"I Have Been A Hazel-Tree, And They Hung The Pilot Star And The Crooked Plough Among My Leaves"

There was a time (during my college years and immediately thereafter) when I was in love with the poetry of Yeats.  I'm sure that many others have had the same experience.  A few lines can capture the essence of this youthful infatuation.  "When you are old and grey and full of sleep . . ."  "A pity beyond all telling/Is hid in the heart of love . . ."  "The trees are in their autumn beauty,/The woodland paths are dry . . ."  "And the white breast of the dim sea/And all dishevelled wandering stars."  It is easy to see why I was beguiled.

But at some point it all seemed too high-pitched.  Added to that was Yeats's penchant for self-dramatization and for oracular pronouncements based upon questionable cosmologies.  And then I discovered, in turn, Thomas Hardy, Edward Thomas, and Philip Larkin.  I immediately felt:  "This is more like real life."

Don't get me wrong:  in terms of sheer volume of beautiful and memorable poems, Yeats has few (or, perhaps, no) equals.  His poetry still delights me when I read it.  But, as the saying goes, the thrill is gone.  I am perfectly willing to concede that my falling out of love is due to a spiritual, emotional, and/or aesthetic failure on my part.  Or perhaps I just grew old. (After all, The White Album no longer means to me what it once did.)

All of this leads up to a lovely poem by Yeats -- a poem that goes well with Ezra Pound's "I stood still and was a tree amid the wood."

Samuel Palmer, "The Gleaning Field" (c. 1833)

   He Thinks of His Past Greatness when a Part
                of the Constellations of Heaven

I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young
And weep because I know all things now:
I have been a hazel-tree, and they hung
The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough
Among my leaves in times out of mind:
I became a rush that horses tread:
I became a man, a hater of the wind,
Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head
May not lie on the breast nor his lips on the hair
Of the woman that he loves, until he dies.
O beast of the wilderness, bird of the air,
Must I endure your amorous cries?

W. B. Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds (1899).

Nobody does this sort of thing better than Yeats.  I confess that I can still feel the pull.

Samuel Palmer, "Harvest Moon" (c. 1833)

"I Stood Still And Was A Tree Amid The Wood"

In "The Trees," Philip Larkin writes:  "The trees are coming into leaf/Like something almost being said."  The lines bring to mind two lines from Wallace Stevens's "The Motive for Metaphor":  ". . . you were happy in spring,/With the half colors of quarter-things."

As spring progresses, the leaves of the trees move through innumerable shades of green.  On a sunny day, the larger leaves are diaphanous, with all the variations of green taking on a tinge of sun-shot yellow.  If it is breezy, their green shadows sway and flutter against each other, flowing like a stream.

Stephen McKenna, "An English Oak Tree" (1981)

                        The Tree

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,
Knowing the truth of things unseen before;
Of Daphne and the laurel bow
And that god-feasting couple old
That grew elm-oak amid the wold.
'Twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated, and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart's home
That they might do this wonder thing;
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
And many a new thing understood
That was rank folly to my head before.

Ezra Pound, A Lume Spento (1908).

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Daphne (line 3) is transformed into a laurel tree as she is pursued by Apollo.  The "god-feasting couple old" (line 4) refers to the story of Baucis and Philemon in Metamorphoses.  The couple provided a meal to Zeus and Hermes when no one else in their village would do so. As a reward, Zeus spared their lives when he destroyed the village and its inhospitable residents.  He also granted their wish that, should one of them die, the other would die at the same time.  Much later, as they died of old age, they embraced, and as they did so they were transformed into intertwining trees:  an oak and a lime.  Pound uses "elm-oak" (line 5).

Stephen McKenna, "Foliage" (1983)

"Consider The Grass Growing" (Once Again)

In my previous post, I stated that Philip Larkin's "The Trees" is my "May poem."  However, I remembered today that there is another poem to which I pay a visit each May.

     Consider the Grass Growing

Consider the grass growing
As it grew last year and the year before,
Cool about the ankles like summer rivers,
When we walked on a May evening through the meadows
To watch the mare that was going to foal.

Patrick Kavanagh, Collected Poems (edited by Antoinette Quinn) (Penguin 2004).  The poem was first published in The Irish Press on May 21, 1943.

George Price Boyce, "Anstey's Cove, South Devon" (1853)

The following untitled poem by Saigyo (1118-1190) is one of a series of ten poems.  The sequence is titled "Ten Poems on Impermanence."

Since I no longer think
of reality
as reality,
what reason would I have
to think of dreams as dreams?

Saigyo (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, Saigyo: Poems of a Mountain Home (Columbia University Press 1991).

At this point, I have to be careful.  I do not wish to fly off into obscure metaphysical space.  More importantly, I do not wish to over-simplify a poem that is the product of thousands of years of Buddhist philosophy and Japanese culture.  (With centuries of Taoist philosophy and Chinese culture in the background.)  All of which is beyond my competence.  The risk of presumption on my part is substantial.

With those caveats (and with the added caveat that I am relying upon a translation), I will humbly offer a tentative (and all-too-obvious) thought. Saigyo is not saying that reality is not reality.  Nor is he saying that dreams are not dreams.

Well, then, what is he saying?  Walk off into the meadows.  Consider the grass growing.  Stop all of your thinking.  Stop putting a name to everything.

Henry Holiday, "Hawes Water" (c. 1859)

"Like Something Almost Being Said"

As some long-time readers may recall, I make it a habit to visit two particular poems in May and November of each year.  My November poem is Wallace Stevens's "The Region November."  My May poem is "The Trees" by Philip Larkin.

Why revisit a poem that we know quite well?

At the outset, let's be clear:  poetry is not life.  (Likewise, art is not life and books are not life.)  We do not read poems in order to live.

But, at the risk of sounding highfalutin', I will go out on a limb and suggest that a good poem can do two things.  First, it can help us to understand what it means to be a human being amidst other human beings.  Second, it can give us an inkling of how we, as human beings, fit into the World -- the earthly paradise that surrounds us.  A good poem puts us in our place. Thus, it makes sense to pay it a visit now and then.

James McIntosh Patrick (1907-1998), "Ashley Burn, Spring"

                 The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old?  No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Philip Larkin, High Windows (Faber and Faber 1974).

I have no doubt that "The Trees" is well-loved by many people.  But those of us who love it do so for reasons that are peculiar to each of us.  Many of us may find the same phrases in the poem beautiful and moving:  "Like something almost being said" or "Their greenness is a kind of grief" or "Yet still the unresting castles thresh" or (of course) "Begin afresh, afresh, afresh."  But how we feel about those words arises out of our own separate lives.

Hence, any attempt to articulate the reasons for our love of the poem is doomed to failure.  Our love is inextricably bound up with our life.  Should you be so lucky as to cross the path of someone who tells you that they love "The Trees," it is best to say "Yes, I know what you mean" and leave it at that.

Besides, as I have often said, explanation and explication are the death of poetry.  If someone attempted to explain to me that the beauty of "The Trees" lies in this-or-that aspect of its meter or in this-or-that aspect of its rhyme, I would regard them as the Grim Reaper of poetry.

I would instruct them to step outside, in May, and have a look at the trees.

James McIntosh Patrick, "City Garden" (1979)

Four-Line Poems, Part Seven: "Sighs Nature An Alas? Or Merely, Amen?"

If I take my daily walk in the late afternoon or early evening, I can watch the swallows take their dinner above the open fields that I pass through. They rise and fall and dive and curve at the same time each day.  Their single-mindedness, swiftness, and precision are wonderful to behold:  a beautiful unchoreographed ballet.

Then again, who am I to say that they are not choreographed?  All of their movements may be perfectly planned in a way that is well beyond my ken.

Anna Isabella Brooke, "Wharfedale from above Bolton Abbey" (1954)

            The Spotted Flycatcher

Gray on gray post, this silent little bird
Swoops on its prey -- prey neither seen nor heard!
A click of bill; a flicker; and, back again!
Sighs Nature an Alas?  Or merely, Amen?

Walter de la Mare, Inward Companion: Poems (1950).

De la Mare's use of "alas" in "The Spotted Flycatcher" brings to mind another of his poems.

                  Harvest Home

A bird flies up from the hayfield;
Sweet, to distraction, is the new-mown grass:
But I grieve for its flowers laid low at noonday --
        And only this poor Alas!

I grieve for War's innocent lost ones --
The broken loves, the mute goodbye,
The dread, the courage, the bitter end,
The shaken faith, the glazing eye.

O bird, from the swathes of that hayfield --
The rancid stench of the grass!
And a heart stricken mute by that Harvest Home --
        And only this poor Alas!

Walter de la Mare, The Burning-Glass and Other Poems (1945).

Joseph Kavanagh (1856-1918), "Gypsy Encampment on the Curragh"

"Look Thy Last On All Things Lovely, Every Hour"

In a recent post, I suggested that Elizabethan poets were preoccupied with the transience of our lives.  But transience is the implicit subject of all poetry, isn't it?  Any good poem is an attempt to arrest life as it escapes our grasp.  The same is true of any good painting.

A poet or a painter embarks upon this effort knowing that it is doomed to failure.  But therein lies the beauty of the undertaking.  (Pun not intended.) This fleeting World is -- despite human nature, despite our daily dose of the dispiriting news of the world -- an earthly paradise.  Would an unchanging Paradise be a paradise?

John Humphrey Spender, "Staked Rose" (1953)

                  Fare Well

When I lie where shades of darkness
Shall no more assail mine eyes,
Nor the rain make lamentation
     When the wind sighs;
How will fare the world whose wonder
Was the very proof of me?
Memory fades, must the remembered
     Perishing be?

Oh, when this my dust surrenders
Hand, foot, lip, to dust again,
May these loved and loving faces
     Please other men!
May the rusting harvest hedgerow
Still the Traveller's Joy entwine,
And as happy children gather
     Posies once mine.

Look thy last on all things lovely,
Every hour.  Let no night
Seal thy sense in deathly slumber
     Till to delight
Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;
Since that all things thou wouldst praise
Beauty took from those who loved them
     In other days.

Walter de la Mare, Motley and Other Poems (1918).

Our own individual transience is a given.  Time is short.  But humanity's attempt to momentarily halt that transience through poetry and painting is an unchanging constant that is bequeathed to all of us.

Josephine Bowes (1825-1874), "A Cornfield near Calais"

"When I Look At Lovely Things Which Pass"

Perhaps I am easy to please, but I never cease to be amazed at the way these things work.  Now -- just as the last of the cherry, apple, and pear blossoms drift to the ground -- on come the lilacs, the rhododendrons, and the azaleas (to name but a few).

And they in turn will soon be replaced, until all of this rising and opening and fading and falling has its denouement in an empty December to come. But there is no need to dwell on that now.

William Callow (1812-1908), "Easby Abbey, Yorkshire" (1853)

                           In the Fields

Lord, when I look at lovely things which pass,
     Under old trees the shadows of young leaves
Dancing to please the wind along the grass,
     Or the gold stillness of the August sun on the August sheaves,
Can I believe there is a heavenlier world than this?
     And if there is
Will the strange heart of any everlasting thing
     Bring me these dreams that take my breath away?
They come at evening with the home-flying rooks and the scent of hay,
     Over the fields.  They come in Spring.

Charlotte Mew, Complete Poems (edited by John Newton) (Penguin 2000.) The poem was first published in 1923.

William Callow, "Old Avenue, Inveraray"

The following poem by Walter de la Mare (which has appeared here before, but which is worth revisiting) provides, I think, a nice complement to Mew's poem.

             Now

The longed-for summer goes;
Dwindles away
To its last rose,
Its narrowest day.

No heaven-sweet air but must die;
Softlier float,
Breathe lingeringly
Its final note.

Oh, what dull truths to tell!
Now is the all-sufficing all
Wherein to love the lovely well,
Whate'er befall.

Walter de la Mare, O Lovely England and Other Poems (1953).

William Callow, "Confluence of the Greta and the Tees" (1872)

"In A Lifetime How Many Springs Do We See?"

I do not think that we ought to dwell unduly upon our mortality.  Unlike, say, the Elizabethans, I have no desire to place a skull on my mantelpiece as a reminder of where I am bound.  And I certainly do not wish to follow the example of John Donne, who is reputed to have occasionally slept in his coffin (which he kept inside his house).  Enough is enough.

Still, being mindful of the brevity of our days is, I think, a good idea.  If nothing else, it may help us to appreciate the moments as they fly away. Besides, in doing so, we keep ourselves in good company:  Su Tung-p'o and A. E. Housman, for instance.

Stanley Spencer, "Lilac and Clematis at Englefield" (1954)

       Pear Blossoms by the Eastern Palisade

Pear blossoms pale white, willows deep green --
when willow fluff scatters, falling blossoms will fill the town.
Snowy boughs by the eastern palisade set me pondering --
in a lifetime how many springs do we see?

Su Tung-p'o (1037-1101) (translated by Burton Watson), in Selected Poems of Su Tung-p'o (Copper Canyon Press 1994).

"In a lifetime how many springs do we see?"  For some of us, the question is not an idle one.  To wit:  at a certain age, the number of springs that we have already seen without a doubt exceeds the number of springs that we have yet to see.  Simple arithmetic, I'm afraid.  But this is not a cause for despair. However, to borrow from Samuel Johnson, it does serve to concentrate the mind wonderfully.

Stanley Spencer

"Wisteria at Englefield" (1955)

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad (1896).

A side-note:  on the poetic comparison of snow and blossoms ("snowy boughs by the eastern palisade;" "to see the cherry hung with snow"), please see my previous post on W. H. Davies's "Nailsworth Hill" and Po Chu-i's "Village Night" ("buckwheat blossoms are like snow").

Stanley Spencer, "Garden at Whitehouse, Northern Ireland" (1952)