Poems I Journey With 20

The Dean of St Paul's, John Donne - early portrait

The ode is an ancient poetic form that dates back to ancient Greece. A simple definition runs thus: a poem in which a person expresses a strong feeling of love or respect for someone or something is an ode. A rather more precise definition would be that it is a lyric poem usually marked by exaltation of feeling and style, varying length of line, and complexity of stanza forms.  A classical ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist. It is an elaborately structured poem praising or glorifying an event or individual and that describes nature intellectually as well as emotionally.  It was originally accompanied by the music of the lyre in ancient Greece and hence it is a distinct form of the lyric. Tonight I would like to offer the reader an Ode from the pen of the great Anglican Divine, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, London and accomplished poet John Donne (1573 – 1631).

ODE by John Donne

                       I.

VENGEANCE will sit above our faults; but till
She there do sit,
We see her not, nor them. Thus blind, yet still
We lead her way; and thus, whilst we do ill,
We suffer it.

                      2.

Unhappy he whom youth makes not beware
Of doing ill.
Enough we labour under age, and care;
In number, th' errors of the last place are
The greatest still.

                      3.

Yet we, that should the ill we now begin
As soon repent,
Strange thing! perceive not; our faults are not seen,
But past us; neither felt, but only in
The punishment.

                       4.

But we know ourselves least; mere outward shows
Our minds so store,
That our souls no more than our eyes disclose
But form and colour. Only he who knows
Himself, knows more. 

Brief Commentary and Observations

St Paul's Cathedral, London

John Donne is a very complex and most interesting character.  He was well educated, but came from a recusant Catholic background with an uncle (his mother’s brother) being a Jesuit priest and translator named Jasper Heywood. His mother was a great-niece of the Roman Catholic martyr Thomas More. This tradition of martyrdom would continue among Donne's closer relatives, many of whom were executed or exiled for religious reasons. Needless to say, given this background, the young Donne converted to Anglicanism as anyone of us would if we prized our very lives. 

He travelled on the continent for several years in his early to mid-twenties and learned to speak both Spanish and Italian fluently. Needless to say, as any scholar of the time would be, he also was adept in both Latin and classical Greek.  He served also as a diplomat for some years. Despite his great education and poetic talents, Donne lived in poverty for several years, relying heavily on wealthy friends as patrons. He spent much of the money he inherited during and after his education on womanising, literature, pastimes, and travel. 

In 1601, he secretly married Anne More, with whom he had twelve children, several of whom died either in childbirth or as infants. In 1615, he became an Anglican priest at the behest of the King, James I, although he did not want to take Anglican orders at all. In 1621, he was appointed the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London. He also served as a Member of Parliament in 1601 and in 1614. The subjects of Donne's poetry are (i) religious themes, especially the search for what might be termed true religion or the truth in religion, (ii) romantic love, (iii) sexuality – explicit enough in places – and (iv) mortality. He is known as the foremost poet of the group that is called the Metaphysical Poets and is a supreme exponent of the art of the conceit.  The poem I have offered the reader this evening is simply called Ode.

I like this poem as it may be read on two levels.  The obvious or overt level shows us the human being in all his/her flaws, unaware of the level of their sinning before the Almighty God, the Judge of our lives, and, consequently, possessing little or no guilt. The second level, I argue, would not really have been too obvious to readers of Donne’s own time, namely how little the human person actually knows himself or herself. In other words, we moderns can see that such lack of self-knowledge is in fact our lack of awareness of all our unconscious motivations. In this regard, I read the final stanza, which I repeat here, in such a fashion. We could do worse than contemplate the depth in those lines once again:

But we know ourselves least; mere outward shows
Our minds so store,
That our souls no more than our eyes disclose
But form and colour. Only he who knows
Himself, knows more. 

Poems I Journey With 15

Old depiction of Horace

There is much richness in the classics, that is in Latin and classical Greek texts. Unfortunately, I never got to study classical Greek at school, though I did study Latin to Leaving Certificate level. Being reasonably good at languages, I also loved studying the poems of Virgil, Horace and Ovid and so on. Much of what I learned over forty years ago is unfortunately lost somewhere in the recesses of my memory.  Retirement will certainly entice me to reacquaint myself with the Latin language and some of the texts of those old poets. I remember well Horace’s agricultural metaphors and his love for wine. I’m sure the reader of these lines will know that most famous of quotes from his pen, namely “carpe diem” or “seize/pluck the day.”  These few lines from that famous Ode are worth quoting here for the beauty of the language: “Tu ne quaesieris — scire nefas — quem mihi, quem tibi finem di dederint, Leuconoë .... dum loquimur, fugerit invida aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.” = “Do not ask — it is wrong to know (it is impossible to know) — what end (quem finem) the gods have in store for you or for me, Leuconoë .... while we talk (discuss) envious time flees away: pluck the day, and believe as little as possible in tomorrow!”  I wish I was at home in Latin so that I could translate the verses given on my own. I had to use an on-line dictionary and Google translate and compare to other translations.  Still I enjoyed the activity as I began to remember some of my old Latin skills.

The reason I begin this post with a diversion into an Horatian Ode is that I should like to share a poem from the great Professor, classical scholar and poet A.E. Housman (1859 – 1936) with you all this evening. He was steeped in all things classical and is reckoned to be one of the greatest classical scholars of the twentieth century. Such poets as those listed above and many others from both Latin and Greek would have influenced my chosen poet.

XXXI

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;

His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;

The gale, it plies the saplings double,

And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger

When Uricon the city stood:

'Tis the old wind in the old anger,

But then it threshed another wood.

Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman

At yonder heaving hill would stare:

The blood that warms an English yeoman,

The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,

Through him the gale of life blew high;

The tree of man was never quiet:

Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,

It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:

To-day the Roman and his trouble

Are ashes under Uricon.

Briefest of Commentaries

A.E. Housman

This poem occurs in a collection called A Shropshire Lad and was first published in 1896 at Housman's own expense after several publishers had turned it down. His colleagues and students were surprised by the emotional depth and vulnerability it revealed in an apparently distant and self-contained man.  This poem is the 31^st poem, its title designated in Roman numerals as XXXI of some 63 poems in the collection.  In the distance, some five miles to the north of Wenlock Edge, is a forested hill, the Wrekin (pronounced REE-kin).

“Holt” is an old Germanic word (and English, with its Anglo-Saxon ancestry, is a Germanic language) for a wood, a forested area.  “Hanger” also comes from an old Anglo-Saxon term; it means a wood on a slope, like the forest on Wenlock Edge. The wind blew through those woods “when Uricon the city stood.”  He is taking us back to Roman Britain — Britain after the Romans had invaded and settled there.  His “Uricon” was the Roman city Viriconium/Viroconium, also called Uriconium, which lay where the present day town of Wroxeter lies, several miles west of the Wrekin.  It was the fourth largest Roman City in ancient Britain.

As a classicist, A.E. Housman is reminded of Roman Britain.  As he views the restlessness of the fleecy trees on Wenlock Edge and on Wrekin hill or mountain he becomes aware of his own restlessness and realises that such discomfort has been part of the human condition for hundreds of years. We are in the province, of course, of what was classically called “pathetic fallacy,” namely the attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things or animals, especially in art and literature. Here “'Tis the old wind in the old anger,” and then we have the recalling or imagining of how a Roman soldier or official might have felt over 1500 years before:

Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman

At yonder heaving hill would stare:

The blood that warms an English yeoman,

The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

A.E. Housman is moved by the restlessness of the wind in the trees and by his own inner restlessness as part of the human condition. He feels deeply his own continuity with the sympathies and emotions of another human being from more ancient times, especially with how a Roman soldier or official might have felt standing in the same spot as the poet. This is a wonderfully simple but an extraordinarily powerful poem from a very fine poet.