The Chilterns -- Rupert Brooke

(Poem #514) The Chilterns Your hands, my dear, adorable, Your lips of tenderness - Oh, I've loved you faithfully and well, Three years, or a bit less. It wasn't a success. Thank God, that's done! and I'll take the road, Quit of my youth and you, The Roman road to Wendover By Tring and Lilley Hoo, As a free man may do. For youth goes over, the joys that fly, The tears that follow fast; And the dirtiest things we do must lie Forgotten at the last; Even love goes past. What's left behind I shall not find, The splendor and the pain; The splash of sun, the shouting wind, And the brave sting of rain, I may not meet again. But the years, that take the best away, Give something in the end; And a better friend than love have they, For none to mar or mend, That have themselves to friend. I shall desire and I shall find The best of my desires; The autumn road, the mellow wind That soothes the darkening shires. And laughter, and inn-fires. White mist about the black hedgerows, The slumbering Midland plain, The silence where the clover grows, And the dead leaves in the lane, Certainly, these remain. And I shall find some girl perhaps, And a better one than you, With eyes as wise, but kindlier, With lips as soft, but true. And I daresay she will do. -- Rupert Brooke

Note: The Chilterns are an English range of hills

Today's poem works on a number of levels. It certainly has a touch of
humour, or at least a rather bitter sense of irony, but it is certainly not
a humorous poem - it is at heart both serious and passionate, with a
somewhat morbid outlook remniniscent of Housman, though always balanced by
an element of deft self-mockery.

There is also a strong dash of the 'open road' theme (presaged by the poem's
title), the symbolic connection between wandering and leaving one's past
behind made explicit. And to round things off, the ever popular 'she left
me, but life goes on' theme - which merely goes to prove that unoriginality
of sentiment hurts a good poem not at all.

Construction:

The salient feature of today's poem is clearly the 'extra' line at the end
of each verse. The fifth line serves a dual purpose - it breaks the flow of
the poem, emphasising each verse in isolation, and it provides the perfect
place to either change the mood of, and seamlessly comment on, the preceding
quatrain, or wrap it up with a decisive image or pronouncement.

Links:

The two poets who instantly spring to mind are A. E. Housman and Dorothy
Parker. See, for instance, the former's "When I was One and Twenty":
  poem #86
and the latter's "A Well-Worn Story":
  [broken link] http://www.suck-my-big.org/blah/wellworn.html

Other poets who can flawlessly walk that fine line between pain and
flippancy include Millay, Teasdale and Betjeman - I don't have any
particular poems in mind at the moment, but all of them are well worth
exploring.

We've run one Brooke poem in the past: poem #280

Which links to a biography:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/7086/brookebionote.htm

and a commentary on today's poem (recommended - it has a nice appraisal of
Brooke with reference to his times):
http://www.geocities.com/~bblair/990803.htm

-martin

The Tavern -- Jalaluddin Rumi

From Samarkand, the Silk Road crosses the Pamirs and heads through Afghanistan
into Persia...

(Poem #513) The Tavern All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, And I intend to end up there. This drunkenness began in some other tavern. When I get back around to that place, I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile, I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary. The day is coming when I fly off, But who is it now in my ear who hears my voice? Who says words with my mouth? Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I cannot stop asking. If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks. I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way. Whoever brought me here will have to take me home. This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say. I don't plan it. When I'm outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all. We have a huge barrel of wine, but no cups. That's fine with us. Every morning We glow and in the evening we glow again. They say there's no future for us. They're right. Which is fine with us. -- Jalaluddin Rumi

(Excerpted from The Essential Rumi, translations by Coleman Barks with John
Moyne, 1995).

A beautiful and subtle meditation - the utter simplicity of Rumi's words
enhances the power of his creation. It's said that Rumi's mystical quatrains
were composed in a state of exaltation; as Britannica puts it, "... a state of
ecstasy, induced by the music of the flute or the drum, the hammering of the
goldsmiths, or the sound of the water mill in Meram, where Rumi used to go with
his disciples to enjoy nature."

thomas.

[Links]

Today's poem shares more than just a title with Harivanshrai Bachchan's
wonderful 'Madhushala (The Tavern)', which you can read in Sameer Siruguri's
superb translation at poem #72

There's more about Rumi (and about Persian/Urdu poetry in general) in the
commentary accompanying 'Spring Giddiness', at poem #473

Previous stops along the Silk Road:
Li Po, 'About Tu Fu', poem #505
Christopher Marlowe, 'Lament for Zenocrate', poem #507
James Elroy Flecker, 'The Golden Road to Samarkand', poem #510

[Moreover]

Rumi was the Emperor Akbar's favourite poet; Akbar, the greatest of the Great
Mughals, was a direct descendant of Timur. Yet another sign of the fundamental
interconnectedness of all things.

Silence -- Thomas Hood

Inspired by my previous poem...

(Poem #512) Silence There is a silence where hath been no sound, There is a silence where no sound may be, In the cold grave--under the deep, deep, sea, Or in wide desert where no life is found, Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound; No voice is hushed--no life treads silently, But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free, That never spoke, over the idle ground: But in green ruins, in the desolate walls Of antique palaces, where Man hath been, Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls, And owls, that flit continually between, Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan, There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone. -- Thomas Hood

Today's sonnet is built around an intriguing conceit - that there are two
kinds of silence, that where life has never been, and that which flows back
after man has come and gone.

A beautiful conceit, and beautifully developed - there's not a whole lot it
needs said about it. The use of 'self-conscious' at the end is unusual,
though - while I'm not sure what Hood intended by it, I personally lean
towards 'self-aware', rather than the more modern usage.

Links:

We've run one Hood poem, which includes a biography - see poem #251

-martin

Beautiful Lofty Things -- William Butler Yeats

Guest poem submitted by Sunil Iyengar:

(Poem #511) Beautiful Lofty Things Beautiful lofty things; O'Leary's noble head; My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd. "This Land of Saints", and then as the applause died out, "Of plaster Saints"; his beautiful mischievous head thrown back. Standish O'Grady supporting himself between the tables Speaking to a drunken audience high nonsensical words; Augusta Gregory seated at her great ormolu table Her eightieth winter approaching; "Yesterday he threatened my life, I told him that nightly from six to seven I sat at this table The blinds drawn up"; Maud Gonne at Howth station waiting a train, Pallas Athena in that straight back and arrogant head; All the Olympians; a thing never known again. -- William Butler Yeats

In light of the recent Larkin poem somebody contributed, "MCMXIV," I think
Yeats' last line might be taken as a precedent for the English poet's
conclusion, "Never such innocence again." I can't say whether "Beautiful Lofty
Things" had a direct bearing on the Larkin poem (both lyrics cap a charming
catalogue of reminiscences with the rueful "never again"), but if somebody can
dig up Larkin's 1973 Oxford Anthology of English Verse, perhaps he or she can
settle the question. I am confident, however, that Larkin featured other late
Yeats poems in his collection; these are often elegaic pieces about W.B.'s Irish
associates. (For example, I recall Larkin's inclusion of "In Memory of Eva
Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz" and "The Municipal Gallery, Revisited.")

But focus on "Beautiful Lofty Things" (circa 1938) for its plainspoken evocation
of the characters, scenes and events that mattered most to the poet. Or it may
not be that they "mattered most," necessarily, but at any rate the images assail
him like a torrent, line for line, ending with the solitary vision of his
unrequited love, Maude Gonne. Even the act of "waiting a train" seems to echo
the poet's longing at the end of life.

Other images: John O'Leary was an Irish patriot (1830-1907), mentioned in an
earlier Yeats poem, "September 1913," with the refrain: "Romantic Ireland's dead
and gone;/It's with O'Leary in the grave." The poet's father, J.B. Yeats, is
quoted as defending John Synge's play, "The Playboy of the Western World,"
before a jeering mob at Abbey Theatre. (Consult the collected letters between
father and son for a profile of this remarkable man -- a painter and lecturer
who died in New York .) Standish O'Grady was an Irish historian and novelist.
Augusta Gregory, herself a playwright and folklorist, was connected with Yeats
and the Celtic Revival from its earliest days. She died in 1932. According to
Yeats editor Richard J. Finneran, the quote within the poem refers to Lady
Gregory's response when threatened by a tenant during the Irish Civil War.

The references to "Pallas Athena" and "All the Olympians" apotheosize this
gallery of heroes into Greek divinities. It is not often appreciated how
seriously Yeats took friendship, but we have only to cite his oft-quoted verses
from another gallery ("Municipal"):

"Think where man's glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends."

Sunil Iyengar.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods -- George Gordon, Lord Byron

(Poem #510) There is a pleasure in the pathless woods There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. -- George Gordon, Lord Byron

     (from Childe Harold, Canto iv, Verse 178)

Another very common poetic theme - the desire for wild, lonely places seems
to strike a responsive chord in most people, whether as a renunciation of
society (and its attendant sensory overload), a wish to be 'closer to
nature' or a sense of beauty that city streets and people do not satisfy.
Or perhaps it is an extension of (or even a cause of) the wanderlust that
pervades poems like yesterday's 'Golden Road to Samarkand' and Stevenson's
'Vagabond'.

One of the problems I usually have with Byron is that his verse tends to
sound glib - one of the things that tempered my admiration of his admittedly
brilliant Don Juan. Thankfully, today's poem avoids that, being
unobtrusively crafted while maintaining the quiet solemnity that the subject
matter calls for.

Construction:

Spenserian stanzas. Here's what the Cambridge History of English and
American Literature has to say:

   In his letter to Moore, prefixed to The Corsair, Byron confesses that the
   Spenserian stanza is the measure most after his own heart, though it is
   well to remember that when he wrote these words he had not essayed the
   ottava rima. Disfigured as the stanzas of Childe Harold often are by
   jarring discords, it must be confessed that this ambitious measure
   assumed, in Byron's hands, remarkable vigour, while its elaborately knit
   structure saved him from the slipshod movement which is all too common in
   his blank verse. Yet, this vigour is purchased at a heavy price. Rarely
   in Byron do we meet with the stately, if slow-moving, magnificence with
   which Spenser has invested the verse of his own creation; the effect
   produced on our ears by the music of The Faerie Queene is that of a
   symphony of many strings, whereas, in Childe Harold, we listen to a
   trumpetcall, clear and resonant, but wanting the subtle cadence and rich
   vowel-harmonies of the Elizabethan master.

        -- http://www.bartleby.com/222/0209.html

On Childe Harold:

There's a nice essay on the significance of Childe Harold at Bartleby (from
which the above note on the construction is quoted):
http://www.bartleby.com/222/0209.html

Some quotes:
   The surprising success of the first two cantos of Childe Harold on their
   first appearance in 1812 was in no small measure due to the originality
   of the design, and to Byron's extension of the horizon of romance.
   [...]
   There was much that appealed to the jaded tastes of English society
   under the regency in the conception of Childe Harold as `Pleasure's
   palled victim,' seeking distraction from disappointed love and Comus
   revelry in travel abroad; but, placed amid scenes which quiver with an
   intensity of light and colour, Childe Harold remains from first to last
   an unreal, shadowy form. He is thrust into the picture as fitfully as the
   Spenserian archaisms are thrust into the text, and, when, in the last
   canto, he disappears altogether, we are scarcely conscious of his
   absence.

Random associations:

"Light breaks where no sun shines" - Dylan Thomas
"I could not love thee, dear, so much/ Loved I not honour more" - Lovelace,
'To Lucasta'

Links:

We've run a couple of Byron's poems in the past: see poem #169 for a
biography and [broken link] http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/index_poet.html for
the rest of the poems.

The Childe Harold essay (once again): http://www.bartleby.com/222/0209.html

Today's poem evoked far too many others to list them all, but worth
rereading are: poem #1, poem #2
[if only to note the oblique similarity between the first two poems we ran]
poem #113, poem #309

-martin