Keats and Yeats: Two Odes

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
         My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
         One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
         But being too happy in thine happiness,—
                That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
                        In some melodious plot
         Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
                Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
         Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
         Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
         Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
                With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
                        And purple-stained mouth;
         That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
                And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
         What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
         Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
         Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
                Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
                        And leaden-eyed despairs,
         Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
                Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
         Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
         Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
         And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
                Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
                        But here there is no light,
         Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
                Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
         Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
         Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
         White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
                Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
                        And mid-May's eldest child,
         The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
                The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
         I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
         To take into the air my quiet breath;
                Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
         To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
                While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
                        In such an ecstasy!
         Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
                   To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
         No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
         In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
         Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
                She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
                        The same that oft-times hath
         Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
                Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
         To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
         As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
         Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
                Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
                        In the next valley-glades:
         Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
                Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

--JOHN KEATS




BYZANTIUM

The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the starlit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood,
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

--WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Just Shy Of Fifty-Two

I've outlived Keats, Shelley, and Byron by a considerable margin with not all that much to show for it.

The heat is on, then, to make the second half-century count.  I embrace the challenge.

Lines: evidence of time passing, though not of any mere passive passage of time.  Maps to the country of character, of mishap and what-have-you.  A lack of sunscreen, certainly; plenty of squinting into the sun, commuting, driving across bridges, kayaking and diving out in the glare.  Pool-time and sea-time too: dried skin from the chlorine and salt.  And all that reading, of course, the concentration above all those pages . . . .  And yet, and this is something I wear with pride: more smiles than anything, frankly.  There's an aspiration, don't you think?  Crease your face with good will and cheer, if you dare.  (I'm smiling as I type that.)

There's a poem by Robert Graves that comes to mind, though he was older when he wrote it.  I'll post it in a day or so.

This year I've written at least one poem worth keeping, and that's a fine judgment, a fine declaration.  More would be better, but then that's homework to be dealt with in the next few months.

Just now, right now, I am toasting all of us with a bit of Bushmills.  Carry on, and live as large as you can.

May the devil . . . oh, you know.  And, here's to King Brian in the interim.  I'm drinking Irish, after all.

Yeats: "That Dolphin-Torn, That Gong-Tormented Sea"

BYZANTIUM

The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.
Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.
Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood.

The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea. 

--William Butler Yeats

M.C. Richards: Being Passionate, Defined

          But of course we have to be passionate.  That is to say, when we are, we must be able to be.  We must be able to let the intensity -- the Dionysian rapture and disorder and the celebration of chaos, of potentiality, the experience of surrender -- we must be able to let it live in our bodies, in our hands, through our hands into the materials we work with.  I sense this: that we must be steady enough in ourselves, to be open and to let the winds of life blow through us, to be our breath, our inspiration; to breathe with them, mobile and soft in the limberness of our bodies, in our agility, our ability, as it were, to dance, and yet to stand upright, to be intact, to be persons.  We come to know ourselves, and others, through the images we create in such moods.  These images are disclosures of ourselves to ourselves.  They are life-revelations.  If we can stay 'on center' and look with clear-seeing eyes and compassionate hearts at what we have done, we may advance in self-knowledge and in knowledge of our materials and of the world in its larger concerns.


--M.C. Richards, Centering: In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person

"The Paths of Glory Lead But to the Grave[s]," Robert Graves, That Is

Or, as I should say, the poet Graves leads the way here. I couldn't help the bad joke involving Gray's line from his "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." Still, weak humor notwithstanding, I believe that possessing "a new understanding of my confusion" will lead to sure, certain, and true glory. Maybe I should step aside here and let the poet offer his guidance.

IN BROKEN IMAGES

He is quick, thinking in clear images;

I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;

I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images,

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;

Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact,

Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;

When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;

I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;

I in a new understanding of my confusion.

--Robert Graves

Passages: Kodak Moment?

"Every picture tells a story--don't it?" That's Rod Stewart singing, but today I'm thinking of how pictures work standing alone, as history, and in that difficult, turbulent territory that exists between subjective history and pure image.

Richard Ford is a writer I admire, both in his novels and in his short stories. I read him avidly, and I've taught his short stories to my students. The Ultimate Good Luck is Ford's second novel, a sort of detective-story-without-a-detective, a wonderfully tense excursion that has Hemingway's short stories, Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers, and Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato in its bloodlines. (I don't know the truth of those possible influences, but that's what I thought when I first read the book in 1986, and I still do).

There are so many moments I could quote for you, but today I want to pull out one moment. This passage concerns the way a picture can tell different stories to different people, concerns how a picture may be worth a thousand words, but we just may need those thousand words to properly appreciate the picture (or the real life of the picture), and concerns the manner in which the character Quinn just may be too susceptible to what the character Rae thinks and wants. (And Rae matters to him, though he'd better figure out how to make that work and be okay with it; happiness would just be a bit too much to ask for--themes of the larger novel.)

Anyway, here's the part of one paragraph from a tense, action-oriented, reflective novel that held my attention today. And, as I have been telling my students, writing that holds my attention is writing I value:

There was a picture taken nearly that long ago that showed him standing alone on the sand beach on Mackinac Island, staring gloomily into the camera as though into a dark thundercloud that threatened to ruin his day. Rae said he looked saturnine and didn't like the pose. But the truth was that he had just fucked a big Finnish girl from Ludington, whom he'd met on the boat from St. Ignace, and who had wide Finnish blue eyes and dusty skin and was older than he was. And he was, he thought, in the best spirits of his life, and had gone back in fact, the very next moment, and found the girl and fucked her again. But in his mind, over time, he had defeated the facts, become convinced that he was sour and out of sorts, and he didn't like to look at the picture and kept it in his footlocker where he never saw it.

--Richard Ford,

from The Ultimate Good Luck

Touchstone: The Testament of Daedalus

Consider this quotation from Michael Ayrton's The Testament of Daedalus:

What there is in me of poesis rests in my fingertips and in my eyes, but because the poem exists in the thing I make, and not in me, it comes to me in the act of discovery. I make votives of one sort and another and celebrate possibilities in gold and bronze and other materials. In the making of things and especially in the making of images, lies an act of conquest which is sufficient exercise of power for a proper man.

I put this passage next to Seamus Heaney's "The Diviner" (and next to various parts of Mary Renault's The King Must Die and The Mask of Apollo) when I think about teaching, about art, about craft, and about ambition. The books I haven't written yet; the stories I tell, have told, will tell.

Ayrton, Michael. The Testament of Daedalus. London: Robin Clark, 1991.

Renault, Mary.  The King Must Die.  New York: Pocket Books, 1965.

---.  The Mask of Apollo.   New York: Pantheon, 1966.