"I Stood Still And Was A Tree Amid The Wood"

In "The Trees," Philip Larkin writes:  "The trees are coming into leaf/Like something almost being said."  The lines bring to mind two lines from Wallace Stevens's "The Motive for Metaphor":  ". . . you were happy in spring,/With the half colors of quarter-things."

As spring progresses, the leaves of the trees move through innumerable shades of green.  On a sunny day, the larger leaves are diaphanous, with all the variations of green taking on a tinge of sun-shot yellow.  If it is breezy, their green shadows sway and flutter against each other, flowing like a stream.

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

                        The Tree

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,
Knowing the truth of things unseen before;
Of Daphne and the laurel bow
And that god-feasting couple old
That grew elm-oak amid the wold.
'Twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated, and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart's home
That they might do this wonder thing;
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
And many a new thing understood
That was rank folly to my head before.

Ezra Pound, A Lume Spento (1908).

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Daphne (line 3) is transformed into a laurel tree as she is pursued by Apollo.  The "god-feasting couple old" (line 4) refers to the story of Baucis and Philemon in Metamorphoses.  The couple provided a meal to Zeus and Hermes when no one else in their village would do so. As a reward, Zeus spared their lives when he destroyed the village and its inhospitable residents.  He also granted their wish that, should one of them die, the other would die at the same time.  Much later, as they died of old age, they embraced, and as they did so they were transformed into intertwining trees:  an oak and a lime.  Pound uses "elm-oak" (line 5).

Stephen McKenna, "Foliage" (1983)

"Consider The Grass Growing" (Once Again)

In my previous post, I stated that Philip Larkin's "The Trees" is my "May poem."  However, I remembered today that there is another poem to which I pay a visit each May.

     Consider the Grass Growing

Consider the grass growing
As it grew last year and the year before,
Cool about the ankles like summer rivers,
When we walked on a May evening through the meadows
To watch the mare that was going to foal.

Patrick Kavanagh, Collected Poems (edited by Antoinette Quinn) (Penguin 2004).  The poem was first published in The Irish Press on May 21, 1943.

George Price Boyce, "Anstey's Cove, South Devon" (1853)

The following untitled poem by Saigyo (1118-1190) is one of a series of ten poems.  The sequence is titled "Ten Poems on Impermanence."

Since I no longer think
of reality
as reality,
what reason would I have
to think of dreams as dreams?

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

At this point, I have to be careful.  I do not wish to fly off into obscure metaphysical space.  More importantly, I do not wish to over-simplify a poem that is the product of thousands of years of Buddhist philosophy and Japanese culture.  (With centuries of Taoist philosophy and Chinese culture in the background.)  All of which is beyond my competence.  The risk of presumption on my part is substantial.

With those caveats (and with the added caveat that I am relying upon a translation), I will humbly offer a tentative (and all-too-obvious) thought. Saigyo is not saying that reality is not reality.  Nor is he saying that dreams are not dreams.

Well, then, what is he saying?  Walk off into the meadows.  Consider the grass growing.  Stop all of your thinking.  Stop putting a name to everything.

Henry Holiday, "Hawes Water" (c. 1859)

"Like Something Almost Being Said"

As some long-time readers may recall, I make it a habit to visit two particular poems in May and November of each year.  My November poem is Wallace Stevens's "The Region November."  My May poem is "The Trees" by Philip Larkin.

Why revisit a poem that we know quite well?

At the outset, let's be clear:  poetry is not life.  (Likewise, art is not life and books are not life.)  We do not read poems in order to live.

But, at the risk of sounding highfalutin', I will go out on a limb and suggest that a good poem can do two things.  First, it can help us to understand what it means to be a human being amidst other human beings.  Second, it can give us an inkling of how we, as human beings, fit into the World -- the earthly paradise that surrounds us.  A good poem puts us in our place. Thus, it makes sense to pay it a visit now and then.

James McIntosh Patrick (1907-1998), "Ashley Burn, Spring"

                 The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old?  No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Philip Larkin, High Windows (Faber and Faber 1974).

I have no doubt that "The Trees" is well-loved by many people.  But those of us who love it do so for reasons that are peculiar to each of us.  Many of us may find the same phrases in the poem beautiful and moving:  "Like something almost being said" or "Their greenness is a kind of grief" or "Yet still the unresting castles thresh" or (of course) "Begin afresh, afresh, afresh."  But how we feel about those words arises out of our own separate lives.

Hence, any attempt to articulate the reasons for our love of the poem is doomed to failure.  Our love is inextricably bound up with our life.  Should you be so lucky as to cross the path of someone who tells you that they love "The Trees," it is best to say "Yes, I know what you mean" and leave it at that.

Besides, as I have often said, explanation and explication are the death of poetry.  If someone attempted to explain to me that the beauty of "The Trees" lies in this-or-that aspect of its meter or in this-or-that aspect of its rhyme, I would regard them as the Grim Reaper of poetry.

I would instruct them to step outside, in May, and have a look at the trees.

James McIntosh Patrick, "City Garden" (1979)

Four-Line Poems, Part Seven: "Sighs Nature An Alas? Or Merely, Amen?"

If I take my daily walk in the late afternoon or early evening, I can watch the swallows take their dinner above the open fields that I pass through. They rise and fall and dive and curve at the same time each day.  Their single-mindedness, swiftness, and precision are wonderful to behold:  a beautiful unchoreographed ballet.

Then again, who am I to say that they are not choreographed?  All of their movements may be perfectly planned in a way that is well beyond my ken.

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

            The Spotted Flycatcher

Gray on gray post, this silent little bird
Swoops on its prey -- prey neither seen nor heard!
A click of bill; a flicker; and, back again!
Sighs Nature an Alas?  Or merely, Amen?

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

De la Mare's use of "alas" in "The Spotted Flycatcher" brings to mind another of his poems.

                  Harvest Home

A bird flies up from the hayfield;
Sweet, to distraction, is the new-mown grass:
But I grieve for its flowers laid low at noonday --
        And only this poor Alas!

I grieve for War's innocent lost ones --
The broken loves, the mute goodbye,
The dread, the courage, the bitter end,
The shaken faith, the glazing eye.

O bird, from the swathes of that hayfield --
The rancid stench of the grass!
And a heart stricken mute by that Harvest Home --
        And only this poor Alas!

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

Joseph Kavanagh (1856-1918), "Gypsy Encampment on the Curragh"

"Look Thy Last On All Things Lovely, Every Hour"

In a recent post, I suggested that Elizabethan poets were preoccupied with the transience of our lives.  But transience is the implicit subject of all poetry, isn't it?  Any good poem is an attempt to arrest life as it escapes our grasp.  The same is true of any good painting.

A poet or a painter embarks upon this effort knowing that it is doomed to failure.  But therein lies the beauty of the undertaking.  (Pun not intended.) This fleeting World is -- despite human nature, despite our daily dose of the dispiriting news of the world -- an earthly paradise.  Would an unchanging Paradise be a paradise?

John Humphrey Spender, "Staked Rose" (1953)

                  Fare Well

When I lie where shades of darkness
Shall no more assail mine eyes,
Nor the rain make lamentation
     When the wind sighs;
How will fare the world whose wonder
Was the very proof of me?
Memory fades, must the remembered
     Perishing be?

Oh, when this my dust surrenders
Hand, foot, lip, to dust again,
May these loved and loving faces
     Please other men!
May the rusting harvest hedgerow
Still the Traveller's Joy entwine,
And as happy children gather
     Posies once mine.

Look thy last on all things lovely,
Every hour.  Let no night
Seal thy sense in deathly slumber
     Till to delight
Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;
Since that all things thou wouldst praise
Beauty took from those who loved them
     In other days.

Walter de la Mare, Motley and Other Poems (1918).

Our own individual transience is a given.  Time is short.  But humanity's attempt to momentarily halt that transience through poetry and painting is an unchanging constant that is bequeathed to all of us.

Josephine Bowes (1825-1874), "A Cornfield near Calais"

"When I Look At Lovely Things Which Pass"

Perhaps I am easy to please, but I never cease to be amazed at the way these things work.  Now -- just as the last of the cherry, apple, and pear blossoms drift to the ground -- on come the lilacs, the rhododendrons, and the azaleas (to name but a few).

And they in turn will soon be replaced, until all of this rising and opening and fading and falling has its denouement in an empty December to come. But there is no need to dwell on that now.

William Callow (1812-1908), "Easby Abbey, Yorkshire" (1853)

                           In the Fields

Lord, when I look at lovely things which pass,
     Under old trees the shadows of young leaves
Dancing to please the wind along the grass,
     Or the gold stillness of the August sun on the August sheaves,
Can I believe there is a heavenlier world than this?
     And if there is
Will the strange heart of any everlasting thing
     Bring me these dreams that take my breath away?
They come at evening with the home-flying rooks and the scent of hay,
     Over the fields.  They come in Spring.

Charlotte Mew, Complete Poems (edited by John Newton) (Penguin 2000.) The poem was first published in 1923.

William Callow, "Old Avenue, Inveraray"

The following poem by Walter de la Mare (which has appeared here before, but which is worth revisiting) provides, I think, a nice complement to Mew's poem.

             Now

The longed-for summer goes;
Dwindles away
To its last rose,
Its narrowest day.

No heaven-sweet air but must die;
Softlier float,
Breathe lingeringly
Its final note.

Oh, what dull truths to tell!
Now is the all-sufficing all
Wherein to love the lovely well,
Whate'er befall.

Walter de la Mare, O Lovely England and Other Poems (1953).

William Callow, "Confluence of the Greta and the Tees" (1872)

"In A Lifetime How Many Springs Do We See?"

I do not think that we ought to dwell unduly upon our mortality.  Unlike, say, the Elizabethans, I have no desire to place a skull on my mantelpiece as a reminder of where I am bound.  And I certainly do not wish to follow the example of John Donne, who is reputed to have occasionally slept in his coffin (which he kept inside his house).  Enough is enough.

Still, being mindful of the brevity of our days is, I think, a good idea.  If nothing else, it may help us to appreciate the moments as they fly away. Besides, in doing so, we keep ourselves in good company:  Su Tung-p'o and A. E. Housman, for instance.

Stanley Spencer, "Lilac and Clematis at Englefield" (1954)

       Pear Blossoms by the Eastern Palisade

Pear blossoms pale white, willows deep green --
when willow fluff scatters, falling blossoms will fill the town.
Snowy boughs by the eastern palisade set me pondering --
in a lifetime how many springs do we see?

Su Tung-p'o (1037-1101) (translated by Burton Watson), in Selected Poems of Su Tung-p'o (Copper Canyon Press 1994).

"In a lifetime how many springs do we see?"  For some of us, the question is not an idle one.  To wit:  at a certain age, the number of springs that we have already seen without a doubt exceeds the number of springs that we have yet to see.  Simple arithmetic, I'm afraid.  But this is not a cause for despair. However, to borrow from Samuel Johnson, it does serve to concentrate the mind wonderfully.

Stanley Spencer

"Wisteria at Englefield" (1955)

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad (1896).

A side-note:  on the poetic comparison of snow and blossoms ("snowy boughs by the eastern palisade;" "to see the cherry hung with snow"), please see my previous post on W. H. Davies's "Nailsworth Hill" and Po Chu-i's "Village Night" ("buckwheat blossoms are like snow").

Stanley Spencer, "Garden at Whitehouse, Northern Ireland" (1952)

A Single Flower

As I was out walking this week, I noticed a single flower growing in a seam of the sidewalk.  It had five yellow petals, and was about three-eighths of an inch in diameter.  I searched, but I could not find any similar flowers nearby.

The world around us contains innumerable small dispensations of this sort, doesn't it?

Imagine this:  for the brief time that it blooms, that tiny yellow flower stands at the center of the surface of our spinning globe.  The flower is the mid-point:  everything else on Earth flows up to it and away from it.

Eliot Hodgkin, "Two Hyacinth Bulbs" (1966)

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower -- but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

Alfred Tennyson, The Holy Grail and Other Poems (1870).  Tennyson left the poem untitled.

Eliot Hodgkin, "Five Variegated Ivy Leaves" (1960)

Life Explained, Part Thirty-One: "Shall Then A Point In A Point Be So Vain As To Triumph In A Silly Point's Adventure?"

As I see it, Elizabethan poetry can be divided into three general categories. First, there are poems praising the poet's beloved in effusive language sprinkled with clever conceits.  Second, there are poems bemoaning the inconstancy of the poet's former beloved.  In this case, the poet either (1) professes his or her undying love, and begs the former beloved to reconsider, or (2) excoriates the perfidious former beloved in a fashion that makes any sort of reconciliation out of the question.

The third category consists of poems about our fate as human beings.  To wit:  meditations upon the transience and brevity of Life and/or upon the ever-lurking specter of Death.  Memento mori and all that.  Pithy explanations of Life.

The following poem (which originated as a song) belongs to the third category.  Although it has been attributed to Thomas Campion, that attribution is likely incorrect.  A. E. H. Swaen, "The Authorship of 'What if a day,' and Its Various Versions," Modern Philology, Volume IV, No. 3 (January 1907).  Thus, the author is best identified as Anonymous.

Evan Charlton (1904-1984), "Early Morning" (1956)

What if a day, or a month, or a year
     Crown thy desire with a thousand sweet contentings;
Cannot the chance of a night or an hour
     Cross thy delight with as many sad tormentings?
                    Fortune, honour, beauty, youth,
                         Are but blossoms dying;
                    Wanton pleasures, doting love,
                         Are but shadows flying.
                              All our joys
                              Are but toys,
                         Idle thoughts deceiving.
                              None have power
                              Of an hour
                         In their lives' bereaving.

Earth's but a point to the world; and a man
     Is but a point to the earth's compared centre.
Shall then a point in a point be so vain
     As to triumph in a silly point's adventure?
                    All is hazard that we have,
                         Here is no abiding;
                    Days of pleasure are but streams
                         Through fair meadows gliding.
                              Weal or woe,
                              Time doth go,
                         In time is no returning.
                              Secret fates
                              Guide our states
                         Both in mirth and mourning.

Anonymous, in Norman Ault (editor), Elizabethan Lyrics (1949).

The first published version of the poem appeared in 1566.  The version above is from a manuscript dating from approximately 1599.  "The world" (line 15) is used in the sense of "the material universe; the cosmos."  OED.

Yes, something to bear in mind:  we are all, each and every one of us, nothing but "silly points" in the universe, endearingly intent upon our "adventures."

Evan Charlton, "Hotel Garden"

Dew

In both Japanese and English poetry, dew is an emblem of the fragility and the transience of our lives.  My previous post included the following poem by Saigyo:

Drops of dew
strung on filaments
of spider web --
such are the trappings
that deck out this world

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

George Price Boyce, "Thorpe, Derbyshire" (1879)

Perhaps the best-known Japanese poem on the subject of dew is the following haiku by Issa.

     The world of dew
is the world of dew.
     And yet, and yet --

Issa (1763-1827) (translated by Robert Hass), in The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa (The Ecco Press 1994).

The English transliteration (i.e., romaji) of the original Japanese is:

     Tsuyu no yo wa
tsuyu no yo nagara
     sari nagara

Tsuyu is "dew."  No is a particle that means, in this context, "of."  Yo is "world."  Wa is a particle that identifies the first occurrence of tsuyu no yo as the subject.  However, given that (1) there is no verb in the first two lines, and (2) the second occurrence of tsuyu no yo is the object (sort of), wa ends up serving as "is" (sort of).  As for nagara sari nagara, I am told (adamantly) by a native speaker that the phrase is untranslatable, but that "yet," "then again," or "on the other hand" will suffice.  Please note that these glosses are based upon my inexpert and limited knowledge of the Japanese language.

George Price Boyce, "Tithe Barn" (c. 1878)

Issa's haiku stands on its own as a beautiful expression of how we live. However, we should remember that it was written within the context of Issa's own life.  The poem originally appeared at the end of the following prose passage from his book A Year of My Life (1819).  He is writing about Sato, his one-year-old daughter, who had contracted smallpox.

"After two or three days, however, her blisters dried up and the scabs began to fall away -- like a hard crust of dirt that has been softened by melting snow.  In our joy we made what we call a 'priest in a straw robe.'  We poured hot wine ceremoniously over his body, and packed him and the god of smallpox off together.  Yet our hopes proved to be vain.  She grew weaker and weaker and finally, on the twenty-first of June, as the morning glories were just closing their flowers, she closed her eyes forever.

Her mother embraced the cold body and cried bitterly.  For myself, I knew well it was no use to cry, that water once flown past the bridge does not return, and blossoms that are scattered are gone beyond recall.  Yet try as I would, I could not, simply could not, cut the binding cord of human love.

                                        The world of dew
                                   is the world of dew.
                                        And yet, and yet --"

Issa (prose translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa; haiku translated by Robert Hass), Ibid, pages 227-228.

George Price Boyce, "Landscape at Wotton, Surrey: Autumn" (1864)