"Reciprocity"

Today was windy, and leaves fell by the thousands.  Rather than pleading "Slow, slow!" (like Robert Frost), I thought:  "Stop, stop!  Not yet!"  To no avail, of course.  Another instance of the World's impassivity, a topic that I visited a few months ago.

A poem by John Drinkwater (1882-1937) seems apt.  Although Drinkwater is now known only for the much-anthologized "Moonlit Apples" ("moonlit apples of dreams . . . moon-washed apples of wonder"), he did write other poems that are worth remembering.

                    Reciprocity

I do not think that skies and meadows are
Moral, or that the fixture of a star
Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees
Have wisdom in their windless silences.
Yet these are things invested in my mood
With constancy, and peace, and fortitude,
That in my troubled season I can cry
Upon the wide composure of the sky,
And envy fields, and wish that I might be
As little daunted as a star or tree.

John Drinkwater, Tides (1917).

                   Gilbert Adams, "The Cotswolds from Park Leys" (1958)

"Condemn'd To Hope's Delusive Mine"

The role that hope plays in our lives is a subject to which Samuel Johnson often recurred.  For instance, his poem "On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet" begins:

Condemn'd to hope's delusive mine,
   As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blasts, or slow decline,
   Our social comforts drop away.

On July 20, 1767, he wrote to Hester Thrale:  "I suppose it is the condition of humanity to design what never will be done, and to hope what never will be obtained."  Boswell reports the following remarks made by Johnson in April of 1775:  "He asserted, that the present was never a happy state to any human being; but that, as every part of life, of which we are conscious, was at some point of time a period yet to come, in which felicity was expected, there was some happiness produced by hope."

The following poem by James Henry (1798-1876) reminds me of Johnson's thoughts on hope.  The idea of an ever-longed for, but ever-receding, dream landscape is one we may all be familiar with (a different landscape for each of us, of course).

                           Old Man

At six years old I had before mine eyes
A picture painted, like the rainbow, bright,
But far, far off in th' unapproachable distance.
With all my childish heart I longed to reach it,
And strove and strove the livelong day in vain,
Advancing with slow step some few short yards
But not perceptibly the distance lessening.
At threescore years old, when almost within
Grasp of my outstretched arms the selfsame picture
With all its beauteous colors painted bright,
I'm backward from it further borne each day
By an invisible, compulsive force,
Gradual but yet so steady, sure, and rapid,
That at threescore and ten I'll from the picture
Be even more distant than I was at six.

James Henry, Poems Chiefly Philosophical (1856).

                   Adrian Paul Allinson (1890-1959), "The Cornish April"

"The Hundred Last Leaves Stream Upon The Willow"

In November of 1916, Edward Thomas sent a draft of "The Long Small Room" to Eleanor Farjeon.  After receiving her comments on the poem, Thomas wrote back:

"I am worried about the impression the willow made on you.  As a matter of fact I started with that last line as what I was working to.  I am only fearing it has a sort of Japanesy suddenness of ending.  But it is true, whether or not it is a legitimate switch to make."

Edward Thomas to Eleanor Farjeon (letter postmarked November 15, 1916), in Eleanor Farjeon, Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years (1958), page 221.

                    The Long Small Room

The long small room that showed willows in the west
Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled,
Although not wide.  I liked it.  No one guessed
What need or accident made them so build.

Only the moon, the mouse and the sparrow peeped
In from the ivy round the casement thick.
Of all they saw and heard there they shall keep
The tale for the old ivy and older brick.

When I look back I am like moon, sparrow and mouse
That witnessed what they could never understand
Or alter or prevent in the dark house.
One thing remains the same -- this my right hand

Crawling crab-like over the clean white page,
Resting awhile each morning on the pillow,
Then once more starting to crawl on towards age.
The hundred last leaves stream upon the willow.

Edna Longley (editor), Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (2008).

                              William Ratcliffe, "Cottage Interior" (1920)

The final line that Thomas worried about is, of course, beautiful.  It was certainly well worth "working to" once Thomas had found it.  After all, it passed his ultimate test, the test that causes us to remember his poetry:  "it is true."  And the line does, to use his words, give the poem something of a "Japanesy suddenness of ending."  (I would also suggest that the ending is reminiscent of a number of Chinese poems from the T'ang Dynasty.)  It is not likely that Thomas had any translations of Ryokan's poetry available to him, but the following poems perhaps provide a hint of what he was speaking of.

My gate has been unbolted for many days,
Yet no sign of anyone entering the peaceful garden.
The rainy season is over, green moss is all around;
Slowly the oak leaves float to earth.

John Stevens (translator), One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan (1977).

Returning to my hermitage after filling my rice bowl,
Now only the gentle glow of twilight.
Surrounded by mountain peaks and thinly scattered leaves;
In the forest a winter crow flies.

Ibid.

                      Norman Clark, "From an Upstairs Window" (c. 1969)

"Dance Of The Macabre Mice"

I do my best to keep politicians out of my consciousness.  The admixture of self-importance and childishness is laughable and breathtaking, but vexing.  (Particularly in heads of state.)   However, you cannot avoid them entirely.  The best that you can do is keep them in perspective and in their place.  As follows.

               Dance of the Macabre Mice

In the land of turkeys in turkey weather
At the base of the statue, we go round and round.
What a beautiful history, beautiful surprise!
Monsieur is on horseback.  The horse is covered with mice.

This dance has no name.  It is a hungry dance.
We dance it out to the tip of Monsieur's sword,
Reading the lordly language of the inscription,
Which is like zithers and tambourines combined:

The Founder of the State.  Whoever founded
A state that was free, in the dead of winter, from mice?
What a beautiful tableau tinted and towering,
The arm of bronze outstretched against all evil!

Wallace Stevens, Ideas of Order (1936).

                         Eliot Hodgkin, "Chiswick Park in the Fog" (1948)

"Slow, Slow!"

Of course, autumn is not autumn without Robert Frost.  Earlier this month, I quoted Frost's friend Edward Thomas on the season:  "Now, now is the hour; let things be thus; thus for ever; there is nothing further to be thought of; let these remain.  And yet we have a premonition that remain they must not for more than a little while." (Edward Thomas, The South Country (1909), page 272.)  Thomas wrote his thoughts, and Frost wrote the following poem -- which independently echoes Thomas's thoughts -- before the two first met on October 6, 1913.

                     October

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost --
For the grapes' sake along the wall.

Robert Frost, A Boy's Will (1913).

In 1913, Thomas's prose and Frost's poetry still contained archaisms -- Romantic and Victorian -- that would pretty much disappear in Frost's newer poetry and in Thomas's yet-to-be-written poetry.  There is always a danger of over-dramatizing (and over-sentimentalizing) the fateful (in a wondrous sense) meeting of Frost and Thomas, and their all-too-brief friendship, cut short by Thomas's death in France.  But I do think that the year or so that they were able to spend together -- walking and talking -- led to a stripping away and a paring down that is characteristic of their best work.

                                John Nash, "Autumn, Berkshire" (1951)

"Clouds Beyond Clouds Above Me, Wastes Beyond Wastes Below"

Stanley Cook's "View" (which appeared in my previous post) brings to mind a poem by a poet who, like Cook, was a resident of Yorkshire.   I am thinking of the setting of Cook's poem:  a vista in Yorkshire "as the threatened snow descends,/Blanking the view."  But I am thinking as well of the poem's conclusion:  resuming -- alone -- a conversation "that ended unhappily years ago/And whose unhappiness you know you had better bear."

                             Charles Cundall, "Mills and Moors" (1932)

The following untitled poem shares a similar setting, but it also shares (perhaps) the feeling that "you had better bear" something, whether you want to or not.

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow,
And the storm is fast descending
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

Clement Shorter (editor), The Complete Poems of Emily Bronte (1908).

                   Cecil Gordon Lawson, "Barden Moor, Yorkshire" (1881)

"You Hear Yourself Resume For A Word Or Two The Conversation That Ended Unhappily Years Ago"

Over the years, Hugo Williams has written three separate poems bearing the same title: "Everyone Knows This."  That phrase comes to mind when I think of the following poem by Stanley Cook, which moves in one direction, but takes a turn at the end.  

                            View

Here in the North, often at the end
Of an uphill road the houses open out
To a view, like finding a hole in the roof.
Some attic or chimney pot is silhouetted
Marking the final foothold on the sky.
The wind combs out grey tugs of cloud
And as the threatened snow descends,
Blanking the view, sometimes you hear yourself
Resume for a word or two the conversation
That ended unhappily years ago
And whose unhappiness you know you had better bear.

Stanley Cook, Woods Beyond a Cornfield: Collected Poems (1995).

At one time, I thought that the conclusion of "View" seemed out of place given what comes before.  But I now think that it makes perfect sense. Why?  Because (to borrow from Hugo Williams) "everyone knows this."  I cannot presume to speak for you, Gentle Reader, but I have had a few of these solitary, one-sided, unexpectedly resumed conversations.  And, as a matter of fact, it is sometimes an unwonted, suddenly-opened view in an otherwise nondescript place on an otherwise nondescript day that calls them to life.  (On the other hand, perhaps I am completely off base and "Everyone Does Not Know This." Which means that I should be worried about talking to myself as I wander the streets in search of views!)

As for the final line: "And whose unhappiness you know you had better bear."  Well, that is another matter altogether, isn't it?  Best left for another time.

                Douglas Percy Bliss, "Urban Garden Under Snow" (c. 1946)  

"Autumn Evening"

Today was one of those "golden clear-blue autumn days" (to quote Steve Forbert's song "Search Your Heart" from Streets of this Town).  But these bright days are becoming ever shorter.

                         Autumn Evening

Autumn is easy, when disappointed leaves make scenes
At parting for ever from perennial boughs,
When naked laburnums in small front gardens pose
Their glistening limbs obliquely in the chilly rain.
Summer, too beautiful to appreciate,
Prints many yellow copies of defeat;
The brown sensations blow about the street
Or, thrown away by the wind, obstruct the grates.
But most in the earlier evenings someone's face
Flares for a moment at a match, or the lamplight
Cleans the darkness from a smudgy bough:
It is myself, and the mind descends like night
With infinite possibilities of truth
Upon the terraces that have taken place.

Stanley Cook, Woods Beyond a Cornfield: Collected Poems (1995).  Stanley Cook (1922-1991) was born in Yorkshire and worked as a teacher there for most of his life.  His poems contain an interesting mixture of both the urban and rural features of the area.  Thus, for example, you find poems by him titled "M1 at Woolley Edge" and "Leaving Huddersfield by the A616." His poetry deserves a wider audience.

I cannot say that I have ever fully puzzled out the last three lines of "Autumn Evening."  The final line -- "upon the terraces that have taken place" -- I find particularly elusive.  What are "the terraces"?  Serried rows of houses in a Yorkshire town?  The empty boughs of trees?  Or something more abstract?  Or none of the above?  But the line is beautiful whether or not I know exactly what it means.  I am content to leave it at that.

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

"The Last Orphan Leaf Of Naked Tree"

By posting the following poem, it is not my intention to take sides in the evergreen dogs versus cats contest.  (I have likely exposed my preferences in a previous post, although I am certainly fond of cats as well.)  Rather, I find the image in the first three lines to be both clever and seasonally apt.  (And I do think that it is a fine dog poem, unexpectedly coming from an eccentric poet who is probably best known for his obsession with death.)

                                    Howard Phipps, "Shepherd's Walk"

     Sonnet: To Tartar, a Terrier Beauty

Snow-drop of dogs, with ear of brownest dye,
Like the last orphan leaf of naked tree
Which shudders in bleak autumn; though by thee,
Of hearing careless and untutored eye,
Not understood articulate speech of men,
Nor marked the artificial mind of books,
-- The mortal's voice eternized by the pen, --
Yet hast thou thought and language all unknown
To Babel's scholars; oft intensest looks,
Long scrutiny o'er some dark-veined stone
Dost thou bestow, learning dead mysteries
Of the world's birth-day, oft in eager tone
With quick-tailed fellows bandiest prompt replies,
Solicitudes canine, four-footed amities.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849), Poems (1851).

                                 Tirzah Garwood, "The Dog Show" (1930)

In Boughs: Stars, Planets, And A Wasp Trap

Quite some time ago, I remarked upon Walter de la Mare's fondness for the word "lovely."  His friend Edward Thomas was fond of the word as well.

        The Wasp Trap

This moonlight makes
The lovely lovelier
Than ever before lakes
And meadows were.

And yet they are not,
Though this their hour is, more
Lovely than things that were not
Lovely before.

Nothing on earth,
And in the heavens no star,
For pure brightness is worth
More than that jar,

For wasps meant, now
A star -- long may it swing
From the dead apple-bough,
So glistening.

Edna Longley (editor), Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (2008).

                            Eliot Hodgkin, "Six Cape Gooseberries" (1954)

However, what brought me back to "The Wasp Trap" was not the word "lovely," but the thought of stars and planets in the boughs of trees.  Another instance of one thing leading to another.

                           Stars and Planets

Trees are jars for them: water holds its breath
To balance them without smudging on its delicate meniscus.
Children watch them playing in their heavenly playground;
Men use them to lug ships across oceans, through firths.

They seem so twinkling-still, but they never cease
Inventing nursery rhymes and huge explosions
And migrating in mathematical tribes over
The steppes of space at their outrageous ease.

It's hard to think that the earth's one --
This poor sad bearer of wars and disasters
Rolls-Roycing round the sun with its load of gangsters,
Attended only by the loveless moon.

Norman MacCaig, Trees of Strings (1977).

                                     Eliot Hodgkin, "Leaves" (1941-1942)