A Proper Place, Part Two: "On One Who Lived And Died Where He Was Born"

One's Proper Place may be where one is right now.  And where one is right now may be where one has been for ever.  Although it may be hard to imagine in today's world, there was a time in which one lived and died where one was born.  And this is still the case in many parts of the world. Perhaps this was not (and is not) such a bad thing.

                      Christopher Wood, "Lemons in a Blue Basket" (1922)

   On One Who Lived and Died
           Where He Was Born

When a night in November
     Blew forth its bleared airs
An infant descended
     His birth-chamber stairs
     For the very first time,
     At the still, midnight chime;
All unapprehended
     His mission, his aim. --
Thus, first, one November,
An infant descended
        The stairs.

On a night in November
     Of weariful cares,
A frail aged figure
     Ascended those stairs
     For the very last time:
     All gone his life's prime,
All vanished his vigour,
     And fine, forceful frame:
Thus, last, one November
Ascended that figure
        Upstairs.

On those nights in November --
     Apart eighty years --
The babe and the bent one
     Who traversed those stairs
     From the early first time
     To the last feeble climb --
That fresh and that spent one --
     Were even the same:
Yea, who passed in November
As infant, as bent one,
        Those stairs.

Wise child of November!
     From birth to blanched hairs
Descending, ascending,
     Wealth-wantless, those stairs;
     Who saw quick in time
     As a vain pantomime
Life's tending, its ending,
     The worth of its fame.
Wise child of November,
Descending, ascending
        Those stairs!

Thomas Hardy, Late Lyrics and Earlier, with Many Other Verses (1922).

Not surprisingly, the world-view of the "wise child of November" sounds a great deal like Hardy's own.  This world-view is distilled in "He Never Expected Much" (written by Hardy when he was eighty-six), which begins:

Well, World, you have kept faith with me,
           Kept faith with me;
Upon the whole you have proved to be
           Much as you said you were.

                  Christopher Wood, "Angelfish, London Aquarium" (1930)

Memory: Variations On A Theme

Thomas Hardy claimed that he could clearly remember incidents that occurred 40 or 50 years earlier in his life.  I have no reason to doubt his claim, particularly given the large number of poems that he wrote about scenes from his life, scenes in which the details -- both factual and emotional -- are quite specific.  I suppose that this ability to remember was a blessing for Hardy's art, but a mixed blessing in terms of getting through an ordinary day:  in some of his poems, the pain of recollection is palpable.

The following two poems address the oftentimes equivocal guises of memory.

        In an Edinburgh Pub

An old fellow, hunched over a half pint
I hope he's remembering.
I hope he's not thinking.

Which comes first?

Memory, as always,
Lazarus of the past --

who comes sad or joyful,
but always carrying with him
a whiff of grave clothes.

Ewen McCaig, The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009).  MacCaig wrote the poem in January of 1989, at the age of seventy-eight.  This leads one to speculate who the "old fellow" in the poem might be (or at least who he might remind MacCaig of).

                                Charles Sheeler, "American Interior" (1932)

                          Emendations

"I fear this" should read:  "as far away as."
"I remember" should read:  "my memory fails me."
"I was aghast" should read:  "I was, alas, distracted."
"The day was clear" should read:  "the day is a blur."

In the penultimate sentence,
"I shall forever regret" should read:  "I shall never regret"
Or, in the alternative:  "my memory once again fails me."

The final sentence should be removed in its entirety.

sip (2011).   
      

                                 Charles Sheeler, "Spring Interior" (1927)

A Proper Place, Part One: "I Like It As It Is"

In a series of posts titled "No Escape" I have looked at the well-known phenomenon of "wherever you go, there you are."  To wit:  we imagine that everything in our life will fall magically into place if we can simply find the Ideal Place that, until now, has eluded us.  It comes as no surprise that this is a delusion, a delusion that has been remarked upon by Montaigne, Johnson, and a host of others.

However, although the Ideal Place may be a chimera, a case may be made that a Proper Place can be found.  I realize that this may seem like a distinction without a difference.  But I see the distinction (somewhat fuzzily) as this:  finding one's Proper Place does not guarantee "happiness" (whatever that is) or provide Big Answers (to allude to Elizabeth Jennings's poem "Answers"); however, a Proper Place may provide equanimity and content ("content" as in A. E. Housman's "that is the land of lost content/I see it shining plain").

The following poem by Neil Powell provides an example of what I am (inadequately) trying to articulate.

                             Charles Ginner, "Flask Walk, Skyline" (1934)

                           Covehithe

In my dream they said:  "You must go to Covehithe."
I crossed over the causeway between two blue lakes
And I found myself on a long forest path
With a few wooden shacks and a glimpse of the sea.
I thought after all it was a place that might suit me.
But they said:  "You must learn from your mistakes."

So, I have come to Covehithe.  Low winter sun
Scans fields of pigs, dead skeletal trees,
Collapsing cliffs.  There are ships on the horizon.
The great church, wrecked by civil war, not storm,
Now shields a smaller church from further harm.
And they were wrong:  I like it as it is.

Neil Powell, The Times Literary Supplement, February 7, 2003.

             Charles Ginner, "Lancaster from Castle Hill Terrace" (c. 1947)

"When Oats Were Reaped"

The delights of Thomas Hardy's poetry are inexhaustible.  First, given that he wrote so many poems (the 1976 Macmillan edition of his complete poems contains 947), one is likely to encounter a previously unread poem when opening a volume of his poems at random.  Second, one is also likely to discover something fresh when returning to a poem one knows.  This may be due to having failed to pay sufficient attention the first time around, and/or to reading the poem after the passage of time, which may change the way you look at it.

I have read the following poem a few times over the years, but I fear that I let much of it pass me by in the past.  On the surface, it may be viewed as a sly commentary on the proverbial phrase "sowing one's wild oats."  To wit: we usually reap what we sow.  It is just the sort of irony that Hardy was wont to fasten upon.  But beneath the ostensibly simple surface a great deal of artifice is at work.

                James McIntosh Patrick, "Stobo Kirk, Peeblesshire" (1936)

                         When Oats Were Reaped

That day when oats were reaped, and wheat was ripe, and barley ripening,
     The road-dust hot, and the bleaching grasses dry,
          I walked along and said,
While looking just ahead to where some silent people lie:

'I wounded one who's there, and now know well I wounded her;
     But, ah, she does not know that she wounded me!'
          And not an air stirred,
Nor a bill of any bird; and no response accorded she.

Thomas Hardy, Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles (1925).

Of course, there is the sound.  In line 1: "reaped . . . ripe . . . ripening."  In line 5: "wounded one . . . well . . . wounded."  The rhyming of "said" at the end of line 3 with "ahead" in the middle of line 4.  And a repeat of that rhyming technique with "stirred" at the end of line 7 and "bird" in the middle of line 8.

Then there are the fine phrases.  In line 4, Hardy refers to a place up ahead "where some silent people lie."  Why did he not simply call it a "cemetery" or a "graveyard"?  (Assuming that a rhyme could be found.)  First, because, for Hardy (both in his life and in his art), the dead are never really dead, but are always with us.  Second, because the silence of these people -- and of this person in particular -- is crucial to the poem: "no response accorded she."

I love the "ah" in line 6: "But, ah, she does not know that she wounded me!" Read the line without the "ah" and see if it makes a difference.  I also like the ambiguity of the line (and, thus, of the poem as a whole).  (Although perhaps it is just me being slow on the uptake that makes it seem ambiguous.)  Is the speaker relieved that the dead woman never had to suffer guilt or grief for having wounded him, and now sleeps in peace? Or, is the speaker perturbed because the dead woman never had to suffer guilt or grief for having wounded him, and now sleeps in peace?

                       James McIntosh Patrick, "Autumn, Kinnordy" (1936)

"Virtue"

There is something to be said for staying the course.  (While being mindful that "everything passes and vanishes," as William Allingham writes.)  Or does staying the course only seem admirable from without?  Perhaps what is seen as faith and fortitude from the outside is resignation and habit from the inside.  On the other hand, this line by Bob Dylan has haunted me for quite some time (since 1975, to be exact):  "And old men with broken teeth stranded without love."  ("Shelter from the Storm," Blood on the Tracks.)

The following poem by Bernard O'Donoghue is, along with Norman MacCaig's "Old Couple in a Bar," offered as a further commentary on (i.e., an attempt to escape from) Charlotte Mew's "frozen ghosts" of Brittany.

                              George Bellows, "The Lone Tenement" (1909)

                           Virtue

He had been unfaithful once, unlikely
as that seemed when, silver-haired and blind,
he let her lead him up the aisle each Sunday.
Some Jezebel, the story was, had lured him
off to Blackpool one weekend, long in the past.
I went along to Mass when I came home,
and enjoyed hearing the praise on every side
of such an exemplary grandnephew.
After he died, she moved to sheltered housing
somewhere near Parbold in the scenic north
of Lancashire, but we sometimes still went
to take her to Mass, tearfully sniffing
into her scented hankie, recalling George
and how she missed his arm upon her shoulder.

Bernard O'Donoghue, The Times Literary Supplement (November 19, 2004).

                                George Bellows, "Blue Morning" (1909)

"Old Couple In A Bar"

Charlotte Mew's vision of the old couple in Brittany as a pair of "frozen ghosts" is a bit discomfiting.  Thus, an alternative view of love in old age is worth considering.

                       Old Couple in a Bar

They sit without speaking, looking straight ahead.
They've said it all before, they've seen it all before.
They're content.

They sit without moving: Ozymandias and Sphinx.

He says something! -- and she answers, smiling,
and taps him flirtatiously on the arm:
Daphnis and Chloe: with Edinburgh accents.

Ewen McCaig, The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009).  MacCaig wrote the poem in December of 1980, at the age of 70.

                                     Samuel Palmer, "Sheep in the Shade"

MacCaig performs a neat trick by moving from the "frown, and wrinkled lip" of the "shattered visage" of Shelley's Ozymandias to the pastoral love of Daphnis and Chloe on a timeless Greek island.  A shepherdess and a shepherd ("with Edinburgh accents") sitting in a pub.  Yes, this is indeed preferable to "frozen ghosts."  (Although there is a time and a place for frozen ghosts as well.  I would not wish to be without them entirely.)

                   Samuel Palmer, "Pastoral with a Horse-Chestnut Tree"

"Frozen Ghosts"

Some may disagree, but I think that Charlotte Mew and A. E. Housman do have something in common:  their love poetry is nearly always about either unrequited love or love requited, but lost.  The following poem by Mew seems to depart from the pattern.  Still, I seem to detect a specter of future loss hovering at the edges.  But perhaps I am being unfairly pessimistic.  I would not wish to deprive Mew of any happiness she was able to find.

                                   The Road to Kerity

Do you remember the two old people we passed on the road to Kerity,
Resting their sack, on the stones, by the drenched wayside,
Looking at us with their lightless eyes through the driving rain and then
     out again
To the rocks and the long white line of the tide:
Frozen ghosts that were children once, husband and wife, father and
     mother,
Looking at us with those frozen eyes --; have you ever seen anything quite
     so chilled or so old?
                       But we -- with our arms about each other,
                               We did not feel the cold!

Charlotte Mew, The Farmer's Bride (1921).  Kerity is a sea-side village in Brittany.  Please note that lines 3, 5, and 6 are single lines, but the length limitations of this format do not permit them to appear as such.

                           James McIntosh Patrick, "City Garden" (1979)

The following poem is, alas, more in keeping with the way Mew's life turned out.  But here is the proverbial rub:  poetry is oftentimes born of sadness, isn't it?

               I so liked Spring

    I so liked Spring last year
        Because you were here; --
                The thrushes too --
Because it was these you so liked to hear --
                I so liked you --

        This year's a different thing, --
                I'll not think of you --
But I'll like Spring because it is simply Spring
                As the thrushes do.

Charlotte Mew, The Rambling Sailor (1929).

                            James McIntosh Patrick, "A City Garden" (1940)

Helpless

When I was a child I longed to be an adult.  This longing was based upon two presumptions:  first, that adults were free to do what they wanted to do (within the limits of law and morality, of course), and, second, that they knew exactly how to do these things (i.e., that they acted with complete self-assurance).  I have since learned (speaking solely for myself) that those two presumptions were a bit optimistic.

The following poem by Frances Cornford (1886-1960) examines this state of affairs from a different angle, but it perhaps expresses part of what I am trying to get at.

                  Stanley Spencer, "The Ferry Hotel Lawn, Cookham" (1936)

                         Childhood

I used to think that grown-up people chose
To have stiff backs and wrinkles round their nose,
And veins like small fat snakes on either hand,
On purpose to be grand.
Till through the banisters I watched one day
My great-aunt Etty's friend who was going away,
And how her onyx beads had come unstrung.
I saw her grope to find them as they rolled;
And then I knew that she was helplessly old,
As I was helplessly young.

Frances Cornford, Collected Poems (1954).

                                     Gilbert Spencer, "The Terrace" (1927)

"Landfall"

Randolph Stow (1935-2010) is best known as a novelist -- a novelist who fell silent during the last 26 years of his life.  (However, he did occasionally review books for The Times Literary Supplement.)  I have not read all of his novels, but I do recommend Visitants, The Girl Green as Elderflower, and The Suburbs of Hell (his final novel, published in 1984).  Stow was born in Australia, but his later years were spent in Suffolk and Essex.

He also wrote poetry.  As an alternative to Christina Rossetti's sleep, Philip Larkin's extinction, and Mary Coleridge's interstellar travel, Stow offers a vision of our fate that seems very peaceful (and -- thankfully -- quiet).

                                  Richard Eurich, "Dorset Cove" (1939)

                                   Landfall

And indeed I shall anchor, one day -- some summer morning
of sunflowers and bougainvillaea and arid wind --
and smoking a black cigar, one hand on the mast,
turn, and unlade my eyes of all their cargo;
and the parrot will speed from my shoulder, and white yachts glide
welcoming out from the shore on the turquoise tide.

And when they ask me where I have been, I shall say
I do not remember.

And when they ask me what I have seen, I shall say
I remember nothing.

And if they should ever tempt me to speak again,
I shall smile, and refrain.

Randolph Stow, A Counterfeit Silence: Selected Poems (Angus & Robertson 1969).

                            Richard Eurich, "Mousehole, Cornwall" (1938)

"Are The Dead As Calm As Those They Leave Behind Them?"

At the beginning of the month, I posted a poem by Christina Rossetti ("Life and Death") that contains the lines:  "Life is not sweet.  One day it will be sweet/To shut our eyes and die."  Because of her religious faith, Rossetti was probably able to view this prospect with equanimity.  Others (Philip Larkin, for instance) look upon death with horror since, for them, it means extinction:
                                    . . . no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

Philip Larkin, from "Aubade," Collected Poems (Faber and Faber 1988).

        Jack Airy, "A House and Cottage near the Quay at Orford" (c. 1940)

In the following untitled poem, Mary Coleridge looks at things differently: she sees neither peaceful sleep nor horrific extinction ahead, but something else entirely.  The prospect she offers is intriguing: interstellar travel.  In any event, time will tell for each of us, won't it?  (Not that we will be able to report back, of course.)

Are the dead as calm as those
They leave behind them, friends or foes?

However a man may love or fight
Calm he falls asleep at night!

Fast the living sleeps and well;
But the spirits -- who can tell?

Are they as a rushing flame
For the Sun from whence it came,

Driven on from star to star,
Where the other dead men are?

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

                   Jack Airy, "St Bartholomew's Church, Orford" (c. 1940)