The Earth does not exhibit itself, nor refuse to exhibit itself—possesses still underneath;
Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the wail of slaves,
Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young people, accents of bargainers,
Underneath these, possessing the words that never fail.
To her children, the words of the eloquent dumb great Mother never fail,
The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail, and reflection does not fail;
Also day and night do not fail, and the voyage we pursue does not fail.
WALT WHITMAN.
How fevered is the man who cannot look
Upon his mortal days with temperate blood,
Who vexes all the leaves of his life’s book,
And robs his fair name of its maidenhood;
It is as if the rose should pluck herself,
Or the ripe plum finger its misty bloom,
As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf,
Should darken her pure grot with muddy gloom;
But the rose leaves herself upon the briar,
For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed,
And the ripe plum still wears its dim attire,
The undisturbèd lake has crystal space;
Why then should man, teasing the world for grace,
Spoil his salvation for a fierce miscreed?
JOHN KEATS.
That great poets should be capable of making such enormous errors of judgment as most of them in fact do make—some with an appalling frequency—is, for me, a subject of chronic astonishment. How was it possible, for example, that a man of Keats’s literary sensibility could find it in him to spoil an otherwise admirable sonnet with that hideously inappropriate and ugly seventh line?
As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf, . . .
Isn’t it manifestly obvious that Naiads and elves, in the particular poetical circumstances, are completely out of place? The whole point of the sonnet lies in its opposition of Man, discontented and self-tortured, to a Nature that is calm and that accepts its fate (for the good reason, incidentally, that it is mindless and cannot do otherwise). Himself a meddling elf, Keats has ruined the whole idea by introducing into the world of Nature a piece of ridiculous supernatural machinery. What he meant to say was: “As if the clear lake should stir up its own mud.” What the exigencies of rhyme and a fatal itch to be too “poetical” actually made him say was:—
As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf,
Should darken her pure grot with muddy gloom.
It is a wound and an affront. One winces, one could groan, and one wants to break out into abusive curses.
As proude Bayard ginneth for to skippe
Out of the wey, so priketh him his corn,
Till he a lash have of the longe whippe,
Than thenketh he, “though I praunce al biforn
First in the trace, ful fat and newe shorn,
Yet I am but an hors and horses law
I moot endure and with my feres draw.”
So fared it by this fierce and proude knight.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER.
It would be wearisome if the greater were invariably illustrated by the less, the higher always by the lower. But, occasionally, how stimulatingly astringent is a cockney metaphor! Even James Joyce’s “snot-green sea” has something to be said for it.
It is characteristic of Chaucer that he should liken the hero of his romance to a corn-fed horse that has to be whipped into good behaviour. Sermons in dogs, books in the quacking ducks . . . The father of English poetry was a naturalist.
Strenuous Life
Give me a spirit that on this life’s rough sea,
Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind,
Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,
And his rapt ship run on her side so low
That she drinks water and her keel ploughs air.
There is no danger to a man that knows
What life and death is; there’s not any law
Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law.
GEORGE CHAPMAN.
Comme je descendais des Fleuves impassibles,
Je ne me sentis plus guidé par les haleurs:
Des peaux-rouges criards les avait pris pour cibles,
Les ayant cloués nus aux poteaux de couleurs.
J’étais insoucieux de tous les équipages,
Porteur de blés flamands ou de cotons anglais.
Quand avec mes haleurs out fini ces tapages,
Les Fleuves m’ont laissé descendre ou je voulais . . .
Plus douce qu’aux enfants la chair des pommes sures,
L’eau verte pénétra ma coque de sapin
Et des taches de vins bleus et des vomissures
Me lava, dispersant gouvernail et grappin.
Et dès lors je me suis baigné dans le poème
De la mer infusé d’astres et lactescent,
Dévorant les azurs verts où, flottaison blême
Et ravie, un noyé pensif parfois descend. . . .
Je sais les cieux crevant en éclairs, et les trombes,
Et les ressacs, et les courants; je sais le soir,
L’aube exaltée ainsi qu’un peuple de colombes,
Et j’ai vu quelquefois ce que l’homme a cru voir.
J’ai vu le soleil has taché d’horreurs mystiques,
Illuminant de longs figements violets,
Pareils à des acteurs de drames très antiques,
Les flots roulant au loin leurs frissons de volets. . . .
J’ai heurté, savez-vous? d’incroyables Florides
Mèlant aux fleurs des yeux de panthères, aux peaux
D’hommes, des arcs-en-ciel tendus comme des brides,
Sous l’horizon des mers, à des glauques troupeaux.
J’ai vu fermenter les marais, énormes nasses
Où pourrit dans les joncs tout un Léviathan:
Des écroulements d’eau au milieu de bonaces,
Et les lointains vers les gouffres cataractant;
Glaciers, soleils d’argent, flots nacreux, cieux de braises,
Echouages hideux au fond des golfes bruns,
Où les serpents géants dévorés de punaises
Choient des arbres tordus avec de noirs parfums. . . .
Or moi, bateau perdu sous les cheveux des anses,
Jeté par l’ouragan dans l’éther sans oiseau,
Moi dont les Monitors et les voiliers des Hanses
N’auraient pas repêché la carcasse ivre d’eau,
Moi qui tremblais, sentant geindre à cinquante lieues
Le rut des Béhémots et des Maelstroms épais,
Fileur éternel des immobilités bleues,
Je regrette l’Europe aux anciens parapets.
J’ai vu des archipels sidéraux, et des îles
Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur:
Est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t’exiles,
Million d’oiseaux d’or, ô future Vigueur?
Mais, vrai, j’ai trop pleuré. Les aubes sont navrantes,
Toute lune est atroce et tout soleil amer.
L’âcre amour m’a gonflé de torpeurs enivrantes.
Oh, que ma quille éclate! Oh, que j’aille à la mer!
Si je désire une eau d’Europe, c’est la flache
Noire et froide où, vers le crépuscule embaumé,
Un enfant accroupi, plein de tristesse, lâche
Un bateau frêle comme un papillon de mai.
Je ne puis plus, baigné de vos langueurs, ô lames,
Enlever leur sillage aux porteurs de cotons,
Ni traverser l’orgueil des drapeaux et des flammes,
Ni nager sous les yeux horribles des pontons.
ARTHUR RIMBAUD.
The Pulley
When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
Let us, said He, pour on him all we can;
Let the world’s riches which dispersèd lie
Contract into a span.
So strength first made a way,
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.
For if I should, said He,
Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gift instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
So both should losers be.
Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.
GEORGE HERBERT.
Lord, what a busy restless thing
Hast thou made man!
Each day and hour he is on the wing,
Rests not a span.
Hadst thou given to this active dust
A state untired,
The lost son had not left the husk,
Nor home desired.
That was thy secret, and it is
Thy mercy too;
For when all fails to bring to bliss,
Then this must do.
O Lord, and what a purchase will that be,
To take us sick, that, sound, would not take thee!
HENRY VAUGHAN.
So many people are ill and overworked, that paradise is commonly conceived as a place of repose. But there are hours and days, there are even whole epochs in the life of every human being, when George Herbert’s Pulley simply doesn’t pull; when rest is the last thing of which the soul and body feel a need; when all desire tends quiveringly towards a strenuous and exciting heaven.
“Art thou weary, art thou languid, art thou sore distrest?” The answer to the hymn-writer’s question is: Yes, sometimes; but sometimes not at all. Christianity has always found a certain difficulty in fitting the unfatigued, healthy and energetic person into its philosophical scheme. Whenever they come across such a person, its moralists begin by reminding him that, even if he does happen to be feeling well now, he will very soon be old and decrepit. After which they tell him that he ought, whatever the state of his mind and his viscera, to behave as though he were feeling ill. “Sickness,” said Pascal, who was never afraid of carrying arguments to their logical conclusions, “sickness is the Christian’s natural state; for in sickness a man is as he ought always to be—in a state, that is to say, of suffering, of pain, of privation from all the pleasures of the senses, exempt from all passions.” The good Christian who has the misfortune to be hale should turn himself into an artificial invalid. But as Kierkegaard remarks, “to be healed by the help of Christianity is not the difficulty; the difficulty is to become thoroughly sick.” For all people at some times, and for some people at all times, this difficulty is insuperable. “Million d’oiseaux d’or, ô future Vigueur!” Even here and now, vigour can be like the sudden explosion above a rock in the sea—the sudden explosion, the continued swoop and glitter—of innumerable wings.
Over hills and uplands high
Hurry me, Nymphs! O hurry me!
Where green Earth from azure sky
Seems but one blue step to be:
Where the sun his wheel of gold
Burnishes deeply in her mould,
And her shining walks uneven
Seem declivities of heaven.
Come, where high Olympus nods,
Ground-sill to the hall of
