Category Archives: Literature

Edward Taylor, 28th Meditation.1

26 Saturday Sep 2020

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The 28th Meditation of Edward Taylor takes as its text John 1:16. In context, the passage (as it would have stood in Taylor’s Bible) reads as follows:

14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. 15 John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me. 16 And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. 17 For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. 18 No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. 

John 1:14–18  

The poem will center upon the receipt of the grace which is in the Word made Flesh. However, as is a consistent theme in Taylor, it begins with the distance from God and the disorder of mind. Although not discussed in this place, the noetic effect of sin – the disordering effect of sin upon the thoughts, affections and behavior – lies behind  his description of his sense as “bewildered” and his “befogged dark fancy”. 

It should be noted that the effects are not simply in a cause-and-effect relationship with some particular sinful action, but are inherent in any human being on this earth. The damage done by Adam’s fall is not completely removed prior to one’s death and personal resurrection.

The poem begins with a self-conscious discussion of the poem itself as a matter of praise, sending some “glory home”. But this glory is returned in small sums, “bits” rather than in “lumps.” (Incidentally, “lumps” does not have the negative connotations it does in contemporary vernacular.) The first stanza reads:

When I Lord, send some bits of glory home

(For lumps I lack) my messenger, I find,

Bewildered, lose his way being alone

In my befogged dark fancy, clouded mind.

Thy bits of glory packed in shreds of praise

My messenger doth lose, losing his ways.

The first line creates an interesting rhythmic effect by beginning with a Bacchic foot: “when I LORD” followed by a pause.  The unusual English rhythm ending on a stress followed by a pause is difficult to read. The awkwardness creates an emphasis on the words. The vocative, Lord, would normally stand at the beginning of a clause, “Lord, when I send ….” Thus, the relationship between “I” and “Lord” is foregrounded.

The remainder of the first line and the second then flow along more easily. However, the poem introduces a puzzling reference, “my messenger”. The messenger is the means by which he is returning glory to the Lord. The precise identity of the messenger is not otherwise clarified. What is the means by which he is sending glory home: the messenger is the poem itself.

And so, as is common in Taylor, his poem is in part about the poem itself. His thinking which creates the poem is bewildered. His “befogged dark fancy” would be the weakness of his ability to conceive and create the poem.

And here comes the problem: he seeks to return some glory to the Lord within the praise which is the poem itself, but the glory falls out (is lost) from the poem:

Thy bits of glory packed in shreds of praise

My messenger doth lose, losing his ways.

A comparison of Plutarch and Paul

15 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by in Plutarch, Romans

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The brilliant moralist and essayist Plutarch (born AD 49 and thus his life overlapped with St Paul who died around 65/66 AD) raised an issue concerning a good ruler – which was also a concern of Paul: the law written on the heart. But they came to rather different conclusions on the matter:

Who then shall have power to govern a prince? The law, without doubt; which (as Pindar saith) is the king of mortal and immortal beings; which is not written without in books nor engraven on wood or stone, but is a clear reason imprinted in the heart, always residing and watching therein, and never suffering the mind to be without government. The king of Persia indeed commanded one of his lords that lay in the same chamber to attend him every morning, and to sound these words in his ears: Arise, O king! and take care of those affairs and duties that Oromasdes requires of thee. But a wise and prudent. prince hath such a monitor within his breast as always prompts and admonishes him to the same effect.

The law on the heart is a peculiar attribute of a good ruler. The law restrains the prince: it is knowledge which governs the governor. If the knowledge is present will effectively direct reason.

Paul raises the same issue of the law written on the heart in his letter to the Roman Church:

12 For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.

13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.

14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.

15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them

16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

Rom2.12-16

The law is present upon every heart. But the law does exactly govern although it does judge. The law sets up as tribunal and gives a judgment. This judgment of the law proves the law has been written on every human heart. It also acts a warning of the greater judgment to come.

This law is different than Plutarch’s version because it belongs to all – but more importantly it gives judgment but does not convey the power to conform:

19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

Rom3.19-20

This perhaps demonstrates the fundamental similarity and distinction between a worthy moralist such as Plutarch and Paul.

In the Bible the fault is far deeper than knowledge. Reason also does not restrain desire; and twisted desire brings madness:

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

Rom1.28

The prophet Jeremiah in a vivid section describes sin against known law so:

23 How can you say, ‘I am not unclean, I have not gone after the Baals’? Look at your way in the valley; know what you have done- a restless young camel running here and there,

24 a wild donkey used to the wilderness, in her heat sniffing the wind! Who can restrain her lust? None who seek her need weary themselves; in her month they will find her.

Jer2.23-24

And so the Christian can not rely upon education alone because the fault is worse than ignorance.

I think history demonstrates that even the wisest rulers have made spectacularly poor decisions when driven by foolish desire. And thus the judgment for depth of treatment and accuracy of human nature go to Paul.

The Wolf and the Lamb by Phaedrus

09 Wednesday Sep 2020

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Oskar Seyffert explains that Phaedrus was born and Macedonia and was brought to Rome as a slave. He introduced fable writing in Latin. He was set free by Augustus. But his writing did not bring him “relief from his miserable position, nor recognition on the part of the educated public; his patron seem to have bee only freedman life himself. In fact, he even drew upon himself, by first two published books, the illiill and persuetuio of the all-powerful favorite of Tiberius, Sejannus who suspected in them malicious references to contemporary events. In consequence, he did not publish the remaining books till after the fall of Sejannus in 31 A.D. and the death of Tiberius in 37.”

This first fable concerns the one who will use any excuse — even if the excuse is merely a false accusation — to destroy another.

THE WOLF AND THE LAMB

BY thirst incited; to the brook

The Wolf and Lamb themselves betook.

The Wolf high up the current drank,

The Lamb far lower down the bank.

Then, bent his ravenous maw to cram,

The Wolf took umbrage at the Lamb.

 “How dare you trouble all the flood,

And mingle my good drink with mud?”

 “Sir,” says the Lambkin, sore afraid,

 “How should I act, as you upbraid?

The thing you mention cannot be,

The stream descends from you to me.”

Abash’d by facts, says he, ” I know

 ‘Tis now exact six months ago

You strove my honest fame to blot”-

 “Six months ago, sir, I was not.”

 “Then ‘twas th’ old ram thy sire,” he cried,

And so he tore him, till he died.

To those this fable I address

Who are determined to oppress,

And trump up any false pretence,

But they will injure innocence.

And here is the Latin originals with my rough translation notes.

Lupus et agnus.

Ad rivum eundem lupus et agnus venerant

A wolf and a lamb came to a river at the same time

Siti compulsi; superior stabat lupus

Being compelled by thirst; the wolf stood above, higher up

Longeque inferior agnus. Tunc fauce improba

And further below the lamb. Then by his wicked mouth

Latro incitatus iurgii causam intulit.

He barked his cause to fight. 

[5] Cur, inquit, turbulentam fecisti mihi

Why, he said, are you making a mess of my

Aquam bibenti? Laniger contra timens:

Water I am drinking? The wooly one fearing

Qui possum, quaeso, facere, quod quereris, lupe?

What ability, I beg, to to that of which you complain wolf?

A te decurrit ad meos haustus liquor.

From you it flows down to me this water to drink.

Repulsus ille veritatis viribus:

Set back by the power of this true

[10] Ante hos sex menses male, ait, dixisti mihi.

After six bad months you say this to me?

Respondit agnus: Equidem natus non eram.

The lamb responded, truly was I not at that time.

Pater hercle tuus, ille inquit, male dixit mihi.

By Hercules, your father he said the evil to me.

Atque ita correptum lacerat iniusta nece.

And then he quickly, unjustly tore him to pieces.

Haec propter illos scripta est homines fabula,

For such people I wrote these fables.

[15] Qui fictis causis innocentes opprimunt.

Who fashion a charge against the innocent.

Some observations on a paragraph from Addison

01 Tuesday Sep 2020

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Here is a paragraph from Richard Addison

Thus I live in the World, rather as a Spectator of Mankind, than as one of the Species; by which means I have made my self a Speculative Statesman, Soldier, Merchant, and Artizan, without ever medling with any Practical Part in Life. I am very well versed in the Theory of an Husband, or a Father, and can discern the Errors in the Oeconomy, Business, and Diversion of others, better than those who are engaged in them; as Standers-by discover Blots, which are apt to escape those who are in the Game. I never espoused any Party with Violence, and am resolved to observe an exact Neutrality between the Whigs and Tories , unless I shall be forcd to declare myself by the Hostilities of either side. In short, I have acted in all the parts of my Life as a Looker-on, which is the Character I intend to preserve in this Paper.

There are so many wonderful things about this quotation Addison in the first number of The Spectator March 1711

Consider

Thus I live in the World,

rather as a Spectator of Mankind,

than as one of the Species;

The “rather” sets an anticipated contrast. Contemporary style is for the immediate comparison. We would “rather than”, but here Addison breaks the contrast into two balanced clauses with an anticipation of the contrast. Notice also that the “s” of “species” recounts the “s” of “spectator”. The contrast begins with spectator and ends with species. The rhythm, sense, and sound all work together.

He gets the added benefit of “spectator” being the name of the paper for which Addison was writing.

Notice how he continues with the alliteration on the “s”

by which means

I have made my self

a Speculative Statesman,

Soldier,

This is a matter of taste and I cannot think of any certain rule, because he stops after self, speculative (which harkens back to spectator), statesman, and soldier. There is a ambiguity in the sense, because what is a spectator soldier – a speculative statesman is anyone of the bores on social media shouting an opinion without any real authority.

Notice what he does here with the sounds:

Merchant,

and Artizan,

without ever medling with any Practical Part in Life.

The m of merchant and meddling, artisan and any, which creates a patterned echo.

The “and” before artisan draws the list to a close.

The final life then breaks up the proceeding patterns of sound

With the Practical Part in Life.”

The concept is silly in their is no spectator merchant or soldier or artisan – unless he never acts.

We now come to the professional pundit:

I am very well versed in the Theory of an Husband, or a Father, and can discern the Errors in the Oeconomy, Business, and Diversion of others,

He does nothing but knows what is wrong with everything. This is the status of the internet: because he does not merely observe, but he also knows why everyone who is leading an actual life is doing the wrong thing.

The charm of Addison’s point of view is that it is ironic and detached without being unkind. In fact in this lovely prose, he is teasing only himself.

Thus there is a patterned irony: he is posing as a gadfly who is weirdly without the ability to see his own deficiency as he promises to critique others.

But the entire the standing is a pose which the real author is mocking.

This playful position itself comes in an essay where he is promising to tell the truth about his status as an author. The essay begins with the promise

I HAVE observed, that a Reader seldom peruses a Book with Pleasure ’till he knows whether the Writer of it be a black or a fair Man, of a mild or cholerick Disposition, Married or a Batchelor, with other Particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right Understanding of an Author. To gratify this Curiosity, which is so natural to a Reader, I design this Paper, and my next, as Prefatory Discourses to my following Writings, and shall give some Account in them of the several persons that are engaged in this Work. As the chief trouble of Compiling, Digesting, and Correcting will fall to my Share, I must do myself the Justice to open the Work with my own History.

Notes on “Item” a Poem by William Carlos Willam

06 Thursday Aug 2020

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Item

This, with a face

like a mashed blood orange

that suddenly

would get eyes 

and look up and scream 

War! War!

clutching her

thick, ragged coat

A piece of hat

broken shoes

War! War!

stumbling for dread

at the young men

who with their gun-butts

shove her

Sprawling—

A note 

At the foot of the page

Observations:

The first word, “This” is jarring: When “this” begins a sentence it acts to specify a particular noun: This particular apple (as opposed to all the other apples in the basket). But here, there is no specified noun: simply “This” – which then receives a modifying phrase: “with a face”. But there is no noun to be modified, only a pronoun without an original noun.

However, this lack of specificity is part of the meaning of the poem. In the third stanza we find a possessive, “her”. So we know it is a woman – especially as contrasted with the “young men” of the fifth stanza.

By not immediately identify the woman as a person – but rather as some unspecified object (note the title of the poem is “Item” – which could be the entire poem as in a “news item” or be a reference to the noun specified by “this”; she may be a woman, or simply be reduced to the story about the woman). 

We can a strange hint that there may be a person in this story, when we see the word “face”. But then why “with”; it makes it sound as if the face were an accessory which could be added or removed. Moreover, the image is immediately coupled to a “mashed blood orange”. 

When read of the young men with their gun-butts, the mashed face returns: She has been struck and her face has been destroyed. She also was seen “sprawling”.

The event comes to us out of historical order, but rather in order of comprehension: We move from the image before us – a mashed face of who knows what (it is a “this” not a “her” at first). 

Then the poet picks through the realization: eyes, a voice (she screams) hands which are known only by their action – clutching – he sees the coat, then the broken shoes, then woman now stumbling away from the young men; and here he sees the cause of her distress the young men with guns. 

Another point here: the face is indistinguishable, not quite comprehensible – because he did not see eyes at first. Note the 

that suddenly

would get eyes

The gap brought about by removing the adverb “suddenly” from the stanza of the verb “get” creates a strange distance in the realization. It seems that the poet noticed something which came out of nowhere and then too a moment to realize, oh, these are eyes looking at me.

So now we have a story, the poet comes upon a woman who has been struck in the face by a young man (they must be soldiers because they are identified with “War! War!”). She has sprawled onto the street, her face a bloody mess. She opens her eyes, clutches her old coat about her and tries to stumble to safety away from the soldiers. 

The line breaks come at grammatical structures, rather than completed concepts. As notes, “suddenly” separated not merely in a different line, but also a different stanza from its verb.

Or take these images:

clutching her

thick, ragged coat

A piece of hat

broken shoes

Clutching her what? What is clutching? Next line thick – pause – ragged coat – longer pause – A piece of hat (where is the rest of the hat) – doubled pause – broken shoes. 

By breaking up the images into distinct lines, we can imagine ourselves looking around for the hat, then the shoes – what has happened her? 

Then she begin dread stumbling to escape, standing, falling for broken shoes – trying to escape. 

And now we come to the answer about the “item” – is it the woman or the story? Well the woman certainly is being dehumanized, she is an item. But the poem uses her degradation to make her even less human: She is not the woman the poet saw, rather she is relegated to the news item. When the men strike, they render her so inhuman that they dash clean out of life and into a story: 

at the young men

who with their gun-butts

shove her

Sprawling—

A note 

At the foot of the page

When they strike her, she becomes a footnote in the story about the war. She is not important enough to consider at length, she is merely one of the many who are struck.

What then does the poem do? The poem causes us to toggle between the story about the woman and the reality of it. But it does it in a very different manner than an essay about this event could do. 

An essay has two natural starting places: the writer could start with the news item and then move backwards to the woman who is mentioned in the footnote. A sort of history of the overlooked. I am working through a biography of Napoleon at the moment. In the story of the retreat from Russia in 1812, he is listing the horrifying ravages to soldiers and peasants. The biography accounts in brief stories of soldiers being buried alive by angry peasants, prisoners of war being skinned alive, women being raped and murdered. The horror is unimaginable for me. 

One could take the time and develop more personally who has murdered or flayed or raped. 

Another way to tell this story would be start with the writer: As I was walking, I saw this woman lying in the street. At first I couldn’t tell she was a woman. 

But this poem does something which an essay could not easily do: It causes the reader to experience the event along with the poet. Rather than reading about through an essay – which would ironically make sure that she is reduced to a note on a page, an “item” – the poet forces us to confront the woman and watch her be physically injured and then reduced even further to being the note in the news item. 

The poem paradoxically gets us around the distance of the words which would make the woman an item by using words force us to experience the woman.

William Blake, To Tirzah

31 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by in Hermeneutics, Literature

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This poem is a good example of how difficult it can be know what the poet intends, particularly when the poet is as deliberately ironic as William Blake. 

This poem also raises the issue of what it means to read something “in context.” Shakespeare and the Bible are famously misused by people who take a particular line wildly out of context. There is a television commercial which advertises a luxury automobile and plays a song which – in its original context — attacks pretension and put-on with material goods. But by using only a portion of the song lyric, the song meant to attack pretension is used to sell pretension.

This short poem is standing by itself one context. In that context, this poem seems to convey a sort of Gnostic Jesus, the body is bad, the soul is good, the hope of life is to be released from the body. “Tirazh” is used as a name for the Northern Kingdom of Israel, following the division of the kingdom into two after the death of Solomon. It is contrast to “Jerusalem,” which would be the heavenly and best.

Tirazh is called a mother of our earthly body which reproduces by means of sexual union, which traps us into a world of sense. The goal of this life is to be finally freed from the body – which the poet claims has been made possible by the “death of Jesus”.

But the poem was a late addition to a collection of poems known as Songs of Experience, which is paired with another collection known as Songs of Innocence. The poems also exist in a larger corpus of poems which develop Blakes philosophy, such as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

To this difficulty of context, we must remember that Blake is often deliberately ironic. We can never take anything he says at “face value.”

While not at all exhaustive, the following simply raises some questions as to how to interpret this poem when it is put into the context of Blake’s remaining (and largely earlier) work and Blake’s ironic posture as a poet.

To Tirzah

Whate’er is born of moral birth

Must be consuméd with the earth

To rise from generation free, 

Then what have I do to with thee?

Whatever is born will die and return to the earth. The last line is an ironic reworking of Jesus’ words recorded in John 2:4, where Mary tells Jesus that the wedding has run out of wine and Jesus responds, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? My hour is not yet come.” So the poet, seeking to be freed from the enslaving earth says, “What have I to do with thee?”

It also seems to state the poet’s aspiration, to be freed from generation, to be freed from this mother.

He then turns to the manner in which life is continued in this world:

The sexes sprung from shame & pride

Blow’d [blossomed] in the morn: in evening died;

But mercy changed death into sleep;

The sexes rose to work & weep.

This poem was added in the latter versions of his poems, Songs of Experience, and seems to have been written around 1805. But the collection also contains poems such as The Garden of Love (1794) which contend that shame and sexual repression are the result of the “Chapel” whose doors were shut and the words “Thou shalt not” were written over the door. 

Here the shame seems to be something inherent in the fact of mortality and the body.  Is Blake now arguing that sexual shame is not the result of societal norms and oppressive morality, but rather something inherent in birth and death of the body? Was it shame and pride which gave rise to this problem prior to the body?

Thou, Mother of my Mortal part,

With cruelty didst mould my heart

And with false self-deceiving tears

Didst bind my nostrils, eyes & ears.

This stanza echoes the poem The Tyger, also from the same collection and also from 1794. The poet meditates upon the dangerous tiger, who is quite dangerous (“the fearful symmetry”). 

This dangerous beast is blamed upon God

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the lamb make thee? 

[The lamb is addressed in a poem from Songs of Innocence.]

In that poem, Blake asks

And what shoulder & what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

In Tirzah, Blake blames the heart upon the earth – the physical part. Is God from Tyger the equivalent of mother in Tirzah? Is his heart cruel like the tigers, or is it merely the product of another’s cruelty? Does his heart give rise to the outrages elsewhere discussed in Songs of Experience?

This discussion of the senses in Tirzah also sits uneasily with Blake’s longer work, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

In that poem, Blake praises physical desire as “energy” and writes such “Proverbs of Hell” as 

The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.

This mortal body of energy is now the moulder of cruelty and death. Does he celebrate the energy of the body, or does he see it as destructive?

And finally

[Thou mother]

Didst close my tongue in useless clay

And me to mortal life betray

The death of Jesus set me free

Then what have I to do with thee?

Jesus, in a Gnostic vein, is used as a trope to argue for an utter freedom from the “useless clay” of the body. How exactly Jesus’ death performs this feat is not clearly stated.

The question then becomes, does this poem reflect a change in Blake’s thinking (it would not be accurate to say that his earlier position was purely a sex-drugs-rock-n-roll ethos, but it was certainly not conventional middle class anachronistically called Victorian piety)? Blake constantly writes with great irony. His poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell seeks a new negotiation of the body and soul along his idiosyncratic lines. 

But in this poem, one could read it as a movement beyond his earlier position (which was written during the early days of the French Revolution) to more escapist, Gnostic vision — complete with the common aspect of Gnostic asceticism due to its distrust of the body.

And one final question, should the context of Blake’s personal life be used to answer the question of what Blake means by this poem?

Robert Frost, A Patch of Old Snow

16 Thursday Jul 2020

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Robert Frost is a deceptive poet. His poems seem obvious and simplistic – at first blush and certainly when compared a contemporary like T.S. Eliot. But the simplicity is a trick. In this way he reminds me of St. John as opposed to St. Paul. St. John writes seeming simplicity and candor, but the sheer apparent simplicity is the means of the depth. 

To take another comparison: Shakespeare last play, The Tempest is seemingly the simplest of all his plays (except perhaps his early comedies) and yet it child like simplicity conceals its depth. Here is a seeming simple poem 

There’s a patch of old snow in a corner

That should I have guessed

Was a blow-away paper the rain

Had brought to rest.

It is speckled with grime as if 

Small print overspread it,

The news of a day I’ve forgotten—

If I ever read it.

There is a sense in the world is invisible to us. We fill in spaces, create meaning, ignore this or that. It is not that pure blank fills our mind, it is that a re-construction, a distortion or domestication takes up our mind. Thus, we see things and yet don’t. 

This poem is an invitation in the moment where something invisible becomes visible for a moment. At first read, the poem is remarkably simple: Frost notices something in a corner. It is a scrap of snow, but it really looks like some crumbled newspaper. 

But as we consider the poem there is a bit more. He didn’t actually mistake the snow for a newspaper: Rather, there seems to be a missing step in the thought: if I had not noticed it was snow, I probably would have thought it was just a newspaper. 

But there is yet another twist: Rather than merely mistaking the snow as if it were old newspaper, his contemplation actually turns the snow into newspaper:

It is speckled with grime as if 

Small print overspread it,

Thus, it is not that he mistook the snow for newspaper and then realized it was snow. Rather, he saw it was snow and then by the power of imagination transformed it into newspaper. 

So rather than being a snow which has mistaken for a newspaper and so passed by without consideration, the snow has become a newspaper in the fact of his consideration:

The news of a day I’ve forgotten

The grime in the snow is the recordation of some day. And now we come to the twist of the knife, the thing that was missed:

If I ever read it.

Thus, the patch of snow is a newspaper of some day that Frost may have actually missed. There was something which is passed, which he did not see. This patch of snow is a newspaper from that day. This also brings up another point: a thing is not comprehensible, really, until it is turned into words. You listen to music or see and painting – but to communicate what has happened, you must turn that event into words. You don’t hum the symphony, you speak of it. You don’t repaint the painting, you explain it. 

And this brings us to one more consideration here: the poem itself. 

The poet seems snow and thinks of a newspaper – a written record — from a day he had missed. He then turns that event into a written record of human words and brings us into his moment. I, by reading the poem and thinking along with him, am looking – by means of his words – at the snow, which is itself a kind of record something missed. And now, Frost’s missed day becomes my missed day. 

Thomas Campion: When to Her Lute Corinna Sings

30 Tuesday Jun 2020

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This little song by Thomas Campion (1567-1620) speaks of the beauty of Corinna’s voice as she sings. The poem works in two stanzas with a quick development of a seemingly simple idea. And yet this simple idea in its perfectly balanced symmetry of concept and structure is deceptive. 

When to her lute Corinna sings

Her voice revives the leaden strings, 

And doth in highest notes appear

As any challenged echo clear;

But when she doth of mourning speak

Ev’n with her signs the strings do break. 

And as her lute doth live or die,

Led by her passion, so must I:

For when of pleasure she doth sing,

My thoughts enjoy a sudden spring,

But if she doth of sorrow speak,

Ev’n from my heart the strings do break.

In the first stanza, the lute which accompanies her voice is made better and is commanded by the beauty of her song. The strings are “lead” until they are revived by her voice. The word “revived” is interesting, because it is to live again – not to live at all. But it seems the idea is that the lute is silent until Corinna starts to sing. 

Accompanied by her lute, Corinna sings “to her lute”.  The singer and the lute form a closed circle. The strings come to life (as presumably did last time only to die when she stopped singing last); and the strings become filled with sorrow, when her voice becomes filled with sorrow. 

This reminds of Orpheus, whose song could make rocks and trees dance. As Shakespeare’s short poem reads:

ORPHEUS 

Orpheus with his lute made trees

And the mountain tops that freeze

    Bow themselves when he did sing:

To his music plants and flowers

Ever sprung; as sun and showers

    There had made a lasting spring.

Every thing that heard him play,

Even the billows of the sea,

    Hung their heads and then lay by.

In sweet music is such art,

    Killing care and grief of heart

    Fall asleep, or hearing, die.

That remarkable power of song then works not merely upon the inanimate lute, but upon the poet.  The poet enters this closed circle: What happens between Corinna and the lute now brings him into its charm: 

And as her lute doth live or die,

Led by her passion, so must I:

The passions in Corinna’s voice bring along the poet. The lute which perhaps changes insensibly changes the sensible poet. The passions of her voice are so profound that he no longer has say over himself:

So must I. 

It is involuntary. 

The circle is then completely closed: the poet is subsumed back into the image of the lute. Note the progression here from “thoughts” (which belong to the man), to “strings” which belong to the lute:

For when of pleasure she doth sing,

My thoughts enjoy a sudden spring,

But if she doth of sorrow speak,

Ev’n from my heart the strings do break.

His very heart has become the lute. This ability to bring the conceit (the controlling thought) from lute to poet to lute is an aspect which raises Campion from the great mass of versifiers. 

There is then one final twist to the poem: the poem itself is an artifact. Corinna is gone. I have no idea who she is. Her voice was there in a moment and has disappeared forever. But this poem remains being as the echo of her voice

And doth in highest notes appear

As any challenged echo clear;

The reader who follows along with Campion can, by the work of imagination, enter into this circle of Corinna and her lute by means of the poem. Corinna’s voice does charm by means of this echo and we enter into this singular moment by means of the poem from 400 years ago. 

And in that the moment is no loner singular, but is transported across time and space. Such things may not “mean” anything to the great powers of countries and armies and economies and science. But there is a beauty here in art which should make the mighty blush. The politics of James (King of England) cannot affect now like Corinna’s song has by means of Campion’s poem.

One final note: I have always found it striking that the Bible routinely portrays heaven as filled with music.

The soprano Jennifer O’Loughlin:

A Comparison of Tennyson and Edward Taylor

26 Friday Jun 2020

Posted by in Edward Taylor, Tennyson

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(This lovely picture is entitled “Alaska Moonlight” by JLS Photography.)

St. Agnes’ Eve by Tennyson forms an interesting counterpart to the Taylor’s Was There a Palace of Pure Gold (Meditation 24).  Both poems are driven by the desire to be with God.  

Both concern a present a present desire to be with God and the need to be fit for such a translation. But despite the similar concern the effect and content of both poems is remarkably different. 

The First Stanza:

Deep on the convent-roof the snows 

Are sparkling to the moon: 

My breath to heaven like vapour goes; 

May my soul follow soon! 

The shadows of the convent-towers 

Slant down the snowy sward, 

Still creeping with the creeping hours 

That lead me to my Lord: 

Make Thou my spirit pure and clear 

As are the frosty skies, 

Or this first snowdrop of the year 

That in my bosom lies. 

Summary: The poet is perhaps a nun of some sort “the convent-roof”; or at least a deeply religious person. One a cold night, while looking over the moonlight snow, the poet’s breath fogs and lifts toward heaven. That leads to a thought of the poet’s soul likewise ascending:

My breath to heaven like vapour goes; 

May my soul follow soon! 

In this desire to be with God, the present time consists of “shadow” and “creeping hours”.  Thus, the prayer that the poet’s spirit may ascend. Like Taylor the poet prays that the soul be purified, “Make thou my spirit pure and clear.” But unlike Taylor there is no meditation on one’s own sinfulness. In fact, the sense is different. The poet’s mediation is made a convent and the sense is a cold, chaste, unworldly desire. 

There are two other marked differences between the poets. Taylor rhythm and imagery are complex, contradictory, often jarring. But Tennyson writes great polish. 

The rhythm is meticulous held in check to draw attention precisely as the poet intends:

DEEP on the CONvent-ROOF the SNOWS 

Are SPARKling TO the MOON: 

My BREATH to HEAven like VAPour GOES; 

MAY my SOUL FOLlow SOON! 

The initial deep slows down the entire scene. The line break, the semicolon and the two accented syllables slow down the movement of the verse and throw the emphasis on the initial syllable of the prayer, “MAY”. 

The imagery is all of a picture: nothing which is not organic to the scene intrudes. A cold night, the snow, the moon, the freezing breath are all of the same event.  

Taylor by contrast would draw together images which have a certain conceptual link, even if in “nature” they would never be found together. Taylor would bring together any number of beautiful images, even if those images have no natural correspondence in the “real world.” I could image Taylor writing of moonlight and the glint of a fish’s scales and the sunshine and a white flower and a ruby, because they all flash light: eventhough sun and moon can never both shine at once.

Here is another similarity to Taylor. Tennyson’s prayer acknowledges an unfitness for heaven, robes are “soiled”, the candle is pale, earthy. Taylor would rail and bemoan his unfitness. Tennyson is more Platonic and less moral. Tennyson sees the physical body as an ontological impediment. Taylor seems the human trouble as more profound.  Both speak of new clothes, but Taylor is more desperate and disgusted. Tennyson sees the current trouble being merely the need for an invitation to ascend:

As these white robes are soil’d and dark, 

To yonder shining ground; 

As this pale taper’s earthly spark, 

To yonder argent round; 

So shows my soul before the Lamb, 

My spirit before Thee; 

So in mine earthly house I am, 

To that I hope to be. 

Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far, 

Thro’ all yon starlight keen, 

Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star, 

In raiment white and clean. 

When Tennyson comes to the doors of heaven, he will be cleared of “sin”; it will be a purging at that time and place,

For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits, 

To make me pure of sin. 

Taylor too sees the need for the work to be on God’s side: “Oh! That my heart was made thy golden box.” And both see that they will be admitted by God’s grace. But there is one point on which they profoundly differ:

He lifts me to the golden doors; 

The flashes come and go; 

All heaven bursts her starry floors, 

And strows her lights below, 

And deepens on and up! the gates 

Roll back, and far within 

For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits, 

To make me pure of sin. 

The sabbaths of Eternity, 

One sabbath deep and wide— 

A light upon the shining sea— 

The Bridegroom with his bride! 

In Tennyson’s poem, the one who is praying has no conflict in the passions. The desire to be God is perfect and consistent: just like the flow of the poem’s language. All of is a consistent piece. The poet desires to be God. The poet trusts that God will work and raise the poet up. 

Taylor too has faith in God’s work and a desire to be God. But in Taylor there is a profound sense of the conflict and inconsistency of religious desire.  

Tennyson’s prayer contains no conflicting emotion.  The covenant towers which reach up toward heaven cast moon-shadows upon the earth. Time on earth creeps. The breath and soul ascend to God by their own nature movement. 

Taylor objectively sees how much better it is to be with God. But then he sees the conflicting desires of his heart which also seeks the earth. Taylor confesses to a desire contrary to God. Taylor is in love with the earth. The breath ascends upward from the convent. But Taylor would also be thinking of the warm bed which waits within, and of the good meal waiting in the morning.

Tennyson’s poem is the prayer of a “saint” who experiences no contrary desire. It is far more beautiful than Taylor’s conflicted mess. Tennyson’s saint would never call herself, “More blockish than a block.” She is a saint, after all. 

But that I thinks makes Taylor’s poem more honest. Tennyson’s saint has achieved a sort of earthly perfection. While Taylor’s penitent is horrified at his conflicted hearts which desires those things which are at odds with his own happiness. As John writes, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

Tennyson’s saint admits to some lurking imperfect, but the poem does not express that terrified sense of sin which makes up Taylor’s meditations.

Thomas Hardy On a Fine Morning

19 Friday Jun 2020

Posted by in Thomas Hardy

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How can one have comfort in an impersonal accidental universe? This was a great problem for Hardy. The world will simply calmly destroy us.

So he asks the question where can I find solace?

It can’t be from our actual experience:

Whence comes Solace?—Not from seeing
What is doing, suffering, being,
Not from noting Life’s conditions,
Nor from heeding Time’s monitions;
But in cleaving to the Dream,
And in gazing at the gleam
Whereby gray things golden seem.

There is just an accident a surprise which permits him to see grey appear to be gold. Even shadows are turning to sun.


Thus do I this heyday, holding
Shadows but as lights unfolding,
As no specious show this moment
With its irised embowment;
But as nothing other than
Part of a benignant plan;
Proof that earth was made for man.

That last line is the key: I am somehow meaningful. The earth is meant for human life.

This is the point where Hardy differs from Lewis. That surprise of joy led Hardy to have a moments accident – a dream. For Lewis the surprise of joy requires an explanation: it can’t be grounded in life experience which is suffering. Where then?

Misery requires no explanation of life is a bare cosmic accident: why should the ends meet? Darwin only requires existence not the good true or beautiful: those have no anchor in a world of chance. Beauty is purposeful, ordered.

Hardy can’t give a better explanation for his morning than “dream.”