"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)

Mutability, Concluded: "The Unimaginable Touch Of Time"

William Wordsworth's best expression of "mutability" is, I think, found in the eight short lines of "A slumber did my spirit seal," which has appeared here previously.  Like the best Japanese and Chinese poems, it is long on nouns and verbs and short on adjectives and adverbs:  "Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,/With rocks, and stones, and trees."  An instance of less being more -- without any loss of emotional impact.

Of course, Wordsworth was wont to go on at greater length, and with less economy, as Romantics tend to do.  Thus, he -- like Shelley -- wrote a poem titled "Mutability."  The poem was written later in his life, long after he had been excoriated by Shelley and others for being too conservative.  (Some things never change.)

Thomas Moran, "The Chasm of the Colorado" (1873)

                         Mutability

From low to high doth dissolution climb,
And sink from high to low, along a scale
Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail;
A musical but melancholy chime,
Which they can hear who meddle not with crime,
Nor avarice, nor over-anxious care.
Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear
The longest date do melt like frosty rime,
That in the morning whitened hill and plain
And is no more; drop like the tower sublime
Of yesterday, which royally did wear
His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain
Some casual shout that broke the silent air,
Or the unimaginable touch of Time.

William Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Sketches (1822).

"Truth fails not."  Is that "Truth" or "truth"?  Either way, I'm not so sure.  Unless the truth he speaks of is "the unimaginable touch of Time."

Thomas Moran

"Cliffs of the Upper Colorado River, Wyoming Territory" (1882)

As in my previous post, a Japanese poem may provide a nice balance to that trademark Romantic combination of effusiveness and melancholy.

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

Saigyo (1118-1190) (translated by Burton Watson), in Saigyo: Poems of a Mountain Home (Columbia University Press 1991).

As I noted above, long on nouns and verbs.  But as lovely and as straight-to-the-heart-of-things as poetry can get.  "The unimaginable touch of Time," put differently.

Thomas Moran, "The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone" (1893)

Mutability, Revisited: "We Are As Clouds That Veil The Midnight Moon"

My previous post contained the epigraph to Canto VI of Edmund Spenser's Mutabilitie.  I'm afraid that this leads me in a simplistic fashion to the following poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

But, come to think of it, "mutability" is at bottom pretty much the subject of all poetry (and of all art), isn't it?  Thus, following the thread of mutability is bound to lead anywhere and everywhere.  "All flesh is grass," et cetera.

Bertram Priestman (1868-1951), "Clouds over the Orwell"

                           Mutability

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
     How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! -- yet soon
     Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
     Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
     One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest. -- A dream has power to poison sleep;
     We rise. -- One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
     Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same! -- For, be it joy or sorrow,
     The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
     Nought may endure but Mutability.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alastor (1816).  "Lyres" (line 5) refers to Aeolian (wind) harps.

Oddly, for all of the poem's Romantic flourishes and conceits, my favorite line is:  "The path of its departure still is free."

Bertram Priestman, "The Sun-Veiled Hills of Wharfedale" (1917)

As is usually the case, the Japanese and Chinese poets can boil this mutability business down to a few lines.

Every single thing
Changes and is changing
Always in this world.
Yet with the same light
The moon goes on shining.

Saigyo (1118-1190) (translated by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite), in The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse (1964).

Mind you, I am always ready and willing to abandon myself to the moon, clouds, winds, and sighing Aeolian harps of Shelley's Romanticism. However, the down-to-earth, yet gentle, words of Saigyo hit home with greater emotional force (for me, at least).  Perhaps this is due to the lovely saving grace of Saigyo's final two lines, which put everything into place in a quiet and -- once again -- gentle way:  "Yet with the same light/The moon goes on shining."

Bertram Priestman, "Kilnsey Crag, Wharfedale" (1929)

"Nature's First Green Is Gold"

As I have observed previously in connection with William Wordsworth's "A slumber did my spirit seal," it is sometimes difficult to appreciate well-known poems that we have lived with for years. However, circumstances may give us an opportunity to see them in a new light, often when we least expect it.

My daily walk usually takes me past a long row of tall bigleaf maples.  The trees are old, and the prevailing north wind has given them a southerly lean.  The trunks are wide and gnarled, and a few of the lower branches of each tree graze the ground.

At this time of year the maples are coming into leaf.  Yesterday, I stopped to look at the unfolding leaves, which are yellow-green as they emerge, flower-like, from the buds.  As I looked, the following poem -- one of those old chestnuts that are sometimes difficult to see afresh -- came back to me.

Lucien Pissarro, "April, Epping" (1894)

  Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost, New Hampshire (1923).

"But only so an hour" is right on the money:  in a couple of days, the new maple leaves will have turned a slightly darker shade of green.  "Leaf subsides to leaf" is very nice:  the image of leaves sinking or settling or relaxing (outward and downward) as they open -- and as they, in time, fall -- is a lovely and a redolent one.

Lucien Pissarro, "The Dunmow Road from Tilty Wood" (1915)

Proud Change (not pleased in mortal things
     beneath the Moon to reign)
Pretends, as well of Gods as Men,
     to be the Sovereign.

Edmund Spenser, Epigraph to Canto VI, Mutabilitie (c. 1589) (spelling modernized).

Lucien Pissarro, "The Garden Gate, Epping" (1894)

Small Things

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "The Woodspurge" prompted me to pay closer attention to the soil as I weeded the garden yesterday.  As I recently noted in connection with the annual awakening of the ant world, there is a great deal going on at ground level, much of which escapes our notice.

Eliot Hodgkin, "The Haberdashers' Hall, 8 May 1945" (1945)

             In the Fallow Field

I went down on my hands and knees
Looking for trees,
Twin leaves that, sprung from seeds,
Were now too big
For stems much thinner than a twig.
These soon with chamomile and clover
And other fallow weeds
Would be turned over;
And I was thinking how
It was a pity someone should not know
That a great forest fell before the plough.

Andrew Young, Collected Poems (Rupert Hart-Davis 1960).

Whenever I read Andrew Young's poetry, I cannot help but feel that I have paid insufficient attention to the world around me.  The following poem provides another instance of Young teaching us how to be on the lookout for things that we might otherwise miss.

                        The Fairy Ring

Here the horse-mushrooms make a fairy ring,
     Some standing upright and some overthrown,
A small Stonehenge, where heavy black snails cling
     And bite away, like Time, the tender stone.

Andrew Young, Ibid.

Eliot Hodgkin, "Undergrowth" (1941)

"The Woodspurge Has A Cup Of Three"

I have commented previously upon two aspects of memory.  First, of all the hours that we have lived, only a small number of seemingly commonplace or nondescript moments lodge themselves in our brains, and remain subject to recall with great sensory and emotional clarity.  Of course, this means that these moments are not "commonplace" or "nondescript" at all. They leave a thread to be followed.

Second, when it comes to these exceptional moments, there are a few details that stand out from everything else.  These details no doubt caused the moment to burrow into our memory in the first place.  Again, they may seem commonplace or nondescript:  a cast of light, a sward of green, a path above the sea . . .

William Holman Hunt, "Our English Coasts (Strayed Sheep)" (1852)

               The Woodspurge

The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
I had walked on at the wind's will, --
I sat now, for the wind was still.

Between my knees my forehead was, --
My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
My hair was over in the grass,
My naked ears heard the day pass.

My eyes, wide open, had the run
Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
Among those few, out of the sun,
The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.

From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom or even memory:
One thing then learnt remains to me, --
The woodspurge has a cup of three.

William Rossetti (editor), The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Volume I (1887).

The crystal-clear, evocative quality of the woodspurge is reminiscent of "the crushed bracken and the wings/Of doves among dim branches" in Patrick MacDonogh's "Revaluation."

                    Revaluation

Now I remember nothing of our love
So well as the crushed bracken and the wings
Of doves among dim branches far above --
Strange how the count of time revalues things!

Patrick MacDonogh, Poems (edited by Derek Mahon) (The Gallery Press 2001).

William Holman Hunt

"The Festival of St Swithin (The Dovecot)" (1865)

Another poem by Rossetti seems apt.

                       Memory

Is Memory most of miseries miserable,
Or the one flower of ease in bitterest hell?

William Rossetti (editor), The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Volume I (1887).

William Holman Hunt, "The Haunted Manor" (1849)