Poems I Journey With 27

Sketch of John Keats

As a young student of English literature at college in the late seventies of the last century when I was 19 or 20, I discovered the wonderful poems of John Keats (1795 – 1821).  There was romance written in the face of the young poet depicted in whatever copies of sketches or paintings that were then available.  To add to the romantic mystery and intrigue was the fact that he had perished from TB, or consumption as it was then called, at just 25 years of age. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his work having been in publication for a period of only four years before his untimely death. Coupled with this, his devotion to his craft, to nursing his younger brother Tom and to his sweetheart Fanny Brawne also added to the romanticism that surrounded this great poet.  To add further to his mystique, we were to learn that in 1816, when he was just 21, Keats received his apothecary's licence, a qualification which made him eligible to practise as an apothecary, physician, and surgeon. Further as a qualified doctor he was to know that his death was imminent when he coughed up blood during his sleep – indeed, he recounts this sad fact in one of his letters.  However, before the end of 1816, he announced to his guardian that he was resolved to be a poet, not a surgeon.

Needless to say, given these brief biographical details one could not be faulted for concluding that John Keats lived with dying and death on a daily basis. The first poem I offer the reader for reflection is his beautiful sonnet “When I have Fears” which is suffused with this ultimate concern, to use the current language of Existential Psychotherapy.

When I Have Fears - Poem by John Keats

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 trace
Their 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 power
Of unreflecting love; - then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink. 

The second poem I should like to offer the readers of these pages is a less well-known one named “Sonnet: Written on the Top of Ben Nevis.” 

Sonnet: Written on the Top of Ben Nevis

Read me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud
Upon the top of Nevis, blind in mist!
I look into the chasms, and a shroud
Vapourous doth hide them, -- just so much I wist
Mankind do know of hell; I look o'erhead,
And there is sullen mist, -- even so much
Mankind can tell of heaven; mist is spread
Before the earth, beneath me, -- even such,
Even so vague is man's sight of himself!
Here are the craggy stones beneath my feet,--
Thus much I know that, a poor witless elf,
I tread on them, -- that all my eye doth meet
Is mist and crag, not only on this height,
But in the world of thought and mental might! 

A pensive John Keats

I love this sonnet for its mysticism and also for its rather “misty” attempt at naming the mystery at the heart of life. In fact, the poem is all about our incapability of grasping this strange mystery, this rather cloudy or unclear life that we live.  The absurdist writer Albert Camus often ended up in despair at life as it was so full of contradictions and unclarity while he was obsessed with finding confirmation and clarity. His book The Myth of Sisyphus is all about the sheer absurdity of the human project which he likened to that of Sisyphus having to eternally roll his great rock up the steep hill of life.   Keats admits in this poem that his own insight into himself, or that his own knowledge of his self is simply shallow to say the least, or foggy or misty to use the imagery of this very poem:

Even so vague is man's sight of himself!
Here are the craggy stones beneath my feet,--
Thus much I know that, a poor witless elf,
I tread on them, -- that all my eye doth meet
Is mist and crag....

Poems I Journey With 24

Sir Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh (or Ralegh) was a most amazing man – a wonderfully alive, creative and swashbuckling Elizabethan who was a soldier, a sailor, a land-owner, a courtier, an explorer as well as being a poet, a writer and a historian. Again, when he was writing his The Historie of the World in the Tower of London he used sources written in some six different languages. It was maintained by some historians that Raleigh was responsible for the introduction of the potato or spud into Ireland. However, this is disputed by other historians. However, he is widely regarded as the one who introduced tobacco and pipe smoking into England. To add to all these accomplishments the fact that he was also a good family man is actually quite astonishing. In short, he was a courageous and ambitious Elizabethan who was truly a Renaissance man, though he rejected the high-flowing style (loaded with classical allusions) of the Italian Renaissance poets in favour of a more direct unornamented fashion of writing known simply as “plain style.”  This was why the critic C.S. Lewis called Sir Walter one of the foremost “Silver Poets” of the seventeenth century.

The poem from Raleigh that I’d like to offer to the reader this evening is one called “The Lie” which, I should imagine, he composed in the Tower of London some time before his execution. That his execution was unjust is the verdict of history. One of the judges at his trial later said: "The justice of England has never been so degraded and injured as by the condemnation of the honourable Sir Walter Raleigh." Raleigh was beheaded in the Old Palace Yard at the Palace of Westminster on 29 October 1618. The accounts of his last comments before his death are indeed very brave and noble: "Let us dispatch", he said to his executioner. "At this hour my ague comes upon me. I would not have my enemies think I quaked from fear."  It is also reported that after he was allowed to see the axe that would be used to behead him, he mused: "This is a sharp Medicine, but it is a Physician for all diseases and miseries." Further, according to biographers, Raleigh's last words (as he lay ready for the axe to fall) were: "Strike, man, strike!"

Ralegh the Soldier

I shall let the poem “The Lie” speak for itself below. One gets a sense of the poet’s nobility, integrity and authenticity in its stanzas. He has little concern, he tells us, for the hypocrisies of either Church or State. We learn that what Raleigh prizes are the virtues of honesty and sincerity.  He also appreciates that we are only pilgrims here on the earth and that our little lives are transient indeed. Like any Elizabethan or Renaissance man he sees the life of the soul as being immortal and imperishable and that of the flesh as mortal and perishable.   This poem will demand that you read it reflectively several times and then perhaps aloud, and then finally you will feel the passion and conviction of a man weighing truthfully and honestly the significance of his life before the axe of execution cuts off his head:

The Lie

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552 –1618)

GO, Soul, the body’s guest,   Upon a thankless arrant: Fear not to touch the best;   The truth shall be thy warrant: Go, since I needs must die,         5 And give the world the lie. Say to the court, it glows   And shines like rotten wood; Say to the church, it shows   What’s good, and doth no good:         10 If church and court reply, Then give them both the lie. Tell potentates, they live   Acting by others’ action; Not loved unless they give,         15   Not strong, but by a faction: If potentates reply, Give potentates the lie. Tell men of high condition,   That manage the estate,         20 Their purpose is ambition,   Their practice only hate: And if they once reply, Then give them all the lie. Tell them that brave it most,         25   They beg for more by spending, Who, in their greatest cost,   Seek nothing but commending: And if they make reply, Then give them all the lie.         30 Tell zeal it wants devotion;   Tell love it is but lust; Tell time it is but motion;   Tell flesh it is but dust: And wish them not reply,         35 For thou must give the lie. Tell age it daily wasteth;   Tell honour how it alters; Tell beauty how she blasteth;   Tell favour how it falters:         40 And as they shall reply, Give every one the lie. Tell wit how much it wrangles   In tickle points of niceness; Tell wisdom she entangles         45   Herself in over-wiseness: And when they do reply, Straight give them both the lie. Tell physic of her boldness;   Tell skill it is pretension;         50 Tell charity of coldness;   Tell law it is contention: And as they do reply, So give them still the lie. Tell fortune of her blindness;         55   Tell nature of decay; Tell friendship of unkindness;   Tell justice of delay; And if they will reply, Then give them all the lie.         60 Tell arts they have no soundness,   But vary by esteeming; Tell schools they want profoundness,   And stand too much on seeming: If arts and schools reply,         65 Give arts and schools the lie. Tell faith it’s fled the city;   Tell how the country erreth; Tell, manhood shakes off pity;   Tell, virtue least preferreth:         70 And if they do reply, Spare not to give the lie. So when thou hast, as I   Commanded thee, done blabbing,— Although to give the lie         75   Deserves no less than stabbing,— Stab at thee he that will, No stab the soul can kill.

Poems I Journey With 10

Archibald Macleish

Archibald Macleish (1892-1982) is a major modernist American poet and writer of the twentieth century, and I first discovered him through his critical writings, rather than through his poetry.  I have beside me as I write the first book I bought by him way back in 1978 when I was a mere twenty years of age.  That book is called Poetry and Experience (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961).  I remember being blown away by how easily he communicated to the reader his understanding of what poetry does and is.  In part one of that book, he discusses in a comprehensive way how poems work through sound, sign, image and metaphor.   In the second section of the book, Macleish treats of how what he has discussed in the first section functions in the works of Emily Dickinson, W.B. Yeats, Arthur Rimbaud and John Keats.  This book, consequently, would be a wonderful introduction to poetry appreciation for anyone wishing to learn more about how to read and enjoy it.

The Old Men in the Leaf Smoke

The old men rake the yards for winter
burning the autumn-fallen leaves.
They have no lives, the one or the other.
The leaves are dead, the old men live
Only a little, light as a leaf,
Left to themselves of all their loves:
Light in the head most often too.

Raking the leaves, raking the leaves,
Raking life and leaf together,
The old men smell of burning leaves,
But which is which they wonder – whether
Anyone tells the leaves and loves –
Anyone left, that is, who lives.

For me, it is the existential thrust of this poem that engages me as a reader.  I have already alluded to the psychiatrist Dr Irvin Yalom's listing humanity's awareness of its mortality as being one of the four great ultimate concerns in every human being's life.  Raking leaves is a perennial occupation for anyone with trees in their garden.  Growing up, it was one task I loved to do when I visited my country cousins and when I spent some three years as a would-be monk.  This poem uses the leaf as a symbol of the mortality of humanity and for the shortness and beauty of life.  I love the way Macleish speaks of "lives" and "loves" and "leaves" as they are, in effect, slight or partial rhymes as these words share the consonants "l," "v" and "s."  Such felicity of language enchants this reader, simple though this use of words is.

Repetition in the poem gives it a song-like sound.  As a country boy, I can almost smell the burning leaves as I have stood beside many a man burning dead vegetation in my time. Another riveting thing about this poem is its apparent simplicity that somehow draws us into the deeper mystery that life is.  It would seem that life is an amorphous mix of things in unity rather than a collection of random things.  When one rakes a garden one rakes many bits and pieces of vegetation and insect life and mud and clay together in a unity, and that unity in plurality suggests a mysticism at work in Macleish's sensitivity.  And this latter mystical sensibility is all too apparent to the perceptive and open reader.  Let's read the second stanza slowly and meditatively with the thoughts and sensitivities of this paragraph in mind:

Raking the leaves, raking the leaves,

Raking life and leaf together,

The old men smell of burning leaves,

But which is which they wonder – whether

Anyone tells the leaves and loves –

Anyone left, that is, who lives.

Mystically and linguistically leaves and lives and loves are all somehow magically one.  We are one with the poet raking them together as we live. On the one hand, then, this is a sad and depressing poem, and yet, on the other, this is a poem that suggests that we are part of the great cycle of nature, and we are ennobled by being part of it, never lessened, as, after all, we are the ones who do the raking.  We are the ones who do the maintenance on the garden.  We, in our turn, will become old men or old women, as the case may be, and we will surely smell of leaves and loves and lives.  Then, the beauty of the poem is that it does not state too much.  It connotes rather than denotes, and that is a wonderful device at the very heart of poetry.  Mystery, mystique, wonder and magic are always beyond capturing in prose.  They are more readily captured but never subdued or crushed in poetry.  That's why the last stanza defies paraphrase, which is surely anathema to anyone with a poetic sensibility.

Poems I Journey With 5

There are no fights as bitter as those between members of the one family, and indeed no wars as bloody as those between citizens of the one country. Somehow we learn to hate more easily and more deeply those we are supposed to love the most.  With respect to the poem I am going to discuss in these thoughts today - "Tichborne's Elegy" -  I wish to paint in the historical background here firstly.

In the history of the royal families of England & Scotland there have been many gory intrigues and many bloody plots.  One of those was the Babington plot, which occurred in 1586, whose purpose was the assassination of Queen Elizabeth 1, a Protestant with the intention of replacing her on the English throne with the rescued Mary, Queen of Scots, (aka Queen Mary Stuart of Scotland) her Roman Catholic cousin who had been imprisoned for 18 years since 1568 in England.  Indeed, Mary had been incarcerated at the behest of her cousin Elizabeth 1 who feared for her throne. The discovery of this plot would lead eventually to the execution of Mary Stuart as one of her letters to one of the plotters revealed that she had consented directly to the assassination of Elizabeth 1.

Now, the long-term goal of the Babington plot was the invasion of England by the Spanish forces of King Philip II of Spain and the Catholic League in France and therefrom the restoration of the old religion.  However, Elizabeth's notorious spymaster, one Sir Francis Walsingham discovered this plot, and he deviously used his discovery for the entrapment of Mary with the direct result that she would now forfeit any claims she might have on the English throne. The tragic Mary was beheaded at Fetherington Castle in 1587.  She was only 44 years of age.

The author of the poem I have chosen for today's entry in these pages is one Chidiock Tichborne who was born into a devout Catholic family in Southampton around 1558 and he was destined to become involved in our aforementioned Babington plot.  Like all Catholics, his life was to become increasingly difficult after Elizabeth 1 made the practice of the Roman Catholic Religion illegal, and he and his father, who had already spent time in prison, found themselves under constant surveillance by the Queen's spies.

Our poet author, Chidiock Tichborne joined the conspirators involved in the Babington plot which, as we have stated, sought to assassinate the Queen and supplant her with the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots.  However, the plot was discovered and the conspirators all executed.  As far as we know Chidiock only wrote three poems, or at least only three of his poems survive the ravages of time.  His famous "Elegy" is by far the best of the three and I quote it in full hereunder.  The unfortunate poet enclosed this poem in a letter he sent to his wife Agnes from the Tower of London on the eve of his execution for treason.  Here is the poem and it is a masterful feat of poetry, replete with metaphors of an intensity that could only be forged in the mind of a talented and sensitive poet on the eve of his execution:

Tychbornes Elegie, written with his owne hand in the Tower before his execution

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of paine,
My Crop of corne is but a field of tares,
And al my good is but vaine hope of gaine.
The day is past, and yet I saw no sunne,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

My tale was heard, and yet it was not told,
My fruite is falne [fallen], & yet my leaves are greene:
My youth is spent, and yet I am not old,
I saw the world, and yet I was not seene.
My thred is cut, and yet it is not spunne,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death, and found it in my wombe,
I lookt for life, and saw it was a shade:
I trod the earth, and knew it was my Tombe,
And now I die, and now I was but made.
My glasse is full, and now my glasse is runne,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

Portrait of Chidiock Tichborne

On reading this poem one is immediately struck by its sheer authenticity and depth, two factors no doubt influenced by a mind concentrated on its imminent demise.  Indeed, the biographical and background information given also adds to the popularity of this much anthologized poem which I remember studying many years ago at college.  The images are literally forged from a wonderfully sensitive mind under the sentence of death.  We are aware that this man is speaking directly to us as he was then also directly speaking to the love of his life, her dear wife Agnes.  Every line contains an antithesis, a polar opposite, a sheer paradox.  These antithetical statements are woven into paradoxes that cut to the heart of the mystery that all human life faces us with - namely its ending in insuperable death. Again, for a moment just reflect on these antitheses in the first stanza:

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of paine,
My Crop of corne is but a field of tares,
And al my good is but vaine hope of gaine.
The day is past, and yet I saw no sunne,

And now I live, and now my life is done.

One can easily list these antithetical words/images in the first stanza thus: youth/cares, joy/paine, corne/tares, good/vain hope, day/no sunne and live/is done and we may continue so to list them rather easily right on through the next two stanzas.  I'll leave it to you, good reader, to do so if you wish.

In short, for this reader, this is a profound poem which plumbs the heights or the depths of our human predicament, the human condition where the theme of our mortality is a central one for all of us.  I have already acknowledged in these poetical reflections that all literature, and consequently and most essentially poetry, is concerned with the basic ultimate concern of death as outlined by Professor Irvin Yalom.  See Poems I Journey With 1: Here.  

There is also an ingenious weaving of tenses together to suggest that time is a very complex entity as in: "And now I live, and now my life is done": In fact the poet repeats this line by three, once in each stanza at the end as a sort of paradoxical chorus that sums up our human predicament - our past and our future are somehow telescoped into the present "now" that is itself so elusive, one "now" that will be cut short by execution for our poet the following day.

If the reader gives voice to this poem by reading it aloud he or she will be greeted by the sheer drama of the declamation.  One becomes a Hamlet or a Macbeth or an Othello or a Lear on the stage of one's own life.  Indeed, one can imagine any one of these tragic heroes giving voice to Chidiock's moving and dramatic words.  We are, as it were, presented with the dance of life with death in thes3 dramatic and moving words.  What more quintessentially human drama could we be granted to behold upon a stage?  Tichborne was only 28 when he wrote these words and "shuffled off his mortal coil" so tragically.  Obviously these words brought the poor man some comfort as he faced his leaving of this painful world.

Queen Elizabeth 1

For sheer mastery of the English language, for poetry of such high and refined emotion, for dexterity of phrase and the forging power of metaphor I know no poet better than the tragic Chidiock Tichborne.  His poem is a masterly composition where time shifts all too quickly and all too mysteriously, and if time could only shift such that we might meet him, I believe we should encounter a wonderfully sensitive individual.

Carol Rumens

Monday 26 November 2012 10.26 GMTLast modified on Tuesday 4 December 201206.23 GMT

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Poems I Journey With 1

Introduction

Having written on and pondered the meaning of life from a spiritual point of view for nearly forty years now, I return again and again to poetry for spiritual sustenance.  Over the next several months I should like to record here the poems - with a short commentary on each - that have inspired me throughout those years. They are the poems to which I return again and again for comfort.

Pearse as a Barrister

Given the significance of 2016 for us Irish, namely the centenary of the 1916 Rebellion or Rising as we more commonly call it, I should like to start with a poem by one of our major national heroes, namely Patrick Pearse (1879 - 1916) who, along with many others, gave his life for the future freedom of the Irish nation.  I will start with one wonderfully deep poem from his pen in English.  It is called "The Wayfarer"

The Wayfarer

The beauty of the world hath made me sad,
This beauty that will pass;
Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun,
Or some green hill where shadows drifted by
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven;
Or children with bare feet upon the sands
Of some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets
Of little towns in Connacht,
Things young and happy.
And then my heart hath told me:
These will pass,
Will pass and change, will die and be no more,
Things bright and green, things young and happy;
And I have gone upon my way
Sorrowful.

Commentary

This poem captures for me one of the central issues in life, namely its transience, transitoriness or impermanence, call it what you will.  I suppose most of us encounter this impermanence most essentially through experiencing loss, especially that loss we encounter in the death of our loved ones.  Another way of expressing this is to say we encounter in those losses our mortality and the brevity and brittleness of the enterprise we call life.  

There are many history commentators with divergent views on Patrick Pearse, but not one can deny his ability as poet, author and perspicacious educationist.  In this poem, "The Wayfarer,"  Pearse expresses his encounter with his own mortality.  Undoubtedly, for those who understand the broader historical motivations of the author, the above poem will have resonances for the reader about dying for one's country.  Pearse knew, indeed believed, that the freedom of the Irish Nation could not be achieved in any other way but through the sacrifice of his life for his country.  However controversial his political beliefs were, and however much we can see their influence in the above poem, nevertheless, anyone knowing nothing of the author will meet the poem in itself, within its own internal coherence without historical interference. It is in this sense of the poem's own internal integrity that I love it. 

The great contemporary psychiatrist and psychotherapist Professor Irvin Yalom has outlined four main ultimate concerns that lie at the heart of every patient or client who comes to his consulting rooms namely (i) existential aloneness, (ii) freedom, (iii) meaninglessness and (iv) mortality.  These four ultimate concerns, he argues, make up the very ground of our being in the world and portray themselves in a vast array of mental complaints in the clients or patients who frequent his therapy sessions.  They also form the four main planks of what he describes as Existential Psychotherapy. 

Pearse as a young boy

Using Professor Yalom's insights into Existential Psychotherapy, and indeed his basic insights into the nature of the human condition we may say that Patrick Pearse engages the two main ultimate concerns of (i) existential aloness and (ii) mortality in his wonderful little poem "The Wayfarer."

The title of the poem is, for me, a very spiritual one, namely that we are all pilgrims or wayfarers on our journey through life.  Without a doubt, the image of pilgrim, wayfarer or journeyer is essentially a religious or spiritual one.  Central to all religions and spiritual traditions is the notion that life is a journey on the way to some destination.  Most religions call such a destination by the name of Heaven or Nirvana or whatever.  Yet within many religious traditions, there are also spiritual sub-strands that emphasise that the journey or pilgrimage itself is what matters and that the NOW of life is what is important, not the goal! If there is a goal, well so much the better, but that often distracts us from the task at hand, namely making the most or the best of the life we live in the now of existing.

Transience (mortality, mutability, transitoriness, impermanence) is noticed in these lines: "This beauty that will pass," "shadows drifted by," and "These will pass//Will pass and change, // Will die and be no more."  Also the beauty of the world will sadly pass, too.

Pearse, when he wrote this poem was obviously overcome with sadness, the sadness of leaving the beauty of the world behind him at his death.  And yet for me, I am never saddened by this poem as I understand his predicament at the time, namely what his sacrifice of his life would cost him.  Moreover, with an understanding of existential psychotherapy as proposed by Irvin Yalom and Emmy Van Deurzen and others of that approach to therapy and to life, it is by encountering our mortality head on that we come to prize life and living all the more highly.  

In the Buddhist tradition, meditation upon dying and death is highly recommended, not from the point of view of wallowing in depression or sadness, but rather in the consequent appreciation of the power of living in the now and valuing all the painful beauty we may meet in that now: of valuing the beauty of the brittleness of the world and the fragility of life, "the leaping squirrel," the beauty of "a red lady-bird upon a stalk," or "some green hill," or even barefooted children running on the sands of the coastal strands, little beautiful towns, "things young and happy," and "things bright and green."

There is no need, like the wayfarer, to go on your way sorrowful that things will pass, but rather to begin the journey to learn to appreciate the presence of life in the now, even if it is fleeting and transitory.  In the end, we are, after all, just a little part of a more eternal cycle. Let us appreciate our little part in that great cycle of things that makes life in the first place. 

For an alternative commentary and a recording of an actor reading the poem see the following LINK.