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Three Poems by William Carlos Williams, Part Three (A sight of a cynic)

17 Sunday Feb 2019

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature, Uncategorized

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Cynic, Dignity, Diogenes, Diogenes Laertius, Honesty, Literature, poem, Poetry, Pretense, Reverence, William Carlos Williams

The third poem in what appears to be a triptych of Williams is again named “Pastoral” as was the first in the series. Williams again takes the part of a detached but certainly not disinterested observer. While he does not involve himself in the matter under consideration, he deeply cares about it. Indeed, in this final poem he is “astonish me beyond words”.

This poem again comes around to the poor and their dignity — unknown and unobserved by those of Williams’ native world — but this time he begins with “little sparrows”:

The little sparrows
hop ingenuously
about the pavement
quarreling
with sharp voices
over those things
that interest them.

The scene is easy to understand for anyone who has ever seen a sparrow: the small birds are hoping about doing something and making their sharp sounds. But there are a few things here which are interesting:

First the intensity of the birds’ conduct: they hop, they quarrel, their voices are sharp. There is a great intensity to their conduct.

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(Photo by Jorma Peltoniemi)

Second, the birds have no concern for the poet watching them at their business: the birds hop ‘ingenuously’. There is a complete unstudied and unconcerned freedom about the birds conduct. They have their own world and the poet may not enter: he can see, but not participate. Also, the subject of their quarrel is their own concern: “those things/that interest them.” They simply don’t care about Williams.

The birds’ unconcern is matched by the human detachment:

But we who are wiser
shut ourselves in
on either hand
and no one knows
whether we think good
or evil.

We people “shut ourselves in”. We are “wiser” and so we don’t concern ourselves with these matters. We certainly do not tell anyone, “no one knows whether we think good/or evil.” We — in seeming dignity (as opposed to the undignified “ingenuous” birds) — do not let on our judgment.

There is an ironic allusion here to the Fall: our wisdom (“we who are wiser”) does not lead to us to judgment; no one even knows whether we judge this good or evil. The Fall described in Genesis 3, concerns the temptation of the shrewd serpent who tricked Eve into believing that eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would make her wise and she would become as God (of the gods):

Genesis 3:5–6 (NASB95)
5 “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

All of this wisdom has resulted in a stultified judgment: we simply don’t concern ourselves with these lowly animals.

The faint allusion to the Bible is again hinted at in the next stanza.

Meanwhile
the old man who goes about
gathering dog-lime
walks in the gutter
without looking up
and his tread is more majestic than
that of the Episcopal minister
approaching the pulpit
of a Sunday.

Dog-lime is a riddle. Doing a little looking I found a message board of similarly stumped readers, and someone suggested that it may mean trying to find something to eat in the gutter, or possibly some residue of dog-feces. Whatever the meaning, it is obviously unbecoming: it is a mark of this man “in the gutter” who never looks up: he is the precise opposite of the Episcopal minister on a Sunday morning (the most dignified of men). But here is another use of “dog” and this rather unreverent man which we will consider in a moment.

The reference to “dog” is the exact opposite of “god” (which is an obvious joke made at length by Joyce in Ulysses — which Williams would not have known).

But there is a patent allusion to Wilde in Lady Windermere’s Fan:

Lord Darlington.  No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.  [Sits down at C. table.]
Dumby.  We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars?  Upon my word, you are very romantic to-night, Darlington.

Our old man, very unromantically, does not even look up from the gutter: he is scrounging for some offal of some sort.

The old man is like the sparrows: he is about something intently. It is a matter of life and death to him, and he bears no pretense. He has no concern about the poet or anyone else. Like the sparrow he carries on his life in public.

Now let us return to the vague reference to dog-lime which seems to invoke the Cynic Diogenes who carried on his live in public, like a dog, with no concern about the thoughts of others.

Waterhouse-Diogenes

(John William Waterhouse, Diogenes)

Here are some references from Diogenes Laertius which may help explicate this poem. He writes of the first great cynic Diogenes as follows:

Through watching a mouse running about, says Theophrastus in the Megarian dialogue, not looking for a place to lie down in, not afraid of the dark, not seeking any of the things which are considered to be dainties, he discovered the means of adapting himself to circumstances. He was the first, say some, to fold his cloak because he was obliged to sleep in it as well, and he carried a wallet to hold his victuals, and he used any place for any purpose, for breakfasting, sleeping, or conversing. And then he would say, pointing to the portico of Zeus and the Hall of Processions, that the Athenians had provided him with places to live in.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. R. D. Hicks (Kansas City Missouri: Harvard University Press, November 1, 2005), 25–27.

And one day when Plato had invited to his house friends coming from Dionysius, Diogenes trampled upon his carpets and said, “I trample upon Plato’s vainglory.” Plato’s reply was, “How much pride you expose to view, Diogenes, by seeming not to be proud.” Others tell us that what Diogenes said was, “I trample upon the pride of Plato,” who retorted, “Yes, Diogenes, with pride of another sort.”

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. R. D. Hicks (Kansas City Missouri: Harvard University Press, November 1, 2005), 27–29.

He would say that men strive in digging and kicking to outdo one another, but no one strives to become a good man and true.

And he would wonder that the grammarians should investigate the ills of Odysseus, while they were ignorant of their own. Or that the musicians should tune the strings of the lyre, while leaving the dispositions of their own souls discordant; [28] that the mathematicians should gaze at the sun and the moon, but overlook matters close at hand; that the orators should make a fuss about justice in their speeches, but never practise it; or that the avaricious should cry out against money, while inordinately fond of it. He used also to condemn those who praised honest men for being superior to money, while themselves envying the very rich.

At a feast certain people kept throwing all the bones to him as they would have done to a dog.Thereupon he played a dog’s trick and drenched them.

So I think it safe to say that this old man in the gutter seeking dog-lime is no romantic; rather, he is the precise opposite of the romantic. But he is also a man utterly without pretense or deception (although he is possessed of a very different pretense; yet, he is an animal and in parallel to the sparrows).

By setting the old man up as a cynic, Williams displays this old man as an honest man. The most famous incident of Diogenes involves a lamp, “He lit a lamp in broad daylight and said, as he went about, “I am looking for a man.” (λύχνον μεθʼ ἡμέραν ἅψας περιῄει λέγων “ἄνθρωπον ζητῶ.”)

Diogenes_looking_for_a_man_-_attributed_to_JHW_Tischbein

This dog-man is set up in direct contrast to the great master of dignity and civilization and Williams finds the Cynic (Greek for “dog”) more “majestic” than the minister.

The poem then ends with the self-abnegating lines:

These things
Astonish me beyond words.

The irony here is that Williams has actually provided words, may precise and well-calibrated words which make allusion to Oscar Wilde and a Greek philosopher. He is so “astonished” “beyond words” that he has given us words. What this must mean is that his poem aims at but does not achieve the end which he sought (which is the common element of anyone who has written and judged himself honestly).

So what then is the summary of Williams’ attitude to the poor? First, he cannot enter into their world. He is observes from a distance; he is astonished and finds great beauty and dignity; but he is still a world-apart. Second, he sees in them a dignity which transcends their circumstance. They are more “majestic” than the height of Williams’ own class and world. It is a sort of barbaric dignity and beauty which he sees.

Third, his poem is the connection which draws him into their world. He sees, frames, understands and makes their lives something intelligible him; even if that intelligibility leaves him at a distance. His words do something, but they cannot do all.

A poem by Thomas Hardy

13 Wednesday Feb 2019

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poem, Poetry, Thomas Hardy

Fame and power in human beings is a relative thing. I knew a man who was quite famous in one country. His picture was on billboards and posters. He was on tv. People would wait for hours to great him. Yet in his home country, he was unknown. A lovely pleasant interesting man, but not the least famous.

Power too is all in perception. A king is only a king because others think him so.

Time is distance too. When time makes a king unknown; the king’s power is all in the people who visit – and in this case it is those who died nearby. The king is now a lamppost, a sign or marker. He is nothing himself.

ROME AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS NEAR THE GRAVES OF SHELLEY AND KEATS (1887)

Who, then, was Cestius,

And what is he to me?

-Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous

One thought alone brings he.

I can recall no word

Of anything he did;

For me he is a man who died and was interred

To leave a pyramid

Whose purpose was exprest

Not with its first design,

Nor till, far down in Time, beside it found their rest

Two countrymen of mine.

Cestius in life, maybe,

Slew, breathed out threatening;

I know not. This I know: in death all silently

He does a kindlier thing,

In beckoning pilgrim feet

With marble finger high

To where, by shadowy wall and history-haunted street,

Those matchless singers lie . . .

—Say, then, he lived and died

That stones which bear his name

Should mark, through Time, where two immortal

Shades abide;

It is an ample fame.

Three Poems by William Carlos Williams, Part Two

02 Saturday Feb 2019

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature, Uncategorized

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Al Que Quiere!, Apology, Literature, poem, Poetry, William Carlos Williams

Al Que Quiere! - Wikipedia

In a previous post we noted that Williams wrote a series of three poems (published in Al Que Quiere! (1917)) concerning the poor. There was a certain ambiguity in the first poem Pastoral (there is a second poem also named “Pastoral”) concerning Williams’ relationship with the subject: was he mocking the poor or the pastoral form? Was he objectifying the poor and thus dehumanizing their plight? How should we resolve these questions.

In the second poem of the series, Apology, Williams considers not the home of the poor, but the poor themselves:

Apology

Why do I write today?

 

The beauty of

the terrible faces

of our nonentities

stirs me to it:

 

colored women

day workers –

old and experienced –

return home at dusk

in cast off clothing

faces like

old Florentine oak.

 

Also

 

the set pieces

of your faces stir me –

leading citizens-

but not in the same way.

 

Here, Williams considers the “terrible faces” of “our nonentities”.  First we must note that “terrible” does not have the connotations of extremely bad, poor quality, et cetera. Here are some contemporary uses of the phrase “terrible face”:

Quo Vadis, “She imagined him having a terrible face, an immovable malice in the features”. (1899) The Clash, 1922, “the terrible face of the wounded man”. A short story in Good Housekeeping, The River’s End, “It was a haunting and terrible face, a face heavy and deeply lined”. The courage of Captain Plum, 1924, “Nathaniel tried to stifle the cry on his lips, tried to smile, to speak — but the terrible face that stared up into his own held him silent, motionless.” [Both The River’s End and Captain Plum were written by James Oliver Curwood, he apparently like that phrase.] In fact, 1919, was the highpoint in the use of the phrase “terrible face”!

These faces are thus peculiarly striking, they are faces that do something to the observer.

Williams does not speak of horror of these faces, for he refers to the “beauty” of these “terrible faces”. He is walking along and arrested by the horror which has marked and the beauty which shows from the faces of these poor “colored women”. Here are the most downtrodden and he sees them.

There is nothing romanticized about their appearance, and he yet finds elegance here: their faces are beautiful and like “Florentine oak”: a phrase which has a whiff of the ancient world. When combined with the phrase “terrible face” it may not be reading too much allusion to think of some Roman demigod.  Their castoff clothing is then a kind of disguise.

But at the same time, these are poor women in poor clothes walking home from a difficult job as night descends. These women have become real to him. It is as if he has just noticed them.

And note the title, the poem is an “apology”: I am sorry, dear reader, leading citizen, that I have noticed the beauty and humanity of these fellow-creatures whom you have seeming not seen.

He then addresses his “leading citizens” directly: “your faces” — which are “set pieces” also have an affect upon me.

The last line then comes as a cut, “but not in the same way.”

There is nothing smug in Williams consideration of the poor. Rather than objectifying the poor, they have intruded into his conscious as real people. This is not to say he does not recognize a profound distance. He does not pretend to enter into their world. He offers no help. He does nothing to change a thing.

This is only a poem: not a call to some action. But I think for making itself a bare poem — without the pomposity and politics which mar most (all?) contemporary poetry (nothing is so dull and limiting as politics in poetry — the politics are jejune and the poetry is mundane) — makes it more powerful.

The poor who are so often not recognized have become quite real. They are there in beauty with their “terrible faces”. The “leading citizens” are criticized because they have missed what he has found.

These poor women must first become human beings in the eyes of the “leading citizens” before anything can be done. Otherwise, the response to these women will be render them something less than human, lacking agency: objects of the leading citizens’ largesse rather than human being deserving of respect on the same ground as any human: both good and bad.

These women, after all, have “terrible faces” and “beauty”.

Three Poems by William Carlos Williams (Part One)

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature, Uncategorized

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Literature, poem, Poetry, William Carlos Williams

There are series of three poems from Al Que Quiere! (1917) which concern the same matter of the persons perhaps most likely neglected as objects of poetry. This attention would not be interesting in and of itself today: looking for outcasts, portraying the outcast is sure sign of artistic integrity.

Two of the poems are entitled “Pastoral”, their companion is “Apology”.  The first pastoral begins:

When I was younger

it was plain to me

I must make something of myself

 

The patter is five – five – eight. The longer line exhausts the idea and makes a bit of closure. What then is the idea: ambition: which ambition is going to contrasted with the wisdom of age:

 

Older now

I walk back streets

 

How the opposite of ambition. He is not in a place to be seen, here is in backstreets.

 

Admiring the houses

Of the very poor:

 

He then lists out the items he sees:

 

roof out of line with sides

the yards cluttered

with old chicken wire, ashes,

furniture gone wrong;

the fences and outhouses

built of barrel-staves

and parts of boxes, all,

if I am fortunate

smeared a bluish green

that properly weathered

pleases me best

of all colors.  

 

Before we come to the conclusion, we are left with a bit of a question: Is he ironic? Not ironic in finding the items visually interesting. There is something visually interesting in decay. Any number of photographers have used such things as either the subject or the backdrop for their images.

 

But the irony of saying such a color “pleases” him. There is a strange tone in the pastoral subject of poetry were the poet idealizes another’s poverty as a place of serenity and tranquill beauty – away from whatever ambition and hurry has ceased the poet and his world. But we never see the poet volunteer to become poor. (Dickens, to his credit may idealize some poor people, but he does not romanticize poverty per se.)

 

Is Williams merely finding beauty where it can be found – is it a realization that his ambition is of little good except for beauty? Is there a mocking of the “pastoral”?

 

 

He ends with

 

            No one

will believe this

of vast importance to the nation.

 

What is of no importance? His vision of beauty? The fact that he likes the color? The lives of the poor?

 

We know that he has gotten something wrong – his early ambition has given way to looking at the poor and seeking beauty in their ramshackle existence.

 

The next poem, “Apology” may help understand the first (assuming he holds a consistent position).

John Ruskin (Sesame and Lillies): On Pride as the Motive

11 Tuesday Dec 2018

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature, Uncategorized

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Pride

Practically, then, at present, "advancement in life" means, becoming
conspicuous in life; obtaining a position which shall be
acknowledged by others to be respectable or honourable.  We do not
understand by this advancement, in general, the mere making of
money, but the being known to have made it; not the accomplishment
of any great aim, but the being seen to have accomplished it.  In a
word, we mean the gratification of our thirst for applause.  That
thirst, if the last infirmity of noble minds, is also the first
infirmity of weak ones; and, on the whole, the strongest impulsive
influence of average humanity:  the greatest efforts of the race
have always been traceable to the love of praise, as its greatest
catastrophes to the love of pleasure.

I am not about to attack or defend this impulse.  I want you only to
feel how it lies at the root of effort; especially of all modern
effort.  It is the gratification of vanity which is, with us, the
stimulus of toil and balm of repose; so closely does it touch the
very springs of life that the wounding of our vanity is always
spoken of (and truly) as in its measure MORTAL; we call it
"mortification," using the same expression which we should apply to
a gangrenous and incurable bodily hurt.  And although a few of us
may be physicians enough to recognise the various effect of this
passion upon health and energy, I believe most honest men know, and
would at once acknowledge, its leading power with them as a motive.
The seaman does not commonly desire to be made captain only because
he knows he can manage the ship better than any other sailor on
board.  He wants to be made captain that he may be CALLED captain.
The clergyman does not usually want to be made a bishop only because
he believes that no other hand can, as firmly as his, direct the
diocese through its difficulties.  He wants to be made bishop
primarily that he may be called "My Lord."  And a prince does not
usually desire to enlarge, or a subject to gain, a kingdom, because
he believes no one else can as well serve the State, upon its
throne; but, briefly, because he wishes to be addressed as "Your
Majesty," by as many lips as may be brought to such utterance.

Some Notes on Written for a Personal Epitath, by Dylan Thomas

14 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by memoirandremains in Dylan Thomas, Literature, Uncategorized

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Dylan Thomas, poem, Poetry

32676601445_ed14b3f96e_o

In his poem, Written for a Personal Epitath, Dylan Thomas begins his epitaph with the observation that he is “feeding the worm”. This is a commonplace, going back at least to Hamlet

Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A
certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at
him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We
fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves
for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is
but variable service—two dishes but to one table.
That’s the end. (4.3.19-28)

Thomas avoids the obvious cliche but makes the point. He then turns to a question, “Who I blame”: blame for the fact of his death. He repeats the question in line 6, “Who do I blame?” He does state he has been “laid down/At last by time”. Again an allusion to Shakespeare: in Sonnet 19 he refers to “Devouring time”. In Sonnet 16, time is “bloody time”.

It is interesting how Thomas describes the place of death, “under the earth with girl and thief”: sex and violence.

So whom does Thomas blame?

 Mother I blame
     Whose loving crime
     Molded my form
     Within her womb,
Who gave me life and then the grave,
     Mother I blame.

Her love and effort gave birth to death:

     Here is her labour’s end,
     Dead limb and mind,
     All love and sweat
     Gone now to rot.

There is a very physical aspect to his creation, “love and sweat”. There was work and desire which brought forth the poet: and to what end? “Dead limb and mind.”

“Labour” is a useful pun: both effort and the time of giving birth.

One thing to note about these lines is the scansion: HERE is HER LABour’s END/DEAD LIMB and MIND/ALL LOVE and SWEAT/GONE NOW to ROT

The accumulation of accented syllables makes the going very slow, and with the subject matter, very solemn.

The poem then ends with an unrhymed couplet, which drags the reader into his despair:

I am man’s reply to every question,
His aim and destination.

This blank despair makes sense of Thomas’ famous poem, Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night. Death is a blank, pointless end. There is nothing beyond current existence. There is no basis for hope.  It is an interesting position, because Thomas also seems life as a power which works through all living things. Yet there is no merger of “life” with in his thought, as there often is in this often pagan pantheism. There is no god, thus, there is no perpetuation. There is a chemical process, called “life” which we have — and which we cling to (for some reason), but there is no point.

Am I a stone

04 Sunday Nov 2018

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poem, Poetry

Am I a stone and not a sheep
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the sun and moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon—
I, only I.

Yet give not o’er,
But seek thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

 

Please read the discussion of this and two other poems

Conceive these images in the air

26 Friday Oct 2018

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Conceive These Images in the Air, Dylan Thomas, poem, Poetry

This poem by Dylan Thomas has a remarkable rhythmic movement. This is neither free-verse nor does it make use of a regular meter. The meter is quite purposeful and underscores the movement of thought. The rhythm matches the importance of the words. The rhythm also matches the speed of reading. Each word hurries or slows the progress of the argument.

The poem is also interesting in that speaks of what makes a thing real; more particularly, is an imagination, an abstraction real? If it is tangible that makes an image real, what of the fact that tangible images can “trickle away”. And what is it for a stone to trickle away “through thought”.

Like all good Thomas poems, the words take a great deal of thinking. He writes more in riddles, and delights in the sounds of words. I don’t know anyone who plays this wordgame as well or as successfully as Dylan Thomas.

To get the full effect, the poem must be spoken – not read. The words are script, not an essay.
ConCEIVE these IMages in the AIR
WRAP them in FLAME, they’re MINE;
SET against GRANite,
Let the TWO dull STONES be GREY,
Or, FORMED of SAND,
TRICKle aWAY through THOUGHT
In WATer or in METal,
FLOWing and MELTING under LIME.
CUT them in ROCK
SO, not to be deFACED,
They HARDen and take SHAPE again
As SIGNS I’VE not brought DOWN
To any LIGHTer STATE
By LOVE-tip or my HAND’s RED HEAT.

Edgar Allan Poe — A Tale of Jerusalem

12 Tuesday Jun 2018

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A Tale of Jerusalem, Edgar Allan Poe, Short Story

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This is a strange and wildly ahistorical tale. It speaks of three Jewish temple workers, one identified as a priest, who are upon a battlement looking over the army of Pompey surrounding the city. They have made  deal with Pompey to purchase a temple sacrifice. They let down the money in a basket. The Romans mock the Jews and claim that Phoebus is a true God. The basket become enshrouded in a mist, indeed the entire world outside the city walls seems enshrouded in mist.

While they wait, they moan that they shall lose their positions and their service. Finally, something of weight is felt on the basket and they begin to haul.

They pull up the basket and cannot make out what it is until it is quite close. They at first each think the Romans have provided something wonderful. Only at the end do they realize their error, they have been hauling up “a hog of no common size”:

Now, El Emanu! slowly, and with upturned eyes, ejaculated the trio, as, letting go their hold, the emancipated porker tumbled headlong among the Philistines, “El Emanu — God with with us — it is the unutterable flesh!”

The historical details are all wrong. The Jews of the city have nothing in common with the actual human beings of this time — who would have been far more sophisticated and understanding of Romans and their customs. The men speak of a world 1,000 years old (for the most part), the Romans are not even contemporary with Rome of the time (beyond their contempt). The Romans come across as powerful and crass.

Yet, that “fault” actually helps to make the point of the story: First, the men of the City are described as extraordinarily outwardly pious. They seem obsessively so as a matter of pride. Their concern as they wait for the basket is for their own position.

The men are then abused of their hope: they are to be put out of their positions. Their poker is “emancipated” (which is a nice comic touch in this instance).

The effect of the story is a parable how the prideful men — who gave the temple money to  their enemies — are then surprised that their enemies have treated them so. They consider whether the Romans (“worshippers of Baal” among other inaccurate descriptions), are generous, fickle or merely conducting good business.

In the end, it is a story of foolish men who misplace their trust, waste their treasure, and are rewarded with injury.

The tale is a parody of a popular novel from 1828, Zillah, a Tale of Jerusalem, by Horace Smith (1777-1849). Poe incorporated whole phrases and sentences from Smith’s story: “Poe’s story is more than a parody; it is literally a collage of snatches of the Smith novel, cut out and pasted together in a new order. Read immediately after Zillah, it is very funny. Read without Zillah it is merely a puzzling and even offensive anecdote” (Levine 352).

I have not read Smith’s story, and so I cannot comment on the parody.

For the text of this short story and notes on the allusions and references in the story, see here.

Horatius Bonar, The Flesh Resting in Hope

27 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by memoirandremains in Horatius Bonar, Hymns, Literature, Uncategorized

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1 Corinthians 15, Horatius Bonar, poem, Poetry

34873626335_e74aee6c70_o

[The headstone reads, “Thomas E, son of W.L. & [?] White, Born Sept. 26, 1871, Died Dec. 26, 1871.” The photo was found on flickr, photographer “Midnight Believer”; Sulphur Springs Cemetery; Crittenden County, Kentucky. No copyright claimed, but thank you anyway.]

 

Lie down, frail body here,

Earth has no fairer bed,

No gentler pillow to afford;

Come, rest thy home-sick head.

 

Lie down, “vile body” here [“vile body” is from Phil. 3:21]

This mould is smoothly strewn,

No couch of flowers more softly spread;

Come, make this grave thine own.

 

Lie down with all thy aches,

There is no aching here;

How soon shall all thy-long ills

Forever disappear!

 

Through these well guarded gates

No foe can entrance gain;

No sickness wastes, nor once intrudes

There memory of pain.

 

The tossing of the night,

The frettings of the day,

All and, and like a cloud of dawn,

Melt from thy skies away.

 

Brief night and quiet couch

In some star-lighted room,

Watched but by one beloved eye,

Whose light dispels all gloom.

 

A sky without a cloud,

A sea without a wave–

These are but shadows of rest

In this thy peaceful grave.

 

Rest for the toiling hand,

Rest for the thought-worn brow,

Rest for the weary way-sore feet,

Rest from all labor now.

 

Rest for the fevered brain,

Rest for the throbbing eye;

Thro’ these parched lips of thine no more

Shall pass the moan or sigh.

 

Soon shall the trump of God

Give out the welcomed sound,

That shakes the silent chamber-walls,

And breaks the turf-sealed ground.

 

Ye dwellers in the dust,

Awake, come forth and sing;

Sharp has your frost of winter been,

But bright shall be your spring.

 

‘Twas sown in weakness here,

‘Twill then be raised in power;

That which was sown an earthly seed,

Shall rise a heavenly flower.

 

1 Corinthians 15:42–49(ESV)

42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

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