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)

"Be Frugal In The Gift Of Love"

One of the nice things about poetry is that one thing leads to another. Elizabeth Jennings's poem "Delay" ends with this lovely line:  "And love arrived may find us somewhere else."  I had been thinking about the line over the past couple of days.  And then the following poem by Richard Church (1893-1972) arrived out of the past.

                  Be Frugal  

Be frugal in the gift of love,

Lest you should kindle in return

Love like your own, that may survive

Long after yours has ceased to burn.

For in life's later years you may

Meet with the ghost of what you woke

And shattered at a second stroke.

God help you on that fatal day.

Richard Church, The Solitary Man (1941).

In mid-20th century England, Richard Church was what used to be called "a man of letters."  He and his work are now mostly forgotten, I fear.  I have spent some time with his poetry over the years, and there are several quiet, fine poems like "Be Frugal" to be found there.  I am not suggesting that his work should displace that of the "Major Poets."  However, I now find that it is individual poems, not poets, that are most important to me.  I first read "Be Frugal" perhaps 20 (or is it 30?) years ago.  Now it unaccountably returns and delights me once again.

                                   Ethelbert White, "Early Spring" (1919)  

"The Star's Impulse Must Wait For Eyes To Claim It Beautiful"

I presume that most of us have had thoughts similar to those expressed by Louis MacNeice in "Star-gazer" (which appeared in my previous post).  I am wilfully ignorant of science, but the idea of starlight travelling through the ages to arrive here before our eyes is of interest to me as a mortal.  The thought that tonight's starlight left its various homes untold years before I was born is wonderful, sad, and somehow comforting.  As is the thought that starlight leaving its homes tonight will arrive here untold years after I am gone.

Likewise, the possibility of some sort of connection between time-travelling starlight and love is of great interest.  Even though it is not scientifically provable.  This, of course, is the business of poetry.

                              Delay

The radiance of that star that leans on me
Was shining years ago.  The light that now
Glitters up there my eye may never see,
And so the time lag teases me with how

Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent.  The star's impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.

Elizabeth Jennings, Poems (1953).

                                     Robin Tanner, "The Plough" (1973)

In A Train, Part Two: "Star-gazer"

I can easily picture Louis MacNeice -- that urbane and questioning figure -- deep in thought in a smoke-filled train.  Perhaps he is on his way to Holyhead to catch a boat to Ireland.  (In fact, R. S. Thomas has written about encountering W. B. Yeats on that route:  "Memories of Yeats Whilst Travelling to Holyhead.")  Or perhaps he is headed to western Scotland and the Hebrides.  And, sure enough, MacNeice did write his share of train poems, among them "Corner Seat," "Train to Dublin," and "Trains in the Distance."  I think that this is my favorite.

                              Star-gazer

Forty-two years ago (to me if to no one else
The number is of some interest) it was a brilliant starry night
And the westward train was empty and had no corridors
So darting from side to side I could catch the unwonted sight
Of those almost intolerably bright
Holes, punched in the sky, which excited me partly because
Of their Latin names and partly because I had read in the textbooks
How very far off they were, it seemed their light
Had left them (some at least) long years before I was.

And this remembering now I mark that what
Light was leaving some of them at least then,
Forty-two years ago, will never arrive
In time for me to catch it, which light when
It does get here may find that there is not
Anyone left alive
To run from side to side in a late night train
Admiring it and adding noughts in vain.

Louis MacNeice, Collected Poems (1966).

Given the circumstances of its composition, "Star-gazer" inevitably has a bitter-sweet air about it.  MacNeice wrote it in January of 1963.  He died unexpectedly of pneumonia in September of that year, just short of his 56th birthday.

                               Trevor Makinson, "Maryhill Goods Yard"

In A Train, Part One: "But Tell Me How Your Schemes Work Out, My Fellow"

It is a commonplace that travelling by train is more conducive to observation and to contemplation than travelling by, say, car or airplane. Not surprisingly, therefore, a great store of poetry exists that has its origins in someone gazing out of the window of a train at the passing world, or in someone sizing up his or her fellow passengers (which may, in the end, lead to a sizing up of himself or herself).

                         In the Train

She is the passenger with restless eyes
Who twists the ticket in her black-gloved fingers.
None knows what calculation, what surmise
Disturb her as the train jerks on or lingers.
Above the eyes her brow is smooth and yellow.
'I grant,' her silence says, 'that all I planned
Has been like something graven in the sand,
But tell me how your schemes work out, my fellow.'

James Reeves, Collected Poems, 1929-1974 (1974).

                       Thomas Henslow Barnard (1898-1992), "Still Life"

How To Live, Part Twelve: "If One's Heart Is Broken Twenty Times A Day . . ."

At times, the sadness of Ivor Gurney's poetry makes me wince.  His pain is so palpable that I sometimes feel like turning away.  But it is crucial to recognize that his poetry is not the sort of trivial and self-regarding "confessional" poetry that we moderns have come to know.

In particular, although there can be a note of complaint in Gurney's poetry, I rarely sense self-pity (a noisome staple of "confessional" poetry). Through all of his sorrow and his pain, Gurney behaves like an adult.  There is something to be learned from this.

                                    Daily

If one's heart is broken twenty times a day,
What easier thing than to fling the bits away,
But still one gathers fragments, and looks for wire,
Or patches it up like some old bicycle tire.

Bicycle tires fare hardly on roads, but the heart
Has an easier time than rubber, they sheathe a cart
With iron, so lumbering and slow my mind must be made,
To bother the heart and to teach things and learn it its trade.

Ivor Gurney, Selected Poems (edited by George Walter) (1996).

"Daily" was originally published in the January, 1924, issue of The London Mercury under the title "Old Tale."  Whether "Old Tale" was Gurney's own first title, or whether it was invented by J. C. Squire, the editor of The London Mercury, I do not know.  Part of me prefers "Old Tale" over "Daily."

                                 Samuel Palmer, "A Hilly Scene" (c. 1826)

"Now It Is September And The Web Is Woven. The Web Is Woven And You Have To Wear It."

Today was beautiful:  warm and bright and cloudless cornflower blue.  But the wind is now of autumn.  And the yellow and angled light is of autumn. Something is incipient.

Recently, I gently questioned R. S. Thomas's assertion that Wallace Stevens's "one season was late fall."  However, I did acknowledge that some of my favorite poems by Stevens are set in autumn.  Here is one that is set in early fall.  Today's weather -- "what is there here but weather, what spirit/Have I except it comes from the sun?" -- brought it to mind.

                            The Dwarf

Now it is September and the web is woven.
The web is woven and you have to wear it.

The winter is made and you have to bear it,
The winter web, the winter woven, wind and wind,

For all the thoughts of summer that go with it
In the mind, pupa of straw, moppet of rags.

It is the mind that is woven, the mind that was jerked
And tufted in straggling thunder and shattered sun.

It is all that you are, the final dwarf of you,
That is woven and woven and waiting to be worn,

Neither as mask nor as garment but as a being,
Torn from insipid summer, for the mirror of cold,

Sitting beside your lamp, there citron to nibble
And coffee dribble . . . Frost is in the stubble.

Wallace Stevens, Parts of a World (1942).

                                           John Nash, "Autumn" (1933)

Variations On A Theme

One of the joys of poetry is encountering a new poem that calls up a poem you had nearly forgotten.  The unanticipated connection multiples your pleasure:  not only have you gained the new poem, but you have also gained the implications that arise out of the echoes of the old poem.

I recently found this poem by Hugo Williams:

                  The Accident

The cricket ball lingered an eternity
in the patch of blue sky
before returning eventually to earth.

I was standing with outstretched arms
when the full force of the future
hit me in the mouth.

Hugo Williams, Dock Leaves (1994).

"The Accident" brought to mind one of the small gems discovered by Philip Larkin and included by him in The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse (1973).  I know little about Michael Ivens (1924-2001), the writer of the following poem.  However, I did come across a harrumphing obituary in The Guardian, which is harrumphingly titled:  "Michael Ivens: Champion of the Libertarian Right and Business Freedom."  The Guardian is reliably hilarious in its harrumphing, and the obituary, contrary to The Guardian's hopes, prompted me to think to myself:  "I like the cut of this man's jib.  He seems to have been remarkably thoughtful, clear-headed, and free of cant.  No wonder The Guardian seems to have taken a dislike to him."

But, back to poetry: 

     First Day at School

First day at school
the large boy
kindly
hurled my ball
with amazing skill
high over the roof

soaring out of sight
out of my prosaic life

Unstintingly
I gave him
my admiration

As others have done
when their respect
money
virginity
honour hope and lives
have been hurled
triumphantly out of sight

Michael Ivens, Private and Public (1968).

                               Thomas Saunders Nash, "Still Life" (1929)

Life As A Work Of Art, Part Two: "The Cast Is Large. There Isn't Any Plot."

The poetry of Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) can be too acerbic for some, but I find it entertaining.  (For a more lyrical, less cynical side of Belloc, I recommend his prose works Hills and the Sea, The Old Road, and The Path to Rome.)  I was introduced to Belloc via the following sonnet, which employs Shakespeare's "all the world's a stage" as a starting point for another view of Life as a theatrical entertainment.

The world's a stage.  The trifling entrance fee
Is paid (by proxy) to the registrar.
The Orchestra is very loud and free
But plays no music in particular.
They do not print a programme, that I know.
The cast is large.  There isn't any plot.
The acting of the piece is far below
The very worst of modernistic rot.

The only part about it I enjoy
Is what was called in English the Foyay.
There will I stand apart awhile and toy
With thought, and set my cigarette alight;
And then -- without returning to the play --
On with my coat and out into the night.

Hilaire Belloc,  Complete Verse (1991).

                          Eugene Jansson, "Hornsgatan by Night" (1902)

Lists, Part Five: "A Quilt Of Quilt Names To Keep You Warm In The Dark"

As I have mentioned previously, Michael Longley is a master of lists.  His collection The Weather in Japan contains several poems that have quilts as their subject.  (An aside:  Longley is fond of transposing Homeric scenes into the modern world.  Thus, Longley's lists sometimes bring to mind Homer's list of Greek ships in The Iliad.)

                         The Yellow Teapot

When those who had eaten at our table and drunk
From the yellow teapot into the night, betrayed you
And told lies about you, I cried out for a curse
And wrote a curse, then stitched together this spell,
A quilt of quilt names to keep you warm in the dark:

Snake's Trail, Shoo Fly, Flying Bats, Spider Web,
Broken Handle, Tumbling Blocks, Hole in the Barn
Door, Dove at the Window, Doors and Windows,
Grandmother's Flower Garden, Sun Dial, Mariner's
Compass, Delectable Mountains, World without End.

Michael Longley, The Weather in Japan (2000).

                             J. E. H. MacDonald, "Rowanberries" (1922)