Requiem: The Soldier -- Humbert Wolfe

Guest poem submitted by Valerie Clarke:

(Poem #1504) Requiem: The Soldier Down some cold field in a world outspoken the young men are walking together, slim and tall, and though they laugh to one another, silence is not broken; there is no sound however clear they call. They are speaking together of what they loved in vain here, but the air is too thin to carry the things they say. They were young and golden, but they came on pain here, and their youth is age now, their gold is grey. Yet their hearts are not changed, and they cry to one another, 'What have they done with the lives we laid aside? Are they young with our youth, gold with our gold, my brother? Do they smile in the face of death, because we died?' Down some cold field in a world uncharted the young seek each other with questioning eyes. They question each other, the young, the golden hearted, of the world that they were robbed of in their quiet paradise. -- Humbert Wolfe

      1916.

My guest poem is another Humbert Wolfe.  I see you have Grey Squirrel.  This
is from his Requiem - The Soldier (1916).  Obviously anti-war, but to me it
brings such grieving for all our dead, whether young in war, or old in bed.
One of those poems with a dreamy, haunting, evocative quality whose words
need to be read aloud and savoured.  It makes me stop and think, and shiver
a little, but be thankful for Wolfe's life and skill.

Wolfe was born in Milan in 1851 but grew up in Bradford, got a First at
Oxford and died in 1940.  He published poetry from the early 1920s while
working for the Civil Service.  Once considered a favourite for Poet
Laureate.  At the outbreak of WW2 he advocated that writers would be better
employed writing propaganda than fighting.

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Shijo -- Chong Chol

Guest poem submitted by Lisa:

(Poem #1503) Shijo The rise and fall of nations are myriad; Taebang Fortress is covered with autumn grass. To the herdsman's pipes I'll leave my ignorance of the past and I'll drink a cup to this great age of peace. -- Chong Chol

This poem appeared today in the Korean Herald, in their "A Poem for
Breakfast" feature.  I was struck by the first line, pointing to the
ephemeral nature of even great nations, as they rise, fall, and are
eventually become covered over with grass.  In the midst of daily bad news
from all corners of the world, much of it caused by nations attempting to
create some sort of permanence for themselves and their ideologies, a
sentiment such as this strikes me as, bizarrely, hopeful.  Nations come and
go, always.  I think I'll join Chong Chol in leaving my ignorance and
drinking a cup -- though I wonder if the age he lived in was really the
great age of peace!

The poem appeared here:
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2004/04/15/asp

The Korean Herald had this to say about the poem:
Chong Chol, the great poet-bureaucrat of the mid-Joseon period, treats one
of the great themes of literature, the ephemeral nature of human existence.
His stance is typically Korean. He says, concentrate on how good things are
now and forget the turbulence of the past! Taebang Fortress is today's
Namwon in North Jeolla Province, Chunhyang's town.

More information about the Joseon period can be found here:
[broken link] http://www.korea.net/learnaboutkorea/history/earlyjoseon.html
[broken link] http://www.korea.net/learnaboutkorea/history/latejoseon.html

More information on the Taebang Fortress (today the Namwon Castle) can be
found here:
[broken link] http://namwon.jeonbuk.kr/eng/sub/usan/nam.htm

--Lisa

Law Like Love -- W H Auden

Guest poem sent in by Aseem Kaul

(Poem #1502) Law Like Love Law, say the gardeners, is the sun, Law is the one All gardeners obey To-morrow, yesterday, to-day. Law is the wisdom of the old, The impotent grandfathers feebly scold; The grandchildren put out a treble tongue, Law is the senses of the young. Law, says the priest with a priestly look, Expounding to an unpriestly people, Law is the words in my priestly book, Law is my pulpit and my steeple. Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose, Speaking clearly and most severely, Law is as I've told you before, Law is as you know I suppose, Law is but let me explain it once more, Law is The Law. Yet law-abiding scholars write: Law is neither wrong nor right, Law is only crimes Punished by places and by times, Law is the clothes men wear Anytime, anywhere, Law is Good morning and Good night. Others say, Law is our Fate; Others say, Law is our State; Others say, others say Law is no more, Law has gone away. And always the loud angry crowd, Very angry and very loud, Law is We, And always the soft idiot softly Me. If we, dear, know we know no more Than they about the Law, If I no more than you Know what we should and should not do Except that all agree Gladly or miserably That the Law is And that all know this If therefore thinking it absurd To identify Law with some other word, Unlike so many men I cannot say Law is again, No more than they can we suppress The universal wish to guess Or slip out of our own position Into an unconcerned condition. Although I can at least confine Your vanity and mine To stating timidly A timid similarity, We shall boast anyway: Like love I say. Like love we don't know where or why, Like love we can't compel or fly, Like love we often weep, Like love we seldom keep. -- W H Auden

In response to Michelle's call for poems about lawyers and the law, here's
one of my favourite Auden poems. Aside from the usual Auden brilliance (the
tone so nonchalantly conversational, the seemingly endless ability to carry
on with a single metaphor) this poem has always been special to me for three
reasons. First, that unlike many Auden poems this one comes to its "timid
similarity" right at the very end, so that having chuckled through the poem
once you are almost compelled to go back to the beginning and read it
through again, this time replacing Law with Love and realising how truly
brilliant the comparison is.

Second, that it's a poem that cries to be read aloud - even reading it in
one's head every stanza has it's own 'voice' creating an incredible
impression of movement as one jumps breathlessly from one person's
view--point to another's.

And finally, for a gem of a last line - one that both makes you laugh and
makes you want to cry with a terrible longing for our lost loves.  In a poem
that is otherwise fairly cheerful it introduces a note of honest grief, that
lifts the poem above the merely clever.

Aseem Kaul

The Quality of Mercy is not Strain'd -- William Shakespeare

Guest poem sent in by Michelle Whitehead

(Poem #1501) The Quality of Mercy is not Strain'd The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That, in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much To mitigate the justice of thy plea; Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there. -- William Shakespeare

           The Merchant of Venice, Act IV Scene 1

I am currently studying "Legal Ethics and Professional Conduct" at Uni. I
have been using the Minstrels site to spark discussion with my fellow
students about the portrayal of lawyers in literature. I was wondering
whether all the Minstrels out there would like to help me out by submitting
their favourite 'lawyer' poems, whether positive or negative?

Since it is not currently on the list I thought I would start the ball
rolling with Portia's speech from The Merchant of Venice, which is perhaps
the best known 'positive' representation of a lawyer in poetry - although
Portia was only impersonating a lawyer and thus could freely use the
language of religion and morality. However, Portia triumphs because she
knows the loophole in the legislation that favours her client. She works
within the man-made law to give effect to the 'higher law' which is the
subject of this poem. This is, in effect, a statement of her personal
ethics.

Other lawyer poems which are already archived by the Minstrels include:

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1392.html
(The Law the Lawyers Know About - H.D.C. Pepler; suggests lawyers are
ignorant of natural and moral laws - presumably having spent too much time
with their noses in books, though there is also a suggestion of an inherent
lack of ethics; this poem obviously touched a nerve in some
poetically-inclined members of the legal profession...)

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1393.html
(The Lawyers Know Too Much - Carl Sandburg; this poem is another
unflattering depiction of lawyers. It suggests they inhabit a dead world of
rhetoric, divorced from the real, living world, yet sucking it dry. I
personally find the rhetorical question which ends this poem to be a
wonderful image for prompting thought about legal ethics and the public
perception of lawyers!)

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/868.html
(Partition - W.H.Auden; looks at Radcliffe's partitioning of India &
Pakistan; gives some sense of the harried nature of lawyers, particularly
mediators trying to do the best for both sides.)

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1126.html
(The Shooting of Dan McGrew - Robert W. Service; very entertaining yarn from
the Yukon gold fields; in contrast with the cold, dispassionate environment
of the first two poems above, this poem introduces some of the drama of
courtroom narratives; lawyers are only mentioned in the last stanza, but
they are portrayed as dispassionate untanglers of the facts - the ones who
sift through the story to find the 'truth' - a truth which significantly
differs from the conclusion of the narrating witness, who is the involved
observer of human nature)

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/842.html
(To a Goose - Robert Southey; once again, lawyers are only incidental to
this poem...  though here their portrayal as perpetually malevolent forces
in society is used more as an accepted cliche which the poem (very subtly)
questions. The other cliche in the poem is the 'love-sick poet's sonnet' -
but the poem is a sonnet which is anything but love-sick!  Hence an implied
questioning of the reliability of cliches.)

Cheers,
Michelle Whitehead

John Keats -- J D Salinger

Guest poem sent in by Pavithra Krishnan

(Poem #1500) John Keats John Keats John Keats John Please put your scarf on. -- J D Salinger

          (From "Seymour An Introduction")

You know it's a good poem when you reach the quiet end and find something's
taken your breath away and left a knot in your throat instead. Couldn't Not
send this in after the Cullen's poem [Poem #1497]. His lines read wrenching,
read like they've been ripped from the dramatic depths of a poet's passion-
and pain.  This poem by contrast is more like a child tugging at your coat
sleeve.  Filled with persistence and a very vulnerable power. This is a poem
written by Seymour aged 8 and we only learn of its existence through Buddy,
his brother (both of them members of the Glass family created by J. D.
Salinger).

Seymour is an unusual child who grows up to be an unusual man and this
particular poem is just a throwaway detail in a book full of throwaway
details that for some reason you don't throw away, but stop at suddenly-
because they are saying so much that you almost didn't hear and they make
you wonder what else in your world might be saying crucial things that you
are drowning out in a profusion of detail. But what got me then and what
gets me now is the stark simplicity of this poem's understated pleading and
its tender tardiness, and sure I know that it's Salinger and not Seymour who
wrote it, but the thought of the thought of this poem in the head of an 8
year old child...

And suddenly I am sad inside, really sad for the first time for a boy-man
named John, John Keats who loved beauty and who wrote its truth, and who
died of tuberculosis when he was 25.

Pavi

[Links]

Biography: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/salinger.htm