John Donne and Elizabeth Jennings: Bells

No man is an iland, intire of it selfe

No man is an iland, intire of it selfe;
Every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;
If a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse,
As well as if a Promontorie were,
As well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were;
Any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
-- John Donne --
Devotions upon Emergent Occasion
Meditation XVII


 


Bell-Ringer

"The bells renew the town, discover it
And give it back itself again, the man
Pulling the rope collects the houses as
Thoughts gather in the mind unscanned, he is
Crowding the town together from the night
And making bells the morning, in remote

Control of every life (for the bells shout 'Wake'
And shake out dreams, though it is he who pulls
The sleep aside.)  But not into his thought
Do men continue as in lives of power;

For when each bell is pulled sufficiently
He never sees himself as any cause
Or need; the sounds had left his hands to sing
A meaning for each listening separately,
A separate meaning for the single choice.

Yet bells retire to silence, need him when
Time must be shown a lucid interval
And men look up as if the air were full
Of birds descending, bells exclaiming in
His hands but shouting wider than his will."

-- Elizabeth Jennings --
Collected Poems


Several days ago I read Elizabeth Jennings' poem, and it has stayed with me, occasionally popping up in odd moments.   A day or so ago, early in the morning  "when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky" Donne's poem emerged from somewhere.

Both poems focus on the human community, but from a slightly different perspective, or so it seems to me.  Donne's poem asserts the close relationship of all humans, so much so that the death of one "diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde;"  However he just asserts it and gives no reason why this is so.  Conversely, I suppose that each birth has the opposite effect: it increases him.

Of course, it is the last two lines. " And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;/
It tolls for thee." that provides a link to Jennings poem.  Jennings' poem proposes that it is the sound of the bells that "collects the houses" and to some extent controls their lives.

The title, however, is "Bell-Ringer," not "Bells."  Jennings tells us that the bell-ringer is not aware of his power or role in the community.  His job is simply to ring the bells at a specified time, and that's all there is to it.

Are there others who possess and exercise similar powers but are unaware of it?  

One last point:  I wonder, though, is it the sound of the bells, or  something signified by the bells.   I have a block, I fear, for I can hardly think of bells without thinking of church and church bells.  I have a problem considering bells in a non-religious setting, so I can't go beyond thinking that the sound of the bells may symbolize a faith that unites the human community.

Are there other possibilities? Could it be language or culture?

The Eagle

 


 
 Hokusai:  Eagle in Flight





The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson --



While the painting by Hokusai doesn't quite exactly match Tennyson's poem, I think it does portray the spirit of the poem.  

Short ones, but. . .

Must be in a strange mood this morning as I read these short poems and found that they brought a smile, not a laugh, but just a gentle smile. I hope they do the same for you.


Caged Birds

The young finch asked the old one why he wept:
"There's comfort in this cage where we are kept."
"You who were born here may well think that's so
But I knew freedom once, and weep to know."

-- Ignacy Krasicki --
from World Poetry,  trans. Jerszy Peterkiewicz and
Burns Singer




Rival  Beauties

Slanting their parasols against the blaze,
They smiled politely, went their separate ways. . .

-- Rskuten --
from A Chime of Windbells, Harold Stewart, ed.







Hunger for Beauty

Beside the road a pink hibicus flowered,
Which my discriminating horse devoured!

-- Basho --
from A Chime of Windbells, Harold Stewart, ed.




The Master and the Dog

Because of thieves, a dog barked all night through.
The master, sleepless, beat him black and blue.
On the next night the dog slept; and thieves came.
The silent dog was beaten all the same.

-- Ignacy Krasicki --
from World Poetry,  trans. Jerszy Peterkiewicz and
Burns Singer







I hope the above bring a smile this Monday morn.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882): The Two Longfellows

Presented are two poems written by Longfellow,  one published in 1836 and one published some forty years later.  I wonder what has happened to bring about such a change in perspective.


Longfellow the Younger


A Psalm of Life

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

   Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

   And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

   And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

   Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

   Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

   Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

   And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

   Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

   In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

   Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

   Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,— act in the living Present!

   Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

   We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

   Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

   With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

   Learn to labor and to wait.

This was published in  1838 when Longfellow was 31.






Longfellow the Elder

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown,
The traveller hastens toward the town,
       And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
       And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
       And the tide rises, the tide falls.

This poem was published in 1879, when Longfellow was 72 years old.  He died three years later in 1882.



An image brought up in both, but with a different conclusion to the latter.

 Longfellow the Younger

"Lives of great men all remind us

   We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

   Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

   Seeing, shall take heart again."



 Longfellow the Elder
"Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
       And the tide rises, the tide falls."

His view of those footsteps in the sand has changed somewhat, it appears.  

Octavio Paz: some short poems

Here

My steps along this street
resound
             in another street
in which
              I hear my steps
passing along this street
in which

Only the mist is real

   -- Octavio Paz --

I have been in a thick fog or mist and there are strange sounds and strange visions immersed in there, along with me.


Pedestrian

He walked among the crowds
on the Boulevard Sebasto',
thinking about things.
A red light stopped him.
He looked up:
                        over
the gray roofs, silver
among the brown birds,
a fish flew.
The light turned green.
As he crossed the street he wondered
what he'd been thinking.

         -- Octavio Paz --

I was not very alert when I first read this poem, but something bothered me about it--just couldn't put my finger on it.  I am ashamed to admit that I didn't find it until the third reading.  Perhaps I did see it the second time but refused to "see it."   Perhaps the colors distracted me as I read along--first red, then gray, followed by silver and then brown, with the silver being the only color that didn't immediately precede the noun it modified.  Who knows?  Maybe I'm just an inattentive reader at times (only at times I hope.)




Exclamation

Stillness
              not on the branch
in the air
               Not in the air
in the moment
                       hummingbird     

                  -- Octavio Paz --

A hummingbird--it's here, and then somewhere else, and then gone.

This one is very much like a haiku, or so it struck me.  I remembered it when I came across the following poem:



Basho An                                                 Basho An

The whole world fits in-                          El mundo cabe                       
to seventeen syllables,                             en diecisiete silabas:
and you in this hut.                                  tu en esta choza.

Straw thatch and tree trunks:                   Troncos y paja:
they come in through the crannies:          por las rendijas entran
Buddhas and insects.                                Budas e insectos.

Made out of thin air,                                 Hecho de aire
between the pines and the rocks               entre pinos y rocas
the poem sprouts up.                                 brota el poema.

An interweaving                                        Entretejidas  
of vowels and the consonants:                   vocales, consonantes:
the house of the world.                              casa del mundo.

Centuries of bones,                                    Heusos de siglos,
mountains: sorrow turned to stone:           penas ya pen~as, montes:
here they are weightless.                           aqui no pesan.

What I am saying                                      Esto quie digo
barely fills up the three lines:                    son apenas tres lineas:
hut of syllables.                                          choza de silabas. 


                                     -- Octavio Paz --


The first and third lines consist of five syllables while the second line has seven--the seventeen syllables of a class haiku.  In the fifth stanza, the second "penas" should have a tilde over the "n."

Basho, of course, is the most famous haiku poet in Japan.  I once purchased a book titled The Haiku Masters and was surprised to find that Basho was not included among them.  The editor in the Introduction explained that the Masters are those superior haiku poets who are second to Basho, who is not a haiku master, but the Haiku Poet.


Example

A butterfly flew between the cars,
Marie Jose said:  it must be Chuang Tzu,
on a tour of New York.
                                       But the butterfly
didn't know it was a butterfly
dreaming it was Chuang Tzu
                                                or Chuang Tzu
dreaming he was a butterfly.
The butterfly never wondered:
                                                  it flew.

                  --  Octavio Paz --


This, of course, refers to a famous saying by Chuang Tzu, some thousands of years ago, in which he supposedly comments on the nature of reality--that one can't tell the difference between reality and a dream.  He said that once he dreamt he was a butterfly and then awoke, and couldn't decide whether he was a butterfly dreaming that he was Chuang Tzu or Chuang Tzu dreaming that he was a butterfly.  I always believed he was satirizing those pompous sages whose wise utterances consisted of obscure formulations.  They always reminded me of the following:
 
Seek clarity--        and you gain wisdom.
Seek wisdom--      and you gain obscurity.
Seek obscurity--    and you gain followers.





Octavio, of course, has many long poems, but those are for another day.

Which, if any, are the most interesting to you, and why?

All poems come from The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, edited by Eliot Weinberger and published as a New Directions Paperback in 1991.  Most translations are by Eliot Weinberger.

Robert Louis Stevenson and Langston Hughes: Two points of view

Requiem

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
   And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
     And the hunter home from the hill.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson --




Death of an Old Seaman

We buried him high on a windy hill,
But his soul went out to sea.
I know, for I heard, when all was still,
His sea-soul say to me:

Put no tombstone at my head,
For here I do not make my bed.
Strew no flowers on my grave,
I've gone back to the wind and wave.
Do not, do not weep for me,
For I am happy with my sea.

-- Langston Hughes --
from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
Arnold Rampersad, Editor


It almost seems as though Hughes' poem is a response to Stevenson's.  Some days I'm with Stevenson, but on other days, well, Hughes seems right for me.  Actually I'm of two minds here: both seem right and fitting when I read them. 

Some novels, stories, and poems that I revisit regularly

 The following is a short list of some novels, poems, and short stories that I reread irregularly for the most part.  There's no particular order or schedule to this.  One day I will get the urge to read something once again, and so I dig it out, settle down in my recliner, surrender to the cat's demand for some lap time, and leave this world for a while.   There are others whose names I can't come up with right now, but sometime tomorrow or the next day, week, month, year, I will see one in my bookcase or read a comment by somebody about it and that's it--time for a another visit. 


J. R. R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings   
These three books are the ones that I have read more than any other work on my reread list, which is strange because I prefer SF to fantasy.   Right now, I am slowly reading The Silmarillion and expect to get to the others this year.    


Thomas Mann
The Magic Mountain
This may be the second most reread book on my list.  I first read it while an undergraduate sometime during the years 1958-1961.  It was for a lit course, and I had to choose a novel from a list provided by the professor to write the outside paper on.  I choose this one, probably because of the title, and I haven't stopped reading it since.  I am now on my second hardbound copy as the first one is falling apart.

Life in a TB sanitarium doesn't sound that enthralling, but once begun, I found it impossible to put down.  It's partially based on a true experience.  Mann's wife went to a sanitarium for several months because of a lung complaint.  While visiting her, Mann underwent some testing and, like his hero Hans Castorp, was told that it would be a good idea if he signed himself in.  Unlike Castorp, he refused and, instead, wrote a novel about the experience.


Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment
I've reread this a number of times, perhaps as often as The Magic Mountain, or close to it anyway.  I consider this book a very significant work because it first introduced me to Dostoyevsky (I think I've read everything of his that's been translated into English), secondly it introduced me to Russian literature, and thirdly it was my introduction to foreign literature.  Moreover, I may not have selected Mann's The Magic Mountain a year or so later. and instead.  I might have gone with an English language work instead.

Raskolnikov believes himself to be a superior person who is not bound by the laws of human society.  The average person is someone who, if he kills someone, is caught and punished.  On the other hand, superior people, such as Napoleon, can be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and are seen as one of the Great Ones.  He kills a pawnbroker, someone useless and odious, to prove that he belongs among the elite.

 

Jack Finney
Time and Again
Simply the best time travel novel ever written.   Time is a mental construct, and the mind can be fooled into traveling into the past if the environment is appropriate and if the individual can be convinced that he or she is actually living at that particular time.  It's a mystery and a romance, and Finney provides sufficient information, along with appropriate photos, to make this a special work, and one that leaves me wishing this was real.
  

Umberto Eco
The Name of the Rose
A marvelous amalgam of mystery and history and religious conflict is all that this is.  Brother William of Baskerville, a monk, has been called to the monastery to act as a mediator and a witness between two conflicting religious ideas of importance.  While there, he is persuaded to investigate a series of murders in the monastery, and his name should provide a vital clue as to his methods.  If he is unable to solve the murders, the Inquisition will be called in, and nobody wants that.  Adso or Adson of Melk is his amanuensis.  The novel is supposedly an edited copy of Adso's recounting of their stay at the monastery.


 
PD James
Anything
 I've read all of her mysteries a number of times, even though I have figured out the villain shortly after getting into the story.  The plots and characters are complex, carefully drawn out.  There seldom is the expected denouement at the end where Commander Adam Dalgliesh gathers all the suspects in the drawing room and slowly works his way around the room, pointing his finger at each in turn.  Instead, the process is a slow one, developing throughout the novel as each suspect is considered and then dismissed until it's a matter of uncovering the final bit of evidence rather than uncovering the identity of the guilty party. 



Jane Austen
Everything including her juvenilia.
I tried reading Pride and Prejudice several times, but I always stopped reading.  Then at age 42 I returned to graduate school in the English Department.  In the first course I took, the reading list included Sense and Sensibility.  I groaned a bit and then settled down to read it.  I loved it and then went out to read everything else by her.  I guess I had to mature a bit before I was ready for her.  If I was forced to list my favorites among her works,  I would say Persuasion would be No. 1 and Mansfield Park would be next.  The others follow closely behind.  It's been a while since I read them all, so I shall probably dust them off and settle down once again.




Russell Hoban
Riddley Walker
This is one of my favorite post-holocaust novels, thanks to a Chaucer course I took a year or two prior to reading the novel.  In the Chaucer course, we had to read The Canterbury Tales in Middle English (the language it was written in).  I struggled mightily because I had always hated reading something that wasn't written in Standard English.  I really didn't want to pay attention to the language; that was too much work.  However, at the end of the course, leaving the classroom for the last time, I felt as if I had lost a world somehow that I would never return to.

A year or so later, I had to take my qualifying exams and The Tales was on the list.  I decided to  play it smart and bought a modern translation and settled down to read.  However, something important was missing, and so I got out the Middle English  text and happily reread it in Middle English.

What has this to do with Riddley Walker?  The answer is simple: Russell Hoban has written the novel in what he speculates English would be like maybe 500 years from now after a nuclear war and  during that period most people have been illiterate.  Those few who could read and write learned from their predecessors and not from teachers or texts which would have kept the language unchanged.  If I had not learned to accept non-standard English texts from the Chaucer course, I never would have finished the novel.  The following is the opening paragraph.  If you read it out loud, as you should do with poetry, you will find it much easier to read.

 "On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he weren't all that big plus he lookit poorily. He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and make his rush and there we wer then. Him on 1 end of the spear kicking his life out and me on the other end watching him dy. I said, 'Your tern now my tern later. . ."

 I've made some other posts about Riddley Walker and some other works by Russell Hoban.  You may want to check them out.  Russell Hoban is a unique writer, with a wild imagination.  Reading anything by him is well worth the time spent.


Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
This is another of my favorite post-holocaust novels.  It too is set hundreds of years after a nuclear war. The locale seems to be somewhere in New Mexico, where monks at a monastery manage to survive as monks did during the so-called Dark Ages perhaps almost 2000 years earlier.  And, along with their farm duties (they have to be completely self-sustaining) they also are dedicated to keeping records of the achievements of the past, even if they don't know what it is that they are painstakingly copying.   They have faith that some day human knowledge will increase to the point that these arcane books and schematics and diagrams will be not only intelligible but also help to spark a resurgence of human learning.

Their task is much like that of the Encyclopediasts in Isaac Asimov's "Foundation series."  However, the monks of the Order of Blessed Leibowitz do not have high tech aides and spaceships to travel about, but only sandals, and if they are lucky, a mule.  The novel is really three novellas, set roughly centuries apart, with only monastery and the monks' task of preserving knowledge to link them.  Well, there's always Benjamin, but he really can't be the Wandering Jew, several thousand years old, could he?

Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
I'm never certain about whether this is a short novel or a long novella, so I will guess this time and call it a novel.  It's the work by Conrad that I've read most often for I find it fascinates me, both in its description of the countryside, the inhabitants, and the Europeans who plague the inhabitants.  It's a biting indictment of the treatment of the black Africans by the white Europeans who have come there supposedly to civilize and bring the benefits of European civilization  and in reality end up brutalizing them in search of profit.

The POV character is Marlow, but the center of the novel is Kurtz   Marlow has taken a job as the captain of a steamer on the Congo River.  Far up the river is a trading outpost run by Kurtz, who has been amazingly successful in obtaining ivory for the company.  Suddenly all shipments stop, and after a few months of silence, Marlow is ordered to take the steamer up the river to Kurtz's trading post.  He is accompanied by the district manager and a group of ivory hunters and treasure seekers, along with a crew consisting of a few cannibals.  Marlow becomes obsessed with the idea of Kurtz and only slowly does he realize that Kurtz is not only at the heart of darkness, but also he is the heart of darkness.

The film, Apocalypse Now, is loosely, very loosely, based on the novel--more of an adaptation than a recounting.  The film is set in Vietnam during the war.  Captain Willard, of the US Army, is sent up the Nung River into Cambodia to find Col. Kurtz and assassinate  who has set himself up as a god among the local tribes people and is conducting his own brand of guerrilla warfare against the Viet Cong.  While much of the novel has been changed for the film, I still found the film to be very close in capturing the tone or atmosphere of the novel--the absurdity and arrogance of the white invaders.


Something happened that I did not account for.  I initially said that this would be a short list, something around ten, maybe even fifteen, but the list keep growing.  I'm now at ten and I still have the same amount left.  I guess I will end this here and continue with the rest on Part Two.  I hope this doesn't turn out to be similar to those fantasy trilogies that reach double digits.  

Han Shan (Cold Mountain) and some like-minded poets

#17

Hundred-foot trees produced by Heaven
get sawed into giant planks
unfortunate building timber
gets left in a hidden valley
its heart stays strong despite the years
its bark falls off day after day
if some astute person took it away
it still could prop up a stable

-- Han-Shan (9th century?) --
from The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain
trans and edited by Red Pine



"Kwang-tsze was walking on a mountain, when he saw a great tree with huge branches and luxuriant foliage. A wood-cutter was resting by its side, but he would not touch it, and, when asked the reason, said, that it was of no use for anything, Kwang-tsze then said to his disciples, 'This tree, because its wood is good for nothing, will succeed in living out its natural term of years.'"
-- ChangTzu --



Han Shan refers to the "unfortunate" building timber left behind. It should have been chopped down and turned into something useful for humans.  Why?  Is a tree's only value that of being useful to humans?  Doesn't the tree have value in being a tree?

ChangTzu is a legendary Taoist sage, second probably only to LaoTzu in his importance in the Taoist ethical system.  He seems to think differently about the tree.  Since it was fortunately not useful to humanity,  it is able to live "out its natural term of years."

Is that what's important about the plants and animals that precariously share this planet with us?  If they are not useful, then they have no value in themselves. It seems to me that in this immense universe, there may be other life forms, but chances are that life forms found on this planet are unique and unlikely to be found anywhere else, just as life forms found on other planets will also be unique and one-of-a-kind.  Moreover, it seems unlikely that we will find any life forms in our own solar system; again, if some are found, they will not be similar to those of earth.  Again, that points out the significance of life in all its variety found here on earth: it is important in itself and this is far more meaningful than merely being useful to us.  If humans are of value in themselves, then I would argue so are those life forms we share this planet with.

This, however, is a side issue from the original theme of this post, which is a lament, in a sense, for those beauties that blossom unseen or dwelt in untrodden ways, or at least so I thought it was.  Now.  .  .I don't know.



The Wild Honey Suckle

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouched thy honeyed blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet:
    No roving foot shall crush thee here,
    No busy hand provoke a tear.

By Nature's self in white arrayed,
She thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the guardian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by:
    Thus quietly thy summer goes,
    Thy days declining to repose.

Smit with these charms, that must decay,
I grieve to see your future doom;
They died--nor were those flowers more gay,
The flowers that did in Eden bloom;
    Unpitying frosts, and Autumn's power
    Shall leave no vestige of this flower.

From morning suns and evening dews
At first thy little being came:
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
     The space between, is but an hour,
     The frail duration of a flower.

-- Philip Freneau  (1752-1832) --
from The Norton Anthology of American Literature


I think that Freneau in the first three stanzas stays with the flower, but read that last stanza again--

From morning suns and evening dews
At first thy little being came:
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
     The space between, is but an hour,
     The frail duration of a flower.


--especially the last four lines.  From the Rubaiyat, 1st edition, Quatrain XLVII--

    "Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what
Thou shalt be--Nothing--Thou shalt not be less."




The following is a stanza from Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."  It also talks about beauties that blush unseen and "waste its sweetness on the desert air." These unfortunate flowers "waste" their sweetness because there's no human around to appreciate it.  From what I understand, flowers did not develop their odors to benefit humans but to attract pollinator which would help to insure the next generation of these flowers.  It's attractiveness to humans is secondary and, frankly, unimportant to the flower.  It has its own agenda, which doesn't include humans.



Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

-- Thomas Gray (1716-1771) --
from Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard



We move now to a human who lives in an isolated area.  She too is ignored by all except for the poet.  And she, too, must die, unknown by all, and missed only by the poet, an unfortunate circumstance.  I wonder if the poet ever thought to ask Lucy how she viewed her situation. 

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
     Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise
     And very few to love;

A violet by a mossy stone,
    Half hidden from the eye,
-- Fair as a star, when only one
    Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
    When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
    The difference to me!

-- William Wordsworth  (1770-1858) --   


I began this simply by reading a poem by Han Shan, a ninth century Chinese poet,  and then remembering poems with similar themes by two English poets and a US poet from the 18th and 19th centuries, over a thousand years later.  But then, something else struck me, and I think I've wandered off from my original thought.  I think I shall come back to this point again. 

Langston Hughes: Feb. 1, 1902--May 22, 1967

Some short early poems by Langston Hughes.


Cabaret

Does a jazz band ever sob?
They say a jazz band's gay.
Yet as the vulgar dancers whirled
And the wan night wore away,
One said she heard the jazz band sob
When the little dawn was grey.


The night is over, and the fantasy world created by music must retreat before the harsh reality of the coming day. What do the jazz players face during the day that elicits a sob before they gather again to enter that fantasy world?

"vulgar dancers"-- Does he mean "vulgar" in the modern sense of coarse, crude, or uncouth, or in the earlier sense of common or ordinary?



Winter Moon

How thin and sharp is the moon tonight!
How thin and sharp and ghostly white
Is the slim curved crook of the moon tonight!

A scythe? -- the implement frequently depicted as being carried by Death, the Grim Reaper.




Dream Variations

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me--
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.


the white day of activity, furious and frenzied, and the dark night of rest and tenderness.
But--both are only dreams.

Langston Hughes: some short poems gathered at random

The following poems come from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. These are the ones that I stopped to read a second time as I browsed through the book, opening randomly at various pages. As I write this, I'm not sure why they interested me, though. Perhaps another reading might give me a clue.




Monotony

Today like yesterday
Tomorrow like today;
The drip, drip, drip,
Of monotony
Is wearing my life away;
Today like yesterday,
Tomorrow like today.


It ends the way it begins--does that suggest monotony? He resists the impulse to make a logic chain of the two repeated lines. He could have written--

Yesterday like today
Today like tomorrow

which gives us the following progression: Yesterday-->Today-->Tomorrow


Instead he gives us-- Today-->Yesterday-->Tomorrow-->Today

Perhaps it's because the one I suggested shows a direct line from yesterday to today to tomorrow, which denotes a progression, while what he gave us was more like a circle from today to yesterday to tomorrow and back to today--no beginning and no end--monotonous.




Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Without dreams, we can't leave the ground. Without dreams life cannot come forth. It seems that dreams are elusive and transient, and we must "Hold fast" to them. Could the cure for monotony be a dream?




Gods

The ivory gods,
And the ebony gods,
And the gods of diamond and jade,
Sit silently on their temple shelves
While the people are afraid.
Yet the ivory gods
And the ebony gods,
And the gods of diamond-jade,
Are only silly puppet gods
That the people themselves
Have made.


I think he forgot the most prevelant gods that the people make and worship and fear: entertainers, athletes, politicians, the past . . .




The Dream Keeper

Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamers,
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.


When I read The Dream Keeper, I immediately thought of the earlier one, Dreams. This poem also suggests that dreams are transient and fragile, which is why they belong off this earth, castles in the sky.



Formula

Poetry should treat
Of lofty things
Soaring thoughts
And birds with wings.

The Muse of Poetry
Should not know
That roses
In manure grow.

The Muse of Poetry
Should not care
That earthly pain
Is everywhere.

Poetry!
Treats of lofty things
Soaring thoughts
And birds with wings.


Is there a touch of irony here?