, 1914-1926 (1927).

                                     Norman Rowe, "Span" (1985)

"Love Without Hope": Two Poems On The Same Theme

The following poem is one of Robert Graves's best-known poems -- at any rate, it seems to pop up in anthologies quite a bit.  It shows that, when he isn't in one of his moony, mythological, exasperating "White Goddess" moods, Graves is very good indeed.

                      Love Without Hope

Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher
Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter,
So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly
Singing about her head, as she rode by.

Robert Graves, The Welchman's Hose (1925).

For some reason, I thought of "Love Without Hope" in connection with a poem by Joan Barton.  But now I wonder if these two poems are in fact "on the same theme."  In any event . . .

                           The Mistress

The short cut home lay through the cemetery --
A suburban shrubbery swallowing up old graves
Iron palings tipped with rusted fleur-de-lys
A sort of cottage orne at the gates,
Ridiculous and sad;

And lost in their laurel groves,
Eaten up by moss,
Stained marble, flaking stone like hatches down,
The unloved unvisited dead:

In the no-man's-land of dusk a short cut home --
The exultant sense of life a trail of fire
Drawn into that tunnel roofed with the cypress smell
And walled with silence adding year to year:

Too far, too far: always
Under the smothering boughs in airless dark
The spirit dwindled, and the fire
Flickered then failed:

Gently implacably from the shade
The indecipherable dedications spoke
'Dear wife' . . . 'devoted mother' . . .
'Beloved child' . . .

Joan Barton, The Mistress and Other Poems (1972).

                                     Richard Eurich, "Sea Wall" (1985)           

"The Climate Of Thought": Robert Graves

I suspect that Robert Graves is best known, not for his poetry, but for Good-Bye to All That (his memoir of the First World War), The White Goddess (a mythological/anthropological/philosophical work), and his historical fiction (I, Claudius, et cetera).  Which, as they say, is a pity, since his poetry is very good.

Given the hundreds of poems that he wrote over a writing life of 70-odd years, it would be misleading to suggest that a particular poem is "typical" of Graves.  Thus, I offer the following poem because I like it, and because the title reminds me of the title of a poem by Wallace Stevens (who I have had on the brain for a couple of months): "The Poems of Our Climate."  (I am not suggesting that there is any literary link between the two poems.  I am only explaining my arbitrary choice.)

                    The Climate of Thought

The climate of thought has seldom been described.
It is no terror of Caucasian frost,
Nor yet that brooding Hindu heat
For which a loin-rag and a dish of rice
Suffice until the pestilent monsoon.
But, without winter, blood would run too thin;
Or, without summer, fires would burn too long.
In thought the seasons run concurrently.

Thought has a sea to gaze, not voyage, on;
And hills, to rough the edge of the bland sky,
Not to be climbed in search of blander prospect;
Few birds, sufficient for such caterpillars
As are not fated to turn butterflies;
Few butterflies, sufficient for such flowers
As are the luxury of a full orchard;
Wind, sometimes, in the evening chimneys; rain
On the early morning roof, on sleepy sight;
Snow streaked upon the hilltop, feeding
The fond brook at the valley-head
That greens the valley and that parts the lips;
The sun, simple, like a country neighbour;
The moon, grand, not fanciful with clouds.

Robert Graves, Collected Poems (1938).

                   Cecil Gordon Lawson, "Cheyne Walk, Chelsea" (1870)