Sunday Poetry XXXI -- TEXTBOOK POETRY 3.3

The subtitle for this section is about as off-putting as anything anywhere across the humongousness literature's pedagogy: "The Mechanics of Verse."  As far as my experience goes, this is the single most influential contributor to students' dislike nearly acatalectic (if you'll excuse the clearly slant usage there) poetry--even more so than just the difficulty of interpretation.  As I look at An Approach to Literature's editors' very limited selection (you'll see in a moment) for exemplifying and explaining the mechanics of poetry and versification, I can't decide if, on the one hand, they're really into it and, at that, only in its purest, most abstract form, or if they understand how dismal counting syllables can be and decided to keep it as short as possible.  But here's the problem: the section isn't short.  In word count, it certainly exceeds the previous two sections, but there are only (are you ready?) TWO POEMS.  (Section 4, by the way, has nearly thirty to choose from!)  Whether it would have been better for the editors to have included a dozen poems, or just two for the entire bloody concept I'll leave to you.  Here, then, I reproduce all of the poetry in this section--no personal selection necessary:

An Approach to Literature

Brooks, Purser, Warren

1952

That the Night Come

William Butler Yeats

She lived in storm and strife,

Her soul had such desire

For what proud death may bring

That it could not endure

The common good of life,

But lived as 'twere a king

That packed his marriage day

With banneret and pennon,

Trumpet and kettledrum,

And the outrageous cannon,

To bundle time away

That the night come.

Come Down, O Maid

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (clearly a favorite of the editors’)

Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.

Sunday Poetry [30] -- TEXTBOOK POETRY 3.2

I have to remind myself, especially as I’m going through a textbook with which I am surprisingly (so, at least, to me) sympathetic, that the point of this little endeavor (the textbook poetry entries) is to show poems with which I am not familiar, poems that indicate the type of the textbook containing them, and, of course, the first and last poems of the lot.  This is difficult here with this text, because I know and enjoy so much of the poetry; I want to include so much more than I should, and not because it’s new, but because I know it and love it.  Maybe that in and of itself is some indication of the type of the textbook I’m holding right now, or maybe it just bears witness against my overall well-roundedness.  There is, after all, so much out there to read that I haven’t even touched.

An Approach to Literature

Brooks, Purser, Warren

1952

The Eagle (included in section introduction as example)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain wall,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Silver (first of section collection)

Walter De La Mare

Slowly, silently, now the moon

Walks the night in her silver shoon;

Silver fruit upon silver trees;

One by one the casements catch

Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;

Couched in his kennel, like a log,

With paws of silver sleeps the dog;

From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep

Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep’

A harvest mouse goes scampering by,

With silver claws and a silver eye;

And moveless fish in the water gleam,

By silver reeds in a silver stream.

To Daffadills

Robert Herrick

Faire Daffadills, we weep to see

      You haste away so soone:

As yet the early-rising Sun

      Has not attain’d his Noone.

            Stay, stay,

         Until the hasting day

            Has run

         But to the Even-song;

And, having pray’d together, wee

         Will goe with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,

      We have as short a Spring;

As quick a growth to meet Decay,

      As you, or any thing.

            We die,

      As your hours doe, and drie

            Away,

      Like to the Summers raine;

Or as the pearles of Mornings dew

         Ne’er to be found againe.

Nulla Fides

Patrick Carey

For God’s sake mark that fly:

See what a poor, weak, little thing it is.

When thou has marked and scorned it, know that this,

This little, poor, weak fly

Has killed a pope; can make an emp’ror die.

Behold you spark of fire;

How little hot!  how near to nothing ‘tis!

When thou hast done despising, know that this,

This contemned spark of fire,

Has burnt whole towns; can burn a world entire.

That crawling worm there see:

Ponder how ugly, filthy, vile it is.

When thou hast seen and loathed it, know that this,

This base worm thou dost see,

Has quite devoured thy parents; shall eat thee.

Honour, the world, and man,

What trifles are they; since most true it is

That this poor fly, this little spark, this

So much abhorred worm, can

Honour destroy; burn worlds; devour up man.

The Mower to the Glow-Worms

Andrew Marvell

Ye living lamps, by whose dear light

The Nightingale does sit so late,

And studying all the Summer-night,

Her matchless Songs does meditate;

Ye Country Comets, that portend

No War, nor Princes funeral,

Shining unto no higher end

Than to presage the Grasses fall;

Ye Glow-worms, whose officious Flame

To wandering Mowers shows the way,

That in the Night have lost their aim,

And after foolish Fires do stray;

Your courteous Lights in vain you waste,

Since Juliana here is come,

For She my Mind hath so displaced

That I shall never find my home.

Ode to the West Wind

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I.

O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

      Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

      Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

      Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,

      Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow

      Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

      With living hues and odors plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

II.

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,

      Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

      Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

      Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge

      Of the horizon to the zenith's height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

      Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

      Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: oh hear!

III.

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

      The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

      Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

      Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

      So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

      Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

      The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

IV.

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

      If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

      The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even

      I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,

      As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

      As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

      I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is;

      What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

      Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

      My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

      Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

      Scatter, as from an extinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

      Be through my lips to unwakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

*

Other poems in this section:

·         “The Man with the Hoe, Written After Seeing Millet’s World-Famous Painting,” by Edwin Markham

·         “The Woodpile,” by Robert Frost

·         “The Lotos Eaters,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

·         “Mariana,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

·         Sonnets 18, 73, and 97, by William Shakespeare

·         “Song,” by Edmund Waller

·         “The Bugle Song,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

·         “The Tree of Man,” by A.E. Housman

·         “A Passer-By,” by Robert Bridges

·         “The Wild Swans at Coole,” by William Butler Yeats

·         “Hymn to Diana,” by Ben Johnson

·         “The Night-Piece to Julia,” by Robert Herrick

·         “God’s Grandeur,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

·         “The Lamb” and “The Tiger,” by William Blake (two of my all-time favorite poems—seriously)

Through the Looking Glass IV -- chapter 2: REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE, ALICE!

1. "as she described it afterwards": I mentioned this yesterday.  Taking it a step further, these simple insertions alter the entire point of view of the narration.  In Wonderland Carroll narrates in omniscient 3rd and is immediately proximate to the events of the story; in Looking-Glass he narrates in limited 3rd and is removed a step, as he tells the story 2nd-hand (or even possibly further removed) as it was originally narrated to him from Alice or another intermediary party.  This emphasizes the distance (I wonder if it was intentional; I imagine it was, but can't be sure) between Carroll and Alice of course; does it have any other role in tone, metaphor, or significance?  (POV: there is a possibility, though I doubt its likelihood, that Carroll's narration is not as removed as I assume, as he could indeed be "watching" the events first-hand for a limited 3rd, which he then augments after receiving report of Alice's personal account.  Regardless, the distance remains, as the story's tense, regardless of helping verbs' presence or absence, leans toward past-perfect rather than simple past.)
2. Note from Martin Gardner: Chapter 2 of Looking-Glass is a parody of Tennyson's Maud (simple Wikipedia article here; in depth discussion here), section 22.
3. There's another garden, of course; neither garden she enters, however, in either book, is as nice or innocent or lovely as she otherwise hoped or expected.
4. Despite Tenniel's illustration, there's no indication in the text that Alice has decreased in size to meet flowers face to face.  Alice stooping to threaten the daisies indicates that she is yet "full-size," as well as the evident size of the Red Queen.
5. Carroll wrote this of the Red Queen in his article "Alice on the Stage": "The Red Queen I pictured as a Fury; but of another type; her passion must be cold and calm; she must be formal and strict, yet not unkindly; pedantic to the tenth degree, the concentrated essence of all governesses!"
6. What do you make of the Red Queen's statement of sense, nonsense, and dictionaries?
7. Chapter 2 reads like an introduction to the looking-glass world.  By now we are parted from the house and soon from its garden, get the lay of the land and its manner of function, and we meet a dominant figure who represents in broad terms the type of the characters to come, at least those of the chess set.  Of course, this renders chapter 1 more of a prologue--the left-hand bookend, perhaps--which makes sense, if you look at the last couple of chapters (12 and 13, certainly; 11's iffy) and compare them together.
8. If Alice's life is a chess game and Carroll is far removed from her, who is manipulating the pieces?  Compare this to the God and demigod issues of Wonderland.
9. Of the Queen's instructions to Alice, only the third interests me, as the first two refer specifically to issues of chess: " --and remember who you are!"  Thoughts?

Maud

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

(part I, section 22)

Come into the garden, Maud, 
For the black bat, night, has flown, 
Come into the garden, Maud, 
I am here at the gate alone; 
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, 
And the musk of the roses blown. 

For a breeze of morning moves, 
And the planet of Love is on high, 
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves 
On a bed of daffodil sky, 
To faint in the light of the sun she loves, 
To faint in his light, and to die. 

All night have the roses heard 
The flute, violin, bassoon; 
All night has the casement jessamine stirr`d 
To the dancers dancing in tune; 
Till a silence fell with the waking bird, 
And a hush with the setting moon. 

I said to the lily, "There is but one 
With whom she has heart to be gay. 
When will the dancers leave her alone? 
She is weary of dance and play." 
Now half to the setting moon are gone, 
And half to the rising day; 
Low on the sand and loud on the stone 
The last wheel echoes away. 

I said to the rose, "The brief night goes 
In babble and revel and wine. 
O young lord-lover, what sighs are those, 
For one that will never be thine? 
But mine, but mine," so I sware to the rose, 
"For ever and ever, mine." 

And the soul of the rose went into my blood, 
As the music clash`d in the hall; 
And long by the garden lake I stood, 
For I heard your rivulet fall 
From the lake to the meadow and on to the wood, 
Our wood, that is dearer than all; 

From the meadow your walks have left so sweet 
That whenever a March-wind sighs 
He sets the jewel-print of your feet 
In violets blue as your eyes, 
To the woody hollows in which we meet 
And the valleys of Paradise. 

The slender acacia would not shake 
One long milk-bloom on the tree; 
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake, 
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea; 
But the rose was awake all night for your sake, 
Knowing your promise to me; 
The lilies and roses were all awake, 
They sigh`d for the dawn and thee. 

Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls, 
Come hither, the dances are done, 
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls, 
Queen lily and rose in one; 
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls, 
To the flowers, and be their sun. 

There has fallen a splendid tear 
From the passion-flower at the gate. 
She is coming, my dove, my dear; 
She is coming, my life, my fate; 
The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;" 
And the white rose weeps, "She is late," 
The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;" 
And the lily whispers, "I wait." 

She is coming, my own, my sweet, 
Were it ever so airy a tread, 
My heart would hear her and beat, 
Were it earth in an earthy bed; 
My dust would hear her and beat, 
Had I lain for a century dead; 
Would start and tremble under her feet, 
And blossom in purple and red.

Sunday Poetry IX -- FROSTED BELLS for NEW YEAR'S

Usually I find back stories for things like this a drag, but today I'm doing it anyway, because the connection doesn't make any sense without the context.

Usually sometime Saturday night (especially now that church time has been moved up to nine), I start thinking about what I might do for Sunday Poetry.  Considering the time of year, both for earth's tilt and our current spot in the calendar, the weather--frigidly cold and snowy--and the New Year circled me mind.  Here in Utah right now, while not setting any records, it is frigidly cold.  The effect of this icy average is augmented by the general emotional impression left by what the recent cold snap's abrupt arrival did to the heavy slush fall from the day before followed by a dry powdery snow then a partial melt-off and finally another wicked freeze last night.

Walking across the church parking lot this morning was dangerous!

The coldest poem I know is "Out, Out -" by the late and way great Robert Frost (who, for some reason--and corroborated by appearances--resides on a particular shelf in my mind right next door to Cormac McArthy

)

(Do you know which one is which?)

Read this poem, and tell me it doesn't just make you shiver, shiver in horrific chill, sure, but as surely shiver in synesthetic frigidity (yes, synesthesia again: one of the greatest abilities of great writing):

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard

And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,

Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.

And from there those that lifted eyes could count

Five mountain ranges one behind the other

Under the sunset far into Vermont.

And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,

As it ran light, or had to bear a load.

And nothing happened: day was all but done.

Call it a day, I wish they might have said

To please the boy by giving him the half hour

That a boy counts so much when saved from work.

His sister stood beside him in her apron

To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,

As if it meant to prove saws know what supper meant,

Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap -

He must have given the hand. However it was,

Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!

Half in appeal, but half as if to keep

The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all -

Since he was old enough to know, big boy

Doing a man's work, though a child at heart -

He saw all was spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off -

The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"

So. The hand was gone already.

The doctor put him in the dark of ether.

He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.

And then - the watcher at his pulse took a fright.

No one believed. They listened to his heart.

Little - less - nothing! - and that ended it.

No more to build on there. And they, since they

Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

Okay, so for the season that seems really negative, and, well, I guess it is.  *not a non-sequitur:*  If you read this blog and have at least followed the Sunday Poetry entries, you should remember last week's interesting parallel between two pieces by Poe--the story, "The Black Cat," and the poem, "The Bells."  Well, this week's pair of pieces are not parallel; I believe they're perpendicular.  "Out, Out -" doesn't seem in any way to celebrate the birth of the new year, at least inasmuch as the holiday is indeed about rebirth and the New and all that mushy stuff.  But remember, as one year is born, so one dies, and should we not walk away from it perhaps even without looking back over our shoulder?

Anyway, I don't know how the connection was made--what or which synaptic firing caught this other one in the cross--but next I thought of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Ring Out, Wild Bells," which is all about the temporal crux of New Year's:

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more,

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

It's the ringing of the bells--the tonal tintinnabulation, that, while in Poe is a tocsin of doom, in Tynneson verily sparkles--that brings the warm fuzzies so associated with New Year's.  But look more closely: inasmuch as "The Bells" and "The Black Cat" --ostensibly so totally different--tell the same story and are quite parallel, so too are both of these poems, "Out, Out -" and "Ring Out, Wild Bells," converge at the same point: New Year's, though clearly from two different directions.

More interestingly still (at least for a great geek like me) is the haunting melody ascribed to the latter of the two, by Crawford Gates.  For me, artistically speaking rather than temporally, at least for the moment, this, by the meeting of tone and lyric, is where the two poems by Frost and Tennyson meet:

*