Well I Remember -- Walter Savage Landor

Guest poem submitted by Aseem Kaul

(Poem #1821) Well I Remember Well I remember how you smiled To see me write your name upon The soft sea-sand-'O! what a child! You think you're writing upon stone!' I have since written what no tide Shall ever wash away, what men Unborn shall read o'er ocean wide And find Ianthe's name again. -- Walter Savage Landor

Yesterday's Spenser made me think of this other version of the 'not marble,
nor the gilded monuments' theme. (Milosz writes: "It's hard to guess where
that pride of poets comes from"). What I like about Landor is how quickly he
cuts to the chase - this is not some lengthy meditation on art and
immortality, this is the poem as an act of schoolboy vanity, the very
arrogance of the claim founded in a deep insecurity, in the memory of being
laughed at, of not being taken seriously.

It is also, a more intensely personal poem, more intimate and somehow more
pathetic. Plus I love the sequence of thought that connects 'no tide shall
ever wash away' to 'read o'er ocean wide'. This is not, in my view, a great
poem, but it is an interesting take on an age old theme.

Aseem.

P.S. A note on the text. The text (and title) here comes from bartleby. My
edition of the Penguin Book of English Verse titles this poem Ianthe (which
is misleading, I think, because Landor has a number of poems with that
title) and has a slightly different text:

 WELL I remember how you smiled
   To see me write your name upon
 The soft sea-sand...'O! what a child!
   You think you're writing upon stone!'
 I have since written what no tide
   Shall ever wash away, what men
 Unborn shall read o'er ocean wide
   And find Ianthe's name agen.