Ozymandias

The poem describes the quintessence of hubris.

See here and here for analysis of the poem

The Darkling Thrush

The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware

As noted in this analysis, "The most significant aspect of Thomas Hardy's brooding poem is the date and time of its composition". The poem is dated 31 December 1900, the last day of the 19th century. That the poem is referring to the end of the old century and the opening of the new one is indicated by the lines:

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,

The first two stanzas are uniformly bleak, with Hardy leaning (wearily ?) on a gate leading to a dark forest, surveying the cold, frosty, spectre-gray, desolate surroundings, as the late afternoon leads to evening.

The last two stanzas describe the joyful singing (caroling)of an old thrush, (aged ... frail, gaunt, and small).

The last two stanzas could be interpreted as Hardy's optomistic hopes for the new century. If so the hope was to be dashed 14 years later as Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est makes amply clear.

A more likely interpretation is that the pessimism remains as Hardy wonders why a bird should be singing its heart out when there is nothing in sight but gloom and misery.

The title of the poem reminds me of two lines from Matthew Arnold's seminal poem Dover Beach

And we are hear as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alrams of struggle and flight


Another link to Arnold's poem is the likely source of Hardy's pessimism. Unlike the modern New Athiests, both Arnold and Hardy realised that the retreat from religious belief, no matter how necessary for intellectual reasons, entailed also a serious loss of certainty, security and hope.

As Arnold explained it:

The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled;
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar ...

Timothy Takach set the Darkling Thrush to music ...



Links:

The Guardian's Poem of the Week

Cindy Shanks at Helium.com

Words

This is a beautiful video, and quietly profound:



This film complemented a Radiolab podcast called Words.

Click on the play button to hear the (audio) podcast.





Here is Radiolab's summary of the podcast:

Words that Change the World

Susan Schaller believes that the best idea she ever had in her life had to do with an isolated young man she met one day at a community college. He was 27-years-old at the time, and though he had been born deaf, no one had ever taught him to sign. He had lived his entire life without language--until Susan found a way to reach out to him.

Charles Fernyhough doesn't think that very young children think--at least not in a way he'd recognize as thinking. Charles explains what he means by walking us through an experiment in a white room. And Elizabeth Spelke weighs in with research from her baby lab--which suggests a child's brain begins as a series of islands, until it can find the right words and phrases to bridge the gaps.

James Shapiro, a Shakespeare scholar at Columbia, argues that Shakespeare behaved more like a chemist than a writer: by smashing words together--words like eye and ball--he created new words, and new ways of seeing the world.

One morning, neurologist Jill Bolte Taylor woke up with a headache. A blood vessel then burst inside her left hemisphere, and silenced all the brain chatter in her head. She was left with no language. No memories. Just sensory intake, and an all-encompassing feeling of joy.

Here is how Jill Bolte taylor told her story at TED:

Dulce et Decorum Est

I have been aware of Wilfred Owen as a war poet since I was a teenager. Some how or other I missed this one until Christopher Hitchins mentioned it being read out loud in class when he was at school.

The description of a single incident in the Great War makes a profound and powerful statement against all wars. World War I poetry has particular poignancy for me as my paternal grandfather participated in that war.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST by WILFRED OWEN

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!---An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,---
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori roughly translates to: It is sweet and honourable to die for one’s country

Hitchins wrote:

... the words of Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" went off like a landmine under my concept of history and empire. The moment came in class. It was the turn of a very handsome boy named Sean Watson to read. As he stumbled his bored and boring way through the lines, I was consumed first by a sense of outrage, as if seeing somebody taking an axe to a grand piano. How could anybody be so brutish and insensitive? I wanted to wrench the book from his hands and declaim the poem. But then I found that this would not in fact be possible, because my eyes were blinded with stinging tears. To this day, I have difficulty reciting the poem out loud without a catch in my throat.

source: Christopher Hitchins, Hitch-22 A Memoir, Allen & Unwin 2010, page 71

Dover Beach

My favourite poem.

It was written by Matthew Arnold

As I Walked Out One Evening

Here is a video of W.H. Auden reciting his marvellous poem, As I Walked Out One Evening.

Here is a review of the poem.

Sit

This is a poem by one of my favorite writers, Vikram Seth. Here is my review of one of his books, Two Lives.

I found it at 3quarksdaily.

The poem gives a great sense of the necessity briefly withdrawing from the cares of the world. I'm not a 26 year old with work on my mind, therefore I have plenty of time to contemplate the too opaque, distressing and profound world. Sitting and chatting with friends over a coffee is a great antidote to the depression that sets in if the world is contemplated too often. As well I am not a great wit so witty conversation often leaves me for dead.

I had to google grackles to find that they are large, aggressive, birds. See this link.


Sit
Vikram Seth

Sit, drink your coffee here; your work can wait awhile.
You're twenty-six, and still have some of life ahead.
No need for wit; just talk vacuities, and I'll
Reciprocate in kind, or laugh at you instead.


The world is too opaque, distressing and profound.
This twenty minutes' rendezvous will make my day:
To sit here in the sun, with grackles all around,
Staring with beady eyes, and you two feet away.

Satan

from "Paradise Lost", Book 1 by John Milton

                                                        ... His Pride
Had cast im out from heaven, with all his host
Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equalled the Most High,
If he opposed, and, with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud,
With vain attempt. He the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.
    Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew,
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded, though immortal. But his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him: round he throws his baleful eyes,
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay,
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate.
At once, as far as Angels ken, he views
The dismal situation waste and wild.
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever burning sulphur unconsumed.             ...


Powerful writing for believers and non believers alike!

My Last Duchess by Robert Browning

Scene: Ferrara

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turn (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
Ans seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek; perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say "her mantle laps
Over my Lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faing
Half-flush that dies along her throat"; such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enohgh
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart ... How shall I say? ... too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, t'was all one! My favour at her breast,
The drooping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace - all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men, - good; but thanked
Somehow ... I know not how ... as if she ranked
My gift of a nine hundred years old name
With anybody's gift. Who's stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even if you had skill
In speech - (which I hae not) - to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark" - and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
- E'en then would be some stooping, and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, Sir, she smiled, not doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. Thee she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below then. I repeat
The Count your Master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. nay', we'll go
Together down, Sir! Notice Neptune, tho',
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me.


It is amazing that a man of such cold blooded and casual violence could have such power over life and death. Pity the "fair daughter" of the Count who is to replace the Duke's former wife who had been murdered by his order - "I gave commands; then all smiles stopped together". She was killed because of her natural innocence and natural sexuality. It is quite possible that the transgressions of the former Duchess were only in the mind of the Duke. The new wife had better be warned very carefully about the sort of deferential behaviour required by her new husband.

What makes the Duke even more frightening is that although he has the instincts and morals of a gangster, he has the patina of a gentleman and is a connoisseur of fine art.