Let's Head for the Land of Poetry . . . .

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

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

Yeats and Pound: "Lake Isle" Poems

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, 
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; 
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, 
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, 
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; 
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, 
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day 
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; 
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, 
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

--William Butler Yeats      (1892)


THE LAKE ISLE


O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, 
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop, 
With the little bright boxes
               piled up neatly upon the shelves
And the loose fragment cavendish
               and the shag, 
And the bright Virginia
               loose under the bright glass cases, 
And a pair of scales not too greasy, 
And the whores dropping in for a word or two in passing, 
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit. 

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, 
Lend me a little tobacco-shop, 
               or install me in any profession
Save this damn'd profession of writing, 
               where one needs one's brains all the time. 

--Ezra Pound     (1915)

The Tide Is Low: Mask and Kelp

Triton Beached (detail).


Perhaps an ancient Greek poet can help us here:

Desire the limb-loosener,
O my companion,
Has beat me down.


--Archilochos

(Translated by Guy Davenport in 7 Greeks.)

Or, perhaps, we should recall a poem by W.B. Yeats I've posted once before here.
His poem begins . . .

I am worn out with dreams;
A weather-worn, marble triton
Among the streams . . . .

Robert Graves: Stones and a Goddess

CONSORTIUM OF STONES

The stones you have gathered, of diverse shapes,

Chosen from sea strand, lake strand, mountain gully:

Lay them all out on a basalt slab together

But allow intervals for light and air,

These being human souls; and reject any

With crumpled calceous edges and no feature

That awakes loving correspondence.

Start at this pair: blue flint, grey ironstone,

Which you ring around with close affinities

In every changeless colour, hatched, patched, plain--

Curve always answering curve, and angle, angle.

Gaps there may be, which next year or the next

Will fill to a marvel: never jog Time's arm,

Only narrow your eyes when you walk about

Lest they miss what is missing. The agreed intent

Of each consortium, whether of seven stones,

Or of nineteen, or thirty-three, or more,

Must be a circle, with firm edges outward,

Each various element aware of the sum.

THE BLACK GODDESS

Silence, words into foolishness fading,

Silence prolonged, of thought so secret

We hush the sheep-bells and the loud cicada.

And your black agate eyes, wide open, mirror

The released firebird beating his way

Down a whirled avenue of blues and yellows.

Should I not weep? Profuse the berries of love,

The speckled fish, the filberts and white ivy

Which you, with a half-smile, bestow

On your delectable broad land of promise

For me, who never before went gay in plumes.

--Robert Graves

Robert Graves, along with William Butler Yeats, is a favorite poet from the beginning and middle of the last century. Both poets share a mythic power, though their visions are individual and discrete from one another. Graves, even more than Yeats, is a poet of raw desire and of deep connection with the elements.

Yeats: "Memory," "Presences," and "The Balloon of the Mind"

MEMORY

One had a lovely face,

And two or three had charm,

But charm and face were in vain

Because the mountain grass

Cannot but keep the form

Where the mountain hare has lain.

PRESENCES

His night has been so strange that it seemed

As if the hair stood up on my head.

From going-down of the sun I have dreamed

That women laughing, or timid or wild,

In rustle of lace or silken stuff,

Climbed up my creaking stair. They had read

All I had rhymed of that monstrous thing

Returned and yet unrequited love.

They stood in the door and stood between

My great wood lectern and the fire

Till I could hear their hearts beating:

One is a harlot, and one a child

That never looked upon man with desire,

And one, it may be, a queen.

THE BALLOON OF THE MIND

Hands, do what you're bid:

Bring the balloon of the mind

That bellies and drags in the wind

Into its narrow shed.

--W.B. Yeats

Yeats: "Men Improve with the Years"

MEN IMPROVE WITH THE YEARS

I am worn out with dreams;

A weather-worn, marble triton

Among the streams;

And all day long I look

Upon this lady's beauty

As though I had found in a book

A pictured beauty,

Pleased to have filled the eyes

Or the discerning ears,

Delighted to be but wise,

For men improve with the years;

And yet, and yet,

Is this my dream, or the truth?

O would that we had met

When I had my burning youth!

But I grow old among dreams,

A weather-worn, marble triton

Among the streams.

--W.B. Yeats

W.B. Yeats: Twilight and Fire (in the Head)

INTO THE TWILIGHT

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,

Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;

Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,

Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Your mother Eire is aways young,

Dew ever shining and twilight grey;

Though hope fall from you and love decay,

Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:

For there the mystical brotherhood

Of sun and moon and hollow and wood

And river and stream work out their will;

And God stands winding His lonely horn,

And time and the world are ever in flight;

And love is less kind than the grey twilight,

And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.

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 stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And some one called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through 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 done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

--W.B. Yeats

Yeats: "The Moods" and "The Mask"

THE MOODS

Time drops in decay,

Like a candle burnt out

And the mountains and woods

Have their day, have their day;

What one in the rout

Of the fire-born moods

Has fallen away?

THE MASK

'Put off that mask of burning gold

With emerald eyes.'

'O no, my dear, you make so bold

To find if hearts be wild and wise,

And yet not cold.'

'I would but find what's there to find,

Love or deceit.'

'It was the mask engaged your mind,

And after set your heart to beat,

Not what's behind.'

'But lest you are my enemy,

I must enquire.'

'O no, my dear, let all that be;

What matter, so there is but fire

In you, in me.'

--William Butler Yeats

P.S. The sense of loss that pervades "The Moods" is absolute, though I'm never quite sure how to answer that question at the end of that poem. (I look around me to see who is missing now, to see whom to name. I wonder about the "fire-born" and yearn to join that "rout," even as the loss is presented to me.) The repetition of "Have their day, have their day" has always worked its magic on me, resonating down the years.

I love how these poems make me think, dramatically and thematically, and yet the emotions emanating from and evoked by these poems are the roots, the sources, the impulses for such thinking. When I was younger, I always thought that more thought was needed to "get" Yeats' work, but older now, I see that more feeling is the real key. Imagination demands both sides of the coin, after all.

Passages: "Dance Like A Wave Of The Sea"

William Butler Yeats has penned so many poems, but this isn't one of the famous ones. "The Fiddler of Dooney" is an early work, artfully simple, and easily overlooked.

THE FIDDLER OF DOONEY

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,

Folk dance like a wave of the sea,

My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,

My brother in Moharabuiee.

I passed my brother and cousin:

They read in their books of prayers;

I read in my book of songs

I bought at the Sligo Fair.

When we come at the end of time,

To Peter sitting in state,

He will smile on the three old spirits,

But call me first through the gate:

For the good are always the merry,

Save by an evil chance,

And the merry love the fiddle

And the merry love to dance:

And when the folk there spy me,

The will all come up to me,

With "Here is the fiddler of Dooney!"

And dance like a wave of the sea.

--W.B. Yeats

"And dance like a wave of the sea": On my best days teaching, I feel a bit like the fiddler. That's heady inspiration for working harder, for doing better. I typed up this simple poem to share, yes, but mostly to remind myself today, this hour. And so.

Passages: W. B. Yeats' Mythic Yearning

Here are two of my favorite poems by William Butler Yeats, early and particularly Celtic poems. The Irish poet strums the mythic harpstrings here, his melodies bright and piercing. I've always felt a bit haunted by Fergus' chariot and Niamh's calling.

WHO GOES WITH FERGUS?

Who will go drive with Fergus now,

And pierce the deep wood's woven shade,

And dance upon the level shore?

Young man, lift up your russet brow,

And lift your tender eyelids, maid,

And brood on hopes and fear no more.

And no more turn aside and brood

Upon love's bitter mystery;

For Fergus rules the brazen cars,

And rules the shadows of the wood,

And the white breast of the dim sea,

And all dishevelled wandering stars.

THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE

The host is riding from Knocknarea

And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;

Caoilte tossing his burning hair,

And Niamh calling Away, come away;

Empty your heart of its mortal dream.

The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,

Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,

Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam,

Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;

And if any gaze on our rushing band,

We come between him and the deed of his hand,

We come between him and the hope of his heart.

The host is rushing 'twixt night and day,

And where is there hope or deed as fair?

Caoilte tossing his burning hair,

And Niamh calling Away, come away.

P.S. If you feel you need more, well, Yeats' poetry, prose, and dramas are easy to find. "The Stolen Child" is your best next step.

The Blood Tells

"One of the most shocking characteristics of the Celts for Classical commentators was that they were--at least in battle--head-hunters. The warrior who decapitated his enemy had more than proof of victory: he was also possessing himself of the sacred and protective powers supposed to reside within the human head. Skulls were frequently positioned at the doors of Celtic temples to act as spiritual guardians. Gods were depicted with over-large heads, while especial importance was attached to the janiform head, because of its ability to look in both directions at once. A famous example from Roquepertuse in the south of France shows the human and the divine, the warrior and the war-god, gripped in the bill of a goose."

--A passage from The Celts: Sacred Symbols. Thames & Hudson, Ltd., London: 1975; reprinted 1996.

That's Fergus above, watching over the birdstand, a horned tripod, that I cobbled together recently. "Who will go with Fergus now?" Many birds, I hope, and may the spirits of all fly freely, here and hereafter.

Today would have been my father's 77th birthday, so I'm thinking of flights of fancy, of Otherworlds and other worlds (like one in which he would still be alive, and I could tell him about new frontage roads and shortcuts). I'll toast you, Dad, with a bit of Irish, though Mom would hardly approve. Here and hereafter.

P.S. Here's a shot of my father as a young man, maybe 30 or so. It's a photo of part of my favorite photo of the man; despite the age and condition of the photo itself, his spirit is clearly visible here.

The Whelming Sea and Strand

This shot strands me in the midst of at least three literary moments: Cuchulain's defeat by the sea; Oedipus' self-mutilation; Jason's being struck down by the spar from the Argo's mast. I also hear echoes of poems by John Montague, Seamus Heaney, Robert Graves, W.B. Yeats, Homer, and Vergil. Not that my photograph compares with such verbal visions, but that's how the mind works, at least mine, paying heed to the scene at hand, yet allowing the echoes to sound and play in the mind's ear. (Sometimes, such echoing may be a cacaphony, so beware what you wish for.)

The shot also sets me there on the beach up north, just south of Mendocino, at Van Damme State Park. Look at how well that sand and shingle drains, appearing almost dry, grains fairly distinct, even as this next wave slides upward from the cove. I can feel the water and sand in my shoes as I look at this shot. The heavy, wet legs of my jeans. Think again how I didn't change into the wetsuit boots or the wetsuit up in the truck since I was just going to take a few pictures. And that's alright. Later, the faint squish and grit as I walked the streets of Mendocino, looking for used books and hot coffee, recalled the fun of this session, the salt air, the vigorous stench of rotting kelp, the bright light, and cooling breezes. It was late November, but lovely, lovely weather. Seas too rough for the class dive, but fine for kayaking and beachcombing.

And that foam.