The Golden Mean

In a recent post I opined that, as one ages, things drop away.  For instance, the daily news of the world gives us plenty to be alarmed and incensed about, but it no longer seems worth the trouble.  The catalogue of horrors and absurdities has ever been thus:  not just last week or last year, but for centuries, millennia.  Why expend energy on it?  Our putative "progress" as a species is a nice fairy tale.  Mind you, this is not an argument for cynicism or misanthropy.  That the world is a madhouse does not relieve us of our duty to behave decently.

And, of course, there is still the matter of getting through an ordinary Wednesday afternoon.  Perhaps this is why I have become fonder and fonder of Horace and Robert Herrick in my senescence.  They are both oases of beautifully conveyed good sense.

Wise they, that, with a cautious fear,
Not always thro' the ocean steer,
Nor, whilst they think the winds will roar,
Do thrust too near the rocky shore:
To those that choose the golden mean
The waves are smooth, the skies serene;
They want the baseness of the poor's retreat,
And envy'd houses of the great.
Storms often vex the lofty oak,
High mountains feel the thunder's stroke;
And lofty towers, when winds prevail,
Are ruin'd with a greater fall:
A breast prepar'd in either state
Or fears or hopes a change of Fate;
'Tis Jove the same that winter brings
And melts the frost by pleasing springs:
Tho' Fortune now contracts her brow,
And frowns, yet 'twill not still be so:
Apollo sometimes mirth pursues,
His harp awakes his sleepy muse,
Nor always bends his threatening bow:
When Fortune sends a stormy wind,
Then show a brave and present mind;
And when with too indulgent gales
She swells too much, then furl thy sails.

Horace (translated by Thomas Creech), Odes, Book II, Ode 10, in Thomas Creech, The Odes, Satires, and Epistles of Horace (1684).

"The golden mean."  This sort of thing is regarded as a cliché by soi-disant sophisticated moderns.  Old, unironic, sentimental stuff.  Too obvious to bear repeating.  But would I rather read the poetry of Horace or a contemporary novel?  Next question.

Charles Parsons Knight, "Ramsey Island, Off Pembrokeshire" (1876)

I have also become increasingly fond of sea-faring metaphors for life, which are abundant in Horace and Herrick.  My time on various bodies of water has been limited to rowboats, an occasional canoe, and car ferries, but there is something about the notion of life as a sea-voyage that strikes my fancy.  Perhaps it is the timelessness of the image.  Last year I spent a great deal of time musing over the numerous lovely funereal epigrams for drowned mariners that one finds in The Greek Anthology.  And then there is this sort of thing:  "Run out the boat, my broken comrades . . . Run up the sail, my heartsick comrades . . . Put out to sea, ignoble comrades . . ." (Louis MacNeice, "Thalassa.")

                            Ship-wrack

He, who has suffer'd ship-wrack, fears to sail
Upon the seas, though with a gentle gale.

Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648).  This has been identified as a translation of line 8 in Poem 7, Book II, of Ovid's Epistulae ex Ponto.  Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly (editors), The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, Volume II (Oxford University Press 2013), page 685.

                            Safety on the Shore

What though the sea be calm?  Trust to the shore:
Ships have been drown'd, where late they danced before.

Robert Herrick, Hesperides.  It has been suggested that the source of the poem is a passage in Epistle IV of Seneca's Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales: "Do not trust her calm; in a moment the sea is in turmoil.  The same day the ships dance in the games, they are engulfed."  Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly (editors), The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, Volume II, page 577.

Charles Parsons Knight, "Falmouth Harbour" (1883)

Not surprisingly, there are echoes of Horace throughout Herrick's poetry. Thus, for example, the following poem by Herrick is reminiscent of the ode by Horace that is set forth above.

      Good Precepts, or Counsel

In all thy need, be thou possest
Still with a well-prepared breast:
Nor let the shackles make thee sad;
Thou canst but have, what others had.
And this for comfort thou must know,
Times that are ill won't still be so.
Clouds will not ever power down rain;
A sullen day will clear again.
First, peals of thunder we must hear,
Then lutes and harps shall stroke the ear.

Robert Herrick, Hesperides.

"Times that are ill won't still be so" (line 6) may have its source in Horace's lines translated by Creech as:  "Tho' Fortune now contracts her brow,/And frowns, yet 'twill not still be so."  Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly (editors), The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, Volume II, page 706.  "First, peals of thunder we must hear,/Then lutes and harps shall stroke the ear" (lines 9 and 10) may show the influence of Horace's "Apollo sometimes mirth pursues,/His harp awakes his sleepy muse,/Nor always bends his threatening bow."  Ibid.

Charles Parsons Knight, "Cawsand Bay" (1877)

Finally, out of nowhere comes this:

         Waiting Both

A star looks down at me,
And says:  "Here I and you
Stand, each in our degree:
What do you mean to do, --
          Mean to do?"

I say:  "For all I know,
Wait, and let Time go by,
Till my change come." -- "Just so,"
The star says:  "So mean I: --
          So mean I."

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

I suppose that pursuing the golden mean is to a great degree a matter of waiting.

"Everything which seems to perish merely changes.  Since you are destined to return, you ought to depart with a tranquil mind.  Mark how the round of the universe repeats its course; you will see that no star in our firmament is extinguished, but that they all set and rise in alternation.  Summer has gone, but another year will bring it again; winter lies low, but will be restored by its own proper months; night has overwhelmed the sun, but day will soon rout the night again.  The wandering stars retrace their former courses; a part of the sky is rising unceasingly, and a part is sinking."

Seneca (translated by Richard Gummere), Epistle XXXVI, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales.

Charles Parsons Knight, "The Kyles of Bute" (1893)

Mystery

I am always grateful for the unexpected gifts that poetry provides.  For instance, a few days ago I discovered this:

                              A Stranger

Her face was like sad things:  was like the lights
Of a great city, seen from far off fields,
Or seen from sea:  sad things, as are the fires
Lit in a land of furnaces by night:
Sad things, as are the reaches of a stream
Flowing beneath a golden moon alone.
And her clear voice, full of remembrances,
Came like faint music down the distant air.
As though she had a spirit of dead joy
About her, looked the sorrow of her ways:
If light there be, the dark hills are to climb
First:  and if calm, far over the long sea.
Fallen from all the world apart she seemed,
Into a silence and a memory.
What had the thin hands done, that now they strained
Together in such passion?  And those eyes,
What saw they long ago, that now they dreamed
Along the busy streets, blind but to dreams?
Her white lips mocked the world, and all therein:
She had known more than this; she wanted not
This, who had known the past so great a thing.
Moving about our ways, herself she moved
In things done, years remembered, places gone.
Lonely, amid the living crowds, as dead,
She walked with wonderful and sad regard:
With us, her passing image:  but herself
Far over the dark hills and the long sea.

Lionel Johnson, Ireland, with Other Poems (1897).

Where had this poem been all these years?   What a beautiful and wondrous thing it is.

Because I am fond of the poets of the Nineties, I was familiar with a few of Lionel Johnson's poems, but this had eluded me.  As it happens, it is not typical of his verse, which usually consists of rhymed stanzas or non-stanzaic poems in heroic couplets.  In contrast, "A Stranger" is written in unrhymed blank verse.  I have the sense (and I may well be wrong) that Johnson was so emotionally taken by the woman who is the subject of the poem that he wanted to set down the experience with as much immediacy as he could.  In this, he has wonderfully succeeded.

There is a mystery at the heart of "A Stranger":  the mystery of the human soul.  To his great credit, Johnson  neither caricatures nor patronizes the woman:  he recognizes the uniqueness of her soul, and this is what moves him.  Yes, he does speculate, but he never violates the dignity of her soul. Pity is a difficult and delicate thing, for we can never presume to know what lies within the soul of another.

Albert Goodwin (1845-1932), "The Tower of London" (1897)

The mystery of each human soul also lies at the heart of a favorite poem of mine, which appeared here back in November of 2011.  As is the case with "A Stranger," it is a Victorian poem that does not sound or feel "Victorian" as we tend to think of that term.

                  The Knight in the Wood

The thing itself was rough and crudely done,
Cut in coarse stone, spitefully placed aside
As merest lumber, where the light was worst
On a back staircase.  Overlooked it lay
In a great Roman palace crammed with art.
It had no number in the list of gems,
Weeded away long since, pushed out and banished,
Before insipid Guidos over-sweet,
And Dolce's rose sensationalities,
And curly chirping angels spruce as birds.
And yet the motive of this thing ill-hewn
And hardly seen did touch me.  O, indeed,
The skill-less hand that carved it had belonged
To a most yearning and bewildered heart,
There was such desolation in its work;
And through its utter failure the thing spoke
With more of human message, heart to heart,
Than all these faultless, smirking, skin-deep saints;
In artificial troubles picturesque,
And martyred sweetly, not one curl awry --
Listen; a clumsy knight who rode alone
Upon a stumbling jade in a great wood
Belated.  The poor beast with head low-bowed
Snuffing the treacherous ground.  The rider leant
Forward to sound the marish with his lance.
You saw the place was deadly; that doomed pair,
The wretched rider and the hide-bound steed
Feared to advance, feared to return -- That's all!

John Leicester Warren, Rehearsals: A Book of Verses (1870).  "Marish" (line 25) is, according to the OED, a "poetic, archaic, and regional" form of "marsh."  A note:  when Warren republished the poem 23 years later, he changed "heart" to "brain" in line 14.  John Leicester Warren, Poems Dramatic and Lyrical (1893).  I have used the original 1870 version.

The ostensible subject of the poem is a work of art.  But, of course, the true subject of the poem is the artist and his "human message," his "most yearning and bewildered heart."  Like Johnson, Warren does not patronize the subject of his poem.  Again, what we are given is a moving depiction of a unique and unfathomable soul.

Albert Goodwin, "Landscape"

I have sometimes made hasty and ill-advised judgments about other people, which I will always regret.  Given how little we know about ourselves, we ought to tread lightly when it comes to the mystery of others.  We should not presume to know too much.

As long-time readers have heard here before, "we should be careful//Of each other, we should be kind/While there is still time."  (Philip Larkin, "The Mower.")  As Johnson and Warren show us, there is a thread that connects us all, if only we look.  But a mystery always remains unplumbed.

     The previous owner:
I know it all, --
     Down to the very cold he felt.

Issa (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 4: Autumn-Winter (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 168.

     When I looked back,
The man who passed
     Was lost in the mist.

Shiki (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 2: Spring (Hokuseido Press 1950), page 85.

     A lantern
Entered a house
     On the withered moor.

Shiki (translated by R. H. Blyth), Haiku, Volume 4: Autumn-Winter, page 283.

Albert Goodwin, "Durham Cathedral" (1910)

Haven

As I suggested in a recent post, we ought not to think so much.

"Thoughts are in a great measure masters of things, and which is more, 'tis in your own power to think as you please:  Therefore don't suffer Opinion to cheat you any longer.  Disengage from the Tyranny of Fancy; and then as if you doubled some dangerous cape, you'll have nothing but a steady course, a smooth sea, and a land-locked bay to receive you."

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 12, Section 22, in Jeremy Collier (translator), The Emperor Marcus Antoninus, His Conversation with Himself (1702), pages 231-232.

Here is another translation of the same passage:

"Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power.  Take away then, when thou choosest, thy opinion, and like a mariner, who has doubled the promontory, thou wilt find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay."

George Long (translator), The Thoughts of the Emperor M. Aurelius Antoninus (Second Edition 1880), page 201.

Marcus Aurelius does not use "opinion" in our modern sense of, say, "opinions" about the political or social issues of the day.  Rather, his use of the word embodies the key Stoic concept that the only thing over which we have control in life is our own conduct, which includes our impressions of (i. e., our "opinions" about) external circumstances (past, present, and future).  Accordingly, we should not let those impressions run riot.  The world is what it is.  Thinking about what might have been, what ought to be at the moment, or what may lie ahead is a waste of time and energy.

               The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it.  But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it.  I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it.  Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past.  It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

R. S. Thomas, Laboratories of the Spirit (Macmillan 1975).

Christopher Meadows (1863-1947), "Saltcoats Harbour"

It is worth remembering that this is not a unique Stoic concept.  For instance, it is reminiscent of (to me at least) the idea of non-attachment that is found in Buddhism and Taoism.  Modern culture is constantly entreating us to devote our thoughts and attention to chimeras and fantasies (as well as to the media-fueled frenzy of daily "crises").  This is on top of our natural human tendency to worry about the past, the present, and the future.  Enough is enough.

Mind you, I am not claiming to be free of "the Tyranny of Fancy."  Nor am I lying at anchor in a calm harbor of non-attachment.  However, here's a good feature of the aging process:  things drop away; the absurdity and the emptiness of humanity's antics become more apparent with each passing year.  Peace and quiet seem to come of themselves, if one lets them (knock on wood).  "Peace comes dropping slow."  "Like noiseless snow, or as the dew of night."  Or so one hopes.

                    Evening Quiet

Early cicadas stop their trilling;
Points of light, new fireflies, pass to and fro.
The taper burns clear and smokeless;
Beads of bright dew hang on the bamboo mat.
Not yet will I enter the house to sleep,
But walk awhile beneath the eaves.
The rays of the moon slant into the low verandah;
The cool breeze fills the tall trees.
Letting loose the feelings, life flows on easily;
The scene entered deep into my heart.
What is the secret of this state?
To have nothing small in one's mind.

Po Chu-i (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 1: Eastern Culture (Hokuseido Press 1949), page 175.

Dane Maw (1909-1989), "Scottish Landscape, Air Dubh"

Like all sound advice, this is easier said than done.  The mind is a perpetual motion machine, isn't it?  For someone like Po Chu-i, the stilling of thoughts can occur out in the backyard at the end of the day.  However, for those of us who are inveterate daydreamers, sunk in reverie (the mind ever humming away), there is a tendency to think:  "If only I could [fill in the blank], then I could begin to live."  Thus, for example, the notion of the perfect place tends to haunt us.

                                        Where?

You are in love with a country
Where people laugh in the sun
And the people are warm as the sunshine and live and move easily
And women with honeycoloured skins and men with no frowns on their
          faces
Sit on white terraces drinking red wine
While the sea spreads peacock feathers on cinnamon sands
And palms weave sunlight into sheaves of gold
And at night the shadows are indigo velvet
And there is dancing to soft, soft, soft guitars
Played by copper fingers under a froth of stars.

Perhaps your country is where you think you will find it.
Or perhaps it has not yet come or perhaps it has gone.
Perhaps it is east of the sun and west of the moon.
Perhaps it is a country called the Hesperides
And Avalon and Atlantis and Eldorado:
A country which Gauguin looked for in Tahiti and Lawrence in Mexico,
And whether they found it only they can say, and they not now.
Perhaps you will find it where you alone can see it,
But if you can see it, though no one else can, it will be there,
It will be yours.

A. S. J. Tessimond, Voices in a Giant City (Heinemann 1947).

Frank Jowett (1879-1943), "A Sunlit Harbour"

But isn't thinking what humans do?  Isn't it in our nature to run through all of the possibilities, to consider all of the choices?  What's more, reading a poem involves thinking.  So does looking at a painting.  This post is arguably nothing but an exercise in escapism via thought.  I understand the point.   And I recognize that Stoicism, Buddhism, and Taoism are sometimes criticized for their "quietism."  (A wonderful word, actually.)

But, again, enough is enough.  We are too often in thrall to "the Tyranny of Fancy."  And "to have nothing small in one's mind" is, I think, something to aspire to.

                         Boats at Night

How lovely is the sound of oars at night
     And unknown voices, borne through windless air,
From shadowy vessels floating out of sight
     Beyond the harbour lantern's broken glare
To those piled rocks that make on the dark wave
     Only a darker stain.  The splashing oars
Slide softly on as in an echoing cave
     And with the whisper of the unseen shores
Mingle their music, till the bell of night
     Murmurs reverberations low and deep
That droop towards the land in swooning flight
     Like whispers from the lazy lips of sleep.
The oars grow faint.  Below the cloud-dim hill
The shadows fade and now the bay is still.

Edward Shanks, The Island of Youth and Other Poems (1921).

"Discharge Opinion, and you are safe; and pray who can hinder you from doing it?"

Marcus Aurelius (translated by Jeremy Collier), Meditations, Book 12, Section 25.

Stanhope Forbes, "The Inner Harbour: Abbey Slip" (1921)

A Leaf

Spring has peaked.  Summer is near.  Yet earlier this week I found myself pondering the falling of the leaves.  My out-of-season thoughts were prompted by having come across this:

                    Imitation

Far from your own little bough,
Poor little frail little leaf,
Where are you going? -- The wind
Has plucked me from the beech where I was born.
It rises once more, and bears me
In the air from the wood to the fields,
And from the valley up into the hills.
I am a wanderer
For ever:  that is all that I can say.
I go where everything goes,
I go where by nature's law
Wanders the leaf of the rose,
Wanders the leaf of the bay.

Giacomo Leopardi (translated by J. G. Nichols), in Giacomo Leopardi, The Canti, With a Selection of His Prose (Carcanet 1994).  The poem is titled "Imitation" because it is a translation by Leopardi from a poem in French ("La Feuille": "The Leaf") by Antoine-Vincent Arnault (1766-1834).

I consider Leopardi to be the King of Pessimism.  To wit:

"What is life?  The journey of a crippled and sick man walking with a heavy load on his back up steep mountains and through wild, rugged, arduous places, in snow, ice, rain, wind, burning sun, for many days without ever resting night and day to end at a precipice or ditch, in which inevitably he falls."

Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone (edited by Michael Caesar and Franco D'Intino), 4162-4163 (January 17, 1826) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2013), page 1809.

Yes, I know:  Whew!  And, mind you, this is the proverbial tip of the iceberg.  Leopardi, like Schopenhauer (who, not surprisingly, greatly admired him), ultimately came to the conclusion that, given our fate, we would be better off if we had never been born.  Again:  Whew!  

In light of all this, the life of the ever-wandering leaf in "Imitation" seems like a carefree stroll in the park, doesn't it?

David Bates, "A Beech Wood, Malvern, Worcestershire" (1889)

Leopardi's poem brought to mind one of my favorite poems by Derek Mahon (or by anybody, for that matter), which has appeared here before (in autumn).

                    Leaves

The prisoners of infinite choice
Have built their house
In a field below the wood
And are at peace.

It is autumn, and dead leaves
On their way to the river
Scratch like birds at the windows
Or tick on the road.

Somewhere there is an afterlife
Of dead leaves,
A stadium filled with an infinite
Rustling and sighing.

Somewhere in the heaven
Of lost futures
The lives we might have led
Have found their own fulfilment.

Derek Mahon, Poems 1962-1978 (Oxford University Press 1979).

As I have suggested in the past, one thing leads to another when it comes to poetry.  Perhaps it was Leopardi's line "I go where everything goes" that led me on to "Leaves," with its "dead leaves/On their way to the river."  In any case, I was now sunk deep in autumn, while outside all was green and blue and bright.

John Gardiner Crawford

"Little Burn, Bonskeid" (1980)

Six poems later in Leopardi's The Canti, I found this autumnal reverie:

     Fragment: From the Greek of Simonides

All human things last only a short time;
The old blind man of Chios
Spoke but the simple truth:
As are the lives of leaves,
So are the lives of men.
But few there are who take
Those words to heart; while everyone receives
Unruly hope, the child
Of youth, to live with him.
As long as our first age
Is fresh and blooming still,
The vacant headstrong soul
Will nourish many pleasant dreams, all vain,
Careless of death and age; the healthy man
Has no regard for illness or disease.
But he must be a fool
Who cannot see how rapidly youth flies,
How close the cradle lies
To the funereal fire.
So you who are about
To step into the land
Where Pluto holds his court,
Enjoy, since life is short,
The pleasures hard at hand.

Giacomo Leopardi (translated by J. G. Nichols), in Giacomo Leopardi, The Canti, With a Selection of His Prose.

Coincidentally, I posted a different translation of Simonides's poem last October.  As I noted at the time, the "man of Chios" (line 2) refers to Homer, who was traditionally thought to have been born on Chios, an island in the Aegean Sea in the region known as Ionia.  The lines "As are the lives of leaves/So are the lives of men" echo a passage in Book VI of The Iliad.  The passage was rendered by Alexander Pope as follows:

Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now with'ring on the ground:
Another race the foll'wing spring supplies,
They fall successive, and successive rise;
So generations in their course decay,
So flourish these, when those are passed away.

Here is a modern translation by Robert Fagles:

Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.
Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,
now the living timber bursts with the new buds
and spring comes round again.  And so with men:
as one generation comes to life, another dies away.

Alec Dixon, "Autumn, High Beach, Essex" (1988)

As long-time (and much-appreciated!) readers may have noticed, I am wont to present a coda to the topic at hand by presenting a brief Chinese or Japanese poem that seems to get to the heart of the matter.  Thus, the following haiku brings our autumnal idyll to a close.

     People are few;
A leaf falls here,
     Falls there.

Issa (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 4: Autumn-Winter (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 364.

What Issa has to say does not supplant what Leopardi or Mahon or Simonides or Homer have to say.  But he provides a lovely distillation that puts everything into perspective.

Come to think of it, here is a final thought by Leopardi:

"His amusement was to count the stars as he walked."

Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone, 280 (October 16, 1820), page 185.

Further perspective.

John Inchbold, "A Study, in March" (1855)

"The Further One Travels The Less One Knows"

I'm not cut out to be a hermit.  There are certain insuperable practical obstacles.  To cite just one:  the lack of pizza delivery services.

But I am sympathetic to the idea of a such an existence.  Mind you, I am not a misanthrope.  I just prefer peace and quiet.  I won't willingly submit myself to unnecessary noise and annoyance.  For instance, the prospect of enduring our American presidential election campaign for the next 17 (!) months is enough to convert me into an anchorite or a stylite until after Tuesday, November 8, 2016.

Fortunately, we each have the power to create a hermitary wherever we happen to be at this moment.  Not a solipsistic, narcissistic alternative reality, but a vale of refuge.

The gnomic pronouncements of the Tao Te Ching often leave me confounded.  But I've always felt there is a fundamental core of truth (and basic common sense) at the heart of Lao Tzu's oftentimes circular and self-contradictory observations about how the Universe works.

No need to leave your door to know the whole world;
No need to peer through your windows to know the Way of Heaven.
The farther you go, the less you know.

Therefore the Sage knows without going,
Names without seeing,
And completes without doing a thing.

Lao Tzu (translated by Robert Henricks), Tao Te Ching, Chapter 47.

Here is an alternative translation of the same passage:

Without leaving his door
He knows everything under heaven.
Without looking out of his window
He knows all the ways of heaven.
For the further one travels
The less one knows.
Therefore the Sage arrives without going,
Sees all without looking,
Does nothing, yet achieves everything.

Lao Tzu (translated by Arthur Waley).

Ethereal and down-to-earth.  Evanescent and hard-headed.

Alexander Sillars Burns (1911-1987), "Afternoon, Wester Ross"

The advice of Lao Tzu can only take you so far.  There is still the matter of getting through an ordinary Wednesday afternoon.  "The farther you go, the less you know."  Yes.  A fine sentiment.  But the truth of it only emerges in the details, in the "small trifles."

                              The Hermit

What moves that lonely man is not the boom
     Of waves that break against the cliff so strong;
Nor roar of thunder, when that travelling voice
     Is caught by rocks that carry far along.

'Tis not the groan of oak tree in its prime,
     When lightning strikes its solid heart to dust;
Nor frozen pond when, melted by the sun,
     It suddenly doth break its sparkling crust.

What moves that man is when the blind bat taps
     His window when he sits alone at night;
Or when the small bird sounds like some great beast
     Among the dead, dry leaves so frail and light;

Or when the moths on his night-pillow beat
     Such heavy blows he fears they'll break his bones;
Or when a mouse inside the papered walls,
     Comes like a tiger crunching through the stones.

W. H. Davies, The Bird of Paradise and Other Poems (1914).

James Maclauchlan Milne, "Loch Tulla" (1933)

Davies's poem gives one pause.  It is one thing to indulge in reveries about a life of solitude, it is quite another to actually live that life.  Here is another way of looking at this hermetic world-in-a-room business.

"All this, however, does not mean that I am an avid lover of solitude who wishes to hide in the mountains once and for all.  I am more like a sickly person who has retired from society after becoming a little weary of mixing with people.  As I look back over the many years of my frivolous life, I remember at one time I coveted an official post with a tenure of land and at another time I was anxious to confine myself within the walls of a monastery.  Yet I kept aimlessly wandering on like a cloud in the wind, all the while laboring to capture the beauty of flowers and birds.  In fact, that finally became the source of my livelihood; with no other talent or ability to resort to, I merely clung to that thin line.  It was for the sake of poetry that Po Chu-i tired himself out and Tu Fu grew lean.  I am saying this not because I regard myself as an equal of those two Chinese masters in wisdom and in poetic genius.  It is because I believe there is no place in this world that is not an unreal dwelling.  I abandoned the line of thinking at this point and went to sleep.

My temporary shelter --
A pasania tree is here, too,
In the summer grove."

Basho (translated by Makoto Ueda), "An Essay on the Unreal Dwelling," in Makoto Ueda, Matsuo Basho (Kodansha International 1982), pages 120-121.  This is the final paragraph of a haibun, which may be described as "haiku prose, or prose written in the spirit of haiku."  Ibid, page 112.  "A haibun usually (though not necessarily) ends with a haiku.  The implication is that a haibun is a perfect prose complement to the haiku." Ibid, page 121.

Here is an alternative translation of the final two sentences:

"And yet we all in the end live, do we not, in a phantom dwelling?  But enough of that -- I'm off to bed."

Basho (translated by Burton Watson), in Robert Hass (editor), The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa (The Ecco Press 1994), page 58.

James Torrington Bell, "The Cairngorms from Aviemore" (1937)

I agree with Basho:  I do not have it in me "to hide in the mountains once and for all."  On the other hand, Pascal makes a good point:  "I have often said that all the misfortune of men proceeds from their not knowing how to keep themselves quiet in their chamber."  Blaise Pascal (translated by Joseph Walker), Pensées (1670).

This morning, I sat at the front window and watched a couple of dozen sailboats run a race out on Puget Sound.  Behind them, the Olympic Mountains, snow-capped, stood serene, as mountains tend to do.  The boats moved in and out of giant cloud shadows drifting across the blue water.

I realize that I live in an unreal dwelling, a phantom dwelling.  But it will suffice.

     In my hut this spring,
There is nothing, --
     There is everything!

Sodo (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 2: Spring (Hokuseido Press 1950), page 34.

Adam Bruce Thomson (1885-1976), "Harvesting in Galloway"

Departing Spring

As I have noted on previous occasions, the turning of the seasons is, for me at least (and I suspect for some of you as well), a matter of emotion, not of solstices and equinoxes, or of dates on a calendar.  Thus, out walking this past week, I concluded that spring has departed and that summer has arrived.  This conclusion had something to do with the "fullgrown thickness" of the trees (to borrow from Philip Larkin), and with their deepening greens, greens which stretched in every direction.

"Departing spring" ("yuku haru" in Japanese: yuku is a form of the verb "to go"; haru is "spring") is a traditional seasonal subject of haiku.  Perhaps the best-known "departing spring" haiku appears near the beginning of Matsuo Basho's travel journal Oku no Hosomichi.  (The title has been variously translated as "Narrow Road to the Interior," "The Narrow Road to the Deep North," and "Narrow Road to a Far Province."  Oku means "interior," "deep," "within," or "inner"; hoso means "narrow"; michi means "road"; no is a prepositional particle.  Hence, "Narrow Road to the Interior" is probably the most accurate translation:  it is literal, but it also captures the symbolic implications of the phrase.)    

"Very early on the twenty-seventh morning of the third moon, under a predawn haze, transparent moon barely visible, Mount Fuji just a shadow, I set out under the cherry blossoms of Ueno and Yanaka.  When would I see them again?  A few old friends had gathered in the night and followed along far enough to see me off from the boat.  Getting off at Senju, I felt three thousand miles rushing through my heart, the whole world only a dream.  I saw it through farewell tears.

Spring passes
and the birds cry out -- tears
in the eyes of fishes

With these first words from my brush, I started.  Those who remain behind watch the shadow of a traveler's back disappear."

Basho (1644-1694) (translated by Sam Hamill), in Sam Hamill, The Essential Basho (Shambhala 1999), page 4.

Here is another translation of the haiku:

     Spring going --
birds weeping, tears
     in the eyes of fish.

Basho (translated by Robert Hass), in Robert Hass, The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Isssa (The Ecco Press 1994), page 38.

Alexander Fraser (1827-1899), "Dundarave Castle, Loch Fyne"

The haiku may perhaps be better understood -- and felt -- if one reads the first few sentences of Basho's brief introduction to Oku no Hosomichi.  The introduction appears immediately prior to the departure scene.

"The moon and sun are eternal travelers.  Even the years wander on.  A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.  From the earliest times there have always been some who perished along the road.  Still I have always been drawn by wind-blown clouds into dreams of a lifetime of wandering.  Coming home from a year's walking tour of the coast last autumn, I swept the cobwebs from my hut on the banks of the Sumida just in time for New Year, but by the time spring mists began to rise from the fields, I longed to cross the Shirakawa Barrier into the Northern Interior."

Basho (translated by Sam Hamill), in The Essential Basho, page 3.

This passage illuminates not only the haiku quoted above, but also Basho's life as a whole:  at some point he came to the realization that it was his destiny to be a constant traveler, and to record his travels.  This dovetails with the notion of life as a journey, a notion that came naturally to Basho by virtue of his immersion in Chinese and Japanese poetry, Taoism, and Buddhism.

Alexander Fraser, "Cadzow Forest and White Cattle"

When it comes to the changing of seasons, departures are accompanied by arrivals.  Losses are bittersweet, but there are always compensations.

     Cherry blossoms
Fall and float on the water
     Of the rice seedlings.

Kyoroku (1656-1715) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 2: Spring (Hokuseido Press 1950), page 360.

We grieve over the snow showers of cherry blossoms, but -- ah! -- the blossoms fall amid the bright green rice seedlings, aligned in long rows across the water.  (An aside:  my first visit to Japan was during the rice-planting season; as we made our landing approach, we passed over a countryside dotted with rice paddies; I had never seen a green of that hue before.) 

A lovely image, but what of the sky?  Do the cherry blossoms (pink, white) fall into sky-blue water?  In the following haiku, Buson takes Kyoroku's image one beautiful step further.

     A night of stars;
The cherry blossoms are falling
     On the water of the rice seedlings.

Buson (1716-1783) (translated by R. H. Blyth), Ibid, page 170.

"The way up and the way down are one and the same," to paraphrase Heraclitus violently out of context.  Cherry blossoms departing.  Rice seedlings arriving.  High above both of them -- and floating in the dark indigo water with them -- the stars.  Ama no gawa:  River of Heaven.

Alexander Fraser, "East Coast Harbour Scene"

"Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home."  Ironic moderns have decided that this is a cliché, a risible bit of pop psychology.  They haven't read Basho.  (Or Cavafy, for that matter.)

The journey takes place in the here-and-now of today -- which may be the final day of spring, or (you never know) the final day of your life.

     Today only
Walking in the spring,
     And no more.

Buson (translated by R. H. Blyth), Ibid, page 66.

Alexander Fraser, "Barncluith"

"A Stranger Here Strange Things Doth Meet, Strange Glory See; Strange Treasures Lodged In This Fair World Appear"

On my afternoon walk, I often silently chide myself:  Stop thinking!  As I have remarked here on more than one occasion, thinking is highly overrated.  I thus harbor the quixotic notion that, one day, my stroll will be thought-free.  But, alas, the past, present, and future always intrude.

The mind is an unending source of distraction.  Yesterday I walked along a row of trees whose boughs were full of the hum of bees.  My first reaction was simple joy at the all-enveloping sound coming down from the green and blue spaces overhead.  But thinking soon intervened: "What kind of tree is this?"  Followed by: "the bee-loud glade."  Why couldn't I leave well enough alone?

                  A Passing Glimpse

I often see flowers from a passing car
That are gone before I can tell what they are.

I want to get out of the train and go back
To see what they were beside the track.

I name all the flowers I am sure they weren't:
Not fireweed loving where woods have burnt --

Not bluebells gracing a tunnel mouth --
Not lupine living on sand and drouth.

Was something brushed across my mind
That no one on earth will ever find?

Heaven gives its glimpses only to those
Not in position to look too close.

Robert Frost, West-Running Brook (1928).

I am reminded of Frost's "The Most of It," in which the universe suddenly and unexpectedly makes its presence known in the form of "a great buck" that emerges from a forest and swims across a lake -- "and that was all." Perhaps these glimpses are as much as we can hope for.  All the more reason to not obscure them with thought.

William MacGeorge (1861-1931), "Kirkcudbright"

The poems of Frost and Edward Thomas often seem like an ever-ongoing conversation between the two of them.  At times, the conversation consists of counterpoints.  At other times, they seem to be completing each other's thoughts.  Frost wrote "A Passing Glimpse" in 1926 or so.  Thomas had died nine years earlier.  But, if you will, imagine this as part of their conversation:

                 Adlestrop

Yes.  I remember Adlestrop --
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly.  It was late June.

The steam hissed.  Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform.  What I saw
Was Adlestrop -- only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

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

A train journey.  The same naming of the things of this World.  The same "passing glimpse."

I will never cease to be amazed and moved by the fact that Thomas and Frost found each other when they did.

William MacGeorge, "Water Lilies"

Attentiveness is difficult.  Which is one reason why we need poetry.  It helps us to pay attention.  Think of how many of us look more intently at the things around us by virtue of having one day come across "Adlestrop." We all know that poems and books are not life.  But they can be a finger pointing at the moon.

                       The Salutation

                    These little limbs,
        These eyes and hands which here I find,
This panting heart wherewith my life begins,
        Where have ye been?  Behind
What curtain were ye from me hid so long?
Where was, in what abyss, my new-made tongue?

                    When silent I
        So many thousand thousand years
Beneath the dust did in a chaos lie,
        How could I, smiles or tears,
Or lips or hands or eyes or ears, perceive?
Welcome ye treasures which I now receive.

                    I that so long
        Was nothing from eternity,
Did little think such joys as ear and tongue
        To celebrate or see:
Such sounds to hear, such hands to feel, such feet,
Such eyes and objects, on the ground to meet.

                    New burnished joys
        Which finest gold and pearl excel!
Such sacred treasures are the limbs of boys,
        In which a soul doth dwell:
Their organized joints and azure veins
More wealth include than the dead world contains.

                    From dust I rise,
        And out of nothing now awake;
These brighter regions which salute mine eyes
        A gift from God I take:
The earth, the seas, the light, the lofty skies,
The sun and stars are mine; if these I prize.

                    A stranger here
        Strange things doth meet, strange glory see;
Strange treasures lodged in this fair world appear,
        Strange all and new to me:
But that they mine should be, who nothing was,
That strangest is of all, yet brought to pass.

Thomas Traherne (1636-1674), in H. I. Bell (editor), Traherne's Poems of Felicity (University of Oxford Press 1910).  (A side-note: Traherne's contemplation of our soul's emergence from "so many thousand thousand years/Beneath the dust" brings to mind Arthur Symons's "The Soul's Progress" (which has appeared here previously): "It enters life it knows not whence; there lies/A mist behind it and a mist before . . .")

We ought never to lose the sense of strangeness (and wonder) articulated by Traherne.  This takes us back to the subject of my previous post: humility.  We should never take anything in the World for granted.  The final stanza of "The Salutation" is particularly beautiful, and provides a corrective "snap out of it!" whenever we are beset with feelings of boredom, dissatisfaction, or malaise.  Another of those true truisms, I'm afraid: existence is a miracle.

William MacGeorge, "River Scene Through Trees"

Humility

A week or so ago, I noticed the annual sign that Spring has arrived in earnest and that Summer is near:  tiny anthills began to emerge along the seams of the sidewalks.  We love Spring for its flowers and its blossoming trees, for its wide skies and its breezes, and for its changeableness.  But, for me at least, there is something reassuring, even touching, in knowing that the ants are once again going about their business.

Yes, I know there is a vast, clamorous World out there.  But, as I have observed on more than one occasion, there is something to be said for appreciating, and cultivating, the commonplace.

                       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).

We mustn't fall prey to the Pathetic Fallacy, we are told.  But I unabashedly confess that ants are "invested in my mood/With constancy, and peace, and fortitude."  I cannot help myself.  I wait for their reassurance each Spring, and I am comforted when they provide it.

Robert Lillie (1867-1949), "Flower Study, Narcissi"

I have an uneasy feeling that I am about to make a pretentious and annoying Pronouncement About Poetry.  So let me first say that I deplore Pronouncements About Poetry.  That being said, here is my Pronouncement:  one of the benefits of good poetry is that it teaches us humility.

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 (1869).  The poem is untitled.

William Blake preceded Tennyson:  "To see a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower."  ("Auguries of Innocence.")  In our ironic "modern" world, this sort of thing is regarded as a cliché.  But it's all true, you know.

Robert Lillie, "Part of My Studio Mantel"

For real humility before the wonder of the World, consider this:

                              Morning Glories

By the well side, morning glories I transplanted,
wild tendrils climbing the rail, angling this way and that:
before I know it the well rope's been completely seized --
now I beg water from the house next door.

Rokunyo (1734-1801) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, Kanshi: The Poetry of Ishikawa Jozan and Other Edo-Period Poets (North Point Press 1990), page 48.

Rokunyo's poem was likely inspired by the following well-known haiku:

By morning glories
my well bucket's been seized --
borrowing water.

Chiyo-ni (also known as Kaga no Chiyo) (1703-1775) (translated by Burton Watson), Ibid.

Thus, perhaps Chiyo-ni and Rokunyo would not have plucked the flower in the crannied wall.  This is not intended to be a criticism of Tennyson, by the way.  I've plucked a flower or two in my day.  As it turns out, Japanese poets are themselves of two minds about whether flowers ought to be plucked.

     To pluck it is a pity,
To leave it is a pity,
     Ah, this violet!

Naojo (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 2: Spring (Hokuseido Press 1950), page 380.

     The violet:
Held in the hand,
     Yet more lovely.

Koshu (translated by R. H. Blyth), Ibid, page 381.

Whether the flower is plucked or not plucked, the underlying lesson is one of humility.

Robert Lillie, "Japanese Anemones"

I know nothing about how to live.  I have no wisdom to impart.  But I have come to learn that truisms are, well, true.  The commonplace World -- the World right there in front of us at this moment -- is all that we need.  Its wonders are inexhaustible.  We owe it our humility.

                 Life Hurries By

Life hurries by, and who can stay
One winged Hour upon her way?
The broken trellis then restore
And train the woodbine round the door.

Walter Savage Landor, Dry Sticks (1858).

Robert Lillie, "The Paisley Shawl"

"Begin Afresh, Afresh, Afresh"

It is time, dear reader, for me to beg your indulgence as we pay our annual visit to my "May poem."  To wit:

                  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).

My daily walk takes me through a former army post (now turned into a park) on the bluffs above Puget Sound.  At one point, I pass beneath a long row of tall bigleaf maples that border the former parade ground, which is now an expanse of green that is mowed throughout the year.

Yesterday, a breeze came up as I walked beneath the canopy of boughs.  I looked up into the swaying branches against the blue spring sky, listening all the while to the rush of the wind through the fluttering leaves.  Larkin is correct:  "Begin afresh, afresh, afresh" is exactly what the leaves say.

Christopher Sanders, "Sunlight through a Willow Tree at Kew" (1958)

We each have our own versions of Eternal Paradise.  A fit subject for reverie, I think.  I suspect that some of us would be content to spend eternity stretched out on the grass beneath a full-leaved tree, blue sky overhead, wind soughing through the boughs.  Sun and shadow would move back-and-forth across our face as we lay looking upward at the restless green and blue and yellow patterns.  For ever.

      Kayenta, Arizona, May 1977

I fall asleep to the sound of rain,
But there is no rain in the desert.
The leaves of the trader's little cottonwoods
Turn, turn in the wind.

Janet Lewis, Poems Old and New: 1918-1978 (Swallow Press 1981).

In Eternity, there will be no seasons.  Only the ever-moving colors of the sun and the leaves and the sky and the sound of the wind in the leaves -- a rustling, a sighing, at times a roaring.

The riverbed, dried-up, half-full of leaves.
Us, listening to a river in the trees.

Seamus Heaney, The Haw Lantern (Faber and Faber 1987).

Patrick Symons, "Oak Arch Grey (Wimbledon Common)" (1981)

Perhaps you think that I have gone too far with these daydreams of Eternity.  Crossed the line into purple prose.  But every time I walk beneath a tunnel of whispering trees I cannot help but wish that the tunnel will never end.  I slow down as the exit approaches.  I glance backward.  My spirit droops as I emerge.

I suppose this is what Wallace Stevens is getting at in "This Solitude of Cataracts":  "He wanted to feel the same way over and over.//He wanted the river to go on flowing the same way,/To keep on flowing."  Alas, we are all up against Heraclitus's dictum:  You cannot step into the same river twice.

But, in a World of popular culture ("entertainment" and politics) that consists entirely of chimeras and fantasies, is it madness to want to walk for ever down an avenue of trees?  And what if, as you walk, the leaves above you, and all around you, say this:  "Begin afresh, afresh, afresh"?

Who has seen the wind?
     Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling
     The wind is passing thro'.

Who has seen the wind?
     Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads
     The wind is passing by.

Christina Rossetti, Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872).

Robert Ball, "Mrs Barclay's Pond, Harborne" (1949)

Dwelling

"Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say."  So writes Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations, Book IV, Section 41 (translated by George Long).  An earlier translator (Jeremy Collier in 1702) puts it even more colorfully:  "Would you know what you are?  Epictetus will tell you that you are a Living Soul, that drags a carcass about with her."

A startling image, yes, but no cause for distress.  It simply states a fact. Integrating this fact into our daily lives creates an opportunity for freedom. It is ancient news, studiously avoided by most moderns.

Like dew that vanishes,

like a phantom that disappears,

or the light cast

     by a flash of lightning --

so should one think of oneself.

Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481) (translated by Steven Carter), in Steven Carter, Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (Stanford University Press 1991).

The opening line of Emperor Hadrian's death-bed poem comes to mind: animula vagula blandula.

Hubert Wellington, "Overhanging Tree, Frampton Mansell" (1915)

Accurate though it may be, the image of one's soul carrying around a corpse or a carcass may be difficult to come to grips with.  Is it something to idly contemplate as you drift off to sleep, or greet the dawn?  I think not.

Still, we all inhabit "a temporary lodging."  Perhaps, then, this is more palatable:  envision your "little soul" as residing within a dwelling that will one day be abandoned.  Which begs the obvious question:  what will remain of us when the soul has flown?

               A Tale

There once the walls 

Of the ruined cottage stood.

The periwinkle crawls

With flowers in its hair into the wood.

In flowerless hours

Never will the bank fail,

With everlasting flowers

On fragments of blue plates, to tell the tale.

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

Thomas later substantially revised the poem:

               A Tale

Here once flint walls,

Pump, orchard and wood pile stood.

Blue periwinkle crawls

From the lost garden down into the wood.

The flowerless hours

Of Winter cannot prevail

To blight these other flowers,

Blue china fragments scattered, that tell the tale.

Edward Thomas, Ibid.

The rhyming of "flowerless hours" is risky, isn't it?  But lovely.  I can understand why Thomas retained this phrase, while changing nearly everything else.  His revisions to the lines about the china fragments are interesting.  He abandons "everlasting flowers/On fragments of blue plates" in favor of "these other flowers,/Blue china fragments scattered." Thus, rather than painted flowers on pieces of broken china, we have blue fragments of china scattered on the ground, replicating the blue flowers of the periwinkle.

So there you have it:  another way of looking at our soul's dwelling-place. Will we leave scattered blue flowers of broken china for posterity?

Hubert Wellington, "Summer Day, Frampton Mansell" (1915)

Thomas never directly mentions the prior inhabitants of the abandoned dwelling, but their unspoken presence dominates both versions of the poem:  there is, after all, "A Tale" to be told.  But all that remains is a trail of china fragments on the ground.  And silence.

                  Meng-ch'eng Hollow

A new home at the mouth of Meng-ch'eng;

old trees -- last of a stand of dying willows:

years to come, who will be its owner,

vainly pitying the one who had it before?

Wang Wei (701-761) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century (Columbia University Press 1984).

Wang Wei is the occupant of the "new home."  He will also, in the future, be "the one who had it before."  Vanished.  A subject of speculation and pity.  "Flesh, breath, and the Inner Self -- that is all."  Marcus Aurelius (translated by Gerald Rendall), Meditations, Book II, Section 2.

A corpse, a carcass, a dwelling.  But still the soul flits and flutters.

                    Spring

That man's life is but a dream --

Is what we now come to know.

Its house abandoned,

the garden has become home

     to butterflies.

Sogi (1421-1502) (translated by Steven Carter), in Steven Carter, Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (Stanford University Press 1991).

Hubert Wellington, "The Big Barn, Frampton Mansell" (1915)