Sonnet II, from "To W.P." -- George Santayana

Guest poem sent in by Jeffrey Sean Huo

(Poem #1767) Sonnet II, from "To W.P." With you a part of me hath passed away; For in the peopled forest of my mind A tree made leafless by this wintry wind Shall never don again its green array. Chapel and fireside, country road and bay, Have something of their friendliness resigned; Another, if I would, I could not find, And I am grown much older in a day. But yet I treasure in my memory Your gift of charity, and young hearts ease, And the dear honour of your amity; For these once mine, my life is rich with these. And I scarce know which part may greater be,-- What I keep of you, or you rob from me. -- George Santayana

A brief biography of George Santayana was run with Minstrels Poem #25 ("The
Poet's Testament"). This poem was first published in 1896, as part of
Santayana's collection "Sonnets and other Verses". The W.P. of the title was
Warrick Potter, who tragically died of complications from a boating accident
three years earlier. Santayana suffered a number of significant personal
griefs and shocks as he approached his 30th birthday, including the tragic
deaths of many of his close friends.  But the death of Potter, whom
Santayana described as his "last real friend", hit Santayana particularly
hard. Today's poem is the second of four sonnets written by Santayana in
memory of his friend.

For me, Santayana in this sonnet captures a very deep idea within his lines.
Every death is a sorrow. But there are a rare few individuals close to us,
who filled our lives and the lives of all around them with life and laughter
and joy. Who touched us deeply with their wit and wonder, humor and
imagination, kindness and beauty. Those deaths hurt especially deeply
precisely because their lives enriched us so. Or, to turn around Santayana's
closing: we wouldn't be filled with so much sorrow at their deaths, if their
lives hadn't filled us with such laughter and joy.

There was a young lady of brilliant humor and wonderful imagination, founder
and moderator of an online humor quotations community myself and many of my
friends are a part of. In August, she went to the emergency room for severe
abdominal pain and was discovered to have a highly aggressive metatastic
colon cancer. Despite heroic measures, she died on Thursday, exactly a month
before her thirty-third birthday.

This poem is submitted to Minstrels in her memory.

Jeffrey Huo

I Sought on Earth a Garden of Delight -- George Santayana

Guest poem sent in by Cristina Gazzieri

(Poem #1475) I Sought on Earth a Garden of Delight I sought on earth a garden of delight, Or island altar to the Sea and Air, Where gentle music were accounted prayer, And reason, veiled, performed the happy rite. My sad youth worshipped at the piteous height Where God vouchsafed the death of man to share; His love made mortal sorrow light to bear, But his deep wounds put joy to shamed flight. And though his arms, outstretched upon the tree, Were beautiful, and pleaded my embrace, My sins were loath to look upon his face. So came I down from Golgotha to thee, Eternal Mother; let the sun and sea Heal me, and keep me in thy dwelling-place. -- George Santayana

   I was born and brought up in Italy, the very heart of Christianity, and
it is not difficult, for me, to understand the feeling of the poet in this
sonnet.  The sense of guilt, the feeling of constant inadequacy of your
moral life, the denial of pleasure... They are all part of the religious
feeling they tried to inculcate in us. The reaction against all this,
particularly from the 60s onwards has been radical, so that, today,
Catholicism has become (here, at least) more tolerant towards human
weakness, less strict and demanding, more open.

As many others of my generation I have read and re-read Bertrand Russell's
'Why I am not A Christian', yet, though from an intellectual point of view I
have always shared his views, I cannot completely avoid feeling the need for
a divine presence. As Santayana, I have often hoped for the existence (and,
I must admit, in times of need, I have also prayed) of a female divinity (a
mother goddess or a Madonna – call her what you like) – I thought I did so
because it was easier for me to pray to a divinity of the same gender, so I
was surprised when I read Santayana's poem. Our need must probably be
something more ancestral, the need to be soothed by a mother also in
maturity; the feeling that  we are bond to simple, elemental laws: the
cycles of nature, life and death, biological laws and an "Eternal Mother" is
closer to this than any other abstract, frowning or anguishing father god.

Cristina

The Poet's Testament -- George Santayana

Guest poem sent in by Rajeev

(Poem #25) The Poet's Testament I give back to the earth what the earth gave, All to the furrow, none to the grave, The candle's out, the spirit's vigil spent; Sight may not follow where the vision went. I leave you but the sound of many a word In mocking echoes haply overheard, I sang to heaven. My exile made me free, from world to world, from all worlds carried me. Spared by the furies, for the Fates were kind, I paced the pillared cloisters of the mind; All times my present, everywhere my place, Nor fear, nor hope, nor envy saw my face. Blow what winds would, the ancient truth was mine, And friendship mellowed in the flush of wine, And heavenly laughter, shaking from its wings Atoms of light and tears for mortal things. To trembling harmonies of field and cloud, Of flesh and spirit was my worship vowed. Let form, let music, let all quickening air Fulfil in beauty my imperfect prayer. -- George Santayana

  George Santayana is considered a contemporary architect of philosophic
  thought. He balanced his many interests to make considerable contributions
  in literature and philosophy. He distinguished himself as a professor of
  philosophy at Harvard University, teaching philosophy as a way of life
  rather than just as an academic subject.

  He was a philosopher, poet, critic of culture and literature, and
  best-selling novelist. Although born in Spain, Santayana said that he must
  be considered an American author and philosopher. Educated in the United
  States, he taught at Harvard University for over twenty years. He retired
  from Harvard in order to be a full-time writer and philosopher (he had
  planned for early retirement since the mid-1890s, but Harvard's president
  prevailed upon him to stay two years longer than he planned). Although he
  was invited to hold positions at Oxford University, Harvard University,
  and Brown University, he chose to live the remaining forty years of his
  life in Europe traveling and writing, finally settling in Rome in a
  Catholic hospital-clinic in 1941 after an unsuccessful attempt to leave
  the country for Switzerland during World War II. He was then seventy-nine
  years old. These forty international years were remarkably productive in
  terms of his literary corpus, and his correspondence as a celebrated
  philosopher and writer was extensive. He is one of a few philosophers to
  appear on the cover of Time magazine (3 February 1936).

    - Introduction to the Letters of George Santayana

What attracted me to poetry was the music and the sense of rhythm of it all.
This was not always the case with most of the works that I read, where the
beat wasn't apparent the first time. This particular poem was a notable
exception - simple, no frills, and it goes straight to your heart. I like to
think of it as the reason why we read poetry....

Regards

Rajeev

PS : Incidentally, Will Durant's masterpiece - The Story of Philosophy -
has a chapter on Santayana and his philosophical work, for those
interested....