Poems I Journey With 16

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861) was one of the most prominent English poets of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime. She was vehemently anti-slavery even though her father had earned much of his wealth from that much maligned, exploitative and cruel industry. She had married her husband Robert Browning in secret and went with him to live in Florence, having been disinherited by her father. Emily Dickinson was an avid fan of Barrett Browning and the latter’s work greatly influenced the American poet who admired her as a woman of achievement. Her popularity in the United States and Britain was further advanced by her stands against social injustice, including slavery in the United States, injustice toward Italian citizens by foreign rulers, and child labour.

Here, let me offer the reader of this blog two poems from Barrett Browning’s pen, “A Musical Instrument” published posthumously and her most frequently anthologized poem “How do I Love Thee?” Both poems speak eloquently for themselves and are rather ethereal and mystical in tone and sentiment. Barrett Browning was extremely spiritual and religious and a gifted linguist and scholar, all self-taught.  She knew Greek, Latin and Hebrew and translated many pieces from the early Fathers of the Church into English and read the Hebrew Bible. All her life she was sickly, but her delicate physical condition did not prevent either her intellectual or spiritual insights and visions.

A Musical Instrument

I.

WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan,

Down in the reeds by the river?

Spreading ruin and scattering ban,

Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,

And breaking the golden lilies afloat

With the dragon-fly on the river.

II.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,

From the deep cool bed of the river:

The limpid water turbidly ran,

And the broken lilies a-dying lay,

And the dragon-fly had fled away,

Ere he brought it out of the river.

III.

High on the shore sate the great god Pan,

While turbidly flowed the river;

And hacked and hewed as a great god can,

With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,

Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed

To prove it fresh from the river.

IV.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,

(How tall it stood in the river!)

Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,

Steadily from the outside ring,

And notched the poor dry empty thing

In holes, as he sate by the river.

V.

This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan,

Laughed while he sate by the river,)

The only way, since gods began

To make sweet music, they could succeed.'

Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,

He blew in power by the river.

VI.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!

Piercing sweet by the river!

Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!

The sun on the hill forgot to die,

And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly

Came back to dream on the river.

VII.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,

To laugh as he sits by the river,

Making a poet out of a man:

The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, —

For the reed which grows nevermore again

As a reed with the reeds in the river.

Elizabeth's husband Robert Browning and their son Robert Junior, called Pen

How Do I Love Thee?
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Sonnet XLIII
from Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1845 (published 1850)

Poems I Journey With 4

W.B.Yeats, surely one of the greatest poets of all time who wrote in the English language, offers me so much artistic, literary, and dare I say it, spiritual sustenance, that my volumes of his poems are always well thumbed.  Therefore, let me offer the reader another of my favourites from his pen, here.  It is called, aptly enough, "The Long-Legged Fly."  There is something at once beautiful and somewhat gauche about the title as "long-legged" applied to any species suggests a certain ungainliness and a definite awkwardness in the first place. And yet the poem suggests a certain transcendent grace that builds its myth upon lowly nature; a certain extraordinary beauty that transcends the ordinary quotidian experience of life.

Long-Legged Fly

That civilization may not sink,

Its great battle lost,

Quiet the dog, tether the pony

To a distant post;

Our master Caesar is in the tent

Where the maps are spread,

His eyes fixed upon nothing,

A hand upon his head.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence. 

That the topless towers be burnt

And men recall that face,

Move most gently if move you must

In this lonely place.

She thinks, part woman, three parts child,

That nobody looks:

Her feet practise a tinker shuffle,

Picked up upon a street.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

Her mind moves upon silence. 

That girls at puberty may find

The first Adam in their thought,

Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,

Keep those children out.

There on the scaffolding resides

Michael Angelo.

With no more sound than the mice make

His hand moves to and fro.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence. 

Commentary

Something as beautiful as this poem simple defies commentary, and in so doing I am, in a sense being somewhat sacrilegious in attempting, as it were, to nail down the "sacred" experience of these well-crafted lines in more mundane words.  Despite that caveat, I shall try to express here, at least what this poem means to me, one solitary reader.  I love the scientific, very unpoetical term, a word, naturally enough, avoided by Yeats, namely "dolichopodidae" that describes that most cosmopolitan of fly families, namely that of the "two-legged flies." Apparently there are about 7,000 species of these flies at a conservative count.

When I read a poem I don't necessarily go in search for an exact meaning, for such an intention, to my mind, is sacrilegious.  In other words, I search for connotations more than denotations.  I have learnt to let a poem suggest meanings, obviously not outlandish and impossible ones, but rather more possible ones and as many of them as is reasonable.  In a sense, obviously, we will never know exactly what was in  the poet's mind when he wrote the poem, but we can make an educated guess anyway.

The refrain which marks the ending of each stanza is an amazingly powerful chorus that suggests the power of human reflection, awareness, concentration, meditation or contemplation from whose seeds all of civilization emerged.  It suggests that through this self-reflective power civilization emerges and is greater than the individual parts that go to make it up. Civilization and all its cultures transcend the individual.

Western monasticism and Eastern practices of Buddhism have always rated silence highly because silence is, as it were, the seedbed of creativity and wisdom.  Silence is also the seedbed of genius.  In the first stanza we meet the great Julius Caesar sitting in his tent looking into the distance, obviously pondering, with his eyes "fixed upon nothing."  In silence, he is obviously contemplating what he and his troops have as a goal.  The Romans were great conquerors, great men of action and one of the great builders of Western civilization.  Caesar needs to enter the realm of silence to garner inspiration for his conquests, to tap into his vision of future possibilities:

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence. 

In the second stanza we encounter the great Helen of Troy. Obviously, her beauty is directly conjured up in our minds by the lines:

That the topless towers be burnt

And men recall that face,

Move most gently if move you must

In this lonely place.

These lines remind us of the lines from Christopher Marlowe's play, Doctor Faustus, especially these lines put in Faustus's mouth by the playwright:

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium -

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

Helen is the very essence of beauty, a beauty so natural and so rhythmic that she captures its quintessence in the gorgeous peasant girl that dances so lithely in the streets. Through her, Yeats seems to be arguing that all beauty is made possible as she is its symbol or emblem in Greek civilization.  The Greeks, obviously, with the Romans were the two great builders of Western civilization. In this sense, we may say that the first stanza is essentially about politics/military affairs, which lie at the physical foundations of civilization, while the second stanza is about aesthetics and the innocence of pure alluring beauty which is also another source of the creative spark that set civilization alight.  One could also maintain that this second stanza highlights or underscores the power of creativity in the realm of mythology.  

In the last stanza, Yeats contemplates the spark of genius that inspired one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance period, one Michel Angelo, whom he calls Michael Angelo here in this poem.  It is, as it were, the "Arts" stanza as it describes the painting of the Sistine Chapel.   To put it rather bluntly the poet's wish "That girls at puberty may find the first Adam in their thoughts" suggests that the power of Michel Angelo's depiction of the naked male form may entice them to have children.

Once again, genius thrives in silence and peace:

With no more sound than the mice make

His hand moves to and fro.

Each of the three characters, one in each stanza, viz., Julius Caesar, Helen of Troy and Michel Angelo achieve transcendence, or an elevation to a higher plane, or a going beyond this physical world just as the long-legged fly defies gravity as it walks across the water.  Let us note here that the imagery in the last two lines, which function like a chorus from a song, is simply beautiful and so gently put because the long-legged fly can move across the surface of the water effortlessly, without disturbing it in the same way, as it were, that the genius of Caesar, Helen or Michel Angelo can move creatively from one idea to the next.

Michel Angelo, like Helen and Caesar, is inspired by a vision beyond him, some transcendent pull, as it were.  Aristotle called such a pull, a "telos."*

*A telos (from the Greek τέλος for "end", "purpose", or "goal") is an end or purpose, in a fairly constrained sense used by philosophers such as Aristotle. It is the root of the term "teleology," roughly the study of purposiveness, or the study of objects with a view to their aims, purposes, or intentions.  See WIKI here.

Journal of a Soul 14

We identify people by their different characteristics: the contours of their body, the shape of their face, the colour of the hair or the sound of their voice or even of their laugh. Their selfhood or character is summoned up by the powerful blending of all these characteristics.  I wish to concentrate on only one of these qualities here, namely the last listed one - the sound of the human voice.

Some years back, I remember viewing a TV programme on those poor lost souls - the homeless or those of our number who live on our streets.  The most haunting thing about the whole programme was, in fact, a short recording of one of their number - some old tramp - singing a song or a hymn - I can't remember which at this point in time.  One heard snatches of this song judiciously placed at various emotionally moving points in the programme and at the end as the credits rolled.  Effectively, the voice of this anonymous tramp brought a tear to my eye, and, I'm sure, to many more viewers.

Arranmore lighthouse - July 2010

Some days ago I was teaching/helping/counselling a teenager who has been through some very rough times in his short life.  Another two students were due to attend this social education/personal development class but were absent on this occasion.  There were two other adults - a teacher and an SNA -  in the room.  I didn't wish to do anything too deep or too personal with the young teenager (16), but I knew he was a brilliant guitarist and singer who wrote some of his own songs.  I duly invited him to get a guitar from the music room and play some music for us.  What we ended up with was a 30 minute performance where the young man sang his heart/soul out literally through his music.  One song, he told us, was written for one of his best friends who had ended his own life, and the lyrics mentioned how this poor lost soul used cut himself with a knife.  We three adults were moved by the sound of the young man's voice, by the passion in it, by the soulful, tender and healing nature of the music.

How true it is, then, as the dramatist William Congrieve (1670 – 1729) declared that "Music has charms to soothe a savage breast."  This young man in my story has learned the lesson well that he can heal himself through his creativity.  It is one of the main contentions of  the  Existential School of Psychotherapy that all forms of creativity are avenues to healing the human soul.  The great American Existential therapist Rollo May always underscored this seminal point.

And so, as this young man sang his words, he weaved his musical magic which brought tears to other eyes.  Music in general, and the singing voice, which is also a wonderful instrument, are both means of great healing.

And as to what music may be, we are all at a loss to explain in the philosophical sense.  And yet, we know how real it is when we hear it and are emotionally and aesthetically moved by it.  And somewhere in its depths and heights, widths and breadths, we meet something powerfully healing and renewing.  It is something deeply connected with our true humanity.

Also, when people write poems or songs, they put a certain passion into what they compose and this passion is for a perceived beauty or value or truth which they have somehow apprehended, that "something understood" which the lyrical poet George Herbert (1593 - 1633) mentions as one of the results of the power of prayer.

There is also something natural and beautiful about good music, an inevitability of phrasing and sound in harmony with the heart and soul.  Like the first few posts in this particular blog, finishing with the soulful sound of a human voice may be the most appropriate way of ending this brief post. 

I'll put a link here to a group of lads called The Original Rudeboys as I taught one of their number and a brother of another of them.

Check out some others of their numbers, too.

Enjoy!

The Original Rude Boys