Spring. And All Else.

The poems that move us the most have an inexpressible mystery at their heart.  This is a dogmatic proposition that I cannot hope to defend on a rational basis.  It is a corollary to one of my two laws of poetry (which long-time -- and much-appreciated! -- readers of this blog may recall):  Explanation and explication are the death of poetry.  (For those who may be interested, my second law is this:  It is the individual poem that matters, not the poet.)

With those platitudinous truisms out of the way, let us consider, for instance, this:

            A Song for a Parting

                            I.
Flora will pass from firth to firth;
Duty must draw, and vows must bind.
Flora will sail half round the earth,
Yet will she leave some grace behind.

                            II.
Waft her, on Faith, from friend to friend,
Make her a saint in some far isle;
Yet will we keep, till memories end,
Something that once was Flora's smile.

William Cory (1823-1892), Ionica (Third Edition; edited by A. C. Benson) (George Allen 1905).  The poem originally appeared in the 1891 edition of Ionica.

William Cory is best known for his translation of a poem by Callimachus (c. 310 - c. 240 BC).  Callimachus's poem is found in The Greek Anthology.  Cory's translation, which has appeared here in the past, begins:  "They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,/They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed." It concludes:  "Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;/For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take." "Thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales" refers to Heraclitus's poems.

Who, or what, is "Flora"?  The Roman goddess of flowers and of spring?  Or is she a real person whose identity is cloaked in an evocative alias?  Or neither?  I have no idea.  Yet the poem still beguiles me, for it is a beautiful thing.  Flora is Flora.  Nothing more need be said.

James Torrington Bell (1898-1970), "Landscape"

As lovely and welcome as the arrival of spring is, I have lately found myself regretting the coming disappearance of the bare branches of the trees as the leaves emerge.  As one ages, it seems that life and the World take on a more elegiac cast.  I say this without a trace of melancholy, complaint, or foreboding.  The beautiful particulars of the World seem more beautiful to me with each passing year, with a beauty that continually unfolds, without end.  This no doubt has something to do with a quickening awareness of the evanescence of all things.  There is no getting around it:  time is short.  Yet an elegy need not be a lament.

And so I never tire of looking up at the breathtaking intricacy of interlacing empty branches against the sky, in any weather.  But particularly when, beyond the branches, white castles of cloud travel across the blue.  Nor will the shadows of those same branches spread out at my feet on a sunny day ever cease to be a source of wonder.

"A Song for a Parting."  Exactly.

     Simply trust:
Do not also the petals flutter down,
     Just like that?

Issa (1763-1828) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 2: Spring (Hokuseido Press 1950), page 363.

James Torrington Bell, "Braes of Downie" (1938)

Remember

Earlier this month I posted the following poem from The Greek Anthology:

This stone, beloved Sabinus, on thy grave
     Memorial small of our great love shall be.
I still shall seek thee lost; from Lethe's wave
     Oh! drink not thou forgetfulness -- of me.

Anonymous (translated by Goldwin Smith), in Henry Wellesley (editor), Anthologia Polyglotta: A Selection of Versions in Various Languages, Chiefly from The Greek Anthology (1849).

I realize that some may find the poem to be slight:  four lines by a nameless ancient poet translated by a Victorian historian who dabbled in poetry. And I suspect that those who have knowledge of the original Greek text may find the translation wanting (and/or florid).  Yes, I understand.  But it keeps haunting me, and I cannot let it go.

But I will not destroy it by dissecting it.  I will only say that this is marvelous:  "I still shall seek thee lost."  As is this:  "Memorial small of our great love shall be."  Translation or not, the poem bridges the millennia and reminds us that we are all one and the same.  From an unknown Greek poet in an antique land to a translator in Victorian England to readers in the 21st century:  nothing has changed.

John Piper

"Tombstones, Holy Trinity Churchyard, Hinton-in-the-Hedges" (1940)

William Johnson Cory, whose wonderful translation of a poem by Callimachus appeared here recently, wrote a poem in Greek which he then translated into English.  It is an appropriate companion to the first poem. From the other side of the grave.

                                   Remember

You come not, as aforetime, to the headstone every day,
And I, who died, I do not chide because, my friend, you play;
Only, in playing, think of him who once was kind and dear,
And, if you see a beauteous thing, just say, he is not here.

William Johnson Cory, Ionica (1891).

Cory has captured the spirit and tone of the poems in The Greek Anthology very well:  that characteristic mixture of emotion and stoicism (lower case) -- restrained passion, with an underlying foundation of dignity and decency.  Ancient, not modern.

John Piper, "Exterior of the Church of St. Denis, Faxton" (1940)

In his essay "The Charm of the Greek Anthology" (in More Literary Recreations), Edward Cook perceptively pairs Cory's "Remember" with a poem of the same title by Christina Rossetti (which has previously been posted here, but is always worth revisiting).

                       Remember

Remember me when I am gone away,
     Gone far away into the silent land;
     When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
     You tell me of our future that you planned:
     Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
     And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
     For if the darkness and corruption leave
     A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
     Than that you should remember and be sad.

Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862).

John Piper, "Tithe Barn, Great Coxwell, Berkshire" (1940)

"Still Are Thy Pleasant Voices, Thy Nightingales, Awake"

Considering that the odds of writing a good poem are long (even for an accomplished poet), being remembered for a single poem is not a bad thing.  Such is the case of William Johnson Cory (1823-1892).  In Cory's case the single poem is the translation of an epigram by Callimachus.  But Cory's version of Callimachus's poem is so fine that he has transformed it into his own -- while remaining true to the spirit of the original.

                                   Heraclitus

They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.
I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

William Johnson Cory, Ionica (1891).

Well, on the strength of this poem, I believe we can say of William Johnson Cory himself:  "Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake . . ."

Alan Sorrell (1904-1974), "The Artist in the Campagna" (c. 1931)

Here is a prose version of Callimachus's poem:

"One told me of thy death, Heraclitus, and it moved me to tears, when I remembered how often the sun set on our talking.  And thou, my Halicarnassian friend, liest somewhere, gone long long ago to dust; but they live, thy Nightingales, on which Hades who seizeth all shall not lay his hand."

Callimachus (translated by W. R. Paton), in W. R. Paton, The Greek Anthology (Heinemann 1919).  The "Heraclitus" referred to in the epigram is not the well-known Greek philosopher, but a poet from Halicarnassus. According to Paton, "Nightingales" is "the title of a book of poems."

For purposes of comparison, here are two other verse translations:

They told me, Heraclitus, thou wert dead;
And then I thought, and tears thereon did shed,
How oft we two talk'd down the sun:  but thou,
Halicarnassian guest! art ashes now.
Yet live thy nightingales of song; on those
Forgetfulness her hand shall ne'er impose.

Callimachus (translated by Henry Nelson Coleridge), in Henry Wellesley (editor), Anthologia Polyglotta: A Selection of Versions in Various Languages, Chiefly from the Greek Anthology (1849).

One told me, Heraclitus, of thy fate,
Which brought the tear into my eye to think
How oft we two, conversing long and late,
Have seen the sun into his chamber sink;
But that is past and gone, and somewhere thou,
Halicarnassian guest! art ashes now.
Yet live those nightingales of thine; on these
The all-grasping hand of Hades will not seize.

Callimachus (translated by Charles Neaves), in Charles Neaves, The Greek Anthology (1874).

Alan Sorrell, "Sudanese Express Passing Abu Simbel"

The prose translation and the two verse translations contain the same elements as Cory's version:  tears of sorrow; a memory of friends talking until the sun went down; ashes/dust; poems as nightingales; Death/Hades/forgetfulness.  But they cannot hold a candle to what Cory has pulled off.  Because I am a sworn enemy of explication and explanation, I will say only this:  Cory has written a lovely poem.  A poem which, once read, cannot be forgotten.  Why this is so is what makes poetry the wondrous thing it is.  We should leave it at that.  Definitions destroy.

Alan Sorrell, "Train in a Landscape"