Thanatopsis

   To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;—
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature’s teachings, while from all around—
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air—
Comes a still voice— Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

   Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,
The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,—the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods—rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,—
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.—Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings—yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life’s green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man—
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

-- William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), poet, lawyer, and editor, premier American poet of his age. this was one of the most popular poems of the mid-19th century. 

The poem's title literally means, "a consideration of death," which is amazing considering this was one of Bryant's first poems, possibly begun when he was 17. A natural argument against the closing lines, which urges one to live so that one faces death in trust of rest and knowledge that we are not alone in death, might be found in Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night." The song "I Will Follow You Into the Dark," by Deathcab for Cutie, also turns upon this idea.

Lovely commentary by Jerry Harp in the Kenyon Review here.

Image: A gravestone in a cemetery in Elsberry, MO.

The Castaway

Obscurest night involv'd the sky,
          Th' Atlantic billows roar'd,
When such a destin'd wretch as I,
          Wash'd headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
          His floating home for ever left.

No braver chief could Albion boast
          Than he with whom he went,
Nor ever ship left Albion's coast,
          With warmer wishes sent.
He lov'd them both, but both in vain,
          Nor him beheld, nor her again.

Not long beneath the whelming brine,
          Expert to swim, he lay;
Nor soon he felt his strength decline,
          Or courage die away;
But wag'd with death a lasting strife,
          Supported by despair of life.

He shouted: nor his friends had fail'd
          To check the vessel's course,
But so the furious blast prevail'd,
          That, pitiless perforce,
They left their outcast mate behind,
          And scudded still before the wind.

Some succour yet they could afford;
          And, such as storms allow,
The cask, the coop, the floated cord,
          Delay'd not to bestow.
But he (they knew) nor ship, nor shore,
          Whate'er they gave, should visit more.

Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he
          Their haste himself condemn,
Aware that flight, in such a sea,
          Alone could rescue them;
Yet bitter felt it still to die
          Deserted, and his friends so nigh.

He long survives, who lives an hour
          In ocean, self-upheld;
And so long he, with unspent pow'r,
          His destiny repell'd;
And ever, as the minutes flew,
          Entreated help, or cried—Adieu!

At length, his transient respite past,
          His comrades, who before
Had heard his voice in ev'ry blast,
          Could catch the sound no more.
For then, by toil subdued, he drank
          The stifling wave, and then he sank.

No poet wept him: but the page
          Of narrative sincere;
That tells his name, his worth, his age,
          Is wet with Anson's tear.
And tears by bards or heroes shed
          Alike immortalize the dead.

I therefore purpose not, or dream,
          Descanting on his fate,
To give the melancholy theme
          A more enduring date:
But misery still delights to trace
          Its semblance in another's case.

No voice divine the storm allay'd,
          No light propitious shone;
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
          We perish'd, each alone:
But I beneath a rougher sea,
          And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he.

--William Cowper (1731-1800), prominent English poet and inspiration to the early Romantics. This was believed to be his last poem written before his death. It is featured in the film version of the novel Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, chosen by screenwriter and actress Emma Thompson. Cowper was listed as Marianne's favorite poet in the novel, but the poem read by Edward was left unnamed. Technically this choice is an anachronism, as the novel is set between 1795 and 1800, and this poem was published posthumously in 1803.

Image: Man Overboard, Rescue Launch from HMS 'St Jean d'Acre' by Oswald Walters Bryerly (1817-1894)

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World

    

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
                      Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
                                                 The soul shrinks

From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,
And cries,
             “Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”

Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
“Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
                       keeping their difficult balance.”

-- Richard Wilbur (1921- 2017), American poet, editor, and translator

Image: Angel sculpture, Christ Church Cathedral, St. Louis

Pyrosymphonie

   

You and I, when our days are done, must say
Without exactly saying it, goodbye.
If we could choose at such a time one free
Embodiment which might, by being the last,
Stand in the account somehow as one
Generous entry putting the whole in credit,
What and where would it be, that final choice?

There are times such as when we have had them
Must serve in their completeness for the fancy,
For they are all we get. As yesterday,
Breathing in the wood, crouching for ceps.
And just a week ago, the eyes narrowing
For twenty porpoises sewing the waves
Beyond West End, not seen for fifteen years.

And then last month, the heart syncopating,
We slipped from a canoe into the shallows
With golden Beynac above us, tall, half-robed.
That wood, that sea, that river, rooted or moving,
Survive in all their changes, year by year
In which we drift through them, seizing on hope,
Searching for our permanent lost shapes.

Perhaps for that moment we could be ourselves
For once, and somehow find ourselves in time
For the Assumption at Calvi, surprised by night,
The whole sky split by fire and dripping stars.
And we should live this passionate postscript till
Those shapes no longer named themselves as all
That they suggest, these mimes of the cascade:

Lamps of the hill town’s single street, guiding
Its evening Clios after each other down
To the pleasures of the coast, the pulse of light,
Celestial pinball, instantaneous blooms,
Paper in chimneys, headaches, calculations,
Ribbons, Spanish exclamation marks,
Cringing anemones, the sky shocked red,

A burst of dizzy bubbles in the kicklight
Of the downthrust of an ankle, following
Your swimming shape for ever for this moment
Onwards through weed-flagged crevices, as quick
As your shutter on these artificial fires
That live just longer than we might expect,
Though never giving time to say goodbye.

—John Fuller (1937- ), English poet, novelist, teacher, editor, Fellow Emeritus at Magdalen College, and critic

I Will Follow You Into the Dark

    

Love of mine, someday you will die,
But I'll be close behind--
I'll follow you into the dark;
No blinding light, or tunnels to gates of white,
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark.

If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the "No's" on their vacancy signs;
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks,
Then I'll follow you into the dark.

In Catholic school, as vicious as Roman rule,
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black.
I held my tongue as she told me, "Son, 

Fear is the heart of love,"
So I never went back.

If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the "No's" on their vacancy signs;
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks,
Then I'll follow you into the dark.

You and me have seen everything to see,
From Bangkok to Calgary
And the soles of your shoes 

are all worn down. The time for sleep is now
But it's nothing to cry about,
'Cause we'll hold each other soon
In the blackest of rooms....

If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the "No's" on their vacancy signs;
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks,
Then I'll follow you into the dark--
Then I'll follow you into the dark.

--Benjamin Gibbard (1976- ), American songwriter and musician who performs as the lead singer for the band Death Cab for Cutie.

Video here:

Those Winter Sundays

 

    

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

-- Robert Hayden  (1913-1980), born Asa Bundy Sheffey, devout Baha'i, poet, and professor, first African American appointed Poet Laureate, 1976-1978.

Robert Hayden reads this poem:

Kiss

    

When Lynne saw the lizard floating

in her mother-in-law’s swimming pool,
she jumped in. And when it wasn’t
breathing, its body limp as a baby
drunk on milk, she laid it on her palm
and pressed one fingertip to its silky breast
with just about the force you need
to test the ripeness of a peach, only quicker,
a brisk little push with a bit of spring in it.
Then she knelt, dripping wet in her Doc Martens
and camo T-shirt with the neck ripped out,
and bent her face to the lizard’s face,
her big plush lips to the small stiff jaw
that she’d pried apart with her opposable thumb,
and she blew a tiny puff into the lizard’s lungs.
The sun glared against the turquoise water.
What did it matter if she saved one lizard?
One lizard more or less in the world?
But she bestowed the kiss of life,
again and again, until
the lizard’s wrinkled lids peeled back,
its muscles roused its own first breath
and she set it on the hot cement
where it rested a moment
before darting off.

-- Ellen Bass (1947- ), American poet, editor, and author

How to Apologize

   

Cook a large fish—choose one with many bones, a skeleton
you will need skill to expose, maybe the flying
silver carp that's invaded the Great Lakes, tumbling
the others into oblivion. If you don't live
near a lake, you'll have to travel.
Walking is best and shows you mean it,
but you could take a train and let yourself
be soothed by the rocking
on the rails. It's permitted
to receive solace for whatever you did
or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful
human. When my mother was in the hospital,
my daughter and I had to clear out the home
she wouldn't return to. Then she recovered
and asked, incredulous,
How could you have thrown out all my shoes?
So you'll need a boat. You could rent or buy,
but, for the sake of repairing the world,
build your own. Thin strips
of Western red cedar are perfect,
but don't cut a tree. There'll be
a demolished barn or downed trunk
if you venture further.
And someone will have a mill.
And someone will loan you tools.
The perfume of sawdust and the curls
that fall from your plane
will sweeten the hours. Each night
we dream thirty-six billion dreams. In one night
we could dream back everything lost.
So grill the pale flesh.
Unharness yourself from your weary stories.
Then carry the oily, succulent fish to the one you hurt.
There is much to fear as a creature
caught in time, but this
is safe. You need no defense. This
is just another way to know
you are alive.

-- Ellen Bass (1947- ), American poet, editor, and author

Image: Alfred Sisley, Fish On a Plate, 1865-1867

Mused Mary in Old Age

   

The lengthening shadows of the cedar trees

Have blended into twilight, and the sun 

Has plunged in glorious gold precipitance 

Beyond the dim crest of the western hills, 

Bearing with it the day’s disquietudes; 

And now the stars, that lamp the feet of God, 

Are lighted, and night’s purple silences 

Steal gently round me fraught with memories. 

’Twas such an hour as this—long, long ago 

Yet seeming yesterday—he came to me, 

My little son, in joyous travail born 

Out there across the hills in Bethlehem, 

Where we who journeyed southward to be taxed— 

Strangers in our own father’s land—had found 

No shelter in the crowded khan, and shared, 

Perforce, a grotto with the stabled kine. 

 Ah, how it all comes back again to me! 

The courtyard, in the flickering torchlight, filled 

With huddled trav’lers sleeping ’neath the sky, 

The kneeling camels of a caravan, 

The patient asses dozing by the wall, 

A smell of roasting meat at little fires, 

The shouts of melon-sellers, the low drone 

Of reverend elders bending at their prayers, 

Barking of street-dogs, porters’ blasphemies, 

The laughter of a girl, the mellow flute 

Of some rapt lover, and the tinkling tune 

Of sheep-bells forward moving through the dark.

And then the hour supreme, wherein my soul 

Clomb the dark pinnacles of pain, and death 

Grappled with life through whirling aeoned years,

But fled at length and left the Miracle. 

 They laid him there beside me on the hay, 

A wee pink being in his world’s first sleep; 

My arm was round about him and his breath 

Was warm with life on my exultant breast, 

And they whose winged watch is set to keep 

Ward in the valley lands of heaven looked down,

Not up, that night to find their paradise. 

All weak with labor and soul’s happiness, 

I lay beneath the sapphire tent of skies, 

And in my heart I made a little prayer 

Of thanks that flew up to the throne of God 

On swift dove pinions of unuttered song; 

And as I prayed, lo, upon loops of stars 

Night’s velvet curtainings were lifted up, 

A wondrous light turned all the world to rose, 

And down the skies swept singing seraphim 

In mighty echoes of my little prayer. 

Oh, can it be that threescore years have marched 

In troubled caravan across the waste 

Of desert life since then, and can it be 

That I, who sit here in mine eventide, 

White with the snows of sorrow and of time,

Was once a bright tressed girl who heard the choirs 

Of heaven rejoice that she had borne a son? 

Why, I can feel that little heart beat still 

Close to my own, the touch of little hands 

Warm and caressing on this withered breast; 

Still I can hear the first low wail that marked 

His woe’s beginning and the tortured path 

That he should tread in mighty gentleness, 

With pain and anguish, ’til his love supreme 

And terrible meekness, overcoming death, 

Should lead him conqueror to sit with God, 

Pleading for sinful men in paradise. 

Today I stole into the synagogue 

And heard a rabbi read the sacred scroll: 

How that my lord, Isaiah, said of old, 

Thy Maker is thy husband, he hath called thee 

As a forsaken woman, spirit grieved; 

God, for a little moment, hides his face 

From thee, but with his loving kindness soon 

And tender mercies shall he gather thee. 

Then was I comforted, and peace displaced 

The turmoil in my heart, and minded me 

Of that great promise Gabriel bore from God 

And the immeasurable fruitage of his word, 

The life and death and glory of my son. 

 So in the shades of life and night I sit, 

Under the sheltering arbor of the dark 

That curves above, vined o’er with trellised stars, 

Waiting my spirit bridegroom, and the sound 

Of that loved voice—long silent save in dreams— 

Calling across the vibrant firmament, 

O Mary, Mother Mary, come to Me.

-- George M. P. Baird (1887-1970), American poet, professor, and civil servant

Image: The Virgin Mary in Old Age, by James Tissot

In Oklahoma

When you leave a Real City, as Gertrude Stein did, and go to 

Oakland, as she did, you can say, as she did, there is no there, there. 

When you are a Hartford insurance executive, as Wallace Stevens was, 

and you have never been to Oklahoma, as he had not, you can invent 

people to dance there, as he did, and you can name them Bonnie and 

Josie. But a THERE depends on how, in the beginning, the wind 

breathes upon its surface. Shh: amethyst, sapphire. Lead. Crystal 

mirror. See, a cow-pond in Oklahoma. Under willows now, so the 

Osage man fishing there is in the shade. A bobwhite whistles from his 

fencepost, a hundred yards south of the pond. A muskrat-head draws 

a nest of Vs up to the pond’s apex, loses them there in the reeds and 

sedges where a redwing blackbird, with gold and scarlet epaulets 

flashing, perches on the jiggly buttonwood branch. Purple martins 

skim the pond, dip and sip, veer and swoop, check, pounce, crisscross 

each other’s flashing paths. His wife in the Indian Hospital with 

cancer. Children in various unhappiness. White clouds sail slowly 

across the pure blue pond. Turtles poke their heads up, watch the 

Indian man casting, reeling, casting, reeling. A bass strikes, is hooked, 

fights, is reeled in, pulls away again, is drawn back, dragged ashore,

 put on the stringer. In Oklahoma, Wally, here is Josie’s father. 

Something that is going to be nothing, but isn’t. Watch: now he takes 

the bass home, cleans and fries it. Shall I tell you a secret, Gert? 

You have to be there before it’s there. Daddy, would you pass them a plate 

of fish? See friends, it’s not a flyover here. Come down from your 

planes and you’ll understand. Here.

--- Carter Revard (1931- 2022), poet, writer, Rhodes scholarship recipient, English professor at Washington University in St. Louis, medievalist, and member of the Osage nation