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.

:: the eternal surge of time and tide ::

once upon a time, something really super-awesome happened to me.

it was like this.

for years and years (or more like year and a half) I had been searching for a. e. housman's a shropshire lad. searching. every library, every bookstore, and I could find no copy anywhere.
(pause, for a sad face.)

and then last week, an idea of uncommon brilliance burst upon me and I asked for the housman call number at my university's library. wonder of wonders...
they not only had an entire shelf of housman works and commentaries and criticisms, they had THREE COPIES of a shropsire lad! embarrassment of riches. I had a glorious time reading it, and lived happily ever after. yay!

in all seriousness, though, I rediscovered 'on wenlock edge', a poem I must have read hundreds of times but whose impact I'd never really absorbed. I kept reading it over the next few days, trying to soak in the genius, the wistful, solemn, suddenness of it all, but I had this nagging sense I'd read this poem in a different form before. long story long, I went looking for a millay parallel (you know my obsession with good ol' edna st. vincent) and came upon 'if still your orchards bear'. your task: read both. then come back here, if you feel like it.

both poems are incredible. their deceitfully simple formats hide complex thoughts -- maybe because I'm still struggling to grasp the full import of their meanings, but the emotional power still hits me every time.
   both poems seem to flow from a heart-trouble. each speaker mentions a personal difficulty: "the thoughts that hurt him, they were there....then was the Roman, now 'tis I" and "I cannot think your thoughts will be much different from mine....supposing in ten thousand years, men ache, as they do now" -- but each is universally applied. the speakers may have varied "memories hard to bear" and "thoughts that hurt", but at the same time, don't we all have "things that [we] could not bear, and live"? "men ache," says millay, and that's true of all men at all times, no matter the specific cause. one speaker looks forward, the other looks back, but both discover the same truth: "there is nothing new under the sun".
 
both poems, interestingly, use nature -- orchards & fruit, wind & storms & landscape -- as the constant, even in its changes. in housman's poem, the trees are the men and the wind is their life, an outside force that spends itself and leaves the trees (no pun intended) silent, unmoved, and in a way unchanged; eternal. as if the ranks of men are always there, animated as separate beings, but ultimately ever-passing. in millay's poem, the tree is human life; trouble is the fruit, held & warmed & owned by the human hand.

I think ultimately the focuses of the poems are fundamentally different: millay gently sympathizes with every centuries' daily struggles, housman subtly emphasizes the brevity of man's life. but the similarity occurs as both throw light on their own trouble by speaking of universal difficulties, however vague and unspecific these "difficulties" may be.
   it is through the vagueness of their difficulties that they speak of ours. on one hand, the authors make these things universal, a large, human turmoil that spans the ages -- perhaps eternal "who are we? what are we? where are we?" questions. but both poets also make it a more personal thing, for them and (since I can't speak for you) for me: subtly relating their parts in mankind's ever-recurring troubles, but a relation general enough for a broader reader interpretation. people can universally relate to these personal troubles, in part because they're not specifically stated. I have "memories hard to bear at noon, at moonlight harder still"; perhaps small struggles, but I imagine everyone does. this poetic generalization works because I know my memories without having them dictated to me by the author's single and particular viewpoint. I place my own history in the words to "bring the eternal note of sadness in" as I more fully realize each poem's thrust: changes and troubles and lives come and go, and the ages roll on towards eternity.
   the thing is, neither the speaker nor the subjects are emotionally connected at all. housman will never know the roman whose ashes have been buried for thousands of years; millay doesn't know the "brother" who might stand here when her ashes have been buried for thousands of years; and neither of them knows me, just as I don't know them or you. even in our connected humanness and the difficulties we all experience because of life, there is an impassable separation between us that cannot be bridged.

I'm struggling to clearly explain what I mean and I am becoming incredibly redundant. this is shaping into an all-around rough week for me.
   just enjoy and appreciate the incredible insights these two very different people had into the human condition: the personal sorrows which fundamentally, deeply relate all humankind to one another, and the loneliness that forever separates them.

*hey, you're awesome if you can identify the byron quote. BYRON YEAH MAN

:: the poetry I promised, like, a long time ago ::

(but only sort of, because it's only one.)

this past summer, I rediscovered trumbull stickney's 'mnemosyne' and couldn't get enough of it. I'm not really kidding here; I think I read it every day for more than one week (although I can't be sure about that). I read it a lot.

'mnemosyne' is haunting in a quiet, somber way; but the upshot of the poem doesn't seem to be unhappiness as much as the sadness of memory. memory is almost always sad, it seems to me. the memory itself may be good, but I always finish reliving those happy memories with this little sigh -- like, I'm not actually able to do it over again. once you're past, you can't go back.

anyway, I feel like stickney takes a very personal memory and opens it up to the reader, makes it a memory for us all to experience and relate to in our own way -- whatever our own memories, our own stories, he lets us remember them and feel the same sort of sadness.

read the poem, in the link above.

then watch this haunting (in its own way) video, 'mnemosyne' put to music by ljova and the kontraband.

(trust me. it deals with a woman in an orange coat, drinking a coke, and walking far out into the misty country.)

:: sometimes it's not just sour grapes ::

you know when you really want something, and you can't have it, but in the end you're actually really glad you didn't get it?
no?
me neither.

that's one of the odd topics that edwin arlington robinson touches on in his poem "richard cory". not many people are familiar with edwin arlington robinson; I am only familiar with a few of his poems, even less with him. I like what I've read enough to be curious about his other stuff, but not curious enough to have already done the research. later.
maybe.

"richard cory" is pretty self-explanatory. there's this dude. he's rich. everybody's like "WOO RICHARD CORY" -- only quietly and respectfully -- and the last line is breathtakingly shocking and raw and revelatory. but what I like about the poem is it's extraordinary relatable-ness. it's extraordinary because you can relate to both sides at once.

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

robinson sets up cory's status right away: "we people on the pavement". "we people" are removed from this one man by an intangible social status displayed in the very tangible mode of travel. he's in a vehicle, on the road, while everyone else relies on their own two feet. but there's something of high breeding and quality even in the way he looks.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich -- yes, richer than a king --

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

not only is this man a gentleman, he's rich. (pun!   …get it? if you don't get it, sucks for you. I'm hilarious.) despite this money, richard cory doesn't parade himself; he's quiet, unassuming, polite. and this personableness … personability? hrm … makes even the plebs like him. pulses flutter. we on the pavement watch him go by, all, 'dude, that richard cory's where it's at, man.'

to tell the truth, we all know people like that, right? people who have everything, at least everything we want. money, grace, looks, charm, popularity. it's bad how badly I feel that way sometimes: this feeling that if I wish or want it hard enough, there just isn't a way for me to not get it. because I'm so deserving.
   obviously, though, I'm not. I don't deserve any of what I've been given. why aren't I grateful for what I have? seriously: I have so much.
   mama is always reminding me -- sure, this friend or that friend may not have the same struggles I do. olivia is outgoing, unselfconscious, completely unable to be embarrassed, adorable -- truly, she's the real-life epitome of cynthia kirkpatrick, only without the shallowness. kelsey is beautiful, musical, has a great sense of humor, but is willing to laugh at the dumbest stuff just so you'll feel better about yourself; it's like she thrives on merely being encouraging to the people around her. amanda chopped off her beautiful hair and got a pixie cut -- her gorgeous cheekbones just rolled with it, and I don't know if I have ever met anyone prettier. honest, guys, cross my heart and hope to die. but she doesn't realize  how beautiful she is; and her photorealistic artwork has gotten her paid jobs and a private tutor in san francisco. she's 18.
   you can see how, with friends like this, I'd be jealous all the time. but mama reminds me that olivia may not be shy, kelsey may be able to sing, amanda might be amazing at painting, but they have their own struggles. I see where I struggle -- shyness, vanity, irritation; really, pride -- and how they don't seem to. but that doesn't mean they don't struggle. their areas of difficulty are just different, and different doesn't mean better. it just means different.

thank you for hearing me out.
last verse.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

we don't realize what we have because we're so busy wanting what we don't. our bread isn't enough; we have to have the meat, too.
and the irony is found in that if we had the meat and the bread, we wouldn't necessarily be happy, either.

:: 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.  

:: in defense of myself ::

I kind of threw that little short story out there, not expecting anyone to read it, and kind of hoping no one would. it's one of those personal things -- you don't realize how much of you it is until you give it away. 

   honestly, I know it's crappy writing. I sent it to my writing teacher as this extracurricular critique and she said there should be more dialogue (and I don't remember if she said, or I just felt this vibe, "DON'T WRITE SO MANY PASSIVE SENTENCES!"). 
   still, also honestly, I love it. maybe it's that 'curse of knowledge' thing (psych, guys. take AP psych, it's the best thing you'll ever do) -- I know what I mean, and I can't separate that from what I actually say, while you just read the words and miss any underlying meaning that my brain supplies for me. the prose is really heavy and dull and awful, though (not to mention some terrible sentence construction, sorry 'bout that). I know I tried way too hard to add these ridiculous layers of meaning, and I laid it on thick. the prose really reflects that, and probably the themes come out and whack you in the face like the B in "suBtle". 
   I try. I really do.

but back to that "I love it" thing. I do; and when I think about it, that's probably because 1. I love the poem. always have, always will. (if you cut out a few words, you can fit it to the tune of 'shenandoah'. don't ask me how I know.) 2. I developed this woman; she is like me; she is unlike me; she is a part of me. I know her. 
   this woman is complex. this woman is completely shallow. yet the shallowness is complex. 
   she liked attention and the idea of a romantic attachment outside of her rank. (remember, I had to read into the poem. in that, I don't think she's quite this bad: it's more of an indifference -- as far as love goes -- towards him, and he realizes, when he dies, she'll be a little sad but it won't affect her that much. oh, poor boy, she'll think "a little sadly," [emph. mine] but more complacently than anything else. in my story I added a lot of stormy emotion that isn't … really … accurate….) she liked that the dude was all, "I love your pilgrim soul and the sorrows of your changing face, yo" but didn't honestly care for him. he's not so brash as to ask that she leave her money/family/status for him, but she considers it and decides, nah, material stuff is more important to me. when he finally realizes, it's this sort of arthur clennam/flora experience: ajskjgjdkjaklf you are NOT what I thought you were. so -- in my story -- he leaves. he says, you're not worth it, and I can't stick around forever. I've got a life. 
   except that he dies. (don't make me cry.) when she realizes he's totally, irredeemably gone, I think she also sees he was more important to her than she thought and she regrets it; but...
   here is the core of what I meant.
   even in her regret -- perhaps true sorrow -- over his death, she still selfishly blames him and refuses to see her fault in it. the last clue I threw in there (tried to throw) was her angry half-thought: "why had he not, in those gone, bright days --". why had he not. not "why did I not". 

   I tried to have a theme of dryness running through: desiccated memories, dusty house, withered woman. the memories come rushing like a torrent of water. (and that is such a cliched phrase it makes me wince.) she's so lacking in love that she's dried out and bitter; she really hates those mountains because they remind her of what she loved about them -- their transience -- and what he loved -- their endurance. they remind her over and over of her true self; what she loves is still the shallow, petty, romantic sighing over "the true best that might have been"… but really couldn't. she didn't love him, she didn't love them, she didn't love anyone but herself. and now she's old. and now she has nothing. and it's her own fault. 

   I hate this woman. her pettiness, her drama, her short-sighted views and her selfishness. my writing teacher said it would be better with more dialogue; as far as writing goes, yes. but my point in writing it without spoken words (not just to echo the poem, which has only one line possibly spoken) was to emphasize her loneliness. she has no one to speak to; she will remain in quiet misery until the day she dies.
   
   perhaps it's presumption to add so much to yeats's meaning, and he's obviously a better writer than I'll ever be. he conveyed his version of the story in 12 lines. that rhyme. my only excuse is that I LOVE YEATS, so if he's turning over in his grave…I'm sorry! this is just my little tribute to you and the lasting impression your poetry has left on me.

:: end of the golden words ::

Over the land there lies a long shadow,

westward reaching wings of darkness.

The Tower trembles; to the tombs of kings

doom approaches. The Dead awaken;

for the hour is come for the oath breakers:

at the Stone of Erech they shall stand again

and hear there a horn in the hills ringing.

Whose shall the horn be? Who shall call them

from the grey twilight, the forgotten people?

The heir of him to whom the oath they swore.

From the North he shall come, need shall drive him:

he shall pass the Door to the Paths of the Dead.

I know I said I didn't like free verse. yeah, well, there's an exception to every rule (...except this one. har har. couldn't help it). I need to stop trying to analyze why I like things -- it's so hard to put it into words, I can't put it into words correctly anyway, and it sort of spoils the thing for me since I generally like it because it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

   there, I admitted my motivation for most things. warm fuzzies. woot. 

   besides, what if you get a kick out of good poetry not because of warm fuzzies, but because you like practicing the goose-step to its meter? ("the assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold...") or what if you need lyrics to rap? (can I give you a suggestion? try taylor swift's "love story". rapper's delight, no joke, and I like hot butter on my breakfast toast.) this is really not for you, in those cases.

   I guess, then, this is pretty exclusively for me, which means I will ramble unintelligibly. you're basically listening to me talking to myself. 

   if you don't mind eavesdropping...

   

  a lot of the poems in return of the king are free verse, but they're fierce and determined. I can see aragorn saying them with an "it is not this day!" look on his face. ...or éomer, if it's éomer. :T

Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising

I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.

To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:

Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!

it's a strong man's lament for his sister. I want to cry for the sweetness. it's as good as pippin's "steward of gondor" song, if you can believe that. (and I love pippin.)

   then comes legolas, thinking of the cry of gulls, and again we know the fellowship will be broken one day -- not just parted.

Silver flow the streams from Celos to Erui

In the green fields of Lebennin!

Tall grows the grass there. In the wind from the Sea

The white lilies sway,

And the golden bells are shaken of mallos and alfirin

In the green fields of Lebennin,

In the wind from the Sea!

"And then softly, to his own surprise, there at the vain end of his long journey and his grief, moved by what thought in his heart he could not tell, Sam began to sing." 

   how sweet.

In western lands beneath the Sun

the flowers may rise in Spring,

the trees may bud, the waters run,

the merry finches sing.

Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night

and swaying beeches bear

the Elven-stars as jewels white

amid their branching hair.

Though here at journey's end I lie

in darkness buried deep,

beyond all towers strong and high,

beyond all mountains steep,

above all shadows rides the Sun

and Stars forever dwell:

I will not say the Day is done,

nor bid the Stars farewell.

the songs are a contrast, themselves. they not only speak of contrasts, but they often come at dark times when singing seems out of place. I love how tolkien blends them into the narrative pretty seamlessly. 

   to note it for a moment, the narrative rises to its climax soon after sam's song. they make it to mount doom; gollum does indeed have one last part in the story; frodo and sam wonder what stories will be told that they will miss, now that they're here "at the end of all things"; and that is how gwaihir finds them. 

   the fellowship is reunited. the fellowship is broken. cue "into the west". 

"'To the Sea! To the Sea! The white gulls are crying,

The wind is blowing, and the white foam flying.

West, west away, the round sun is falling.

Grey ship, grey ship, do you hear them calling,

The voices of my people that have gone before me?

I will leave, I will leave the woods that bore me;

For our days are ending and our years failing.

I will pass the wide waters lonely sailing.

Long are the waves on the Last Shore falling,

Sweet are the voices in the Lost Isle calling,

In Eressëa, in Elvenhome that no man can discover,

Where the leaves fall not: land of my people for ever!'

And so singing Legolas went away down the hill."

   

   in honor of tolkien, I read the story that originated the "west of the moon, east of the sun" phrase. I love how it rings with the feeling of farewell, the idea that 'where I am going, you cannot come' -- a parting that is such sweet sorrow I can't stop reading it... and the "road goes ever on and on" motif is a beautiful one.

Still round the corner there may wait

A new road or a secret gate;

And though I oft have passed them by

A day will come at last when I

Shall take the hidden paths that run

West of the Moon, East of the Sun.  

and the series ends. 

The road goes ever on and on

Out from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

Let others follow it who can!

"Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went aboard; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost. And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise."

- - -

I guess that sort of turned out of an "LOTR poetry discussion" into a "ramble about LOTR everything".

   oh well. staying on topic isn't why I started this blog. I wanted to think more about literature, and this definitely helped me think. 

   I would suggest, though, if you want to think: don't read this, go write your own thoughts. it's quite a wonderful experience. :)

:: more words of gold ::

*I must pause in this lovely re-reading of tolkien's poetry to say that this post will be extremely overshadowed by some personal sorrow of mine: jacoby ellsbury has gone to the dark side. we now mourn him; and this will absolutely affect me for quite some time. thank you for understanding.*

the songs throughout lord of the rings have an added layer of sadness because most of them are laments.
   I've only just realized this. but if you think about it -- if 95% of the poems are sad, the others will feel sad since they're written in the same style (although the meter and message vary greatly: another amazing tolkien talent).
  let's think about sad things for a while.

'Beneath Amon Hen I heard his cry. There many foes he fought.

His cloven shield, his broken sword, they to the water brought.

His head so proud, his face so fair, his limbs they laid to rest;

And Rauros, golden Rauros-falls, bore him upon its breast.'

'O Boromir! The Tower of Guard shall ever northward gaze

To Rauros, golden Rauros-falls, until the end of days.'

(just like boromir, ELLS IS DEAD TO ME. I know my sister will be singing a lament over him, herself. she's in literal tears right now. darn you, jacoby, making my sister cry!!!) 

   aragorn's songs are the best. read this poem out loud in your head (you know what I mean?). the meter is odd -- definitely not a standard meter -- but it is so compelling.

Gondor! Gondor, between the Mountains and the Sea!

West Wind blew there; the light upon the Silver Tree

Fell like bright rain in gardens of the Kings of old.

O proud walls! White towers! O wingéd crown and throne of gold!

O Gondor, Gondor! Shall Men behold the Silver Tree,

Or West Wind blow again between the Mountains and the Sea?

I will skip several of the next passages, since I'm not a fan of free verse, even if it's tolkien speaking through treebeard. ents forever; "pip and merry hug trees" and so do I, and all that, but I'm not an entwife, so I'll skip that section. "to isengard with doom we come!"

   

   "'Healing I found, and I was clothed in white. Counsel I gave and counsel took. Thence by strange roads I come, and messages I bring to some of you. ...

"But dark is the path appointed for thee:

The Dead watch the road that leads to the Sea."

...

"Legolas Greenleaf long under tree

in joy thou hast lived. Beware of the Sea!

If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore,

Thy heart shall then rest in the forest no more."'"

what can I say? the foreshadowing says it all. it's heart-rending how the happiest part of LOTR is the first few chapters, and then it all goes downhill. (like how that stupid guy was awesome in the postseason and then he "had" to go to the evil empire because they offered him a huge contract and he's a horrible person and worse than youk!!! oh I hate them both! jacoby ellsbury, you SUCK!!!!)

The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.

Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,

Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

the whole story has a finality about it: each occurrence seems to mark the ending of something, something that can't be recovered. boromir will never live again; frodo will never be the same. any sweetness and any hope still has a taste of that finality.

 Tall ships and tall kings

Three times three,

What brought they from the foundered land

Over the flowing sea?

Seven stars and seven stones 

And one white tree.

a hopeful prophecy, perhaps -- but trees grow old eventually. even elves do not live forever.

:: of words of gold ::

I used to get really irritated when I was reading a book and the characters would quote something and it would

                                                                                   appear

italicized, centered -- like these lines are here.

it drove me nuts. usually I didn't know what the quotation was even from, so it made me feel dumb on top of that. 

   my annoyance with inserted poetry changed when I read lord of the rings. (maybe I should say I found an exception to the rule.) I fell in love with tolkien's poetry; it's so wonderful I sometimes flip through the book just reading the songs, and, hokey though it may be, I really do enjoy the musical because THEY QUOTE THE BOOK and I can't resist it when people do their research.

   um, I didn't mean to quote lbd again. sorry.

today I want to just wallow in amazing meter and beautiful words for a little while; though there's so much poetry here that "today" is about to mean "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," which I trust will not creep in its petty pace from day to day, since this is poetry we're discussing.
   ah, the joys of participation! 

read it. seriously. 

- - -

some of the only poetry I've discovered that I can just slip into is what tolkien included in lord of the rings. you don't have to be in the 'right mood', you can just start reading. his words are like music; further, he conveys the idea of a tune without it. take the elvish songs: they are delicate, clear, otherworldly, but they are only in verse. the tune you feel? it's just words. 

O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!

We still remember, we who dwell

   in this far land beneath the trees,

Thy starlight on the Western Seas.

the marching songs ("we must away! we must away! we ride before the break of day!") and the nonsense songs ("O! water hot is a noble thing!") and the sweet pondering songs ("and whither then? I cannot say") all add to the feel of the moment. perhaps it's tolkien's constant use of contrast that makes his LOTR poetry so moving: open and closed, hot and cold, dark and light. 

O! Wanderers in the shadowed land,

despair not! For though dark they stand, 

all woods there be must end at last,

and see the open sun go past....

but then again, he has nonsense verses quite devoid of meaning, and they're great. I do sometimes wonder if (for example) the bombadil chapters were just for the poetry. because honestly, do those two/three chapters add much to the story but amazingly-metered verse? mmmno.

   speaking of amazing meter, though: the martial, strong-beat verses are fantastic, stirring and exciting (think of the "do you hear the people sing" drumbeat). ...but somehow they're always bittersweet. 

Gil-galad was an Elven-king.

Of him the harpers sadly sing:

the last whose realm was fair and free

between the Mountains and the Sea.

His sword was long, his lance was keen,

his shining helm afar was seen;

the countless stars of heaven's field

were mirrored in his silver shield.

But long ago he rode away,

and where he dwelleth none can say;

for into darkness fell his star

in Mordor where the shadows are.

many of the poems in the series are sad -- "as are all the tales of middle-earth" -- but they are all the more beautiful for that sadness; his mini-epic poems are breathtaking.

Long was the way that fate them bore,

O'er stony mountains cold and grey,

Through walls of iron and darkling door,

And woods of nightshade morrowless.

The Sundering Seas between them lay,

And yet at last they met once more,

And long ago they passed away

In the forest singing sorrowless.

the tale of beren and tinúviel is one of my favorites; but also the "flammifer of westernesse". there's just a wildness about it -- flowing lines, the alliteration -- that I love. 

    one thing that strikes me about tolkien's poetry is his ability to capture a sweetness and a sadness: almost melancholy, a nostalgia, perhaps, which transforms ordinary, relatable things into something slightly elevated and slightly magical -- and we go right along with it. we live that journey with the fellowship, and feel all the more noble and courageous for it! and it becomes so much harder to let go when the time comes.

I sit beside the fire and think 

of how the world will be

when winter comes without a spring

that I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things

that I have never seen:

in every wood in every spring

there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think

of people long ago,

and people who will see a world

that I shall never know.

the use of language to convey an atmosphere is an ability all great poets have. dare I say it's one that distinguishes the great from the mediocre? compare the words and cadence of the elf-songs to the dwarf-chants. the heavy echo of the words are like the stones the dwarves themselves hewed. 

The world is grey, the mountains old,

The forge's fire is ashen-cold;

No harp is wrung, no hammer falls:

The darkness dwells in Durin's halls;

The shadow lies upon his tomb

In Moria, in Khazad-dûm.

...versus:

When dawn came dim the land was lost,

The mountains sinking grey

Beyond the heaving waves that tossed

Their plumes of blinding spray.

there are a few smatterings of verse that I've left out, but this has been almost all of the poems in book one. the last one (that's not in elvish) is galadriel's song as the fellowship is preparing to leave lothlorien. the musical's song "wonder" draws quite a few lines from the book, and mostly from this song. both are beautiful.

I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew:

Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew.

Beyond the Sun, beyond the Moon, the foam was on the Sea,

And by the strand of Ilmarin there grew a golden Tree.

Beneath the stars of Ever-eve in Eldamar it shone,

In Eldamar beside the walls of Elven Tirion.

There long the golden leaves have grown upon the branching years,

While here beyond the Sundering Seas now fall the Elven-tears.

O Lórien! The Winter comes, the bare and leafless Day;

The leaves are falling in the stream, the River flows away.

O Lórien! Too long I have dwelt upon this Hither Shore

And in a fading crown have twined the golden elanor.

But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me,

What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?