As You Came from the Holy Land -- Sir Walter Raleigh

Guest poem submitted by Fraser Spratt :

(Poem #1695) As You Came from the Holy Land As you came from the holy land Of Walsinghame, Met you not with my true love By the way as you came ? How shall I know your true love, That have met many one, As I went to the holy land, That have come, that have gone ? She is neither white nor brown, But as the heavens fair ; There is none hath a form so divine In the earth or the air. Such a one did I meet, good sir, Such an angel-like face, Who like a queen, like a nymph, did appear, By her gait, by her grace. She hath left me here all alone, All alone, as unknown, Who sometimes did me lead with herself, And me loved as her own. What's the cause that she leaves you alone, And a new way doth take, Who loved you once as her own, And her joy did you make ? I have loved her all my youth, But now old, as you see, Love likes not the falling fruit From the withered tree. Know that Love is a careless child, And forgets promise past ; He is blind, he is deaf when he list, And in faith never fast. His desire is a dureless content, And a trustless joy ; He is won with a world of despair, And is lost with a toy. Of womankind such indeed is the love, Or the word love abusèd, Under which many childish desires And conceits are excusèd. But true love is a durable fire, In the mind ever burning, Never sick, never old, never dead, From itself never turning. -- Sir Walter Raleigh

I've been listening to Andrew Motion's "A Map of British Poetry" series on
Radio 4 [1] and have simply been blown away by every show. The vast range of
poetry that is being performed is amazing, and all the actors they've hired
are simply outstanding, Simon Russell Beale especially. It was his reading
of this poem I'm submitting that opened my eyes, if you will, to just how
moving poetry can be.

And you know, there's a lot of brilliant analysis in this archive, and for
that I applaud all involved. It can, however, feel slightly unnecessary and
intimidating on occasion. That of course may simply be my limited experience
showing through. Nevertheless, I know what effects me emotionally and this
poem most certainly does that.

Fraser.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/mapportal.shtml

Learning -- Judith Viorst

Guest poem sent in by Kathryn Stinson

(Poem #1694) Learning I'm learning to say thank you. And I'm learning to say please. And I'm learning to use Kleenex, Not my sweater, when I sneeze. And I'm learning not to dribble. And I'm learning not to slurp. And I'm learning (though it sometimes really hurts me) Not to burp. And I'm learning to chew softer When I eat corn on the cob. And I'm learning that it's much Much easier to be a slob. -- Judith Viorst

I memorized Viorst's "Learning" with my third grade son and recited it in
front of his third grade class, with him.  What a pleasure to share it,
parenting the same child who memorized it with me, as he was actually
learning little nuances of polite living.

It was a class assignment, and all the children memorized something and then
stood to recite, some with their parents, some going it alone.

Public school teachers are unsung heroes.  I thank mine whenever I get the
chance.

And a bunch of them have put together poetry sites for the little guys.
Here's a gateway site for several good children's poetry sites:

http://www.shadowpoetry.com/links/childrenspoetrylinks.html

~Kathryn Stinson

[Biography]

 Judith Viorst is the author of eight collections of poetry and five books of
 prose, including the bestseller Necessary Losses and her comic novel,
 Murdering Mr. Monti.

 ....

 Viorst has ... written twelve children's books, among them the classic
 Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible,  No Good, Very Bad Day.

 http://www.annonline.com/interviews/980112/biography.html

[Theme]

 The current theme, poems worthy of memorisation, started at Poem #1687

The Garden -- Andrew Marvell

Guest poem submitted by Andrew Bateman:

(Poem #1693) The Garden How vainly men themselves amaze To win the palm, the oak, or bays, And their uncessant labors see Crowned from some single herb or tree, Whose short and narrow-vergèd shade Does prudently their toils upbraid; While all the flowers and trees do close To weave the garlands of repose. Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, And Innocence, thy sister dear! Mistaken long, I sought you then In busy companies of men: Your sacred plants, if here below, Only among the plants will grow; Society is all but rude, To this delicious solitude. No white nor red was ever seen So amorous as this lovely green; Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, Cut in these trees their mistress' name. Little, alas, they know or heed, How far these beauties hers exceed! Fair trees! wheresoe'er your barks I wound No name shall but your own be found. When we have run our passion's heat, Love hither makes his best retreat: The gods who mortal beauty chase, Still in a tree did end their race. Apollo hunted Daphne so, Only that she might laurel grow, And Pan did after Syrinx speed, Not as a nymph, but for a reed. What wondrous life is this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons as I pass, Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness: The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade. Here at the fountain's sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide: There like a bird it sits and sings, Then whets and combs its silver wings; And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light. Such was that happy garden-state, While man there walked without a mate: After a place so pure and sweet, What other help could yet be meet! But 'twas beyond a mortal's share To wander solitary there: Two paradises 'twere in one To live in Paradise alone. How well the skillful gardener drew Of flowers and herbs this dial new; Where from above the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run; And, as it works, the industrious bee Computes its time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers! -- Andrew Marvell

        (1621-1678)

Given the last poem ("You, Andrew Marvell" by Archibald MacLeish, Poem
#1692) I thought it would be good to include Marvell's "The Garden." I have
no idea what this poem is about. The garden relates to Earth and to
Paradise, and there is a to and fro between human endeavour and the mindless
perfection of the garden. There are religious overtones (and who, living in
Marvell's England, at war between the King/Church of England and
Puritanism/Parliament could avoid such overtones?). All I can say is that
this poem has wandered around my head since I  first read it. At times when
everything seems to be going to the dogs, I find much comfort in the quiet
sanity of the lines

   Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
   Withdraws into its happiness:
   The mind, that ocean where each kind
   Does straight its own resemblance find;
   Yet it creates, transcending these,
   Far other worlds, and other seas;
   Annihilating all that's made
   To a green thought in a green shade.

For me, if he had written nothing else, this would have been enough. You
could argue that the lines "Two paradises 'twere in one / To live in
Paradise alone." are misogynist, but the rest of the work, I think,
compensates for this.

Andrew.

Excerpts from a Father's Wisdom -- A K Ramanujan

Guest poem submitted by Rama Rao, a stanza from:

(Poem #1692) Excerpts from a Father's Wisdom Do not worry about Despair Just comb your hair Despair is a strange disease I think it even happens to trees. -- A K Ramanujan

Sometimes a poem seeps in without one realising, and resonates. Ramanujan,
in my opinion the finest Indian poet to have written in English, is often
simple and matter-of-fact in his themes. Yet I find these lines haunting and
melancholic and memorisable.

Rama Rao.

You, Andrew Marvell -- Archibald MacLeish

Guest poem sent in by Vivek Narayanan

(Poem #1691) You, Andrew Marvell And here face down beneath the sun Here upon Earth's noonward height To feel the always coming on The always rising of the night: To feel creep up the curving East The earthy chill of dusk and slow upon those underlands the vast And ever climbing shadow grow And strange at Ecbatan the trees Take leaf by leaf the evening strange The flooding dark about their knees The mountains over Persia change And now at Kermanshah the gate Dark empty and the withered grass And through the twilight now the late Few travellers in the Westward pass And Baghdad darken and the bridge Across the silent river gone And through Arabia the edge of evening widen and steal on And deepen in Palmyra's street The wheel-rut in the ruined stone And Lebanon fade out and Crete High through the clouds and overblown And over Sicily the air Still flashing with the landward gulls And loom and slowly disappear The sails above the shadowy hulls And Spain go under and the shore Of Africa the gilded sand And evening vanish and no more The low pale light across that land Nor now the long light on the sea: And here face downward in the sun To feel how swift how secretly The shadow of the night comes on... -- Archibald MacLeish

My number one memorisable poem has to be at the moment Roethke's The Waking;
of course it's not about sleep at all, but the sleep of reason and anxiety,
ie., an attempt to put reason and anxiety to sleep.  Sure enough, it seems
to have a very real, calming effect on me when I recite it to myself: which
leads me to believe that the number one reason we memorise poems is that so
they may be internalised in the living body and have an actual, physical
effect, be a way of reforming the self.  Well... since that one is already
in the archive, I'm typing up this other famous poem from memory, a
remarkable visualization of time in the shadow that creeps as the Earth
turns.

The poem's own movement/cadence and its eschewing of punctuation makes for a
physical mimesis of the shadow's constant growing; and it manages both a
very large scale and a minuteness of seen detail: such as (and how!) the
wheel-rut left by centuries of wheels on Palmyra's street.

Slightly longish, MacLeish's poem is nevertheless surprisingly easily to
memorise because of the rhymed quartrains and the very steady, measured
iambic (te-tum te-tum) line which is stretched out longingly by all those
long vowels.  When I checked my version out against the poem at the
poets.org website there were a few things I'd gotten wrong, I'd typed: "the"
for "those" in the 7th line, "darken" instead of "deepen" in the 21st line,
and "downward" instead of "landward" in the 26th line.  Thus the exercise
was a very good one which made me pay renewed attention again to MacLeish's
subtle and rather careful word-choices.

I'd also kept the last four lines together and not used any punctuation.
The punctuation seems to be a bit different in different versions on the
net; for instance, in one version the poem ends in an ellipsis, in another in
a full stop-- which makes me think, my humble opinion, that perhaps the poem
would indeed be better without any punctuation at all.

One clarification may also aid the memorising of the poem: going strictly by
sense, the third stanza parses out as follows: "... and strange at Ecbatan,
the trees take leaf by leaf the evening; strange, the flooding dark about
their knees, the mountains over Persia change."  So there should be a slight
pause or breath just before the second "strange" to make the enjambment
clear.

Vivek

[Links]

A great piece by Mark Strand on today's poem:
 http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/author.pperl?authorid=30082&view=fromauthor

Biography:
 http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/macleish/life.htm

Today's poem is very reminiscent,  in tone, feel and rhythm, of
Auden's "The Fall
of Rome" [Poem #494]