Good Poems
GregD -- Thursday, May 01, 2003 -- 12:25:42 AMPut up a good poem. Tell us what you like about it.
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I love Hopkins. That's one of my favorite poems. The other one I like, even though it's overwrought:
I CAUGHT this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,--the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
Hopkins is my favorite poet. I wish I could have listened in on some of the ross family Christmas arguments. While I love the celebratory ones like "The Windhover" and "Pied Beauty," I think it's the "terrible sonnets" that mean the most to me. Even while describing despair, in the act of creating he stands against it. Very courageous and very beautiful.
I also love this poem titled "To R.B." It's to his friend and reader Robert Bridges, a poet laureate, one of the few to give Hopkins any encouragement as a poet. The sadness and resignation, even wryness, about being deserted by the Muse (much as woman can be impregnated and abandoned) really gets me.
THE FINE delight that fathers thought; the strong
Spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame,
Breathes once and, quenchèd faster than it came,
Leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song.
Nine months she then, nay years, nine years she long
Within her wears, bears, cares and moulds the same:
The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim
Now known and hand at work now never wrong.
Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this;
I want the one rapture of an inspiration.
O then if in my lagging lines you miss
The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation,
My winter world, that scarcely breathes that bliss
Now, yields you, with some sighs, our explanation.
Stephanie, I was just thinking of this earlier this morning, and I wonder if it belongs here or in the Five Years Later thread.
No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing-
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-
-ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'.
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.
cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed
Thinking about the Towers, this fits beautifully and chillingly.
At my mother's funeral, one of my former undergrad professors from whom I took Victorian lit classes was there (he also knew my mother). He knew how much I loved Hopkins, and though I hadn't seen him in many years, he came right up to me, put his forehead to mine, and spoke the first four lines of "Carrion Comfort." Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee... That went right to my heart. What a sweet man.
This is a day for Auden, I think. This poem is strikingly appropriate:
September 1, 1939by W.H. Auden
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
Yes indeed. Wow.
Yesterday I was driving and Paul Simon's song "American Tune" came on the radio. Not to be compared with Auden, of course, but it made me cry, thinking about it with the backdrop of the Towers in my head: the soul flying and the people falling.
And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying
Those all are.
Here is my post-9/11 tagline from TT:
(O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless!
O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel!)
From Walt Whitman's Drum Taps.
[side note: nowadays googling "whitman" + "manhattan" gets more of Christie Todd than poor ol' Walt]
When the going gets tough, I read Szymborska. I mentioned her poem Could Have earlier in this thread. That's always the one I keep going back to.
In that same context, I also like Reality Demands.
Reality demands
we also state the following:
life goes on.
It does so near Cannae and Borodino,
at Kosovo Polje and Guernica.
There is a gas station
in a small plaza in Jericho,
and freshly painted
benches near Bila Hora.
Letters travel
between Pearl Harbor and Hastings,
a furniture truck passes
before the eyes of the lion of Cheronea,
and only an atmospheric front advances
towards the blossoming orchards near Verdun.
There is so much of Everything
that Nothing is quite well concealed.
Music flows
from yachts near Actium
and couples on board dance in the sunlight.
So much keeps happening,
that it must be happening everywhere.
Where stone is heaped on stone,
there is an ice cream truck
besieged by children.
Where Hiroshima had been,
Hiroshima is again
manufacturing products
for everyday use.
Not without its charms is this terrible world,
not without its mornings
worth our waking.
In the fields of Maciejowice
the grass is green
and on the grass is -- you know how grass is --
transparent dew.
Maybe there are no fields other than battlefields,
those still remembered,
and those long forgotten,
birch woods and cedar woods,
snows and sands, iridescent swamps,
and ravines of dark defeat
where today, in sudden need,
you squat behind a bush.
What moral flows from this? Maybe none.
But what really flows is quickly-drying blood,
and as always, some rivers and clouds.
On the tragic mountain passes
the wind blows hats off heads
and we cannot help
but laugh.
I love this.
I remember that as your tagline, artie. I also remember thinking about an "O" with a very different feeling, "O Superman."
In the memorial New Yorker issue in 2001, Anthony Lane wrote that, seeing people jump from the towers and how they would inevitably come to symbolize more than their final, terrified act, made him think of the end of Larkin's "An Arundel Tomb":
Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd
-The little dogs under their feet.
Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.
They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.
They would no guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they
Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the grass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-littered ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,
Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigures them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
Those Poles, they really know how to speak to the unspeakable. I was rereading Milosz and came upon this, which I already posted in Passages, but will re-post here.
Nobody knows the beginning of the city.
Slushy ruts, a call at the ferry,
Resin torches, a fisherman leaning on a spear,
And fish pots and the mists of the shallows.
Then the riders with lances lead in
Half-naked prisoners and pine after pine
Falls down and with huge timbers
A castle is erected above the swift river.
Dark rafters. The whirl of dogs
Crunching bones in the gleam of shields and swords,
Shaky rush-lights and whiskered shadows
Bent over pewter goblets, raucous songs.
In bedchambers, amid spearshafts and leather bands,
Giggling of old gods. In the thicket at night
Their wild stomping and whistling. And yet already a bell
Trickled its tiny voice through the wilderness,
And the monks, raised on their stirrups,
Were turning toward the people below
Who, uncertain, faltered between their rite
And the force of the new imperious laws.
Who knows the beginning? We lived in this city
Without caring about its past. Its walls
Seemed to us eternal. Those who lived here before us
Were just a legend, undeciphered.
Our age is better, we would say. No plague, no sword
To pursue us, so why should we look back?
Let the centuries of terror sleep in the hard earth.
We tuned our instruments, evenings
In a circle of friends would bring us gladness,
Under the colorful lanterns and the green of chestnuts
Feasts were celebrated. The slenderness of our women
Pleased our eyes. Our painters used to choose
Joyous colors. Till that day arrived.
The makeup streamed down women's cheeks. Their rings
Rattled against the pavement. Eyes
Turned to the indifferent abysses of heavens
And accepted death. Foundations of ornate buildings
Burst, the dust of crushed brick
Rose with smoke to the sun, pigeons
Were falling from the sky. We propped our street fortresses
Against the rubble of our homes, till they fell,
Our fortresses, and hands, and arms. The smell of defeat,
Cadaverous, nauseating, atrocious silence
After the din of battle descended on smoldering cinders,
The autumn rain beat down and the survivors
Received upon their brows the stigma of the slave.
The enemy debased memory, ascribing to himself
Both ancient and future glory.
And then, sitting where once it had stood,
That beautiful city, sifting through our fingers
The sand of the barrens, we discovered
The sweet name of our country. It was no more
Than the sand and the rustle of the wind in wormwood.
For a country without a past is nothing, a word
That, hardly spoken, loses its meaning,
A perishable wall destroyed by flame,
An echo of animal emotions. In the sand we saw
The ashes of centuries mixed with fresh blood.
Pride then left us and we rendered homage
To men and women who once lived and ever since
We have had our home founded in history.
Unknown Frost Poem to be published Monday
Fascinating.
Sir Walter Raleigh, courtier, navigator, diplomat, explorer, spy, cartographer, adventurer, writer and poet wrote this piece which deserves to be read aloud (note that "arrant" is a variation of "errand"):
The Lie
Go, soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless arrant:
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant.
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.
Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church, it shows
What's good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.
Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others' action,
Not loved unless they give,
Not strong but by a faction:
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.
Tell men of high condition
That manage the estate,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate:
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell them that brave it most,
They beg for more by spending,
Who, in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but commending:
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell zeal it wants devotion;
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it is but motion;
Tell flesh it is but dust:
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.
Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honour how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favour how it falters:
And as they shall reply,
Give every on the lie.
Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in over-wiseness:
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.
Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is prevention;
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention:
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie.
Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay:
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming:
If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.
Tell faith it's fled the city;
Tell how the country erreth;
Tell, manhood shakes off pity;
Tell, virtue least preferreth:
And if they do reply
Spare not to give the lie.
So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing,
Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing,
Stab at thee he that will,
No stab the soul can kill.
(He was beheaded in 1618.)
'Warning to Children'
Children, if you dare to think
Of the greatness, rareness, muchness
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to untie the string.
In the parcel a small island,
On the island a large tree,
On the tree a husky fruit.
Strip the husk and pare the rind off:
In the kernel you will see
Blocks of slate enclosed by dappled
Red and green, enclosed by tawny
Yellow nets, enclosed by white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where the same brown paper parcel -
Children, leave the string alone!
For who dares undo the parcel
Finds himself at once inside it,
On the island, in the fruit,
Blocks of slate about his head,
Finds himself enclosed by dappled
Green and red, enclosed by yellow
Tawny nets, enclosed by black
And white acres of dominoes,
With the same brown paper parcel
Still untied upon his knee.
And, if he then should dare to think
Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,
Greatness of this endless only
Precious world in which he says
he lives - he then unties the string.
-- Robert Graves
Random question:
Does anyone know of any good examples of the use of an ABCDABCD rhyme scheme?
I can think of two --
Ma, o pianto, o duol!
M'han rapito il miraggio
Dov'io, giulivo,
L'anima acqueto.
Spento è quel sol,
Quel sorriso, quel raggio
Che mi fa vivo,
Che mi fa lieto!
You can make fools
Out of other good guessers;
Put me in blinkers,
I know where you'd be.
It would take schools
Of the finest professors,
Usin' their thinkers,
To keep you from me.
Straight to your door
Over obstacle courses;
Maybe I'm braggin',
But surely you'll see --
It would take more
Than a pack of wild horses,
Pullin' your wagon,
To keep you from me.
Any more, anyone?
(Deleted message originally posted by Amaxen on Thursday, January 29, 2009 -- 12:47:40 PM.)
Sparky:
Yeah. And the funny thing is -- the first several times I heard these, I didn't notice it; I interpreted them as 4-line ABAB verses. (But, somehow, at some subconscious level, they sounded better than your typical ABAB.) Only later did the true structure dawn on me.
BTW, if you see an "X" (or some other odd-looking character) on line 5 of the Italian text, that's supposed to be an "e" with a downward accent ("è").
Audio of Ramon Vinay singing "Dio, mi potevi": here.
My favorite recording of Otello (with Vinay, Nelli, Valdengo, dir. by Toscanini): (older edition) here or (newer edition) here. I don't know whether the newer one is remastered or anything; but it apparently has some "opening announcements" and "spoken synopses" of each act. (I would probably find that annoying.)
You can download "Wild Horses" from Amazon for a buck: here. You can listen to a free clip, which includes one of the above verses.
It's also on a "Greatest Hits" album: here.
I dug up Rossetti's Three Shadows:
I looked and saw your eyes
In the shadow of your hair,
As a traveller sees a stream
In the shadow of the wood;
And I said, “My faint heart sighs,
Ah me! to linger there,
To drink deep and to dream
In the sweet solitude.”
I looked and saw your heart
In the shadow of your eyes,
As a seeker sees the gold
In the shadow of the stream;
And I said, “Ah me! what art
Should win the immortal prize,
Whose want must make life cold
And Heaven a hollow dream?”
I looked and saw your love
In the shadow of your heart,
As a diver sees the pearl
In the shadow of the sea;
And I murmured, not above
My breath, but all apart,—
“Ah! you can love, true girl,
And is your love for me?”
I especially like the "I saw X2 in the shadow of X1... I saw X3 in the shadow of X2... I saw X4 in the shadow of X3" (each time, "as a [whoever] sees [whatever] in the shadow of [something else]") trick. Great structure (in addition, of course, to the rhyme scheme).