sweet thames run softly

The first time I read William Jay Smith's "London" it didn't strike me as remarkable, but I woke up next morning with the first two lines circling in my head. It feels like a sign when my mind starts memorizing things on its own.

So I went back and read it again, and that's when I decided to memorize the whole thing. It's a pretty simple poem with a straightforward structure that makes for easy recall, but as I took it in line by line, it's a pretty powerful poem as well.

"London" is rife with religious themes and inversion—destruction as judgement, the anti-paradise, myths and fate; it's almost medieval in its darkness. The repetition and odd meter give me Gregorian chant or Greek chorus vibes, channeling doom. The doom is fateful, inescapable; the city apparently exists in some kind of post-apocalypse, but is facing its final, immediate end.

The first stanza is an overture to the piece, beginning with a ghostly harbinger and a warning, that both echoes the Lord's Prayer and Weird Sisters of Macbeth. 

...Give us this day our daily bread, 

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil;

For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

The Weird Sisters themselves (of Double, double / toil and trouble / fire burn and cauldron bubble fame) serve to warn from, while instigating destruction. Straddling the line between temporal and spiritual, the Sisters present a temptation phrased in cautionary language—which means they’re messengers of fate, but also directing it by suggestion. “You’re going to be king” is a pretty seductive prophecy.

The tone of the whole poem conveys the sense of desperate hopelessness: “all are lost.” Smith is a master of double meaning—“lost” can be both the end of hope and the darkness of the soul; juxtaposed with Banquo’s ghost, the theme of temptation and falling from grace becomes that much more obvious. Banquo, as Macbeth’s foil, is uneasy with the Sisters’ words and resists the reward they offer:

“But ‘tis strange;

And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

The instruments of darkness tell us truths,

Win us with honest trifles, to betray ’s

In deepest consequence.” (Macbeth, Act 1 Scene III, lines 122-126)

Banquo’s caution is his doom; but of course Macbeth’s reckless, heady greed becomes his. Banquo’s ghost presages earthly vengeance for the terrified usurper, and no quiet rest for his soul.

Rest for the soul is what salvation is to purchase: redemption from sin and ultimately man’s fallen state. But “the ribs that rose and fell were barrel staves,” lifeless wood, stark and bleached on the shore. These aren’t the ribs formed from dust and made man; these aren’t the ribs that became woman; and Adam isn’t sleeping by the River of Life in the flourishing garden, but dead by a river that only wants more. 

The river is the main player in this poem. It is terrible in its presence, a force as fearful and potent as evil, and it takes. The river is Fate. There is no resisting it or swimming against it or undoing the damage it brings. It is chaos, disguised as direction.

The river is also “like a serpent”. Sinuous and sly, it infiltrates and poisons—mixing the water and sky, confusing, muddying, turning the world upside down. In the Biblical narrative, Satan disguised as a serpent came to Eve in the garden and promised great things: to know like God. All she had to do was one small act of disobedience, to take one fruit from the one tree God had forbidden. “But you will not die, as God promised,” the serpent said; “instead, you will know good and evil. Take and eat!” 

And the people ate, and they fell from grace. Not only did their souls die, they would no longer live forever, because good gifts from an evil hand lead to destruction. “Honest trifles” often do “betray ’s in deepest consequence.”

On the night of the king’s murder, Banquo—sensing that something is rotten in the state of Denmark   a disturbance in the force   just standing in the back, sensing something—says, “There’s husbandry in heaven; their candles are all out” (Act II, scene 1, 4-5). The sky is dark and quiet, before the storm breaks. “It will be rain tonight” (Act III, scene 3, 16). 

The whole setting here is dull and grim, some kind of futuristic medievalism, and using Macbeth for atmospheric context colors the poem with murder and cruelty and greed—and a certain hopelessness. With so many undertones of religion throughout the poem, does Smith use “the quiet sky” to suggest an absence of God? Here he is a silent divinity, at best, but one who perhaps never existed outside the potency of this dark river.

The insidious water, the serpent, brings ultimate destruction. From temptation to the final fall, from the weird sisters to the bloody hands, Banquo’s ghost promised and now Birnam comes to Dunsinane. I love this word picture, “Leaves from Birnam Wood were on the wind”: there is something so evocative about it. Maybe it’s the Swinburnian alliteration. Maybe because it reminds me, oddly enough, of the end of The Great Gatsby (‘leaves on the wind’ lines always make me think of autumn) where Nick says that “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” There’s also that beautiful—I’m sorry, tangent here—beautiful passage after the description of what could have been “a night scene by El Greco”:

“After Gatsby’s death, the east was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes’ power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air, and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line, I decided to come back home.”

Not at all am I saying the two are related, but it’s interesting that Fitzgerald would use Fall as a time of renewal, when life starts all over (and Nick is coming home and beginning fresh); but it lives in the context of death and ending and the close of the season. The brittle leaves of Birnam Wood were in the air, and they presaged the end. Also, it’s yet another definition of the word “fall”.

Fate has come to destroy with what it gives. It’s a continued inversion of biblical themes, where the “living water” (a symbolic name for Jesus) and the “river of life” (from the book of Revelation’s New Jerusalem) now become the water of death. In Revelation, the saints stand around God’s throne and sing “Holy, holy, holy” in a praise song for their redemption. Here it is a shriek of terror as an unforgiving force begins to consume them. 

Throughout Macbeth, Banquo serves as the conscience, a constant reminder of doom and consequences, but he also has a sort of triumph over death. Whether his ghost actually returns or that’s Macbeth’s personal conscience driving him crazy, Macbeth killed but cannot get rid of Banquo’s nagging presence. There’s an interesting religious parallel (since we’re looking for those): Jesus died and then rose, although his promise was hope and Banquo’s is despair. 

Unless you think I’m taking this too far, notice Macbeth’s language in Act IV, scene 4, 138: he refers to the ghost as “blood-boltered Banquo”. He is literally crowned with blood, and this “crown doth sear my eyeballs” (128). In conjunction with all the other Christian themes, it’s a remarkable coincidence that Christ’s death followed his own crown of thorns and blood. So we can back-interpret that Christ’s resurrection as a symbol of life is again subversively paralleled with Banquo’s half-return as a warning and a curse.

His presence as the ghost at the feast is the unpleasant past linked to a worse future, the writing—since we’re still talking biblical references!—on the wall. The figurative leaves from Birnam Wood, the wind as change, are excellent foreshadowing; the ghost has passed by and blighted the ribs of man. Life and hope are wrecked in the overturned garden. There is falling from life to death, and the hungry waves come closer, and the stars begin to go out.

The final verse may be my favorite, it is so powerful and ties all the threads tightly together. The jewels of Banquo’s crown, like Christ’s sweated drops of blood in the garden, have fallen—the candles of heaven are darkened.

In C. S. Lewis’s The Last Battle, there is a (very very long) passage describing the end of the world (that I’m going to reproduce here with no shame for the extra homework). When I was inhaling the Chronicles of Narnia at 10, this was a striking image for me that resurfaced when I was thinking about the stars “disappear[ing] above the city”:

Then the great giant raised a horn to his mouth. They could see this by the change of the black shape he made against the stars. After that—quite a bit later, because sound travels so slowly—they heard the sound of the horn: high and terrible, yet of a strange, deadly beauty. 

Immediately the sky became full of shooting stars. Even one shooting star is a fine thing to see; but these were dozens, and then scores, and then hundreds, till it was like silver rain: and it went on and on. And when it had gone on for some while, one or two of them began to think that there was another dark shape against the sky as well as the giant's. It was in a different place, right overhead, up in the very roof of the sky as you might call it. ‘Perhaps it is a cloud,’ thought Edmund. At any rate, there were no stars there: just blackness. But all around, the downpour of stars went on. And then the starless patch began to grow, spreading further and further out from the centre of the sky. And presently a quarter of the whole sky was black, and then a half, and at last the rain of shooting stars was going on only low down near the horizon. 

With a thrill of wonder (and there was some terror in it too) they all suddenly realized what was happening. The spreading blackness was not a cloud at all: it was simply emptiness. The black part of the sky was the part in which there were no stars left. All the stars were falling: Aslan had called them home.

Of course, in the context of Narnia, this is a bittersweet thing because while the old world is ending, there is the promise of one new and better.

That is absolutely not the case here. Nothing is getting better. Everything is only getting worse.

London Bridge is falling, falling, falling, 

Scaled, and crossed.

The stars are gone, the singers are silenced. Perhaps the world ends here. The Sisters, Banquo, the singers, the people—maybe they accurately predicted the end, but it’s still the end! Being right didn’t save any of them.

The Bridge falls, in an eerie echo of the nursery rhyme. … London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down… Access to the city is now cut off. –Looking at a map of London, of course it only borders the river, but if that river were a snake, and that snake had “coiled upon each eye” around it (describing how it turns upon itself? Or circling back like the London Eye? See what I mean, the layers), the city would be stranded by the encircling snake. 

When the bridge falls, the river becomes the ruler. The bridge is “scaled”: a verb which here means an enemy action, climbing over, breaking through the defenses—but also, and more obviously, describes a snake. And the bridge is “crossed”: the city is infiltrated. This is subtle wordplay as well, since Christ died on the cross, but this ends with death; not resurrection. 

There is a distinct lack of actors in this poem: the singers narrate, the people cry, but nobody does anything beyond wail in the dark. Only the river “moves among them”. There is no power for good, only evil, and man’s fall is synonymous with man’s creation (if we take the rising and falling barrel staves to be the moment of his birth: it’s also the moment we realize he is dead). The crown—“of life,” the reward for tribulation, or in Macbeth’s case murder—brings and is a mark of death, and the cross that was supposed to bring redemption is a sign of the bitter end.

- - -

I really loved this poem when I started writing about it months ago, but it’s been a long summer and I’m kind of over it. Posting for practice more than anything else. It spoke to me where I was mentally then, and I’m somewhere else now.

…Reading Dostoevsky’s The Idiot so maybe that’s not exactly a great place. My mama always told me I was special.

the darkness of the light

last post was such a nice, whole-blog wrap-up that I thought I was done. I wanted to be done: farewell, sweet blog, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. ...alas, real life cannot be neatly solved with a goblet of poison and a flick of the rapier. (rather, of course life can literally be dispatched with a goblet of poison and/or fancy sword work, but my point is this blog situation doesn't offer such a tidy conclusion.)

ALL THAT TO SAY: I never know how to come back when I decide I'm going to go and then change my mind. I am the definition of commitment issues. "YOU (you) don't really wanna STAY (no), but YOU (you) don't really wanna GO-oh" sort of thing. call me alexander.

my tangents, man. this needs to stop. let me get it together.

when I was smoll and still schooling at the home, one of the books that's lasted as a favorite was d'aulaire's book of greek myths. it's a huge treasure-trove of, ha, greek myths and I've loved them ever since whenever that was—a good ten years ago at this point. one of my favorite stories—so sweet, so sad—was the myth of hades and persephone. I loved the pathos of hades' loneliness, persephone's innocence, his sort of terrible, sort of creepily sweet abduction: a little hopeless, because how could she fit in with his realm? but of course he longs for life. it's selfish, but totally understandable.

it's terribly sad how much her mother misses and mourns her, and terrible that persephone is imprisoned and tricked into eating seeds from the underworld so she always has to come back. when I first read the story, I felt this indignation towards the typically selfish god who tricks others into giving him what he wants at their own expense. it was like phantom of the opera the way it almost ended, which is of course the enduring charm of PtO, because he doesn't keep her. buuuut nooooo for hades, and there's a reason nobody believes in the greek gods anymore. gee, I wonder why they broke up.

but as I got older, I felt a small tugging in my shipper heart for the two. what if persephone wasn't all that stupid, and didn't mind being queen of the realm—having a dark, quiet god who loved only her? he didn't seem so terrible. ...but I wasn't writing any fanfiction about it.

recently, I've come across some other books whose authors apparently thought of the same thing. (personally: not a fan. they just aren't that good, as far as I've skimmed.) it was an interesting coincidence to find carol tufts' poem "Hades and Persephone" yesterday; I was first indifferent, then intrigued, and it's now been entered in my poem-collection book where I keep all these precious things in one analog spot.

Ravishing, he rose at her from the gaping earth
like nothing she had ever beheld
blooming there before...

"ravishing" is an interesting word: 'to ravish' has unpleasant historical connotations of rape, but has been softened over the years to something along the lines of 'laid prostrate by'. you're taken over, enraptured; sort of how "thrall" used to be synonymous with "slave" but now "enthralled" creates a positive, less physical twist—you're taken with something to the point of serving it. someone or something "ravishing" is overwhelmingly beautiful; but there's still an undercurrent of darkness (darkness, haha, cuz this is hades) in google's synonyms: 'to ravish,' definition two, is to "enrapture, enchant, delight, charm, entrance, enthrall, captivate." it's not totally of the self, it's a little bit magicked. (also, notice the 'enthralled' entry. that was seriously a coincidence to my mention.) he takes her by surprise, and is oddly attractive to her.

and look, it's only been the first word.

I love how tufts uses "ravishing," "rose," and "blooming" in connotation with the lord of the underworld. he's dark and gloomy and cold and quiet and—not evil; not death; but not exactly good either. and here persephone perceives him through the language of light and flowers, the only way she knows (even though "rose" is a verb here. he still "rose...blooming there". I think tufts knew what she was doing).

his "bleak shadow" begins to wither all the life around him. oddly enough, this isn't terrifying. tufts doesn't make him an ombra-like spirit-sucker, he just appears and sadly kills everything he touches. hades feels resigned here, even though he's active in coming for the goddess. this might be from tufts' use of present participles: -ing words, a little less active than if "his bleak shadow / strangled the insipid flowers, / bleached the easy green from the grass". it kind of happens, and he's not necessarily trying.

the first clue that persephone isn't scared and doesn't mind is I think "Ravishing...". it's not "Terrifying, he rose at her...". if you take "ravishing" in the same sense as "strangling" and "bleaching," then he's not trying to attract her, which makes it a little less romantic. he comes to find persephone, kills the flowers he moves across, and happens to make her attracted to him—but it's never about her or what she wants. but okay, let's not go that direction just yet.

the second clue that persephone isn't scared and doesn't mind is his "relieving her of birdsong and bouquets". that may even be the third, if you count the "insipid flowers" he kills—if these are her thoughts describing the situation. she's mesmerized by this new kind of "flower", and all the world she's known till now is dull and something of a burden. did she think it was a burden before? did it only become a burden when he appeared? but at this point, he's ravishing, and that's all that matters in infatuation.

does persephone know he's from the Deep Dark Depths of the Realm of the Dead? is this a death-wish? is life too heavy, too rich for her? I was reminded of janet loxley lewis's "Austerity," whose narrator "Hated the life in the turfy meadow, / hated the heavy, sensuous bees." the beautiful descriptions of growing life—"birdsong and bouquets, / the rows of oats blowing silver in the sun"—are all of a sudden a responsibility persephone seems weary of. wallace stevens offers a similar commentary on death and life that slowly unfolds in "Sunday Morning":

She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.

and so instead of an aggressive hades swooping in and snatching up a terrified, helpless, innocent, life-loving maiden with a disney-like bird landing on her welcoming finger... we get a woman, tired of ceaseless life, intrigued, irresistibly drawn, suddenly captivated by a new phenomenon—who approaches quietly and sternly and "relieves" her of her living burdens.

"so she let him take her in his shrouding arms." if that wasn't a straight-up message that persephone wants to die, gosh, I don't know what you want to hear. still, there's an element of autonomy: he doesn't grab her, he embraces her, and she lets him. this is so gentle, so quiet; unannounced and unassuming. the "stricken garlands" slide from her and she disappears underground as a peacock wails and the earth closes over her head.

—two things here: more -ing words and peacocks.
I don't know what tufts is trying to convey with the constant inging, but one -ing word appears in every single line of this first stanza, and I think that's important. to me, the -ings frequently indicate an essentialness to their descriptors: hades is in essence ravishing. he doesn't try, he just is. his shadow is strangling, bleaching, relieving; his arms are shrouding. the peacock isn't necessarily always, in essence, "beginning", but at the same time, this first stanza is strongly reminiscent of a moment frozen in time, like keats's "ode on a grecian urn". keats uses -ings, too, because this is all constantly yet never happening—both at once.

that's the joy:

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
   Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And happy melodist, unwearied,
   For ever piping songs for ever new; 

and that's also the tragedy of this "Cold Pastoral": "Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, / Though winning near the goal" (both emphases mine).

there are more interesting word-choice parallels between keats and tufts here. take the first stanza (all bolding mine)(-ing! augh, it's contagious):

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
   Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, 
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
   A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
...
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
   What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

we've already seen that persephone isn't quite the "maiden loth", but we also know that in the original myth she totes is, and that tufts is taking some flights of fancy here with her poetic license. so the narratives provide an interesting comparison. keats himself is contrasting the raucous hilarity of the envisioned party with the silence of the image on the urn; tufts is changing the story of a terrifying abduction to a gentle, silent interaction between the personifications of life and death: the lovely life, wearied, welcoming death as a relief. (welcoming. see what I did there.)

also peacocks. in my extensive research of peacock symbolism (read: 30-second use of the interwebs), apparently for a time in greek culture, peacocks represented immortality. (thanks to the d'aulaires, I already knew the story of argus and his 100 eyes (it's a good story, look it up), but that doesn't seem to relate.) if that's the case and tufts knew it, the peacock wailing as persephone goes "down once more to the dungeon of hades' black despair" is an interesting feature—persephone, a goddess, is immortal, but as the representative of life she's just been taken captive by death (or at least the guardian of the dead. hades wasn't literally the grim reaper. work with me here). does the peacock remind us that she can't actually die, that giving up her living rule on earth doesn't mean she gets to abscond forever? or is the peacock just a sad, eerie note, crying where persephone was silent? it almost mourns for her as she goes beneath "the sealing earth." it's a grave.

the peacock's cry—the second indication of sound in the poem, after the "birdsong" in line 6—is at least a final reminder of the sounds of earth. beneath, it is silent

...As if all trilling nature had loosed
Its rush of sound from around her
And she found herself begin
To weep

aren't the words themselves a beautiful whisper? from the rolling -ings to this nearly -ing-less section, replaced with "sh" and "ou" and "s": papery, rustling. quiet. persephone, still alive, -ings her way through the last half of the verse: "turning," "making," "budding," "cloying."

the line "Turning her eyes / from his untried kindnesses" confused me for awhile; it's one of those lines I feel but am not quite sure I actually understand. I think it's a further example of hades' good-guy (well; not-bad-guy) representation. he brings her down and—silently?*—offers further kindness (beyond the 'rescue' from life and responsibility). she merely turns away and cries, as if "she grieved / for the temperate pleasures he had undone" but actually from amazement and relief.

*interesting note. these two never talk. is this lack of communication part of hades' misunderstanding that she wants to go? are they somehow incapable of talking to one another? persephone I would absolutely expect to make noise, but is hades only able to be—wait for it—silent as the grave?

persephone isn't "half-sick of shadows," she's thoroughly sick of the real deal, "the ceaseless budding / and flowering, the ripeness / cloying at desire." it's like too real to be real; always summer and never christmas would get old pretty quickly. except that it wouldn't get old, because it's always young. I sort of understand how she feels.

remember that part of Tuck Everlasting where tuck takes winnie in the boat and explains life to her?

"But dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born.... If I knowed how to climb back on the wheel, I'd do it in a minute. You can't have living without dying. So you can't call it living, what we got.... I want to grow again," he said fiercely, "and change. And if that means I got to move on at the end of it, then I want that, too.... Can you picture what that means? Forever? The wheel would keep on going round and round, the water rolling by to the ocean, but the people would have turned into nothing but rocks by the side of the road." (pg 64)

persephone felt it in the always-living things around her; what is light without darkness? birth without death? what is persephone without hades? and here's an interesting line, "ripeness / cloying at desire." think back to keats:

More happy love! more happy, happy love!
   For ever warm, and still to be enjoy'd,
      For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
   That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd
      A burning forehead and a parching tongue.

keats's conclusion is that this frozenness is a blessing: the Bold Lover may always chase, but his love will always be fair. their physical passion will never die. it's not so bad, after all! persephone thinks otherwise. the constant budding and ripeness is cloying, too, and she longs for the cool quietness of death. as wallace stevens put it, "death, the mother of beauty."

Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?

to be forever the same is to be always incomplete.

I'll read into the poem a little bit here. "When at last he thought to offer" could be hades frantically (or as frantic as this quiet god gets) searching for something to make her happy. I like to imagine that here, in the darkness, he silently offers her the various inanimate fruits of his kingdom, suddenly placing them before her tearful face, and growing more desperate as he sees (what he thinks is) her sorrow for the world above. (love the grieve/believe word combo as well.)

now: it's the part of the story we've all been waiting for. hades offers persephone the definitive pomegranate. perhaps it's the most alive thing he can find in his underworld, and he hopes to bring a bit of her world to comfort her. pomegranates: in my extensive research of pomegranate symbolism (read: 30-second use of the interwebs), apparently these stood for some variety of life and death, immortality, and fertility—but this also appeared in the original, not just in tufts' work, so it really did mean something. the fruit symbol makes sense with a lot of the themes in the story and in the poem, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to piece those themes together, so I'm going to move on.

When at last he thought to offer
the split pomegranate, the clotted seeds
slick as beaded blood
in the sweating wound she made of him ...

this is the first time I'm genuinely disturbed. this is kind of graphic. not only does it feel subtly sexual, it also feels like something isn't quite right with our girl 'seph. cloying fruit felt overripe, warm, rotten, and the underworld felt cool and dry and safe. but all of a sudden it's wet and damp and she's sucking on a fruit that recalls the imagery of the "gaping earth" from the beginning. this doesn't feel wholesome anymore (I mean, if it ever did).

but let's keep it classy. hades is desperate to keep her. she made of him a sweating wound: is this his heart, broken and bleeding because of his love for her? let's say it is because I prefer that. my interpretation. you don't like it, you can go write your own.

... she brought his chilly hand to her lips
and sucked the musky fruit
enough to hold him those measured months
where he waited to possess once more
what had been lost to him --

"musky fruit." it's not fresh. it's not moderately alive. there is something very intimate about this action—she takes his hand in hers and uses it as a dish (almost like psyche cupping her hands to offer orual a drink). but she eats the seeds, and considering the words of the poem, it makes her something of an inside-out vampire: not death, feeding on lifeblood, this is life, feeding on deathblood. which is somehow a little insane and a little more creepy.

update: after letting this rest for a night and coming back—seriously, I can't stop thinking about this poem—I'm wondering if there's even more to the pomegranate. is it somehow this representation of hades? persephone makes of him a sweating wound, so the beaded blood is his, in a way. the fruit is musky, of the underworld; as he was "ravishing" and offered himself to her, now he offers her this fruit. that makes it seems like an extension of him. she eats these grains and they become both part of her and lost to him, although they also serve to bring her back ("As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I'm afraid that cord of communication would snap. And I have a notion that I'd take to bleeding inwardly"). 

as persephone is life, feeding on death, so hades is death, feeding on life. spoilers: he's preying on her, too, with his embrace.

tufts' poem is full of inversions. of course, we have persephone who loves hades, here, and accepts his advances; persephone who hates life; persephone who wants to stay in the underworld, though he thinks she wants to go; persephone who sucks musky fruit "slick as beaded blood"; and she eats "enough to hold him those measured months / where he waited". I don't know—if hades could get only one musky pomegranate to try to make her happy, maybe she realizes all she has to do is make it through this bloody trial to stay with him. maybe she eats the pomegranate not with enjoyment but because she wants "to hold him those measured months" and this is the only way.

so what had been lost to him?

the grainy fragrance of the living world,

and how?

the flush loveliness of summer
fading in his famished embrace.

-ing. look at it. the living world, fading. fading because he embraces it.
to hades, the living world is as beautiful as the dead world is to persephone. he loves her light; she loves his dark. he didn't try to bleach and strangle, but he can't help it, and he brought her down to have some life with him—but for all he knows, she cries to leave. she begins to wilt herself, "fading in his famished embrace"; "why should she give her bounty to the dead?"
so here's another inversion: instead of the pomegranate being persephone's traditional trap to return, the pomegranate becomes hades letting her go.

hades, as god of the underworld, provided balance. he kept the dead in line, and the dead had to be or, like tuck said, "You can't call it living, what we got." but an eternity of death is just as bad as an eternity of life, if you only see one and not the other. it leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd.

We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk up on our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

persephone, in all her actions, longs for death: from accepting hades' embrace to eating the fruit of the underworld (which would seal her fate to remain). hades, in all his actions, longs for life, and the lost fragrance and beauty of the living world—which he can't help but kill. persephone herself fades in his famished embrace, and the pomegranate alone provides a heartbreaking compromise: they both must be alone to survive together.

update reprise (6 months later): I don't know if I agree with myself anymore. I focused a lot on hades in this analysis, but the poem is really about persephone. and the poem is really about persephone's devious trickery with hades: she "let" him take her, "ma[de] him believe", "made of him" "a sweating wound"—manipulates and lies to get what she wants. what does she want? she wanna ha she wanna ha "to hold him those measured months", and what if "hold" isn't a sweet in-her-arms but prisoner? she's keeping him wanting, holding him captive those "measured months" when she isn't there (because she could have eaten 12 seeds, right? but no, she was measured about the eating). persephone keeps hades imprisoned those months she's gone, making him long for her; but even when he has her, she's leaving, and leaving him always hungry for more. she fades from the ravishing arms, which become an empty, famished embrace.

and another update, in march of 2020 (yup, still thinking): added all the wallace stevens quotes. would love to incorporate them fully, but that would be complicated, because stevens is arguing against christianity, which would have to be contrasted to the greek mythology in a whole other section of thought & analysis. he has his own amazing imagery inversions—comparing a garish living world to silent funeral processions, offering wide water versus living water, and using change as an argument against eternity—that deserve to be analyzed on their own, not just as a lens to examine something else. 
all the same, keep it in mind next to tufts. 

*in trying to come up with a good title for this post, I thought of "the pomegranate compromise" and couldn't stop my mind from thinking "the pomcom" and that is making me laugh harder than my clearly sophisticated sense of humor is comfortable with.

:: how do I love thee? ::

in spring, a young [wo]man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. aka poetry.

today, I bring you my thoughts on elizabeth barrett browning's "how do I love thee" -- which was a poem I liked for a long time, but I think I love now.

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.

she wants to "count the ways", list inclusively, how she loves him. ...it's hard for me to choose which way to read it: personally, as from the author to her husband (she did write it personally; and it took her years to muster up the courage to give it to him), or impersonally, as some "she" to her "him". so I'll use pronouns, and you pick which you like better.

she begins the list. (it's easier to read without formatting.)

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.

she loves him beyond what she merely sees, to the very edges of what she can feel -- and with her (farther-reaching) soul: to the very ends of her be-ing, her very existence, and as much as she can in as close to perfection as she has come. to clarify: she is not perfect, but as she reaches for perfection ("ideal Grace"), her love expands with that reaching -- always to her ultimate capacity.

that's pretty all-encompassing right there. but then she goes from the cosmic to the minuscule: "I love thee to the level of every day's most quiet need, by sun and candle-light." 

   light. what is more plebeian, taken for granted, and yet universally necessary? light keeps us alive; light allows us to then live productively; but it's a quiet need. we implicitly trust it will be there tomorrow -- and the day after -- and don't consider how necessary it is. she's realizing her need for him, though, and in a sweet understatement says she loves him as she loves her life; needs him as she needs the sun; a small statement. enormous in its implications.

she continues to describe the nature of her love: "freely, as men strive for Right." whatever our standards for right and wrong, we pursue what we think "Right" (good, best, correct) utterly, with our whole hearts. when I strive for something, I am throwing my whole self into obtaining that thing, not holding back. this is how she loves him: utterly. in abandon. without reserve. and she strives for him, pursues him, because he is her "Right".

true humility doesn't feel entitled; it says, "I am grateful for everything, because I don't deserve anything." when men "purely…turn from praise", they really believe they don't deserve it. (the key word here is purely.) 

   her love for him is of this same purity. she loves him unselfishly, not trying to get something back; she loves him humbly, not trying to prove her worth to him or get him to feel lucky. she feels lucky, because she can't believe that someone like her could ever be loved by someone like him. (NB: if both significant other and better half feel this way, you've got a recipe for a lasting relationship right there.)

from the nature of her love, she turns to the strength of it, beginning in childhood. first, she loves him "with the passion put to use in my old griefs". this implies two things to me: her feelings are strong. her feelings are lasting.

   the use of passion in context of "my old griefs" calls to mind a child whose emotions are wildly stirred up over an offense, and whose entire self is filled with it: thinking about it constantly, and even when time has passed, when they recall it, feeling the same emotion (sadness, anger) fill them just as potently. 

   and isn't it true that "old griefs" from when we were young are often fresher in memory that later ones? I remember with perfect clarity the time a "friend" of mine told me, laughing, that my teeth were so yellow! remembering even now gives me the same dead, sick feeling in my stomach and I blush. now. ten years later. 

   that whole-self passion of childhood is the strength with which she loves him, and her feelings aren't passing with time. she has invested all of her in loving him, as a child completely abandons rational thought, to unreasoningly lose herself in focusing on him. 

   but if "griefs" is too negative a picture, she continues with softer feelings -- "and with my childhood's faith". the simplicity and innocent trust of children is proverbial: children accept things as so because they're so. there is no suspicion in a child. they hear a statement made, and they believe it, because it was stated; without looking for innuendoes or deeper meanings, or even demanding complete understanding before they accept it. 

   she simply loves him. she doesn't look for why or how or what is love, anyway? she has no ulterior motive. she has no schedule or plan or explanation; it just is. and that's fine with her. 

the next stage of her love's strength is in adolescence, when our "childhood's faith" in our heroes, our saints, is sometimes dashed. her "lost saints", fallen from their pedestals, first taught her cynicism and seemed to kill the whole-hearted, simple love (admiration? hero-worship?) she'd been able to have. now it has returned, and she can look up to him without worrying he won't come through, since he has proven her trust. (well, she doesn't say that. but if you read this personally, the brownings did stay married, and she obviously thought he was The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread, so I'm speculating the teeniest bit. it's called the Poetic Interpretation License, which really is a thing. my thing.)

"I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life." it's like she's run out of words, out of meaningful comparisons and similes and she has to wave her arms around and say, "just… EVERYTHING, okay? I love you with EVERYTHING!" she feels her love so much that she can't really express it (although so far she's done a better job than I could ever do). with all of her, her childhood, her growing-up, what made and does make her who she is, she loves him.

in the last line, she sums it all up. she's talked about the love coming, absorbing her whole life from childhood to now, and then she looks to the end of her life.
   her love, she's already said, isn't the flame of a heart that burns hot but wastes away to ashes. this love  will quietly but completely last for the rest of her life; and, she hopes -- prays -- believes -- even beyond it. she loves him imperfectly on this earth, but will be wholly perfected after death: and then her love for him will become perfect.

:: greetings to gorgo ::

greetings to gorgo

I salute, madam,

the descendant of 
many great kings

a great many times

- - -

sappho is my new discovery. (that may sound ostentatious. pardon me. I do not even read greek.) don't take this the wrong way, but -- I am in love.

sappho is exquisite. her poetry is pure, shining, intensely lit from somewhere inside; it is raw in its sentiment, clear in its statement, beautiful in its clarity and expression. it's not what she says that is so profound or so breathtaking -- it's how she says it. nor do I mean the words themselves. really it's the picture, the feel, they leave behind.

this one, above, I chose because it was so wry, understated, and sarcastic, but incredibly simple. she is merely greeting a friend (or do I mean "friend"?) -- and insulting her.

the salutation isn't just a salute; she could simply say, "I salute you, madam," and yet she chooses to multiply words. the overabundance of near-flattery is obviously not truthful, and makes this woman -- gorgo -- more an object of mirth than respect. she may indeed be the descendant of royalty, but sappho pointedly references the many as well as the great, rather than any remembered names. too many to name? maybe. more likely too unimportant to remember.

gorgo is not only descended from many kings -- lots and lots, hoo boy -- she is greeted "a great many times." once is obviously not enough for this woman; she must be greeted (read with sarcastic inflection on words in quotes) as "grandly" as her "illustrious predecessors" require.

I can only imagine gorgo's response when she heard first heard this. "seriously, sappho? go die."
…and I can only imagine what sappho might have said to that.

:: poetry - love and death ::

something about the last line of "keen" (edna st. vincent millay) haunts me. it's a beautiful poem, and on first read, it sounds sad. but I wonder. is it really describing a tragedy?

Weep him dead and mourn as you may,

Me, I sing as I must:

Blessèd be Death, that cuts in marble

What would have sunk to dust!

Blessèd be Death, that took my love

And buried him in the sea,

Where never a lie nor a bitter word

Will out of his mouth at me.

This I have to hold to my heart,

This to take by the hand:

Sweet we were for a summer month

As the sun on the dry white sand;

Mild we were for a summer month

As the wind from over the weirs.

And blessèd be Death, that hushed with salt

The harsh and slovenly years!

Who builds her house with love for timber

Builds her a house of foam.

And I'd liefer be bride to a lad gone down

Than widow to one safe home.

   except for the lines "sweet we were for a summer month" and "mild we were for a summer month", this young woman might seem pessimistic and cynical -- but she obviously loved the man who drowned. 

   that might be what makes the poem sad, except that I wonder if she really did. first they were "sweet", then they were "mild" (as if their love was waning already); all the descriptions of how they loved each other are transient. seasons are almost always symbols of change (especially with millay: "road to avrille" or this or this) -- summer turns to fall and feelings die -- and the wind and the foam are appropriately momentary to resemble temporary love. 

   her reaction, too, is more relieved than sorrowful. she is glad that death took him, before their love could dissolve into nothing, before she would have to live with his rejection and dislike. her sorrow over his death can be real: she can remember and mourn him truly, while she actually has something to mourn. she'd "built her a house of foam", a relationship based on nothing but momentary feeling. so she is thankful to have the dreams, the memories, without the heartbreak and disillusionment of reality.

   this girl would rather the man she loved dead: had he lived, their love would have died, and she is glad to remember him without pain. true love is selfless, serving, lasting until old age (even if that means undergoing "the harsh and slovenly years"). their love wasn't.

   and that, I think, is the true tragedy of the poem.  

:: how to be happy ::

okay, I promise nothing. e. e. cummings doesn't promise anything, either, but his poem "anyone lived in a pretty how town" offers some insight. 
       "anyone lived" is a sweet love story and a commentary-on-life, following a guy named anyone -- and noone, the girl who loves him. 
       anyone is rather a free spirit. he isn't like the other townspeople: he's lighthearted, he sings and dances ("...through life, swaying and sweeping, and always keeping cool..."). for this childlike delight, "women and men" care "for anyone not at all." this describes their behavior in general: they don’t care for anyone (the man) nor do they care for anyone but themselves. life moves in a circle -- sun moon stars rain -- as they plod along, sowing and merely reaping what they sow. I think the poem is supposed to begin in spring -- which might even figuratively represent anyone’s age. he is young. his life is just beginning.
it’s summer; anyone has grown. children are the only ones who understand him, because they haven’t lost their wonder of life yet; for that reason, some guess that noone "loved him more by more". but they grow, and like the people before them, forget what childhood was like. 
as the year progresses, noone continues to love anyone, to "laugh his joy" and "[cry] his grief". his ‘any’ becomes her ‘all’. time passes; others marry (as do they?) but others are willing to say their "nevers" and let go of their dreams, only dreaming while they sleep. 
why are children so "apt to forget to remember"? who knows. it is a secret that "only the snow can begin to explain"…but it happens. autumn passes; winter comes.
anyone dies.
noone, out of all the people, stoops to kiss his face, and "busy folk" -- who rushed, having other things to do -- buried them side by side. yet even in death these two "dream their sleep": the opposite of the madding crowd, who "sleep their dream". noone and anyone were happy, because they loved and because they hoped, in a way that none of the townspeople could ever understand. 
once again, it’s spring. "women and men(both dong and ding)" reap what they sowed; they live, they die; they don’t realize what they’re missing. and the cycle continues.
sun moon stars rain.

--

e. e. cummings was, I believe, making a point about the way we tend to live. somewhat of an outcast himself (at least, a man who polarized people), he could probably relate to his character, anyone -- who lived his life being himself, something cummings strongly desired to do. isn’t it true, though, that we tend to always be busy, always doing our duties and completing our tasks, without any consideration of the wonderful things around us? "sun moon stars rain"... when was the last time you sat outside in the sun, just letting it warm you? have you gone outside at night just to look at the moon? do you ever marvel at the beauty of the stars, or looked out the window at the falling rain? if cummings’s point was that we don’t slow down and appreciate life enough, I think he was right. there is too much to see out there for us to live life with our eyes shut.        

:: the end of the odyssey - tennyson's ulysses ::

hey, guys.
I just read don juan, childe harolde's pilgrimage, and beppo (byron) (which I already mentioned) (except that I hadn't quite finished dj then). I will probably be saying something soon about what I thought of them (AWESOME except a little edgy; beautiful prose but the story wasn't; hilarious but poking fun at virtue). in any discussion of them, I'll probably say exactly what was in the parentheses, only wordier. keep an eye out. ha ha. 
       but today I bring you my thoughts on the odyssey, homer's odysseus, and tennyson's version. ...I have a really bad habit of writing in a condescending voice (and "condescending" means talking down to you.
       no, can't take credit for that one. I saw it on pinterest). if you think I'm being condescending 1. I'm not doing it on purpose, I just have a snotty voice 2. talk back to my opinions at the screen. tell me about your alternate opinion (trust me, it feels so much better. although I get funny looks when I'm yelling at a screen...). 
       anyway. homer's odyssey! aka death! gore! and rich young promiscuous drunks! ...um, yeah.
       
       homer's odyssey has garnered a reputation for having a happy ending. odysseus returns and kills the bad guys; he comes into his own, loved and welcomed by his son and wife and household. everybody cheers, and we all live happily ever after. it wasn't until I read the odyssey for reals in my senior year writing class that I even knew: it doesn't really end. 
       sure, the book-itself's end is happy -- odysseus is home and the gods are appeased and everyone is rejoicing. the part I hadn't known before (and this is right after O and P have just been reunited) was this:

                                               "Then said Odysseus:
  'My dear, we have not won through to the end.
  One trial -- I do not know how long -- is left for me 
  to see fulfilled. Teiresias' ghost forewarned me
  the night I stood upon the shore of Death, asking
  about my friends' homecoming and my own. ...
  
  Teiresias told me I must take an oar 
  and trudge the mainland, going from town to town,
  until I discover men who have never known
  the salt blue sea, nor flavor of salt meat --
  strangers to painted prows, to watercraft
  and oars like wings, dipping across the water.
  The moment of revelation he foretold
  was this, for you may share the prophecy:
  some traveller falling in with me will say:
  "A winnowing fan, that on your shoulder, sir?"
  There I must plant my oar, on the very spot,
  with burnt offerings to Poseidon of the Waters:
  a ram, a bull, a great buck boar. Thereafter
  when I come home again, I am to slay
  full hekatombs to the gods who own broad heaven,
  one by one. 
                       Then death will drift upon me
  from seaward, mild as air, mild as your hand,
  in my well-tended weariness of age,
  contented folk around me on our island.
  He said all this must come.'" 
{book 23, lines 279-283; 298-319} 

odysseus was going to have to leave again, go on another journey, before he could come home for good and die in peace. 
       I know. I was kind of burnt, too. (lame way to treat this poor dude. lame lame lame.) it made me appreciate tennyson's poem 'ulysses' much more, though -- and that's really where I was going with this. 'ulysses' (the roman name) is about odysseus (the greek name) as he decides to go on that last journey. the time has come.  

       at the first, the poem portrays odysseus as a proud man -- "Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole / Unequal laws unto a savage race, / That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me." his wife is old; his race is savage, while he, both literally and figuratively, sits above them; they are concerned with the basic necessities of life, while he sees beyond and yearns for something higher. odysseus regrets that his people don't recognize him as someone great ("and know not me"). he scorns their ignorance. 
       this desire for recognition continues as he turns to the reader in a soliloquy, revisiting the scenes of his triumph, reliving the glorious days of his strength. here the poem takes a turn, and he is no more the powerful but caged king of the poem's beginning. then he seemed contained, restless, like a lion; now he is an old man, nodding over a cup of wine as he says, "when I was your age..." his spirit, though, yearns to finish his days, not in unrecognized decrepit age, but once again as odysseus the fearless, the courageous, the bold.  
       he leaves his kingdom to his son -- it's almost a will, knowing he is not coming back to rule again -- and seeks the other sailors who are still alive, to see if they want to come on this last voyage. odysseus wants to distinguish himself by "Some work of noble note" that "may yet be done"; and so he leaves ithaka "to sail beyond the sunset...till I die." although he has been made "weak by time and fate," he has rediscovered himself: the strong, proud warrior -- of another age, perhaps, but still the odysseus of adventures. he sails away, carried on by his strength of will; unwilling to die in obscurity, he finally proves himself to himself by facing death; learning "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

       long explanation, I know, but the ulysses here matches homer's odysseus. homer's man is also proud and rather vain of his part in the trojan war (though understandably so). he wants recognition -- a difficulty when he returns as a beggar and has to resist his desire to plunge in and set everything right. he does get restless: he even tires of kalypso, and yearns for home. (as a side note, I think this is an aspect of his restlessness: he loves the excitement of adventure, and while he wants the comfort of home, the draw for him is the struggle along the way. if his home had been nonexistent, he would have wanted to leave kalypso anyway, I think. home wasn't what he exclusively yearned for.) 
       
       homer doesn't address what happened after odysseus's return. it’s clear that O will not be allowed to stay home forever (book 23, lines 280-281, as quoted above). still, we don't know when this “trial” would occur. (that's part of the intrigue of tennyson's poem for me.)       
       as far as O's personality goes, though, tennyson's portrayal seems pretty consistent: a proud adventurer, restless when inactive -- who now, after years of stagnation, wants one last adventure before death. 

:: she walks in beauty, part 2 ::

it’s funny -- whenever I read “she walks in”, I picture a dark-haired girl in stark sunlight, and then I get to “beauty” and it always catches me slightly off-guard.

byron continues in his comparisons of dark and light in the second stanza (and I believe I already pulled out examples of this in my previous post). “one shade the more, one ray the less”…she’s perfect: any darker and she wouldn’t have the same bright grace or beauty.
once again, he emphasizes dark vs. light in his description of her “raven tress[es]” that “softly lighten” over her face. what an impressive contrast!

        because we aren't told her name, to me, at least, it makes her a little more perfect. I can imagine her as he describes her, without knowing any of her story and without having her image ruined by facts. this anonymity makes gives her an almost phantom-like, elusive quality; byron can praise her to the skies without needing to be completely factually correct. he can create a perfect subject for this poem, as if she didn't previously exist... and for all we know, she didn't.

as he ends stanza two, he moves on. the focus seems to shift here to praising her character, her self, rather than her physical features. her face is beautiful, but it only serves to show her character: the innocence and sweetness of her personality. her face is “where thoughts serenely sweet express, how pure, how dear their dwelling-place”; who she is shines through and makes her that much more attractive.

  lord byron continues by doing an amazing parallel sort of description, illustrating her character by describing her physical looks. he sets it up at “where thoughts serenely sweet express…”, and the rest of the poem speaks of her captivating spirit by describing her captivating face. her cheek and brow are “eloquent” in their display of her character. they “tell of days in goodness spent” as well as being attractive in and of themselves.

        perhaps, though, that’s byron’s point. are her features so attractive ‘in and of themselves’? or is her outward beauty the tangible expression of her beautiful personality? she is innocent in love -- implying heart as well as physical purity -- and she is winning in her behavior; despite her beauty, she doesn’t repulse people, she attracts them. this is emphasized later on, too, in that she is specifically “at peace with all below” -- she doesn’t have any petty rivalries or flirtations with those around her. 

  I wonder, here, if the “but” in “but tell of days in goodness spent” is meant to imply she is a happy, healthy girl whose attractiveness is because of her healthiness. as opposed to paint (to put it rather euphemistically. though that is completely conjecture on my part).
byron certainly shows that her attraction for him is her inward beauty, expressed in her face. “the smiles that win” have won him, at least; her face tells of “days in goodness spent”; and there is a certain wistful quality of the last line: “a heart whose love is innocent”. byron was by no means the romantic ideal of classic literature. compare him to mr. darcy. ( -- or don’t.) he epitomizes the tall, dark, and handsome (but also conflicted, moody, and rather dangerous) man of … well, gone with the wind, almost. although rhett never really endeared me to him the way byron has a knack of doing. (gwtw review later, however. my goodness, I’m committing myself to quite a lot.)

this poem captures a mellow, rather wistful feeling. byron reveres this woman for her goodness, and all the more as he recognizes how far above him she is; her goodness requires respect, but she is gracious... and makes everything around her beautiful. 

:: she walks in beauty ::

she walks in beauty, like the night

of cloudless climes and starry skies;

and all that’s best of dark and bright

meet in her aspect and her eyes:

thus mellowed to that tender light

which heaven to gaudy day denies.

one shade the more, one ray the less

had half impaired that nameless grace

which waves in every raven tress,

or softly lightens o’er her face;

where thoughts serenely sweet express,

how pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

and on that cheek, and o’er that brow, 

so soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

the smiles that win, the tints that glow,

but tell of days in goodness spent,

a mind at peace with all below, 

a heart whose love is innocent!

well...

I...

hm...

         … all this space is me trying to think how to express my love for this poem in a delicate way, without thoroughly destroying its effect. (probably the only way for me to do that is to have you go back and read it every time there’s a paragraph break.) to cover this whole wonderful piece in a single post would be a superhuman achievement. I have too many thoughts on the first stanza to do that, so instead you’ll be getting approximately three posts (though I might combine II and III. but we’ll see). 

        I. love. this. poem.
without getting too technical -- the worst thing you can do when discussing poetry -- lord byron’s meter and rhyme scheme are nothing less than perfectly, gloriously wrought. she walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies… but good poetry wouldn’t be good poetry without it (walt whitman fans, I’ll get to you eventually) and I couldn’t bring myself to overlook it. 
without horrendously stressing each beat (example: “she WALKS in BEAUty LIKE the NIGHT” -- okay, okay, that hurts!! you get the picture, anyway) lightly stress every other syllable in your mind. then read it softly out loud without meter at all. if it helps, copy + paste the poem into a blank document and make it regular sentences. now read it.

*pauses in anticipation of your rapturous silence after completion* 

he writes in beauty, doesn’t he?

        it really doesn’t have to do with byron’s skill at using the physical words, but with his amazing descriptions -- and think about what pictures come to mind while reading … just the first stanza.

        consider his use of dark and light. her beauty is “like the night”, yet not dark (“of…starry skies”). the best “of dark and bright” are in her face -- which is further compared to moonlight, the “tender light” that only shines in darkness. her perfection wouldn’t be perfection with any darker shade or any “ray the less”. her hair is dark (“every raven tress”), but her face is bright, not only in comparison to her hair, but in expressing her innocence and purity. that innocence and purity are a light all on their own: they shine through in her face -- “the smiles that win, the tints that glow” -- and show that she, in contrast to…  something…, has a heart that loves free from any taint of uncleanness. 

        byron praises her superficial beauty; at a deeper level, he is contrasting her bright, shining purity to the sordid world he is so accustomed to. the day is described as garishly, startlingly bright, as if byron recognizes his unworthiness in the face of perfection -- the open brightness of day. but she isn’t the harsh exposer of his blots; she is to him a ‘light shining out of darkness’ (a william cowper poem, if you’re interested). she is that “tender light which Heaven to gaudy day denies”: the moonlight which sheds a luster much softer than that of the sun. this description illuminates her character even more, I think (no pun intended). it makes her gentler, shining compared to her dark surroundings; all the more beautiful for that contrast, but without the harshness of stark sunshine. 

in his sonnet ‘with how sad steps, o moon’, sir philip sydney speaks to the moon as if it commiserates with his lovesick state; here, byron reverences ‘her’ (some say a cousin, by marriage, whom he met at a ball) as a more distant moon – something to adore, but something so far from his reach he can only love her for the light she sheds around him.