The Song of the Rider - philosophy.wisc.eduphilosophy.wisc.edu/hunt/poetrycoll.pdf · IV “Ye’ll...

The Song of the Rider and Other Poems of Mystery, Adventure, and Horror

edited byLester H. Hunt

1

For

Nat Hunt. 1989––

2

Note to the reader: Most (not all!) of the poems in this book are regarded as classics today. But thatis not why any of them are here. I include them only because they are fun (or moving or funny) foryoung people to read. The are also fun (and so forth) to quote – and the ones that are not too longare fun to memorize too. I know because I enjoyed many of them when I was young, and memorizedsome of them as well. Read through them, ignore the ones that don’t say anything to you (no ba--tterhits a home run every time) and – above all – have fun.

About the translations: Except where I say otherwise, the translations are my own. In a numberof cases I have put tranlations next to the original foreign-language poem. This is partly to makesure you read it as a translation. Poetry cannot really be translated, in the way that prose can, so anattempt at translating a poem is really just a rough indicator (or a dim shadow) of what the originalactually is and says.

Acknowledgments: Many people helped me or gave me helpful advice on the project of putting thisbook together, including: Simon Blackburn, Deborah Katz Hunt, Lance Lough, Robert Marsh, ImtiazMoosa, Steve Webb, and Marcia Wolf.

LHH

3

leave blank

4

Archilochus of Paros. Around 650 B C.

Some Fragments

êçåÃôáé äz Òôéó Ýóôí áïéä�éó... all those who live, enchanted by song....

* * *áóðßäé ìåí Gáßïí ôéó áãÜëëåôáé, ²í ðáñá èáìíå Ýíôïl áìþìçôïí êáëëéðïí ïõê åèÝëùí.áõôïí äz Ýê ìz åóÜùóáq ôé ìïé ìÝëåé áðéó åêåßíì; åññÝôù q åîáØôßó êôÞóïìáé ïõ êáêßù.

Some Thracian exults with my shield, unwillingly left By a bush; and a fine one it was, not bad at all.I cleared out of there! What matters one shield more or less? I’m moving on! I’ll find another, no worse than it was.

* * *ðïrëëz ïÃäz áëþðç î, áëëz å÷Ãíïõó ©í ìÝãá.

The fox knows many tricks, the hedgehog only one: one great one.

* * *

êñýðôùìåí äz áíéçñá ÐïóåéäÜùíïò Üíáêôïò ääñá

On Burying the Drowned Sailors:Let us hide them, unlovely gifts of Lord Poseidon....

_____________________________________________________________________________* The ancient Greeks thought of Archilochus as the first poet after Homer. He is the earliestGreek poet who gives us a clear sense of who he was and what he was like. Homer is older, buthis Iliad and Odyssey don’t give us any feeling of who he was at all (some people even think“he” was a she!). But Archilochus comes to us across more than two and an half thousandyears as a very definite personality. Legend has it that he was a foot-soldier, which would makehim the first warrior-poet (there have been many since). Ancient legends also say that he died inbattle, and died young. Most of the his words that survive are fragments, bits of poetry that werequoted in books by other people, or were found on pieces of papyrus. The one about his shieldmay be a complete poem. In it he becomes the first Western poet to shock his readers by turningcommon ideas upside down. The Greeks thought it was a disgrace to loose your shield, a sign ofcowardice – but he seems to be almost bragging about it, telling us that he has enough sense not

to risk his life to pick up a lousy shield.

5

Anonymous. Before 1000 AD

An Anglo-Saxon Riddle*

Oft ic sceal wiþ wæge winnan ond wiþ winde feohtan,somod wið þam sæcce, þonne ic secan gewite eorþan yþum þeaht; me biþ se eþel fremdeIc beom strong þæs gewinnes, gif ic stille weorþe;gif me þæs tosæleð, hi beoð swiþran þonne ic,ond mec slitende sona flymað,willað oþfergan þæt ic friþian sceal Ic him þæt forstonde, gif min steort ond mec stiþne wiþ stanas moton fæste gehabban. Frige hwæt ic hatte.

Often I war against wave and wind,Strive against storm, dive down seekingA strange homeland, shrouded by the sea. In battle I am strong if I stand still; Though wind and wave might win over me,Would ruin me and rout me at once if they could,Grab and carry off the goods I guard.But I withstand them, and my tail Sternly against the strictness of stone Must hold fast. Find out who I am

_________________________________________________________________________________* This riddle is number 14 in the Medieval manuscript called The Exeter Book. Apparently, the oldAnglo-Saxon warriors used to tell these riddles to each other after a hard day of slugging it out with theVikings. Actually, they probably sang them, with a sort of harp accompaniment. I have translated theseriddles into modern English. As with this one, they usually are presented as a speech that some thingis making, as if the object has mysteriously come to life to tease us. For a suggested solution – the oldmanuscripts don’t give any – see the bottom of the next page.

The poem was actually written in the Anglo-Saxon language, also known as “Old English” because itis an early ancestor of the English we speak today. I’ve put the Old English text parallel to mytranslation, so you can see what it looked like. The only word on the left that still makes sense is “oft.” It really was a different language!

6


Another Anglo-Saxon Riddle*

A small miracle hangs near a man's thigh, Full under folds. It is stiff, strong, Bold, brassy, and pierced in front. When a young lord lifts his tunic Over his knees, he wants to greet With the hard head of this hanging creature The hole it has often filled before.

______________________________________________________________________________* Exeter Book riddle number 42.Suggested solution to Exeter riddle number 14: Scholars generally agree that the solution mustbe “anchor.” The anchor describes itself as a warrior, and the wind and waves as its enemies.

7


One More Anglo-Saxon Riddle*

A stalk of the living, I nothing said;Dumb, stand waiting to join the dead.I have risen before and will rise again Though plunderers carve and split my skin,Bite through my bare body, shear my head, Hold me hard in a slicing bedI do not bite a man unless he bites me, But the number of men who bite is many.

______________________________________________________________________________* Exeter Book riddle number 63.

Suggested solution to Exeter riddle number 42: All the authorities agree that this one has twoanswers, a correct one and a half-correct one. The correct one is “key.” In those days (long beforepockets were invented) a key would be kept on a chord around a man’s waist, under his clothes. Thehalf-right answer is, well, the one you were probably thinking in the first place. We don’t know forsure why the riddle has two answers like this, but there are several Anglo-Saxon riddles that are likethis: and they all have the same half-right answer!

8


from The Seafarer

May I for my own self song's truth reckon,Journey's jargon, how I in harsh daysHardship endured oft.Bitter breast-cares have I abided,Known on my keel many a care's hold,And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spentNarrow nightwatch nigh the ship's headWhile she tossed close to cliffs. Coldly afflicted,My feet were by frost benumbed.Chill its chains are; chafing sighsHew my heart round and hunger begotMere-weary mood. Lest man know notThat he on dry land loveliest liveth,List how I, care-wretched, on ice-cold sea,Weathered the winter, wretched outcastDeprived of my kinsmen;Hung with hard ice-flakes, where hail-scur flew,There I heard naught save the harsh seaAnd ice-cold wave, at whiles the swan cries,Did for my games the gannet's clamour,Sea-fowls, loudness was for me laughter,The mews' singing all my mead-drink.Storms, on the stone-cliffs beaten, fell on the sternIn icy feathers; full oft the eagle screamedWith spray on his pinion.

______________________________________________________________________________This translation from the Anglo-Saxon, by Ezra Pound, is one of those rare cases of a translationthat is at least as good as the original. Usually, a translation is a pale shadow, but here Pound’swords equal the gnarly toughness of the .

Like the Anglo-Saxon riddles, this poem was originally a evening’s entertainment for men who mightwell have spent the day fighting Vikings or Celtic tribesmen. It is a monologue in which thenameless sea-farer tells of a life of terrible hardship. He’s not asking for pity, though, and hisaudience – Anglo-Saxon warriors all – didn’t give him any. They didn’t feel sorry for him, theyadmired his tough spirit of endurance.

9

Omar Kayyam. Born around 1050 AD

from The Rubaiyat

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time bas but a little way To flutter - and the Bird is on the Wing.

* * *

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness - Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

* * *

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it

* * *

And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky, Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die, Lift not your hands to It for help - for It As impotently moves as you or I.

______________________________________________________________________________This is a case of two minor poets getting together across nine centuries, and producing one greatpoem. Omar was a poet who lived in Persia (what we now call Iran) and wrote four-line verses orquatrains (that’s what rubaiyat means in Persian). The nineteenth-century English poet, EdwardFitzgerald (1809-1883) translated about a hundred of them. The main idea of the poem is prettysimple: human life is completely meaningless, so we might as well have as much fun as we can, andthe best way to do that is to get drunk and try to stay that way. Nor very original (nor even verydeep, in my opinion) but somehow the poem really works: it is one of the most beloved and oftenread in English.

Suggested solution to Exeter riddle number 42: “Onion.” The onion bites a man with its sharptaste, but only if the man bites it first. I think the part about how the onion will rise again refers tothe fact that the onion is a perennial plant and sprouts again in the spring (unlike wheat, which livesfor one season and dies).

10


The Twa Corbies*

IAS I was walking all alane,I heard twa corbies making a mane:The tane unto the tither did say,“Whar sall we gang and dine the day?”

II“– In behint yon auld fail dykeI wot there lies a new-slain knight;And naebody kens that he lies thereBut his hawk, his hound, and his lady fair.

III

“His hound is to the hunting gane,His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,His lady’s ta’en anither mate,So we may mak” our dinner sweet.

IV

“Ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane,And I’ll pike out his bonny blue e’en:Wi’ ae lock o’ his gowden hairWe’ll theek our nest when it grows bare.

V

Mony a one for him maks mane,But nane sall ken whar he is gane:O’er his white banes, when they are bare,The wind sall blaw for evermair.”

______________________________________________________________________________* This is an old Scottish ballad, written in the local dialect. You can get most of the strange wordsby turn “a” sounds to “o” sounds: so “mane” becomes “moan” (ie., a complaint), and so on. Other than that: twa = two, corbie = raven or crow, tane = one, ken = know, fail = made of sod,dyke = wall, hause = neck, theek = thatch. Ravens and crows, like vultures, are carrion-birds: theyeat dead bodies. We have no idea who wrote this poem, but telling the story of a dead knightthrough a dialogue between to carrion-birds who are about to eat him was truly a stroke of genius.

11


Edward, Edward*

IWhy does your brand sae drip wi’ blude,

Edward, Edward?Why does your brand sae drop wi” blude,And why sae sad gang ye, O?”—“O I hae kill’d my hawk sae gude,

Mither, mither;O I hae kill’d my hawk sae gude,And I had nae mair but he, O.”

IIYour hawk’s blude was never sae red,

Edward, Edward;Your hawk’s blude was never sae red,My dear son, I tell thee, O.”—O I hae kill’d my red-roan steed,

Mither, mither;O I hae kill’d my red-roan steed,That erst was sae fair and free, O.”

IIIYour steed was auld, and ye hae got mair,

Edward, Edward;Your steed was auld, and ye hae got mair;Some other dule ye dree, O.”—O I hae kill’d my father dear,

Mither, mither;O I hae kill’d my father dear,Alas, and wae is me, O!”

IV

“And whatten penance will ye dree for that,Edward, Edward?Whatten penance will ye dree for that?My dear son, now tell me, O.”—I’ll set my feet in yonder boat,

Mither, mither;I’ll set my feet in yonder boat,

12

And I’ll fare over the sea, O.”

V“And what will ye do wi’ your tow’rs and your ha’,

Edward, Edward?And what will ye do wi’ your tow’rs and your ha’,That were sae fair to see, O?”—I’ll let them stand till they doun fa’, Mither, mither;I’ll let them stand till they doun fa’,For here never mair maun I be, O.”

VI“And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wife,

Edward, Edward?And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wife,When ye gang owre the sea, O?”—“The warld’s room: let them beg through life,

Mither, mither;The warld’s room: let them beg through life;For them never mair will I see, O.”

VII“And what will ye leave to your ain mither dear,

Edward, Edward?And what will ye leave to your ain mither dear,My dear son, now tell me, O?”—“The curse of hell frae me shall ye bear,

Mither, mither;The curse of hell frae me shall ye bear:Such counsels ye gave to me, O!’

______________________________________________________________________________* Another Scottish ballad, possibly more tragic and gruesome than the last one.. Here the story istold in a conversation between a young man and his “mither” (= mother). You don’t know whatactually happened until the last line, which must be one of the great shock-lines in all of literature --it still gives me goose-bumps when I come to it. To get what it means, you need to know that“counsels” means “advice” or “orders.” Other than that: brand = sword, steed = horse, dule yedree = grief you suffer, penance = punishment.

13

William Shakespeare. 1564––1616

Sonnet 94: They That Have the Power to Hurt

They that have power to hurt and will do none,That do not do the thing, they most do show,Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,Unmovèd, cold, and to temptation slow,They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,And husband nature's riches from expense;They are the lords and owners of their faces,Others, but stewards of their excellence.The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,Though to itself, it only live and die,But if that flower with base infection meet,The basest weed outbraves his dignity. For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

______________________________________________________________________________People disagree about what this poem means. Some scholars insist that it must be some kind of joke:Shakespeare can’t possibly mean what he’s saying here. How can it be good to have the power tohurt people. Actually, I think he is expressing a very old idea, one that was common in his day andgoes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. Being gentle isn’t any good if the reason you are gentleis that you are too weak or cowardly to cause trouble. Strength is good, power is good. Virtue isthe wisdom that restrains them.

14


Clarence’s Dream

Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower,And was embark'd to cross to Burgundy;And, in my company, my brother Gloucester;Who from my cabin tempted me to walkUpon the hatches... As we paced alongUpon the giddy footing of the hatches,Methought that Gloucester stumbled; and, in falling,Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard,Into the tumbling billows of the main.Lord, Lord! methought, what pain it was to drown!What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!What ugly sights of death within mine eyes!Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon;Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea:Some lay in dead men's skulls; and, in those holesWhere eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,As 'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,Which woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep,And mock'd the dead bones that lay scatter'd by.

______________________________________________________________________________This is a speech from Shakespeare’s Richard III. Clarence is being held prisoner by his evil brotherRichard Glouster (soon to be the evil king) in the Tower of London. Here he tells how moments ago,he dreamt that he escaped from the Tower, only to be drowned by his brother. Soon afterward, twohired killers enter his cell and, after stabbing him to death, dump his body into a vat of wine.

15


“Full Fathom Five”

Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made;Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that does fade,But doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange.Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong,Hark! Now I hear them –– Ding-dong, bell.

______________________________________________________________________________This famous poem is actually the lyrics to a song that Shakespeare put into his play, The Tempest. It’s sung by a supernatural being named Ariel, who is taunting one of the bad guys, who have justbeen shipwrecked on Ariel’s magic island. It actually turns out to be a lie – the father is alive andwell, he just swam ashore on a different part of the island. Maybe the guy could have guessed it wasa lie if he listened carefully to the words: they aren’t a realistic description of a rotting, fish-nibbledcorpse, are they?

This poem obviously echoes, in more a light-hearted way, Clarence’s terrifying vision of death bydrowning in Richard III (see the preceding page), which Shakespeare wrote many years before hewrote The Tempest. I’m not sure what that means, except that Shakespeare could recognize an ideathat is worth using more than once.

16

Anonymous. Possibly around 1600

from “Tom O’Bedlam’s Song ”

.From the hag and hungry goblin That into rags would rend ye,All the sprites that stand by the naked man In the book of moons, defend ye.That of your five sound senses You never be forsaken, Nor wander from your selves with Tom Abroad to beg your bacon. While I do sing, any food Feeding drink or clothing? Come dame or maid, be not afraid, Poor Tom will injure nothing..

With an host of furious fancies, Whereof I am commander,With a burning spear, and a horse of air, To the wilderness I wander.By a knight of ghosts and shadows, I summoned am to tourneyTen leagues past the wide world's end. Me think it is no journey. While I do sing, any food Feeding drink or clothing? Come dame or maid, be not afraid, Poor Tom will injure nothing.

______________________________________________________________________________“Bedlam” was the nickname of “Bethlehem Hospital,” the asylum for the insane in Shakespeare’sday. Poor Tom is a helpless madman who goes about begging for his food and trying to avoid abusefrom people who think that the mentally ill are dangerous.

17

Robert Herrick. 1591––1674

Upon Julia’s Clothes

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flowsThat liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes, and seeThat brave vibration each way free,O how that glittering taketh me!

Dreams

Here we are all, by day – by night we're hurledBy dreams, each one, into a several world.

From To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today, To-morrow will be dying.

_____________________________________________________________________________Someone once said that “Julia’s Clothes” was “the best poem about clothes ever written.” I thinkHerrick was kidding though – he is interested in Julia, not her clothes. Herrick wrote a lot of verysexy poems to women with names like Julia, Sylvia, and Corinne – though in real life he was actuallya Protestant minister! Scholars think that most of these women were imaginary.

“Dreams” is actually a translation of a comment by the by the ancient Greek philosopherHeraclitus, which is usually put like this: “The waking have one world in common; sleepers haveeach a private world of his own."

18

Robert Herrick. 1591––1674

The Hag*

The Hag is astride, This night for to ride,The devil and she together; Through thick and through thin, Now out, and then in,Though ne'er so foul be the weather.

A thorn or a bur She takes for a spur;With a lash of a bramble she rides now, Through brakes and through briars, O'er ditches and mires,She follows the spirit that guides now.

No beast, for his food, Dares now range the wood,But hush'd in his lair he lies lurking; While mischiefs, by these, On land and on seas,At noon of night are a-working.

The storm will arise, And trouble the skiesThis night; and, more for(the wonder, The ghost from the tomb Affrighted shall come,Call'd out by the clap of the thunder.

_____________________________________________________________________________“Hag” in Herrick’s day meant witch. This is the earliest poem about witchcraft I’ve seen thatwas obviously written by someone who did not believe that witches are real.

19

William Blake. 1757––1827

The Tyger

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,In the forests of the night;What immortal hand or eye,Could frame thy fearful symmetry

In what distant deeps or skies.Burnt the fire of thine eyes!On what wings dare he aspire?What the hand, dare seize the fire!

And what shoulder, & what art.Could twist the sinews of thy heart?And when thy heart began to beat,What dread hand! & what dread feet!

What the hammer! what the chain,In what furnace was thy brainWhat the anvil, what dread grasp,Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spearAnd water'd heaven with their tears:Did he smile his work to seeDid he who made the Lamb make thee!

Tyger Tyger burning bright,In the forests of the night:What immortal hand or eye,Dare frame thy fearful symmetry.

______________________________________________________________________________Blake wrote a pair of books called “Songs of Innocence,” and “Songs of Experience.” The firstexpresses the view of life that people can have before they become acquainted with the evil thatexists in the world. “The Tyger” is from the “Experience” book. This poem was used brilliantlyin the classic science fiction novel, The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester (1956). The herois captured by a wild tribe living in an abandoned space station and tattooed with swirling patternsall over his body. In the novel, he is the “tyger.” I don’t think anyone who reads that novel willever forget this poem.

20

William Blake. 1757––1827

London

I wander thro' each charter'd street.Near where the charter'd Thames does flowAnd mark in every face I meetMarks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,In every Infants cry of fear,In every voice: in every ban,The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cryEvery blackning Church appalls,And the hapless Soldiers sighRuns in blood down Palace walls

But most thro' midnight streets I hearHow the youthful Harlots curseBlasts the new-born Infants tearAnd blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

______________________________________________________________________________This complex and powerful poem is another of Blake’s “Songs of Experience.” It expresses hishatred of the industrial revolution, the great transformation from manual labor to machine-aidedproduction that was shaking England like an earthquake in Blake’s day. This poem has several puns and plays on words (none of which were meant to be funny!). “Chartered” here means bothsanctioned by law and limited or confined. “Mark” means both remark (ie., notice) and evidence. “Ban” is Old English for curse, but it can also mean prohibition (as in “banned books”). “Appals”in those days meant makes pale, but it also could mean horrifies, and probably is also meant tosuggest coffins and funerals (as in “pallbearer”). In the last verse, Blake is referring to the fact thatinnocent babies can catch venereal diseases from their mothers while still in their wombs.

Chimney-sweeping: This horrible practice was necessary in those days because every home washeated by fireplaces with open fires, and the chimneys would clog with fine black soot. Small boyswith tools were lowered into the chimneys (adults were too big to fit in) and they would clean themout by hand! You can imagine how filthy this job was. Many boys lost their health and even theirlives this way. Mainly because of this poem, many people think of the practice of using “chimney-sweeps” as one of the supposed evils of the industrial revolution. Actually, this practice dates backto the low-tech days of the Middle Ages, and was soon to become obsolete thanks to the industrialrevolution that Blake hated so much. Soon, people’s homes would be heated with higher-techmethods (like steam and, eventually, electricity) that do not kill thousands of little boys. It’s still amagnificent poem, though!

21

Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 1772––1834

Kubla KhanOR, A VISION IN A DREAM.

A FRAGMENT

In Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree :Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to manDown to a sunless sea.So twice five miles of fertile groundWith walls and towers were girdled round :And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;And here were forests ancient as the hills,Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slantedDown the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !A savage place ! as holy and enchantedAs e'er beneath a waning moon was hauntedBy woman wailing for her demon-lover !And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,A mighty fountain momently was forced :Amid whose swift half-intermitted burstHuge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and everIt flung up momently the sacred river.Five miles meandering with a mazy motionThrough wood and dale the sacred river ran,Then reached the caverns measureless to man,And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from farAncestral voices prophesying war !

The shadow of the dome of pleasureFloated midway on the waves ;Where was heard the mingled measureFrom the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !

22

A damsel with a dulcimerIn a vision once I saw :It was an Abyssinian maid,And on her dulcimer she played,Singing of Mount Abora.Could I revive within meHer symphony and song,To such a deep delight 'twould win me,

That with music loud and long,I would build that dome in air,That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !And all who heard should see them there,And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !His flashing eyes, his floating hair !Weave a circle round him thrice,And close your eyes with holy dread,For he on honey-dew hath fed,And drunk the milk of Paradise.

______________________________________________________________________________The story of how this poem came to be written must be the most famous one of all. Coleridge wasill at the time and took a large dose of opium, a drug that is illegal now but at that time was legaland often taken as a painkiller (aspirin and ibuprofen were far in the future). It more or lessknocked him out. Here is how Coleridge described what happened next: “The Author continued forabout three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has themost vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines;if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, witha parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness ofeffort. On awakening he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and takinghis pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At thismoment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock [a nearby village],and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surpriseand mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the generalpurport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all therest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast,but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter!” Thus the anonymous “man from Porlock”unknowingly earned an infamous place in history.

23

Percy Bysshe Shelly. 1792––1822

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique landWho said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,Tell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:And on the pedestal these words appear:'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away."

______________________________________________________________________________* I thought about this poem a lot on that Sunday in December 2003 when Saddam Hussein had beencaptured and the world watched a video of him holding his mouth open so a doctor could take asaliva sample. Ozymandias was an imaginary tyrant, Shelly made him up for this poem. I onceheard Louis Simpson (see p. 99) call Shelly “one of the few true anarchists who have ever lived.”

24

Percy Bysshe Shelly. 1792––1822

from The Mask of Anarchy

As I lay asleep in ItalyThere came a voice from over the Sea,And with great power it forth led meTo walk in the visions of Poesy.

I met Murder on the way -He had a mask like Castlereagh -Very smooth he looked, yet grim;Seven blood-hounds followed him:

All were fat; and well they mightBe in admirable plight,For one by one, and two by two,He tossed the human hearts to chewWhich from his wide cloak he drew.

Next came Fraud, and he had on,Like Eldon, an ermined gown;His big tears, for he wept well,Turned to mill-stones as they fell.

Round his feet played to and fro,Thinking every tear a gem,Had their brains knocked out by them.

Clothed with the Bible, as with light,And the shadows of the night,Like Sidmouth, next, HypocrisyOn a crocodile rode by.

And many more Destructions playedIn this ghastly masquerade,All disguised, even to the eyes,Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.

Last came Anarchy: he rodeOn a white horse, splashed with blood;He was pale even to the lips,Like Death in the Apocalypse.

25

And he wore a kingly crown;And in his grasp a sceptre shone;On his brow this mark I saw -'I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!'

With a pace stately and fast,Over English land he passed,Trampling to a mire of bloodThe adoring multitude.

* * *

Men of England, heirs of Glory, Heroes of unwritten story, Nurslings of one mighty Mother, Hopes of her, and one another; 'Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you - Ye are many - they are few.

* * *

______________________________________________________________________________* As I’ve said, Shelly was an anarchist, what Henry David Thoreau called “a no-government man.” But he didn’t like to be called an anarchist because “anarchy” suggests violence and chaos. Shellybelieved that violence and disorder – the “anarchy” in the title of this poem – are actually causedby governments, especially those dictatorial governments that work the hardest to create their ideaof “order.” He wrote this poem in a blind fury when he heard of an atrocity, the so-called “PeterlooMassacre,” committed by his own government, back in England, while he was living and writing inItaly. Panicky local officials had used the army to break up a large (as many as 50,000 people) massmeeting near St. Peter’s Field in Manchester. The meeting had been called to request parliamentaryreforms. Ten people were killed and about 400 (including many women) were wounded. LordCastlereagh (pronounced like “castle-ray”) and Lord Eldon, mentioned in the poem, were twoBritish officials who Shelly blamed for the disaster, mainly because of their hostility toward reform. Communists have always been fond of this poem, probably because of its stirring call to revolution,but Shelly’s ultra-libertarian political views were very different from theirs.

26

George Gordon, Lord Byron. 1788––1824

The Destruction of Sennacherib

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,That host with their banners at sunset were seen:Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed:And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostrils all wide,But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride:And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail;And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

______________________________________________________________________________Byron is assuming that you know the Bible story (2 Kings 19) that he is describing. Sennacheribwas a real person, an emperor of Assyria who sent several military expeditions to quash rebellionsin Israel. At the end of the last campaign, the God of the Israelites sends the Angel of Death to killthe entire invading army of over five thousand during the night, before they have had a chance toattack “Galilee” refers to the Sea of Galilee in eastern Isreal.. “Ashur” was a major city inAssyria. “Baal” was the name of one of the Assyrian word gods. “Gentile” is a general term for

people who are not Israelites.

27


So, We’ll Go No More A-Roving

So, we'll go no more a roving So late into the night,Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast,And the heart must pause to breathe, And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving, And the day returns too soon,Yet we'll go no more a roving By the light of the moon.

______________________________________________________________________________Byron was charming and handsome and many women were in love with him. Unfortunately forthem, he was a love-‘em-and-leave-‘em kind of guy. This poem shows him leaving one of them, oneof many. Because of this, I think I can feel, under the rippling surface of this poem, a tricky under-tow of cruelty. But that just makes it a little more interesting.

28


From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto the Fourth

CLXXVIII 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 feelWhat I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

CLXXIX Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean -- roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin -- his control Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

______________________________________________________________________________When Byron published the first two parts (or “Cantos”) of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage “I awokeone morning and found myself famous,” as he put it. In these two stanzas, he expresses thedistinctively Byronic view of nature, one of the things that made his writings so popular in his day. I think it is actually very similar to the view that a lot of people have of it today: nature is immenseand brutal, but at the same time beautiful and pure. “Childe,” incidentally, was a Medieval term forsomeone in training to become a knight. It refers to the hero of the poem, a very thinly disguisedversion of Byron himself.

29

John Keats. 1795––1821

“When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be”

When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,Before high-piled books, in charactery,Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,And think that I may never live to traceTheir shadows, with the magic hand of chance;And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,That I shall never look upon thee more,Never have relish in the faery powerOf unreflecting love;--then on the shoreOf the wide world I stand alone, and thinkTill love and fame to nothingness do sink.

“This Living Hand”

This living hand, now warm and capableOf earnest grasping, would, if it were coldAnd in the icy silence of the tomb,So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nightsThat thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of bloodSo in my veins red life might stream again,And thou be conscience-calmed – see here it is – I hold it towards you.

________________________________________________________________________Keats’ brother developed tuberculosis, a disease that was fatal and more or less incurable at thattime, and Keats nursed him until he died. Not long after, Keats himself caught the disease. He diedof it at the age of twenty five. Here are two poems he wrote about a feeling he had that he might dieyoung. On the left is one that he dated January 31, 1818, before he had tuberculosis. On the rightis one that he almost certainly wrote after he found out that he did. They are very different, aren’tthey?

30

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 1807––1882

“The Hymn 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 returnees," Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way;But to act to each to-morrow Finds 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, however pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead!Act,--act in the living Present! Heart within, and God overhead! 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,

31

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.

_____________________________________________________________________________I read a lot of Longfellow when I was a teenager. I had a beautiful book of his complete poems thathad belonged to my grandmother (in fact, I still have it). It was illustrated with amazingly vividsteel plate engravings showing spectacular views of mountains and forests, and they gave a verystrong sense of Longfellow’s way of feeling, the sense of beauty and the optimism. Longfellow wasa very learned man: he was a professor and translated poems from at least four languages. Buthe has always been popular with ordinary readers, partly because of this sense of life that heexpresses so well. At his worst, Longfellow sounds like those “uplifting” sayings on refrigeratormagnets (“Your possibilities are as great as your aspirations,” etc.), but he is the real thing. Thoserefrigerator magnet writers are just imitating him!

32


“The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls”

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

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,But the sea, the sea in 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 stallsStamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;The day returns, but nevermoreReturns the traveller to the shore, And the tide rises, the tide falls.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

* Curlew = a species of shore bird. They say its call note has a wild and lonely sound.

Every human life and every human action has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Our lives movein straight lines. On the other hand, nature moves in a circle: the cycle of the seasons or the tidesrepeats itself endlessly. In this way, human life clashes with nature. The poets have been writingabout this theme for thousands of years, but seldom as beautifully as Longfellow does here.

33


Preface to Evangeline

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman? Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers -- Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands, Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven? Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed! Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er the ocean. Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pré.

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion, List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest; List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.

______________________________________________________________________________Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne were classmates at Bowdoin College in Maine. Later in life,they sometimes traded ideas for stories. Hawthorne discovered the true story on which Evangelinewas based. It concerns the catastrophic events that occurred when the British expelled virtually theentire French population of Nova Scotia. A girl, called Evangeline in Longfellow’s poem, wasseparated from her lover and spent years searching for him. Here Longfellow evokes the mysteryof the Northern forest and the ghostly presence of her vanished people.

34

Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 1809––1892

The Charge of the Light Brigade*

Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. 'Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!' he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!' Was there a man dismay'd ? Not tho' the soldier knew Some one had blunder'd: Their's not to make reply, Their's not to reason why, Their's but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare, Flash'd as they turn'd in air Sabring the gunners there, Charging an army, while All the world wonder'd: Plunged in the battery-smoke Right thro' the line they broke; Cossack and Russian Reel'd from the sabre-stroke Shatter'd and sunder'd.

35

Then they rode back, but not Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon behind them Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell, While horse and hero fell, They that had fought so well Came thro' the jaws of Death, Back from the mouth of Hell, All that was left of them, Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade? O the wild charge they made! All the world wonder'd. Honour the charge they made! Honour the Light Brigade, Noble six hundred!

______________________________________________________________________________* Tennyson wrote this poem as a memorial to those who died in a suicidal charge at the Battle ofBalaclava in the Crimean War (1854-56). Of the 637 British soldiers who took part in the charge,247 were wounded or killed. Partly because of this poem, it is remembered as one of the moredisastrous mistakes in military history (as Tennyson says, “someone had blundered”).

36

Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 1809––1892

The EagleFRAGMENT

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

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

______________________________________________________________________________I’ve always liked this tiny “fragment” because it seems to describe things from the eagle’s point ofview. From high above, the waves of the sea are wrinkles crawling along.

37

Edgar Allen Poe 1809–1849

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore — While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “ ’Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —

Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow ; — vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore — For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore —

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before ; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating “ ’Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door — Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door ;

This it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, “Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore ; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you” — here I opened wide the door ; ——

Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore !” This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore !” —

Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon I heard again a tapping somewhat louder than before. “Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice ; Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore — Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;— ‘Tis the wind and nothing more !”

38

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore ; Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door — Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door —

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, “Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore — Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore !”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy bore ; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door — Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as “Nevermore.”

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. Nothing farther then he uttered — not a feather then he fluttered — Till I scarcely more than muttered ”Other friends have flown before — On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”

Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, “Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore — Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore Of “Never — nevermore.”

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore — What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamplght gloated o’er, But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o’er,

She shall press, ah, nevermore !

39

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Angels whose faint foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. “Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee — by these angels he hath sent thee Respite — respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore; Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore !”

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil! — Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted — On this home by Horror haunted — tell me truly, I implore — Is there — is there balm in Gilead ? — tell me — tell me, I implore !”


“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil — prophet still, if bird or devil ! By that Heaven that bends above us — by that God we both adore — Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore — Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”


“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting — “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore ! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken ! Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust above my door ! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door !”


And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted — nevermore !

______________________________________________________________________________Maybe the oddest thing about this strange poem is Poe’s explanation of how he wrote it. In an essay called“The Philosophy of Composition,” he says he began by deciding the effect he wanted to create in the reader(the impression of beauty) and the feeling (sadness), and from there chose the main devices of the poem thatwe know so well – the fact that it is about death, the fact that the speaker interacts with a raven (at first hethought of making it an owl), the “nevermore” repeated at the end of each stanza – as effective ways toachieve these results. All very scientific!

Respite = rest, quaff = drink, nepenthe = a magic potion causing forgetfulness of sorrow, Aidenn = a Arabicword for Paradise, Plutonian = having to do with Pluto, god of the underworld (in other words, having todo with death).

40

Edgar Allen Poe 1809–1849

Eldorado

Gaily bedight, A gallant knight,In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song,In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old, This knight so bold,And o'er his heart a shadow Fell as he found No spot of groundThat looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength Failed him at length,He met a pilgrim shadow; "Shadow," said he, "Where can it be,This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the mountains Of the moon,Down the valley of the shadow, Ride, boldly ride," The shade replied,--"If you seek for Eldorado!"

_____________________________________________________________________________Early European explorers search South America for the fabulous city of El Dorado (“The Golden’). The city was a myth, so of course they never found it. Poe uses it here as a symbol, but of what? Is his knight seeking something he can never find? The “pilgrim shadow” leaves the question open. But notice that the word “shadow” occurs in the middle of every stanza. The shadow of a thing isnot the real thing, is it? Bedight = decked out, arrayed, adorned. Pilgrim = person on a religiousmission, typically seeking a sacred place.

41

Michael Lermontov. 1814–1841

The Triple Dream

I dreamt that with a bullet in my sidein a hot gorge of Daghestan I lay.Deep was the wound and steaming, and the tideof my life-blood ebbed drop by drop away.

Along I lay amid a silent mazeof desert sand and bare cliffs rising steep,their tawny summits burning in the blazethat burned me too; but lifeless was my sleep.

And in a dream I say the candle-flameof a gay supper in the land I knew;young women crowned with flowers....And my nameon their light libs hither and thither flew.

But one of them sat pensively apart,not joining in the light-lipped gossiping,and there along, God knows what made her heart, her young heart dream of such a hidden thing....

For in her dream she saw a gorge, somewherein Daghestan, and know the man laythere on the sand, the dead man, unawareof steaming wound and blood ebbing away.

_____________________________________________________________________________Though it is a fantasy, this poem has a basis in fact. Lermontov was an officer in the Russian army,and a poet. He wrote a poem that made him instantly famous, but the Tsar found the ideas in itthreatening to his power. Lermontov’s punishment was to be taken from his friends in St. Petersburgand sent on active duty in the wilds of the Caucasus. Back in St. Petersburg, the girls probably weretalking about him.

42

Walt Whitman. 1819––1892

The World Below the Brine

Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves, Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick tangle openings, and pink turf, Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the play of light through the water, Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes, and the aliment of the swimmers, Sluggish existence grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom, The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting with his flukes, The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the sting-ray, Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths, breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do, The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by beings like us who walk this sphere, The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.

______________________________________________________________________________Whitman is probably the most powerfully influential poet of the last two hundred years. He droppedtraditional rhyme and meter: his poems don’t go tumteetumteetum, and they don’t rhyme. After him,more and more poets did the same, they wrote “free verse.”

Here he asks us to consider a dizzying possibility: just as can look down into the see and see a worldof weird slimy creatures below, so there could be world of creatures above who can look down onus....

43

Walt Whitman. 1819––1892

O Captain! My Captain!

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring: But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up——for you the flag is flung——for you the bugle trills;For you bouquets and ribbon’’d wreaths——for you the shores a-crowding;For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head; It is some dream that on the deck, You’’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! But I, with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

___________________________________________________________________________Within days of the Union’s victory in the Civil War, its leader was assassinated. Whitman wrote thispoem to express his horribly conflicting emotions about these two events. This poem uses traditionalrhyme and meter, unlike his other poems, because it was specifically meant for young readers. Hethought free verse is for grown ups.

44

Herman Melville. 1830––1891

Far Off-Shore

Look, the raft, a signal flying. Thin – a shred;None upon the lashed spars lying, Quick or dead.

Cries the sea-fowl, hovering over, “Crew, the crew?”And the billow, reckless rover, Sweeps anew!

______________________________________________________________________________Melville was a great novelist of the sea. His masterpiece was Moby Dick (1851), base on hisexperience as a sailor when he was young. In 1857, however, he gave up trying to make a living bywriting and took a government job in New York. For the rest of his life, he wrote mainly poetry, andseldom tried to publish it. In this little poem, a spooky little snapshot of the remains of a disasterat sea, he returns for a moment to his original subject-matter.

45

Lewis Carroll. 1832-1898

Jabberwocky

'Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe:All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!Beware the Jubjub bird, and shunThe frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought--So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and throughThe vorpal blade went snicker-snack!He left it dead, and with its headHe went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?Come to my arm, my beamish boy!O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe:All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

______________________________________________________________________________

It is very hard to explain why this poem is so interesting. It think of it as a parody of the Medievalpoems in which a young hero kills some terrifying monster (often, but not alway, a dragon), but it’snot exactly funny. It is full of invented words that sound like the almost mean something. Carrollwrote an elaborate explanation of what they mean, but the poem for some reason seems to get alongfine without an explanation.

46


The Walrus and the Carpenter

The sun was shining on the sea,Shining with all his might:He did his very best to makeThe billows smooth and bright--And this was odd, because it wasThe middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,Because she thought the sunHad got no business to be thereAfter the day was done--"It's very rude of him," she said,"To come and spoil the fun!"

The sea was wet as wet could be,The sands were dry as dry.You could not see a cloud, becauseNo cloud was in the sky:No birds were flying overhead--There were no birds to fly.

The Walrus and the CarpenterWere walking close at hand;They wept like anything to seeSuch quantities of sand:"If this were only cleared away,"They said, "it would be grand!"

"If seven maids with seven mopsSwept it for half a year.Do you suppose," the Walrus said,"That they could get it clear?""I doubt it," said the Carpenter,And shed a bitter tear.

47

"O Oysters, come and walk with us!"The Walrus did beseech."A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,Along the briny beach:We cannot do with more than four,To give a hand to each."

The eldest Oyster looked at him,But never a word he said:The eldest Oyster winked his eye,And shook his heavy head--Meaning to say he did not chooseTo leave the oyster-bed.

But four young Oysters hurried up,All eager for the treat:Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,Their shoes were clean and neat--And this was odd, because, you know,They hadn't any feet.

Four other Oysters followed them,And yet another four;And thick and fast they came at last,And more, and more, and more--All hopping through the frothy waves,And scrambling to the shore.

The Walrus and the CarpenterWalked on a mile or so,And then they rested on a rockConveniently low:And all the little Oysters stoodAnd waited in a row.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,"To talk of many things:Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--Of cabbages--and kings--And why the sea is boiling hot--

48

And whether pigs have wings."

"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,"Before we have our chat;For some of us are out of breath,And all of us are fat!""No hurry!" said the Carpenter.They thanked him much for that.

"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,"Is what we chiefly need:Pepper and vinegar besidesAre very good indeed--Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,We can begin to feed."

"But not on us!" the Oysters cried,Turning a little blue."After such kindness, that would beA dismal thing to do!""The night is fine," the Walrus said."Do you admire the view?

"It was so kind of you to come!And you are very nice!"The Carpenter said nothing but"Cut us another slice:I wish you were not quite so deaf--I've had to ask you twice!"

"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,"To play them such a trick,After we've brought them out so far,And made them trot so quick!"The Carpenter said nothing but"The butter's spread too thick!"

"I weep for you," the Walrus said:"I deeply sympathize."With sobs and tears he sorted out

49

Those of the largest size,Holding his pocket-handkerchiefBefore his streaming eyes.

"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,"You've had a pleasant run!Shall we be trotting home again?'But answer came there none--And this was scarcely odd, becauseThey'd eaten every one.

______________________________________________________________________________“Lewis Carroll” was actually the pen name of Charles Luttwidge Dodgson, lecturer in mathematicsin Oxford. His pen name was based on the Latin version of his first two names – LudovicusCarolinus – with the order reversed. Most of his books are very technical ones: he had somethingof a specialty in geometry (both Euclidian and non-Euclidian) and mathematical logic. But he isremembered today for his “Alice” books and his nonsense verse, which he began to write in orderto entertain some kids he knew, with at first no thought of publishing them.

50


The Mad Gardener’s Song

He thought he saw an Elephant, That practised on a fife: He looked again, and found it was A letter from his wife. 'At length I realise,' he said, The bitterness of Life!'

He thought he saw a Buffalo Upon the chimney-piece: He looked again, and found it was His Sister's Husband's Niece. 'Unless you leave this house,' he said, "I'll send for the Police!'

He thought he saw a Rattlesnake That questioned him in Greek: He looked again, and found it was The Middle of Next Week. 'The one thing I regret,' he said, 'Is that it cannot speak!'

He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk Descending from the bus: He looked again, and found it was A Hippopotamus. 'If this should stay to dine,' he said, 'There won't be much for us!'

He thought he saw a Kangaroo That worked a coffee-mill: He looked again, and found it was A Vegetable-Pill. 'Were I to swallow this,' he said, 'I should be very ill!'

He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four That stood beside his bed: He looked again, and found it was A Bear without a Head.

51

'Poor thing,' he said, 'poor silly thing! It's waiting to be fed!'

He thought he saw an Albatross That fluttered round the lamp: He looked again, and found it was A Penny-Postage Stamp. 'You'd best be getting home,' he said: 'The nights are very damp!'

He thought he saw a Garden-Door That opened with a key: He looked again, and found it was A Double Rule of Three: 'And all its mystery,' he said, 'Is clear as day to me!'

He thought he saw a Argument That proved he was the Pope: He looked again, and found it was A Bar of Mottled Soap. 'A fact so dread,' he faintly said, 'Extinguishes all hope!'

_____________________________________________________________________________More of Carroll’s “nonsense verse.” This must be one of the most nonsensical ever written.

52

Thomas Hardy. 1840-1928

Drummer Hodge

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined – just as found:His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt around;And foreign constellations west Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew – Fresh from his Wessex home –The meaning of the broad Karoo, The Bush, the dusty loam,And why uprose to nightly view Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge forever be;His homely Northern breast and brain Grow to some Southern tree,And strange-eyed constellation reign His stars eternally.

______________________________________________________________________________This poem is about the Second Boer War (1899-1902) in which the British fought to conquer anindepent republic in southern Africa that was inhabited mainly by Dutch settlers (the so-called“Boers”). The dead young man (“Hodge” would be his last name) is no doubt fictional, but his fatereflects events that were typical of that war and indeed of almost any war. Hardy describes poorHodge as unable to understand the complicated reasons why Britain thought this war was in itsnational interest, or even why the stars look different in the southern hemisphere. The final image,of Hodge’s brain turning into an African tree while alien stars wheel overhead, is literallyunforgettable. The foreign words are all Boer Dutch: veldt = a grassy plain, kopje = cup. In thosedays the name “Hodge” was sometimes used to mean something like “a country bumpkin.”

53

Thomas Hardy. 1840-1928

The Convergence of the TwainLines on the loss of the "Titanic"

(May 14, 1912)

I

In a solitude of the seaDeep from human vanity,And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

II

Steel chambers, late the pyresOf her salamandrine fires,Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

III

Over the mirrors meantTo glass the opulentThe sea-worm crawls - grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

IV

Jewels in joy designedTo ravish the sensuous mindLie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

V

Dim moon-eyed fishes nearGaze at the gilded gearAnd query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?"

VI

Well: while was fashioningThis creature of cleaving wing,The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

VII

54

Prepared a sinister mateFor her - so gaily great -A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

VIII

And as the smart ship grewIn stature, grace, and hueIn shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

IX

Alien they seemed to be:No mortal eye could seeThe intimate welding of their later history,

X

Or sign that they were bentBy paths coincidentOn being anon twin halves of one august event,

XI

Till the Spinner of the YearsSaid "Now!" And each one hears,And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

______________________________________________________________________________Thomas Hardy was a successful novelist when he decided, during the eighteen-nineties, to devoteall his energy to writing poetry. This poem about the Titanic disaster, apparently written when theterrible news was fresh, reflects Hardy’s philosophy of “fatalism,” the idea that the important eventsin life are in one way or another, determined in advance. The “twain” (= two) of the title are theship and the iceberg. As he describes them, they give the weird impression of being two star-crossed lovers, literally “meant for each other.” “Convergence” is a term used in calculus to referto two quantities that grow steadily closer and closer together according to a fixed formula.

55

Wlliam Earnest Henley. 1849––1903

Invictus*

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

______________________________________________________________________________* “Invictus” is Latin for “undefeated” or “unconquerable.”

Henley was an English poet and magazine editor. He published Kipling’s first poems and was afriend of Robert Lewis Stevenson. This poem has been loved and memorized by many thousands ofordinary people. My father, a high school graduate who worked with his hands all his life, said itwas his favorite poem. It is a memorable statement of a courage and determination in a world thatoffers no religious consolation.

56

Robert Louis Stevenson. 1850-1894

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 long'd to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

______________________________________________________________________________* A requiem is a sort of funeral service, a mass for the dead.

Stevenson, the beloved author of Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde was a poet, and wrote a great deal of poetry specifically for young people. This one was foradults. He wrote it when he was sick and dying on an island far from home. These are the wordson his tombstone.

57

Charles Erskine Scott Wood. 1852––1944

Sunrise

THE lean coyote, prowler of the night,Slips to his rocky fastnesses,Jack-rabbits noiselessly shuttle among the sage-brush,And from the castellated cliffs,Rock-ravens launch their proud black sails upon the day.The wild horses troop back to their pastures.The poplar-trees watch beside the irrigation-ditches.

Orioles, whose nests sway in the cotton-wood trees by the ditch-side, beginto twitter.All shy things, breathless, watchThe thin white skirts of dawn,

The dancer of the sky,Who trips daintily down the mountain-sideEmptying her crystal chalice....

And a red-bird, dipped in sunrise, cracks from a poplar's topHis exultant whip above a silver world.

______________________________________________________________________________Wood is one of those writers who is ignored by professors but loved by a hardy little band ofdedicated fans. A corporate lawyer living in Portland, Oregon, he wrote about nature and was afierce critic of the US. war against Spain (1998), and a strong defender of the rights of Indians. Heonce wrote an essay on US foreign policy in the form of a dialogue between God and Wood’s friend,Mark Twain. Unlike many nature-lovers and anti-war writers today, Wood was very much opposedto big government. In fact, he was a dedicated anarchist, a believer in no government, and wrotea book (now unfortunately out of print) called Too Much Government.

58

Oscar Wilde. 1854–1912

Sonnet to Liberty

Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes See nothing save their own unlovely woe, Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know, -But that the roar of thy Democracies,Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies, Mirror my wildest passions like the sea And give my rage a brother -! Liberty!For this sake only do thy dissonant cries Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings By bloody knout or treacherous cannonadesRob nations of their rights inviolateAnd I remain unmoved -- and yet, and yet, These Christs that die upon the barricades, God knows it I am with them, in some things.

______________________________________________________________________________Wilde has a very disturbing idea here. Why is freedom a good thing? Not because people who havefreedom (that is, the “children” of liberty) are worth looking at. People who have freedom, he says,eventually become lazy slobs who take liberty for granted. No, freedom is a beautiful thing whenpeople who don’t have it yet are still fighting for it. It is the fight that is noble, not the thing itself. This view of the value of freedom was shared by the philosopher Nietzsche.

59

Oscar Wilde. 1854–1912

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

In Reading gaol by Reading town There is a pit of shame, And in it lies a wretched man Eaten by teeth of flame, In a burning winding-sheet he lies, And his grave has got no name.

And there, till Christ call forth the dead, In silence let him lie: No need to waste the foolish tear, Or heave the windy sigh: The man had killed the thing he loved, And so he had to die.

And all men kill the thing they love, By all let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!

______________________________________________________________________The story behind this poem is a tragic one. The Marquis of Queensbury (the same person who wrotethe Queensbury Rules for professional boxing) had been loudly denouncing Wilde for, according tohim, having a homosexual relationship with the Marquis’s son, Lord Alfred Douglass. Wildedecided to put an end to this by suing the him for libel. That was not a good idea, because what theMarquis was saying was actually true. After Wilde lost the suit, the government prosecuted him forbeing actively gay, which in those days was a serious crime. He was sentenced to two years hardlabor in Reading Gaol (pronounced “Redding Jail”). While there, he wrote a long poem aboutconditions there. The last three verses are printed here. It was his last major writing. When Wildewas released from jail, he had lost his right to contact his wife and children. The stigma of beinggay was so enormous in those days that the family name had been changed, from Wilde to Holland,to avoid being associated with him. I’ve met his grandson, who says that they are thinking ofchanging the family name back again.

60

Langdon Smith. 1857–1908

Evolution

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish In the Paleozoic time,And side by side on the ebbing tide We sprawled through the ooze and slime,Or skittered with many a caudal flip Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,My heart was rife with the joy of life, For I loved you even then.

Mindless we lived and mindless we loved And mindless at last we died;And deep in the rift of the Caradoc drift We slumbered side by side.The world turned on in the lathe of time, The hot lands heaved amain,Till we caught our breath from the womb of death And crept into light again. We were amphibians, scaled and tailed, And drab as a dead man's hand;We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees Or trailed through the mud and sand.Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet Writing a language dumb,With never a spark in the empty dark To hint at a life to come. Yet happy we lived and happy we loved, And happy we died once more;Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold Of a Neocomian shore.The eons came and the eons fled And the sleep that wrapped us fastWas riven away in a newer day And the night of death was past.

Then light and swift through the jungle trees We swung in our airy flights,Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms In the hush of the moonless nights;And, oh! what beautiful years were there

61

When our hearts clung each to each;When life was filled and our senses thrilled In the first faint dawn of speech.

Thus life by life and love by love We passed through the cycles strange,And breath by breath and death by death We followed the chain of change.Till there came a time in the law of life When over the nursing sideThe shadows broke and soul awoke In a strange, dim dream of God.

I was thewed like an Auruch bull And tusked like the great cave bear;And you, my sweet, from head to feet Were gowned in your glorious hair.Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave, When the night fell o'er the plainAnd the moon hung red o'er the river bed We mumbled the bones of the slain.

I flaked a flint to a cutting edge And shaped it with brutish craft;I broke a shank from the woodland lank And fitted it, head and haft;Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn, Where the mammoth came to drink;Through the brawn and bone I drove the stone And slew him upon the brink.

Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes, Loud answered our kith and kin;From west and east to the crimson feast The clan came tramping in.O'er joint and gristle and padded hoof We fought and clawed and tore,And check by jowl with many a growl We talked the marvel o'er.

I carved that fight on a reindeer bone With rude and hairy hand;I pictured his fall on the cavern wall That men might understand.For we lived by blood and the right of might Ere human laws were drawn,And the age of sin did not begin

62

Till our brutal tush were gone.

And that was a million years ago In a time that no man knows;Yet here tonight in the mellow light We sit at Delmonico's.Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs, Your hair is dark as jet,Your years are few, your life is new, Your soul untried, and yet -

Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay And the scarp of the Purbeck flags;We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones And deep in the Coralline crags;Our love is old, our lives are old, And death shall come amain;Should it come today, what man may say We shall not live again?

God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds And furnished them wings to fly;We sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn, And I know that it shall not die,Though cities have sprung above the graves Where the crook-bone men make warAnd the oxwain creaks o'er the buried caves Where the mummied mammoths are.

Then as we linger at luncheon here O'er many a dainty dish,Let us drink anew to the time when you Were a tadpole and I was a fish.

_____________________________________________________________________________Most people who teach literature have probably never heard of Smith, partly because he was not apoet but a journalist. He reported on the Spanish-American War for the New York Journal. As faras we know, he never published another poem. And yet this curious poem is often listed as afavorite. It is probably the first poem I can remember reading. They say that Smith wrote it to reciteat a birthday party for his wife at Delmonico’s, a very fashionable New York restaurant during “thegay nineties” (that’s the eighteen-nineties, of course). The poem’s many admirers sometimes missits (according to me) intentional humor. It fancifully combines two ideas you never thought youwould see together: the ancient poetic idea that love lasts forever, and the modern scientific ideathat everything changes. If you put them together, you get the idea that love always changes, withthese wonderfully absurd images of the slimy lovers embracing in the ooze.

63

A. E. Housman. 1859––1936

Mithridatesfrom “Terrence, This is Stupid Stuff”

There was a king reigned in the East: There, when kings will sit to feast, They get their fill before they think With poisoned meat and poisoned drink. He gathered all the springs to birth From the many-venomed earth; First a little, thence to more, He sampled all her killing store; And easy, smiling, seasoned sound, Sate the king when healths went round. They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up: They shook, they stared as white's their shirt: Them it was their poison hurt. --I tell the tale that I heard told. Mithridates, he died old.

______________________________________________________________________________This is part of a longer poem in which the Housman is defending his writings against a criticism: that they tend to be about gloomy subjects and are not “upbeat” enough. He says that experiencinglife’s pains indirectly, through literature, can build up a resistance that enables you to eventuallyswallow the real thing. “Sate” = sat. “Healths” = toasts to someone’s health.

Housman was one of the most popular poets who ever lived. But he was also a very learned man,a professor of ancient Greek literature and philosophy. On the next page is a poem he wrote abouttwo things that the Greek poets often wrote about: the victory of boys in sports or in war (symbolizedby the laurel), and the beauty of girls (represented here by the rose). Poets have often said that,because these things do not last long, they should be taken very seriously: enjoy them while you can.

64

A. E. Housman. 1859––1936

To an Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the raceWe chaired you through the market-place;Man and boy stood cheering by And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,Shoulder-high we bring you home,And set you at your threshold down,Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes a wayFrom fields where glory does not stayAnd early though the laurel growsIt withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shutCannot see the record cut,And silence sounds no worse than cheersAfter earth has stopped the ears;

Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honours out,Runners whom renown outranAnd the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,The fleet foot on the sill of shadeAnd hold to the low lintel upThe still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled headWill flock to gaze the strengthless dead,And find unwithered on its curlsThe garland briefer than a girl's.

______________________________________________________________________________Young people often have trouble understanding this poem because the author expresses himselfalmost entirely in metaphors and symbols. For some comments on it, see the preceding page, under“Mithridates.”

65

Earnest Lawrence Thayer. 1863-1940

Casey at the Bat

A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888

The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day; The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play. And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same, A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast; They thought if only Casey could but get a whack at that– We'd put up even money now with Casey at the bat.

But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake, And the former was a lulu and the latter was a cake; So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat, For there seemed but little chance of Casey's getting to the bat.

But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all, And Blake, the much despis-ed, tore the cover off the ball; And when the dust had lifted, and the men saw what had occurred, There was Johnnie safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.

Then from 5,000 throats and more there rose a lusty yell; It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell; It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled upon the flat, For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.

There was ease in Casey's manner as he stepped into his place; There was pride in Casey's bearing and a smile on Casey's face. And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat, No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Casey at the bat.

Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt; Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt. Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip, Defiance flashed in Casey's eye, a sneer curled Casey's lip.

And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air, And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there. Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped–

66

"That ain't my style," said Casey. "Strike one," the umpire said.

From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar, Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore. "Kill him! Kill the umpire!" shouted some one on the stand; And it's likely they'd have killed him had not Casey raised his hand.

With a smile of Christian charity great Casey's visage shone; He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on; He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the sphereoid flew; But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, "Strike two."

"Fraud!" cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered fraud; But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed. They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain, And they knew that Casey wouldn't let that ball go by again.

The sneer is gone from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in hate; He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate. And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go, And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright; The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light, And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout; But there is no joy in Mudville –mighty Casey has struck out.

______________________________________________________________________________This poem was firs published in The San Francisco Examiner, Sunday June 3, 1888. I grew up innearby Stockton, and in those days I heard claim a number of times that Stockton, my home town,was the original Mudville of this poem. This claim was obvious bragging: people loved this poem. It must be the most famous one ever written about baseball.

67

Richard Hovey. 1864–1900

The Sea Gypsy

I am fevered with the sunset, I am fretful with the bay, For the wander-thirst is on me And my soul is in Cathay.

There's a schooner in the offing, With her topsails shot with fire, And my heart has gone aboard her For the Islands of Desire.

I must forth again to-morrow! With the sunset I must be Hull down on the trail of rapture In the wonder of the sea.

______________________________________________________________________________Richard Hovey was a Lecturer in English literature and Columbia University. He wrote severalplays and was at work on a long poem about Lancelot and Guinevere when he died, but this littlepoem is the only one of his works that is remembered today. Given that he died in his mid thirties,though, his best work might have still been ahead of him when fate cut him down.

68

William Butler Yeats. 1865––1939

The Second Coming*

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all convictions, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

______________________________________________________________________________This famous poem has to do with Yeats’ complicated theories about history and his conviction thatcivilization in general is collapsing. “Gyre” is a term he invented for a historical era. The slouchingbeast in the last line is the Anti-Christ, the worl-conquering monster foretold in the Bible. This poemis often quoted to describe any situation in which the order of the world seems to be coming apart.

69


The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,Because a fire was in my head,And cut and peeled a hazel wand,And hooked a berry to a thread;And when white moths were on the wing,And moth-like stars were flickering out,I dropped the berry in a streamAnd caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floorI went to blow the fire aflame,But something rustled on the floor,And some one called me by my name:It had become a glimmering girlWith apple blossom in her hairWho called me by my name and ranAnd faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wanderingThrough hollow lands and hilly lands,I will find out where she has gone,And kiss her lips and take her hands;And walk among long dappled grass,And pluck till time and times are doneThe silver apples of the moon,The golden apples of the sun.

____________________________________________________________________________Many cultures have a legend of a mysterious, supernatural woman whose beauty destroys men bydriving insane with desire. Keats’ poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” is a famous example. TheGermans have the Lorelei, and in Mexico there is an Indian legend about La Xtabay, who hides, notin a woodland stream like Yeats’ magic spirit, but in a giant cardün cactus, and casts her spell onunsuspecting passers-by. “The Song of Wandering Aengus,” based on an Irish legend, is one of themost haunting versions of this theme. Most versions make it clear that the woman does this out ofmalice, because she is full of hatred for men. One thing that is unique about Yeats’ version is thesuggestion that the mans’ mania might not be entirely her doing: even before he sees her, there is a“fire” in his head. Maybe the fire in his head made him imagine the whole thing – ?

70


When You are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,And nodding by the fire, take down this book,And slowly read, and dream of the soft lookYour eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,And loved your beauty with love false or true,But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fledAnd paced upon the mountains overheadAnd hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

______________________________________________________________________________Yeats fell in love with a beautiful Irish revolutinary, Maude Gonne. He proposed marriage to her,and, later to her daughter, but they both turned him down. This is one of the poems her wrote abouther. It is actually a free translation of a poem by a French Renaissance poet, Pierre Ronsard.

71

Madison Cawein. 1865––1914

The Man Hunt

The woods stretch wild to the mountain side,And the brush is deep where a man may hide,

They have brought the bloodhounds up againTo the roadside rock where they found the slain.

They have brought the bloodhounds up, and theyHave taken the trail to the mountain way.

Three times they circled the trail and crossed,And thrice they found it and thrice they lost.

Now straight through the pines and the underbrushThey follow the scent through the forest's hush.

And their deep-mouthed bay is a pulse of fearIn the heart of the wood that the man must hear.

The man who crouches among the treesFrom the stern-faced men that follow these.

A huddle of rocks that the ooze has mossed—And the trail of the hunted again is lost.

An upturned pebble; a bit of groundA heel has trampled——the trail is found.

And the woods re-echo the bloodhounds' bayAs again they take to the mountain way.

A rock; a ribbon of road; a ledge,With a pine-tree clutching its crumbling edge.

A pine, that the lightning long since clave,Whose huge roots hollow a ragged cave.

A shout; a curse; and a face aghast,And the human quarry is laired at last.

The human quarry, with clay-clogged hair

72

And eyes of terror, who waits them there;

That glares and crouches and rising thenHurls clods and curses at dogs and men.

Until the blow of a gun-butt laysHim stunned and bleeding upon his face.

A rope, a prayer, and an oak-tree near.And a score of hands to swing him clear.

A grim black thing for the setting sunAnd the moon and the stars to look upon.

_____________________________________________________________________________Madison Cawein was a nature poet, known in his day as “the Keats of Kentucky.” They say hepublished an enormous amount of poetry, but this is the only poem of his I have seen.

73

Rudyard Kipling. 1865––1936

Tiger! Tiger!

What of the hunting, hunter bold? Brother, the watch was long and cold.What of the quarry ye went to kill? Brother, he crops in the Jungle still.

Where is the power that made your pride? Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.Where is the haste that ye hurry by? Brother, I go to my lair - to die!

______________________________________________________________________________This is one of many poems that Kipling based on his experiences living in India. A friend of minevividly remembers encountering this poem when he was growing up, as an transplanted east Indian,in eastern Africa. He still knows it by heart.

74


If

If you can keep your head when all about youAre losing theirs and blaming it on you,If you can trust yourself when all men doubt youBut make allowance for their doubting too,If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,Or being hated, don't give way to hating,And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;If you can meet with Triumph and DisasterAnd treat those two impostors just the same;If you can bear to hear the truth you've spokenTwisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winningsAnd risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,And lose, and start again at your beginningsAnd never breath a word about your loss;If you can force your heart and nerve and sinewTo serve your turn long after they are gone,And so hold on when there is nothing in youExcept the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;If all men count with you, but none too much,If you can fill the unforgiving minuteWith sixty seconds' worth of distance run,Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

_______________________________________________________________________This is said to be the favorite poem of the individualist novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand. DavidKelley read it at her funeral..

75


The Gods of the Copybook Headings

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turnThat Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place.But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would comeThat a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touchThey denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even DutchThey denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was trueThat All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four—And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—There are only four things certain since Social Progress began —

76

That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire—

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world beginsWhen all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sinsAs surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burnThe Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

______________________________________________________________________________Alright, by now you’ve noticed that I like to explain things. Well, this poem takes a lot of explaining,so if you don’t appreciate having obscure little details cleared up, just skip this one. But if you do,you’ll miss one of the greatest didactic (i.e., teaches a lesson) poems ever written. This poem waswritten in 1919, at the end of World War I, the bloodiest war the planet had ever seen, and one ofthe most pointless. This is Kipling’s meditation on the ideas that people live by, and how some ofthem actually cause catastrophes like this one. “The marketplace,” is a symbol drawn from theancient Greek city-states, where the market place, the open area in the middle of town, was the oneplace where large groups of people regularly gather. So “the market-place” became a symbol ofmob thinking, of the things that people believe just because everybody else believes them. “Copy-books” were notebooks in which English school children would practice their penmanship. Theywould copy some time-worn proverb (“A stitch in time saves nine,” etc.) at the top (or heading) ofthe page and then copy it over and over. So a “copy-book heading” is an old saying that is repeateduntil it becomes boring and meaningless – but, Kipling is telling us, they are still true. Boring, buttrue! So this poem is about how people ignore old truths and march off in lock-step, like a doomedarmy, in pursuit of popular delusions. In the fourth verse, he is saying that one reason we forget thegods of the copy-book headings is that people build their lives on hope, but the copy-book headingsdon’t usually offer hope, only truth.

Some of the copy-book sayings he refers to are obvious, because he quotes them in full (sometimes in italics). The others I have managed to identify are these: “The moon is made of green cheese.” (Stilton is a sort of English cheese.) This is a saying that was often used to make fun of the wishfulthinking of others. For instance: “When the revolution comes, we will all be rich.” “Yea, sure, andthe moon is made of green cheese!” “Green” cheese is unripe cheese. (Why this should be a symbolof wish-fulfilling fantasy, I don’t know.) “If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride” expressesthe same theme, the folly of wishful thinking. “If pigs had wings, they could fly.” This one was usedto puncture thinking based on an improbable assumption. “If the King would just send inreinforcements, we would win this battle.” “Sure, and if pigs had wings, they could fly!” “RobbingPeter to pay Paul.” Peter and Paul were both apostles of Jesus, and so they were equal. Thus thephase refers to the practice of solving one problem by causing another. Kipling is criticizingmodern welfare-state programs of taxing individuals for “the public good.” Since the “public” isthe same individuals you were taxing in the first place, this seems pointless, he says. I haven’t beenable to identify the saying about the moon being Dutch. Perpetual Peace is the title of a book by thephilosopher Immanuel Kant, an idealistic discussion of international relations. “Brave new world”is a quotation from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In Shakespeare’s play the phase is ironic, just asit is here: this world is neither brave nor new. In Shakespeare, brave generally means beautiful.

Other unusual or obsolete words usued: Listed = wished. Wabbling = wobbling.

77

Edgar Lee Masters. 1868-1953

The Village Atheist

Ye young debaters over the doctrineOf the soul’s immortality,I who lie here was the village atheist,Talkative, contentious, versed in the argumentsOf the infidels.But through a long sicknessCoughing myself to deathI read the Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus.And they lighted a torch of hope and intuitionAnd desire which the Shadow,Leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness,Could not extinguish.Listen to me, ye who live in the sensesAnd think through the senses only:Immortality is not a gift,Immortality is an achievement;And only those who strive mightilyShall possess it.

_____________________________________________________________________________Masters grew up in a small town in Illinois and eventually became a lawyer practicing inChicago. For seven years he was partner to the legendary Clarence Darrow. At the same time,he was struggling to begin a career as a writer. He had been planning to write a realistic novelabout the lives of the people in a small Illinois town. One day, he was reading a translation ofbook of ancient Greek called The Greek Anthology, in which some of the poems are tombstoneinscriptions, some of which are written as little speeches by the person who is buried in thegrave. One of them says: “I was an actor, who died many times [i.e., as a character in a play],but never before quite like this.” He hit on the ingenious idea of making his book a collection ofpoems in which the people buried in a rural Illinois grave yard are telling their stories, one at atime, to the living. He called it The Spoon River Anthology. As you read the book, variousstories involving several of the characters become more and more clear in your mind. Thepicture you eventually get of the lives of the villagers is much like you might get from a novel, butsomehow more powerful. It was an immediate and huge success, one of the most popular booksof poetry ever written by an American.

78

Edgar Lee Masters. 1868-1953

Anne Rutledge

Out of me unworthy and unknownThe vibrations of deathless music;"With malice toward none, with charity for all."Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions,And the beneficent face of a nationShining with justice and truth.I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,Wedded to him, not through union,But through separation.Bloom forever, O Republic,From the dust of my bosom!

______________________________________________________________________________This is another of the little speeches from The Spoon River Anthology (see preceding the page). Ann Rutledge was a real person. According to legend, Abraham Lincoln, who grew up nearby,was in love with her, but she died before they could marry. The legend says that she was the onegreat love of Lincoln’s life, and not Mary Todd, whom he later married. Masters imagines herethat Ann Rutledge had a strong influence on Lincoln’s ideals and – through him – on life inAmerica.

79

Edwin Arlington Robinson. 1869––1935

Richard Corey

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,We people on the pavement looked at him:He was a gentleman from sole to crown,Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,And he was always human when he talked;But still he fluttered pulses when he said,"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich——yes, richer than a king,And admirably schooled in every grace:In fine, we thought that he was everythingTo make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,Went home and put a bullet through his head.

______________________________________________________________________________Edward Arlington Robinson grew up in a small town in Maine. He often wrote about what hesaw as the narrowness of small town life. Back in the ‘sixties, Simon and Garfunkel set thispoem to music and made a popular song of it. Its theme that worldly success isn’t everythingwas popular in those days. The idea is hardly original, but people do forget it every once in awhile and need to be reminded.

80


Miniver Cheevy

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, Grew lean while he assailed the seasonsHe wept that he was ever born, And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;The vision of a warrior bold Would send him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not, And dreamed, and rested from his labors;He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot, And Priam's neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown That made so many a name so fragrant;He mourned Romance, now on the town, And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici, Albeit he had never seen one;He would have sinned incessantly Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace And eyed a khaki suit with loathing:He missed the medieval grace Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought, But sore annoyed was he without it;Miniver thought, and thought, and thought, And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late, Scratched his head and kept on thinking;Miniver coughed, and called it fate, And kept on drinking.

_____________________________________________________________________________Some people think this “Miniver Cheevy” is Robinson’s brutal portrait of – himself!

81


Luke Havergal

Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal, --There where the vines cling crimson on the wall, --And in the twilight wait for what will come.The wind will moan, the leaves will whisper some --Whisper of her, and strike you as they fall;But go, and if you trust her she will call.Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal --Luke Havergal.

No, there is not a dawn in eastern skiesTo rift the fiery night that's in your eyes;But there, where western glooms are gathering,The dark will end the dark, if anything:God slays Himself with every leaf that flies,And hell is more than half of paradise.No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies --In eastern skies.

Out of a grave I come to tell you this, --Out of a grave I come to quench the kissThat flames upon your forehead with a glowThat blinds you to the way that you must go.Yes, there is yet one way to where she is, --Bitter, but one that faith can never miss.Out of a grave I come to tell you this --To tell you this.

There is the western gate, Luke Havergal,There are the crimson leaves upon the wall.Go, -- for the winds are tearing them away, --Nor think to riddle the dead words they say,Nor any more to feel them as they fall;But go! and if you trust her she will call.There is the western gate, Luke Havergal --Luke Havergal.

______________________________________________________________________________In Robinson’s “Miniver Cheevy,” which is much more famous than “Luke Havergal,” he seemsto be critical of Romantic idealism. Here, on the other hand, it looks like he sympathizescompletely with the doomed Havergal’s devotion to an unnamed departed woman. We areseeing a different side of Robinson’s nature.

82

Stephen Crane. 1871–1900

In the Desert

In the desertI saw a creature, naked, bestial,Who, squatting upon the ground,Held his heart in his hands,And ate of it.I said, "Is it good, friend?""It is bitter--bitter," he answered;"But I like itBecause it is bitter,And because it is my heart."

“I Stood Upon a High Place”

I stood upon a high place,And saw, below, many devilsRunning, leaping,And carousing in sin.One looked up, grinning,And said, "Comrade! Brother!"

______________________________________________________________________________Stephen Crane is famous as the author of The Red Badge of Courage, a classic war novel he wrotebefore he had ever seen combat (he later saw more than enough when he served as a warcorrespondent). Few people know that he wrote two books of poems. That’s a shame, because theyare fascinating and entirely original. Like these two, most of them are short and express somestartling or odd idea. The only other poet Crane reminds me of at all is Nietzsche.

83

Walter de la Mare. 1873–1953

The Listeners

"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveler, Knocking on the moonlit door;And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest's ferny floor.And a bird flew up out of the turret, Above the Traveler's head:And he smote upon the door again a second time; "Is there anybody there?" he said.But no one descended to the Traveler; No head from the leaf-fringed sillLeaned over and looked into his gray eyes, Where he stood perplexed and still.But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house thenStood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men:Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair That goes down to the empty hall,Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveler's call.And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry,While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, 'Neath the starred and leafy sky;For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder, and lifted his head:—"Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word," he said.Never the least stir made the listeners, Though every word he spakeFell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house From the one man left awake:Aye, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, And the sound of iron on stone,And how the silence surged softly backward, When the plunging hoofs were gone.

______________________________________________________________________________De la Mare’s novels are often catalogued under “horror” because of their atmosphere of spookymysteriousness. That same atmosphere dominates this poem, his most famous one. Who is thesolitary traveler and what is his nocturnal mission? Why does no one answer him? We are left towonder, knowing that we can never find out for sure.

84

Walter de la Mare. 1873–1953

The Ghost

“Who knocks? “ ” “I, who was beautiful Beyond all dreams to restore, I from the roots of the dark thorn am hither, And knock on the door.”

“ Who speaks? “ “I -- once was my speech Sweet as the bird's on the air, When echo lurks by the waters to heed; 'Tis I speak thee fair.”

“ Dark is the hour! “ “ Aye, and cold.” “Lone is my house.” “Ah, but mine?”“Sight, touch, lips, eyes gleamed in vain.” “Long dead these to thine.”

Silence. Still faint on the porch Brake the flames of the stars. In gloom groped a hope-wearied hand Over keys, bolts, and bars.

A face peered. All the grey night In chaos of vacancy shone; Nought but vast sorrow was there – The sweet cheat gone.

______________________________________________________________________________De la Mare wrote this during World War I. Several of his poems from those years are aboutfriends or lovers who have died.

85

Robert Service. 1874––1958

The Cremation o f Sam McGee

There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold;The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold;The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did seeWas that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;Though he'd often say in his homely way that he'd "sooner live in hell".

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.Yet 'tain't being dead -- it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:"You may tax your brawn and brains,But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,Howled out their woes to the homeless snows -- O God! how I loathed the thing.

86

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May".And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;The flames just soared, and the furnace roared -- such a blaze you seldom see;And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; . . . then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm --Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold;The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold;The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did seeWas that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.

______________________________________________________________________________

My Dad loved Robert Service’s poems, and I read a bunch of them when I was a teenager. Professors ofliterature don’t take his writings seriously, because they seem to be pure entertainment. He has alwaysbeen popular with readers, though. Maybe it’s because the poems feel completely authentic. Hetraveled around the Yukon territory in the gold rush of 1898 and met many men like the ones he wroteabout. On one trip, he paddled up the McKenzie river in a canoe. When he wrote his first poem he wasworking as a bank teller in far northwestern Canada, but his writings made him famous and rich, and hespent the rest of his life writing and traveling the world.

87

Robert Service. 1874––1958

The Land of Beyond

Have ever you heard of the Land of Beyond, That dreams at the gates of the day? Alluring it lies at the skirts of the skies, And ever so far away; Alluring it calls: O ye the yoke galls, And ye of the trail overfond, With saddle and pack, by paddle and track, Let's go to the Land of Beyond!

Have ever you stood where the silences brood, And vast the horizons begin, At the dawn of the day to behold far away The goal you would strive for and win? Yet ah! in the night when you gain to the height, With the vast pool of heaven star-spawned, Afar and agleam, like a valley of dream, Still mocks you a Land of Beyond.

Thank God! there is always a Land of Beyond For us who are true to the trail; A vision to seek, a beckoning peak, A farness that never will fail; A pride in our soul that mocks at a goal, A manhood that irks at a bond, And try how we will, unattainable still, Behold it, our Land of Beyond!

_____________________________________________________________________________Like “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” this poem was based on Canadian Robert Service’sexperience with the tough land, and the tough men, of the great Yukon Gold Rush (1898-1900).

88

Robert Frost. 1875––1963

Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth-- Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches' broth-- A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall?-- If design govern in a thing so small.

______________________________________________________________________________The title refers to the “argument from design,” which says that we know that God exists because theworld must have been designed by someone: the order we see in the world could not have happenedby accident.

89

Robert Frost. 1875––1963

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claimBecause it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that, the passing thereHad worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I marked the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to wayI doubted if I should ever come back.I shall be telling this with a sigh.

Somewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.

____________________________________________________________________________The first time I read this one, I thought Frost was saying, “Do what I did, go down the less-traveledroad, it will all turn out for the best!” But look closer. “And that has made all the difference.” What difference? He never says. Maybe the kind of “road” he is talking about here is the kind youcan’t know about, can’t even compare, unless you have traveled it yourself.

90

Carl Sandburg. 1878––1967

Fog

The fog comeson little cat feet.

It sits lookingover harbor and cityon silent haunchesand then moves on.

Window

Night from a railroad car windowIs a great, dark, soft thingBroken across with slashes of light.

_____________________________________________________________________________Sandburg chose to live in Chicago, far from the haunts of the east coast literary elite. In hiswritings, he found beauty and dignity in ordinary things and ordinary people.

91

Ezra Pound. 1884–– 1972

In a Station of the Metro*

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black bough.

Alba**

As cool as the pale wet leaves of lily-of-the-valley She lay beside me in the dawn.

Papyrus***

Spring...Too long...Gongula

_____________________________________________________________________________* Ezra Pound explained how he came to write this tiny but very famous poem: “Three years agoin Paris I got out of a ‘metro’ [subway] train at La Concorde [Station], and saw suddenly abeautiful face, and then another and another, and then a beautiful child's face, and then anotherbeautiful woman, and I tried all that day to find words for what this had meant to me, and I couldnot find any words that seemed to me worthy, or as lovely as that sudden emotion.” He wrote athirty-two line poem about it, but threw it away. Six months later, he wrote one half as long. Sixmonths after that, he reduced it to one sentence, and here it is. If he had gone any further, therewouldn’t be any poem!

** “Alba” is the feminine form of the Latin “albus,” white. It also is a medieval French word forsunrise and, by extension, a medieval poem about lovers who must part at dawn or be discovered.

*** This is a translation of words found on a scrap of papyrus – an early sort of paper – discoveredin the twentieth century. These words are all that remains of one of the poems of Sappho, one of thegreatest Greek poets. “Gongula” was the name of one of Sappho’s lovers.

During World War II, Pound lived in Italy and made some radio broadcasts for the Fascists. Afterthe war, he (being an American, Idaho-born and bred) was tried in the U. S. for treason. Due to hiseccentric behavior, the court ruled that he was insane, and he subsequently spent more than tenyears a prisoner in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, in Washington D. C. While there, he was awarded theBollingen Prize for a new book of poems, and a public outcry against his confinement resulted.

92

Rainer Maria Rilke. 1875-1926

Ausgesetzt

Ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens. Siehe,

wie klein dort,

siehe : die letzte Ortschaft der Worte, und höher,

aber wie klein auch, noch ein letztes

Gehöft von Gefühl. Erkennst du´s ?

Ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens.

Steingrund

unter den Händen. Hier blüht wohl

einiges auf; aus stummem Absturz

blüht ein wissendes Kraut singend hervor.

Aber der Wissende? Ach, der zu wissen begann

und schweigt nun, ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des

Herzens.

Da geht wohl, heilen Bewußtseins,

manches umher, manches gesicherte Bergtier,

wechselt und weilt Und der großße geborgene

Vogel

kreist um der Gipfel reine Verweigerung.- Aber

ungeborgen, hier auf den Bergen des Herzens...

Exposed

Exposed on the mountains of the heart. See, how small there,see: the last village of words, and higher,but how small too, one last croft of feeling. Do you recognize it? –Exposed on the mountains of the heart. Stony ground under the hands. Here somethingcan flourish; out of the mute cliffblossoms an unknowing plant, singing.But he who knows? Ah, who began to knowand is silent now, exposed on the mountains of the heart.They wander here, sound minds, many, all around, many sure-footed mountain beasts,roam and rest. And the great mountain-protected bird circles the pure refusal of the peak. – Butunprotected, here on the mountains of the heart...

_____________________________________________________________________________Rilke’s poems are usually very philosophical and hard to understand, but even for Rilke this one isvery strange. What on earth does he mean? Maybe this one isn’t really philosophical at all: maybehe isn’t expressing an idea but a feeling he has. A sense of loneliness and danger. That way, itdoesn’t need an explanation. It make sense (in a way) just as it is.

93

John Masefield. 1878–1968

Sea-Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tideIs a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy life.To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

______________________________________________________________________________Masefield was an Englishman – in fact, he was Poet Laureate of England for many years. LikeMelville, though, he began as a sailor and even worked for a while in New York as a bartender.

The phrase “the whale’s way” is an old Anglo-Saxon poetic phrase for the sea.

94

e. e. cummings. 1904––1962

Buffalo Bill’s

Buffalo Bill's defunct* who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallionand break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat Jesus

he was a handsome man and what i want to know ishow do you like your blueeyed boyMister Death

______________________________________________________________________________* Defunct = no longer functioning, or dead. Buffalo Bill was a real person – Col. William F. Cody(1846-1917). When cummings (who liked to avoid capital letters) wrote this poem Cody was indeeddead.

95

Friedrich Nietzsche. 1844––1900

Venedig

An der Brücke stand jüngst ich in brauner Nacht. Fernher kam Gesang; goldener Tropfen quoll's über die zitternde Fläche weg. Gondeln, Lichter, Musik - trunken schwamm's in die Dämmrung hinaus ... Meine Seele, ein Saitenspiel, sang sich, unsichtbar berüührt, heimlich ein Gondellied dazu, zitternd vor bunter Seligkeit. - Hörte ihr jemand zu?

Venice

On the bridge I stoodIn brown of night.From far off there came a song;In golden drops it welledover the trembling space between.Gondolas, lights, music – Drunken it swam out in the twilight...

My soul, its strings invisibly touched,Sang it secret gondola song ,trembling in golden bliss. – Did anyone hear it?

______________________________________________________________________________Nietzsche was one of the very few great philosophers who was also a great writer. He wrote enoughpoetry to fill a good-sized book. In this poem, Nietzsche is trying to communicate an experience thathe thinks the reader has probably never had: a weird combination of high tension and deep peace..He suffered from huge mood swings and loved to stay in southern European cities, such as theVenice of this poem, because his mood was so much better when he was there. Obviously, this poemdescribes one of his good days! I’ve translated t it into English and placed the original next to it,so you won’t forget that this is only a translation – the original is more beautiful!

96

Randall Jarrell. 1914––1965

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner*

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

______________________________________________________________________________* This poem was inspired by things Jarrell saw when he fought in World War II. A ball turretwas a sphere of glass at the rear of some bomber planes. In it sat one lone gunner and one verylarge gun. The ball turret gunner could swing his gun almost 360 degrees, as he defended thebomber against enemy fighter planes. But he was terribly exposed to enemy fire.

97

Robinson Jeffers 1887––1962

The Great Explosion

The universe expands and contracts like a great heart.It is expanding, the farthest nebulaeRush with the speed of light into empty space.It will contract, the immense navies of stars and galaxies, dust clouds and nebulaeAre recalled home, they crush against each other in one harbor, they stick in one lumpAnd then explode it, nothing can hold them down; there is no way to express that explosion; all that exists.Roars into flame, the tortured fragments rush away from each other into all the sky, new universesJewel the black breast of night; and far off the outer nebulae like charging spearmen againInvade emptiness.No wonder we are so fascinated with fireworksAnd our huge bombs: it is a kind of homesickness perhaps for the howling fireblast that we were born from.

But the whole sum of the energiesThat made and contain the giant atom survives. It will gather again and pile up, the power and the glory--And no doubt it will burst again; diastole and systole: the whole universe beats like a heart.Peace in our time was never one of God's promises; but back and forth, live and die, burn and be damned,The great heart beating, pumping into our arteries His terrible life.

He is beautiful beyond belief.And we, God's apes--or tragic children--share in the beauty.We see it above our torment, that's what life's for.He is no God of love, no justice of a little city like Dante'sFlorence, no anthropoid GodMaking commandments,: this is the God who does not care and will never cease. Look at theseas thereFlashing against this rock in the darkness--look at the tide-stream stars--and the fall of nations– and dawnWandering with wet white feet down the Caramel Valley to meet the sea. These are real and we see their beauty.The great explosion is probably only a metaphor--I know not --of faceless violence, the root of all things.

____________________________________________________________________________This poem expresses a unique philosophy that Jeffers developed. He called it “Inhumanism.” Hethought human beings are too wrapped up in themselves. The center of our lives, the focus of our

thoughts and feelings, should be on nature itself: The coldly beautiful spectacle of the universe.

98

Robinson Jeffers 1887––1962

Summer Holiday

When the sun shouts and people aboundOne thinks there were the ages of stone and the age of bronzeAnd the iron age; iron the unstable metal;Steel made of iron, unstable as his mother; the towered-up citiesWill be stains of rust on mounds of plaster.Roots will not pierce the heaps for a time, kind rains will cure them,Then nothing will remain of the iron ageAnd all these people but a thigh-bone or so, a poemStuck in the world's thought, splinters of glassIn the rubbish dumps, a concrete dam far off in the mountain...

_______________________________________________________________________________Shortly after World War I, Jeffers and his wife Una moved to Carmel Point, where he built theirhouse, complete with an observation tower based on old ones they had seen in Ireland, on a cliffoverlooking the Pacific Ocean. They were the first residents of the Point. Over the years, as heviewed the encroachments of approaching “civilization,” it gave him some very gloomy thoughts. Today, “Tor House,” as it is called, is still there and open to the public. But it is surrounded byexpensive modern homes, inhabited by movie stars (like Clint Eastwood, who briefly was mayor ofCarmel) as well as wealthy lawyers and psychiatrists.

99

Edna St. Vincent Millay. 1892–1950

First Fig

My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night ; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-- It gives a lovely light!

Second Fig

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand: Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

"Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare"

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release From dusty bondage into luminous air. O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day, When first the shaft into his vision shone Of light anatomized! Euclid alone Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they Who, though once only and then but far away, Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

__________________________________________________________________________Millay, who was openly bisexual, lived in Greenwich Village and pursued a notoriously “loose” life. The titles of the first two poems are from the title of the book in which they appeared: A Few Figsfrom Thistles. The title of the book was from a Bible quotation, in which Jesus was saying that youcan tell a good person by what they do: “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapesof thorns, or figs of thistles?” Matt.7: 17. Maybe she meant that her poems were the good worksthat came from her “bad” way of life. I think she deserves a lot of credit for being, in “Euclidalone...,” one of the very few poets who acknowledged the greatness of mathematics.

100

Emily Dickinson. 1830-1886

“A Narrow Fellow in the Grass”

A narrow fellow in the grassOccasionally rides;You may have met him,-did you not?His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,A spotten shaft is seen;and then it closes at your feetAnd opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,A floor too cool for corn.Yet when a child, and barefoot, I more than once, at noon,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lashUnbraiding in the sun,-When, stooping to secure it,It wrinkled and was gone.

Several of nature’s people I know, and they know me;I feel for them a transportOf cordiality;

But never met this fellow,Attended or alone,Without a tighter breathing,And zero at the bone.

______________________________________________________________________________Emily Dickinson was a very strange person. As a child in 1830, she attended a private school forgirls – for one year, until terrific homesickness forced her to drop out and return to her home inAmherst, Massachusetts. After that, she seldom left her house. Starting in the 1860s, her physicalisolation from others became more or less total, and she eventually confined her activities prettymuch to one room of her house. She wrote somewhere around 1,800 poems but only published sevenof them in her lifetime. To someone who lives in such conditions, small things take can take on ahuge significance. A visit from one person, if you don’t get many visits, can be as important as anearthquake. And seemingly little details, like seeing a snake in the grass, if you seldom go outdoors,can be deeply disturbing. Reading Dickinson is like looking at the world through a microscope.

101

Emily Dickinson. 1830-1886

“‘Faith’ is a Fine Invention”

"Faith" is a fine invention When Gentlemen can see -- But Microscopes are prudent In an Emergency.

“Success is Counted Sweetest”

Success is counted sweetestBy those who ne'er succeed.To comprehend a nectarRequires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple hostWho took the flag todayCan tell the definition,So clear, of victory

As he, defeated, dying,On whose forbidden earThe distant strains of triumphBreak agonized and clear!

______________________________________________________________________________We tend to think of brilliant, solitary Emily as a delicate, flower-like person, but her point of viewcould be fairly tough-minded, as we see here.

102

Federico García Lorca. 1899–1936

Canción del Jinete

Córdoba.Lejana y sola.

Jaca negra, luna grande,y aceitunas en mi alforja.Aunque sepa los caminosyo nunca llegaré a Córdoba.

Por el llano, por el viento,jaca negra, luna roja.La muerte me está mirandodesde las torres de Córdoba.

¡Ay qué camino tan largo!¡Ay mi jaca valerosa!¡Ay, que la muerte me espera,antes de llegar a Córdoba!

Córdoba.Lejana y sola.

Song of the Rider

Córdobafar off and alone

Black pony, moon so large,and olives in my saddlebag.Though the pony knows the wayI will never arrive in Córdoba.

Through the plains, through the windblack pony, moon so red.Death is watching mefrom the towers of Córdoba.

Ay, the road so longAy, my pony so braveAy, death awaits mebefore I arrive in Córdoba.

Córdobafar off and alone.

______________________________________________________________________________García Lorca was a Spanish poet and a good friend of the painter Salvador Dalí. He and thecomposer Manuél de Falla, another friend, did a lot to increase the popularity of the old of styleSpanish gypsy music – called cante jondo, or “deep song.” To this day, Spanish popular songs arebeing written to the words of Lorca’s poems. The city of Córdoba, toward which the rider in thispoem is traveling without hope of ever getting there, was a great center of art, literature, andphilosophy when Spain was still a Muslim country. To a Spanish reader, it immediately calls upthoughts of the great, old Spain of a thousand years ago. The feeling of doom in this poem is typicalof the cante jondo tradition. As I did with the Nietzsche poem, I have translated it into English andplaced the original next to it.

103

Roy Campbell. 1902–1957

The Zebras

From the dark woods that breathe of fallen showers,Harnessed with level rays in golden reins,The zebras draw the dawn across the plainsWading knee-deep among the scarlet flowers.The sunlight, zithering their flanks with fire,Flashes between the shadows as they passBarred with electric tremors through the grassLike wind along the gold strings of a lyre.

Into the flushed air snorting rosy plumesThat smoulder round their feet in drifting fumes,With dove-like voices call the distant fillies,While round the herds the stallion wheels his flight,Engine of beauty volted with delight,To roll his mare among the trampled lilies.

______________________________________________________________________________Roy Campbell grew up in South Africa, in the state of Kwa-Zulu Natal, where he was an avidhunter, fisherman, and swimmer. No doubt, this strikingly beautiful sonnet is based on his ownobservation. Filly = young female horse (in this case, a zebra), stallion = male horse.

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-38) Campbell made a very bad career move. While theoverwhelming majority of writers and critics were on the Loyalist (ie., Communist and socialist)side, he supported the Nationalist (fascist) side. Though he wrote elaborate explanations, hisreputation never did recover, and today he is almost forgotten. Which is a shame, because hewas an amazingly talented writer.

104

Langston Hughes 1902-1967

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams For if dreams dieLife is a broken-winged birdThat cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreamsFor when dreams goLife is a barren fieldFrozen with snow.

Pennsylvania Station*

The Pennsylvania Station in New YorkIs like some vast basilica of oldThat towers above the terrors of the darkAs bulwark and protection to the soul.Now people who are hurrying aloneand those who come in crowds from far awayPas through this great concourse of steel and stoneTo trains, or else from trains out into day.And as in great basilicas of oldThe search was ever for a dream of God,So here the search is still within each soulSome seed to find to root in earthly sod,One seed to find that spouts a holy treeTo glorify the earth – and you – and me.

______________________________________________________________________________Langston Hughes, probably the best known African-American poet, was a leading figure in the“Harlem Renaissance,” a flowering of black art and culture during the ‘twenties and ‘thirties. Much of his writing was about specifically African-American issues and experiences, but these twopoems have a universal reach.

“Penn Station” was an immense train station, similar to Grand Central, which was demolisheddecades after Hughes wrote this sonnet. The exterior of the building was in the style of a Greektemple. As Hughes imagines it in this poem, it is a temple, dedicated to the human genius that makesit possible for great numbers of people to live where the wish, in pursuit of their own vision of whatlife on earth can be. Basilica = a Catholic church with special ceremonial significance.

105

Theodore Roethke 1908-1963

Night Crow

When I saw that clumsy crow Flap from a wasted tree,A shape in the mind rose up:Over the gulfs of dreamFlew a tremendous bird Further and further awayInto a moonless black,Deep in the brain, far back.

Child on Top of a Greenhouse

The wind billowing out the seat of my britches,My feet crackling splinters of glass and dried putty,The half-grown chrysanthemums staring up like accusers,Up through the streaked glass, flashing with sunlight,A few white clouds all rushing eastward,A line of elms plunging and tossing like horses,And everyone, everyone pointing up and shouting!

______________________________________________________________________________Unlike many highly creative people, Roethke had a happy childhood. His father, who had been asort of forest ranger in Germany, operated a plant nursery in northern Michigan and Theodorespent his early years exploring the plants, soil, and crawly things in the greenhouses and potterysheds. As he tells it, it was a sort of kid heaven, and many of his poems are attempts to capturememories of those days.

106

Five Japanese Haiku

Summer grassWhere warriors dream. –Basho

A blind childGuided by its motherAdmires the cherry blossoms. –Kikaku

The long, long riverA single lineOn the snowy plain. –Boncho

Wild goose, wild goose,At what age Did you make your first journey? –Issa

No one spoke,The guest, the host,The white chrysanthemums. –Ryota

______________________________________________________________________________All these translations were made by the American poet, Kenneth Rexroth. Rexroth used to claim thathe didn’t actually know the Japanese language when he wrote them. When people asked him howhe was able to translate poems from a language he didn’t read, he would say “Oh, I just workedthem out, like crossword puzzles.” I guess that means one word at a time, with a dictionary.

Basho’s haiku about the dreaming warriors probably refers to an old battle-field, where the fallenwarriors are buried. Basho, like Archilochus of Paros, started out as a soldier.

107

Richard Wright 1908-1960

Five Haiku

In the falling snowA laughing boy holds out his palmsUntil they are white.

* * *

Like a fishhook,The sunflower's long shadowHovers in the lake.

* * *

Empty autumn sky:The bright circus tents have gone,Taking their music.

* * *

A slow autumn rain.The sad eyes of my motherFill a lonely night.

* * *

A limping sparrowLeaves on a white window sillLacy tracks of blood.

______________________________________________________________________________Richard Wright was an African-American who grew up in terrible poverty. One of his childhoodmemories was of having to move to another town because a white lynch-mob murdered one of hisrelatives, and his family thought they might be next. In 1940 he suddenly became famous overnightwhen he published a sensational novel about a murderer, Native Son. After World War II, he livedmostly in Europe, where he became friends with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1951, he readsome haiku poems while resting from surgery in a Paris hospital. For several months, he wasobsessed with haiku: he read them, read about them, and wrote over four thousand of them. Manyof his haiku seem to be sad memories of his childhood in Mississippi and Tennessee.

108

Dylan Thomas. 1914––1953

Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,Because their words had forked no lightning theyDo not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how brightTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.Do not go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

______________________________________________________________________________The “good night” Thomas has in mind here is probably death, but I once heard it quoted by apolitical candidate who was reluctant to concede that his opponent had won the election. Like manygreat poems, it can be applied to situations far beyond what the poet actually meant.

109

William Carlos Williams. 1883––1963

The Fall of Icarus

According to Brueghelwhen Icarus fellit was spring

a farmer was ploughinghis fieldthe whole pageantry

of the year wasawake tinglingnear

the edge of the seaconcerned with itself

sweating in the sunthat meltedthe wings' wax

insignificantlyoff the coastthere was

a splash quite unnoticedthis wasIcarus drowning

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Daedalus was a mythical architect and inventor. When King Minos imprisoned him and his sonIcarus in the maze known as the Labyrinth, he created wings for the two of them, using feathers andwax. They flew out of the Labyrinth but Icarus, who flew so close to the sun that his wax melted, fellinto the sea and drowned. Here Williams is talking about a painting by Peter Brueghel, which issupposedly a picture of the fall of Icarus – except it is done as an ordinary landscape, with poorIcarus splashing into the sea in the lower right corner of the scene.

110

Karl Shapiro. 1913––2000

Auto Wreck *

Its quick soft silver bell beating, beating, And down the dark one ruby flare Pulsing out red light like an artery, The ambulance at top speed floating down Past beacons and illuminated clocks Wings in a heavy curve, dips down, And brakes speed, entering the crowd. The doors leap open, emptying light; Stretchers are laid out, the mangled lifted And stowed into the little hospital. Then the bell, breaking the hush, tolls once, And the ambulance with its terrible cargo Rocking, slightly rocking, moves away, As the doors, and afterthought, are closed. We are deranged, walking among the cops Who sweep glass and are large and composed. One is still making notes under the light. One with a bucket douches ponds of blood Into the street and gutter. One hangs lanterns on the wrecks that clings, Empty husks of locust, to iron poles. Our throats were tight as tourniquets, Our feet were bound with splints, but now, Like convalescents intimate and gauche, We speak through sickly smiles and warn With the stubborn saw of common sense, The grim joke and the banal resolution. The traffic moves around with care, But we remain, touching a wound That opens to our richest horror. Already old, the question Who shall die? Becomes unspoken who is innocent? For death in war is done by hands; Suicide has cause and stillbirth, logic; And cancer, simple as a flower, blooms. But this invites the occult mind, Cancels our physics with a sneer, And spatters all we knew of denouement Across the expedient and wicked stones.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

* Gauche = awkward. Occult = dark or supernatural. Denouement = the climax that brings a drama to ameaningful resolution.

Karl Shapiro was coming home from a date with a new girlfriend, perfectly happy and floating on a cloud,when he happened upon this scene of horror. When he got home he wrote this poem.

111

Henry Reed. 1914-1986

Naming of Parts

To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,To-day we have naming of parts. JaponicaGlistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,And to-day we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And thisIs the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,Which in your case you have not got. The branchesHold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always releasedWith an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let meSee anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easyIf you have any strength in your thumb. The blossomsAre fragile and motionless, never letting anyone seeAny of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of thisIs to open the breech, as you see. We can slide itRapidly backwards and forwards: we call thisEasing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwardsThe early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowersThey call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easyIf you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossomSilent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,For to-day we have naming of parts

112

______________________________________________________________________________Henry Reed was a British writer serving in the Royal Army in 1941-42, during the terrible earlydays of World War II, when Britain was facing Hitler alone and very ill-prepared. They were shorton weapons, ammunition, and just about everything needed for the conduct of war. This explainsa number of things about the poem that might seem rather odd. The poem shows a sergeant-instructor giving some recruits a tedious lecture on the parts of the Enfield rifle. Today they havenaming of parts and tomorrow they have what to do after firing. What about actually shooting thegun? It is never mentioned! The men probably aren’t firing the gun yet because they haven’t gotany ammunition. Most likely, the instructor is plodding through the other parts of their instructionin hopes that they ammo will arrive in time for them to actually learn how to fire their weaponsbefore they have to move on. What about the repeated phrase “which in your case you have notgot”? British ordnance is in such a sorry state that the instructor doesn’t even have the sameweapon his young trainees have. The piling swivel (ie., the part they have not got) is an obsoletedevice which used to enable soldiers to store their guns by piling them in a teepee-shaped pile. Itwas discontinued during World War I. When I first read this poem, during the Vietnam War, I andmy friends (and my teachers!) though that the author was saying that war and guns are ugly andbad, while flowers and bumblebees are pretty and nice. Actually, such anti-war sentiments mighthave been far from what the poet had in mind. Maybe the young recruit’s mind is wandering to theflowers and bees in the surrounding countryside because the instructor’s lecture is so boring andpointless.

This poems has been reprinted many times and, like many famous poems, it has also been parodiedmany times. One, posted on the web by one John Dee, begins like this:

Today we are playing the game. Yesterday,we had daily running. And tomorrow morning, We shall have what to do after losing. But today,Today we are playing the game. Real Cornish pasties Taste great and are handy for throwing at linesmenAnd today we are playing the game.

113

Louis Simpson. 1923–

Carentan O Carentan*

Trees in the old days used to standAnd shape a shady laneWhere lovers wandered hand in handWho came from Carentan.

This was the shining green canalWhere we came two by twoWalking at combat-interval.Such trees we never knew.

The day was early June, the groundWas soft and bright with dew.Far away the guns did sound,But here the sky was blue.

The sky was blue, but there a smokeHung still above the seaWhere the ships together spokeTo towns we could not see.

Could you have seen us through a glassYou would have said a walkOf farmers out to turn the grass,Each with his own hay-fork.

The watchers in their leopard suitsWaited till it was time,And aimed between the belt and bootAnd let the barrel climb.

I must lie down at once, there isA hammer at my knee.And call it death or cowardice,Don't count again on me.

Everything's all right, Mother,Everyone gets the sameAt one time or another.It's all in the game.

I never strolled, nor ever shall,Down such a leafy lane.

114

I never drank in a canal,Nor ever shall again.

There is a whistling in the leavesAnd it is not the wind,The twigs are falling from the knivesThat cut men to the ground.

Tell me, Master-Sergeant,The way to turn and shoot.But the Sergeant's silentThat taught me how to do it.

O Captain, show us quicklyOur place upon the map.But the Captain's sicklyAnd taking a long nap.

Lieutenant, what's my duty,My place in the platoon?He too's a sleeping beauty,Charmed by that strange tune.

Carentan O CarentanBefore we met with youWe never yet had lost a manOr known what death could do.

______________________________________________________________________________* Simpson served during World War II in the 101st Airborne Division. As a parachutist, he took partin the horrific D-Day invasion of Europe. Carentan was one of the battles in which the Americanspushed the Germans back during the weeks after D-Day, though at terrible cost in human life. I tooka class from Simpson back in the ‘sixties. He was an exiting teacher, because he always expressedhis opinions in forceful words. Here, though, he seems to prefer to understate the horrors of whatbattle (the ships “spoke to the town,” meaning that it bombarded it with huge guns). Maybe itsbecause he saw the horrors with his own eyes.

115

James Wright. 1927––1980

Autumn Begins in Martin’s Ferry, Ohio

In the Shreve High football stadium,I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.Their women cluck like starved pullets,*Dying for love.

Therefore,Their sons grow suicidally beautifulAt the beginning of October,And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

______________________________________________________________________________* A pullet is a young hen. Incidentally, Martin’s Ferry, Ohio is where Wright was born andgrew up in poverty. His father, who worked for fifty years in a glass factory, was probably verymuch like the men he describes here.

I was introduced to this poem by my college roommate, who was from Ohio. He told me there isone thing you need to know about Ohio to understand the poem: it is not uncommon for kids tobe killed in high school football games. As Wright sees it, there is a terrible energy throwingtheir bodies against each other. He thinks he can explain where this energy comes from.

116

Richard Brautigan. 1935––1984

The Pumpkin Tide

I saw thousands of pumpkins last nightcome floating in on the tide,bumping up against the rocks and rolling up on the beaches;it must be Halloween in the sea.*

Haiku Ambulance

A piece of green pepper felloff the wooden salad bowl: so what?

______________________________________________________________________________* Brautigan is often surrealistic: which means that he puts words and images together in ways thatare not logical but do have a certain strong effect on your mind as you read them. One of his poemsis called “The Horse that Had a Flat Tire” – and, no, it does not explain how, logically, a horsecould have a flat tire even though it hasn’t got any wheels. One thing that makes Brautigan sounique is his peculiar sense of humor. I’m convinced that in the second poem here he is parodyingthe way haiku tends to find meaning in the tiny details of life. He seems to be saying that somedetails really are as meaningless as you thought they were.

117

Richard Brautigan. 1935––1984

Albion Breakfast

For Susan

Last night (here) a long pretty girlasked me to write a poem about Albion,*so she could put it in a black folderthat has Albion printed nicely in white on the cover.

I said yes. She’s at the store nowgetting something for breakfast.I’ll surprise her with this poem when she gets back.

The Day They Busted the Grateful Dead

The day they busted the Grateful Deadrain stormed against San Franciscolike hot swampy scissors cutting Justice into the evil clothes that alligators wear.

The day they busted the Grateful Deadwas like a flight of winged alligatorscarefully measuring marble with black rubber telescopes.

The day they busted the Grateful Dead turned like the wet breath of alligatorsblowing up balloons the size of the Hall of Justice.

_____________________________________________________________________________* “Albion” is an old-time “poetic” word for England. Around 1850, someone (probably a homesickEnglish farmer) gave this name to a majestic spot on California’s rocky coast, about 150 miles northof Brautigan’s San Francisco apartment, and that is what it is still called today. But, no matterwhich Albion Susan was talking about, this poem is not “about Albion.” I bet she was not onlysurprised but sort of annoyed when she got back with the eggs and pancake mix.

When he was forty-nine years old, about seventeen years after he wrote these poems, Brautigan wasrich and famous, but the popularity of his writings was well past its peak. Depressed aboutprofessional and personal problems, he took his life with a .44 pistol he had often used for targetpractice while summering at his ranch in Montana. Later, his daughter Ianthe wrote a moving bookabout him and her attempts to come to grips with his death: You Can’t Catch Death ( 2000).

118

Dom Moraes. 1938––

Santa Clausfrom “The Christmas Sonnets”

His sullen kinsmen, by the winter sea,Said he w as holy: then, to his surprise,They stripped him, flayed him, tied him to a tree,Sliced off his tongue, and burnt out both his eyes.

The trampling reindeer smelt him where he lay,Blood dyeing his pelt, his beard white with rime,Until he lurched erect and limped away,Winter on winter, forward into time.

Then to new houses squat in brick he cameAnd heard the children’s birdlike voices soarIn three soft syllables” they called his name.

The chimney shook: the children in surpriseStared up as their invited visitorLifted his claws above them, holes for eyes.

______________________________________________________________________________* Moraes is a native of India who writes in English. He was an amazing child prodigy. Hestarted writing poetry when he was twelve. He was internationally known when he was fifteen. At nineteen he won Britain’s greatest literary prize. At twenty-seven, he published a book ofselected poems – something other poets do when they are about sixty. And then – he virtuallystopped writing poetry. Today people know him mainly as a writer of books about his travels. His brilliant early poems are one of the world’s best-kept secrets.

Sullen = gloomy and hostile, flay = to strip the skin off.

119

David Bottoms. 1949––

Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump

Loaded on beer and whiskey, we rideto the dump in carloadsto turn our headlights across the wasted field, freeze the startled eyes of rats against mounds of rubbish.

Shot in the head, they jump only once, lie still like dead beer cans.Shot in the gut or rump, they writhe and try to burrow into garbage, hide in old truck tires, rusty oil drums, cardboard boxes scattered across the mounds,or else drag themselves on forelegs across our beams of light toward the darkness at the edge of the dump.

It's the light they believe kills. We drink and load again, let them crawlfor all they're worth into the darkness we're headed for.

______________________________________________________________________________This is one poem that doesn’t need an explanation. The poet is using the rats here as a symbol, butyou can figure that out for yourself. Mr. Bottoms (Professor Bottoms, actually) liked this poemenough to use it as the title of his first book of poems (1980). The book was selected for an awardby the distinguished critic, Robert Penn Warren.

120

Poems or Trees?You Decide!

Trees

I think that I shall never seeA poem lovely as a tree.A tree whose hungry mouth is prestAgainst the earth's sweet flowing breast;A tree that looks at God all day,And lifts her leafy arms to pray;A tree that may in Summer wearA nest of robins in her hair;Upon whose bosom snow has lain;Who intimately lives with rain.Poems are made by fools like me,But only God can make a tree.

-- Joyce Kilmer

Poems

I think that I shall never readA tree of any shape or breed -For all its xylem and its phloem -As fascinating as a poem.Trees must make themselves and soThey tend to seem a little slowTo those accustomed to the paceOf poems that speed through time and spaceAs fast as thought. We shouldn't blameThe trees, of course: we'd be the sameIf we had roots instead of brains.While trees just grow, a poem explains,By precept and example, howLeaves develop on the boughAnd new ideas in the mind.A sensibility refinedBy reading many poems will beMore able to admire a treeThan lumberjacks and nesting birdsWho lack a poet's way with wordsnd tend to look at any treeIn terms of its utility.And so before we give our praiseTo pines and oaks and laurels and bays,We ought to celebrate the poemsThat made our human hearts their homes.

-- Tom Disch

______________________________________________________________________________If you’ve come this far in this book, maybe you are in a position to answer this half-serious question. The poem by Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918) has been reprinted hundreds of times. Tom Disch (1940-2008), author of this parody of Kilmer’s poem, is better known as Thomas M. Disch, the author ofscience fiction classics like Camp Concentration.

121

Index of Authors

Archilochus 5Anonymous 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 17

Basho 108Blake, William 20, 21Bonsho 108Bottoms, David 120Brautigan, Richard 118, 119Byron, George Gordon, Lord 27, 28, 29

Campbell, Roy 105Carroll, Lewis 46,47,55Cawein, Madison 72Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 22Crane, Stephen 83cummings, e. e. 95

Dickinson, Emily 101, 102Disch, Tom 121

Frost, Robert 89, 90

García Lorca, Federico 105

Henley, William Ernest 56Herrick, Robert 18, 19Housman, A. E. 64. 65Hovey, Richard 68Hughes, Langston 103

Issa 107

Jarrell, Randall 97Jeffers, Robinson 98, 99

Kayyam, Omar 10Keats, John 30Kikaku 107Kilmer, Joyce 121Kipling, Rudyard 74, 75, 76

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 31, 33, 34

Lermontov, Michael 42

Mare, Walter de la 84, 85Masefield, John 94Masters, Edgar Lee 78, 79Melville, Herman 45Millay, Edna St. Vincent 100Moraes, Dom 119

Nietzsche, Friedrich 96

Poe, Edgar Allan 38, 39Pound, Ezra 9, 92

Rilke, Rainer Maria 93Robinson, Edwin Arlington 80, 81, 82Roethke, Theodore 106

Ryota 107

Sandburg, Carl 91Service, Robert 86, 88Shakespeare, William 14, 15, 16Shapiro, Karl 111Shelly, Percy Bysshe 24, 25Simpson, Louis 114Smith, Langdon 61Stevenson, Robert Louis 57

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord 35, 37Thayer, Ernest Lawrence 66Thomas, Dylan 109

Whitman, Walt 43, 44Wilde, Oscar 59, 60Williams, William Carlos 109Wood, Charles Erskine 58Wright, James 116Wright, Richard 110

Yeats, William Butler 69, 70, 71

122

The Song of the Rider - philosophy.wisc.eduphilosophy.wisc.edu/hunt/poetrycoll.pdf · IV “Ye’ll...

Documents

Transcript of The Song of the Rider - philosophy.wisc.eduphilosophy.wisc.edu/hunt/poetrycoll.pdf · IV “Ye’ll...