Tag Archives: Poem Analysis

Edward Taylor, Meditation 37.2, My soul, Lord, quails

14 Friday Jan 2022

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Shall I thy vine branch be, yet grapes none bear?

Graft in thy olive stand; and fatness lack?

A shackeroon, a rangel, yet an heir?

Thy spouse, yet, oh! My wedding ring thus slack?

Should angel-feathers plume my cap, I should

Be swashed? But oh! My heart hereat grows cold.

The words:

Daniel Patterson assumes shackeroon  to be a variant on “shackerell,” an obsolete word for vagabond.

Swash is to be worthless.

A rangel must obviously be something of a similar sort. Rangle is gravel fed to hawks to help with digestion, so perhaps this is an alternative spelling.

Summary: Should I be a fine thing in name and yet a wretched thing in actuality? This idea chills my heart.

The Comparisons:

He gives a series of six images in contrast: grape vine, olive tree, heir, spouse, dressed with angel-feathers in his cap.

With the exception of the final image, the images are all important pictures of the way the Christian is said to relate to God.

The Grape Vine

This image comes from John 15, and has particular poignancy here. The nature of the image is that the believer is said to abide as a branch in the grape vine of Christ. Christ provides growth and fruitfulness. If one lacks fruitfulness, it is a dead vine to be pruned.

The passage reads:

 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.”

John 15:1–8 (ESV)

The Olive Stand

This image comes from the 11th Chapter of Romans, and concerns the complicated issue about the relationship of the Covenant People of Israel from before the coming of Christ with the current church. The details of that theological dispute are not critical for this poem. What is important is that God broke off branches and then grafted in branches onto the olive tree. Someone like Taylor would be a wild branch grafted into the tree. But that grafting again comes with a warning (which I have highlighted):

17 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, 18 do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. 19 Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” 20 That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. 22 Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. 23 And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. 24 For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.

Romans 11:17–24 (ESV).

Thus, the first two images do not convey merely the idea that he is not living up to the ideal; they also convey that he may be an imposter. Although not explicitly alluded two in this stanza, there is an idea from the Sermon on the Mount which may be lurking in the choice of these allusions:

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

Matthew 7:21–23 (ESV)

An Heir

This is a substantially more encouraging image. In the 8th Chapter of Romans, Paul refers to believers as “joint heirs with Christ”; and this is made as a matter of comfort and assurance:

15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

Romans 8:15–17 (ESV)

A Spouse

While the language of heir includes a conditional (“if we suffer with him”), the language of the spouse, found in both Ephesians and Hosea is even more encouraging. The spouse will not be lost:

The first example comes the prophet Hosea, who refers to Israel as the Bride of God. Israel’s sin will be put away and she will be reconciled and not lost to God:

16 “And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ 17 For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. 18 And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. 19 And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.

Hosea 2:16–19 (ESV). There is a pun here which makes little sense in English. The words “Baal-i” mean “my Lord, master”.  This can be used as a reference to the god “Baal” or can be used of a husband. But it does create a subservient position for the wife. In place of that word, God says you will call me “husband.” Here is the more technical and detailed explanation:

The second level is that of vocabulary at home with Hosea and his audience but not so with modern readers. In classical Hebrew the familiar terms ʾîš (“man”) and ʾiššâ (“woman”) also express what modern readers understand by husband and wife. Thus in 2:2 one could translate quite literally: “She is not my woman and I am not her man.” The noun baʿal means “owner, master, lord,” and in certain contexts “husband.”12 Both senses of the word are presupposed here in 2:16. In the patriarchal, non-Western societies of ancient Canaan, a husband was the owner and master of his household, which included his wife. In a few instances in the OT the related verb bāʿal is used with the meaning “to marry, to take a wife.” A wife, furthermore, could be described as bĕʿûlâ, a feminine passive form, meaning “possessed [by a husband],” i.e., married. And as a noun, baʿal also is used for Canaanite deities. They were masters of certain powers and possessors/owners of property and people. “Baal” is not a proper name, even though in reference to deities it often functions like one. A Canaanite god called upon as Baal would additionally have one or more names and perhaps some epithets. The same thing can be said for a goddess, if called upon as baʿălâ/baʿălat. A modern parallel is the invocation of a deity as “Lord.”

The declaration in 2:16 that Israel will no longer call YHWH ba‘al presupposes that some in Israel had called upon YHWH with this common noun, a term completely at home in the eastern Mediterranean, especially in the Phoenician-influenced areas. To call YHWH ba‘al carried with it, at least in Hosea’s eyes, an unacceptable form of syncretism with the broader Canaanite culture of which Israel was nevertheless a constituent part. YHWH was worshiped as a deity in the land of Canaan, but for Hosea not all attributes of the Canaanite deities could be applied to the one Lord of Israel.

YHWH should no longer be called ba‘al, but it would be a sign of covenant intimacy to call him husband (ʾîš). It is a metaphor, signifying intimacy as well as indicating more mutuality between God and people than was found in the hierarchy and role specificity of a Canaanite pantheon. As the gracious giver of a covenant to Israel, YHWH is the father, husband, and owner of the people. These are his identities in his relationship to Israel, reflecting modes of his self-revelation. And in his household he can be known by the simplest relational term, ʾîš. Nevertheless, YHWH is no more essentially male than collective Israel or Samaria are female. In the comprehensiveness of his being, YHWH had attributes that belonged to various deities in the Canaanite world. These attributes were not uncritically assimilated to him, and as the comprehensive Lord for Israel, YHWH transcends a defining by gender.

J. Andrew Dearman, The Book of Hosea, The New International Commentary on the Old and New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010), 123–124.

The second example would be from Ephesians, where Paul speaks of human marriage and the image of the marriage between Christ and the Church. What is of primary importance for our allusion is not merely the fact that spouse is appropriate, but further that the husband is love and give himself up for the wife:

28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

Ephesians 5:28–31 (ESV)

The love of the spouse is overwhelming, unchanging, and thus should be transformative. As Paul writes in another place, “For the love of Christ controls us.” 2 Cor. 4:14

An Angel Feather

This last image has no parallel in Scripture, but would be an image following upon the first stanza’s references to “livery.”  If I graced with an Angel Feather, I am a courtier of the heavenly court, then why?

His Failures

Understanding the images we can easily see the failures:

Shall I thy vine branch be, yet grapes none bear?

A grape vine should grow grapes. If it does not, is it a grape vine?

Graft in thy olive stand; and fatness lack?

Fat would be the oil: If I am an “olive tree” and don’t bear olives, then what am I?

A shackeroon, a rangel, yet an heir?

A joint heir with Christ would own all things. This is underscored by the passage upon which the poem is based, “All things are yours … Christ is yours.” If I have an heirship in all things, then how could I be dressed a homeless vagrant?

Thy spouse, yet, oh! My wedding ring thus slack?

If I am a true spouse, why have I lost my wedding ring?

Should angel-feathers plume my cap, I should

Be swashed?

If I am a courtier of heaven, then why am I worthless?

The conclusion

But oh! My heart hereat grows cold.

The first two images came with startling warnings (You will be burned). The third image came as a conditional. The fourth image came with a promise (but does not that promise apply to me?). The final image comes as a confession by a traitor.

As he contemplates this, it freezes him: am I being judged?

Tennyson, But were I loved as I desire to be

14 Friday Jan 2022

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Courtesy “Elise” on flickr

But were I loved as I desire to be!

What is there in the great sphere of the earth,

Or range of evil between death and birth,

That I should fear, – if I were loved by thee!

All the inner, all the outer world of pain,

Clear love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine;

As I have heard that somewhere in the main

Fresh-water springs come up through bitter brine.

‘I were joy, not fear, clasped hand in hand with thee,

To wait for death – mute – careless of all ills,

Apart upon a mountain, though the surge

Of some new deluge from a thousand hills

Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge

Below us, as far on as eye could see.

The Rhyme Scheme:

The first thing which strikes me is the complex rhyme scheme. He has written a sonnet, but I don’t know the name for this rhyme scheme:

A-B-B-A

C-D-C-D

E-F-G-F-G-E

What is interesting is how he uses the rhyme scheme to underscore the sense.

Here is the first stanza:

But were I loved as I desire to be!

What is there in the great sphere of the earth,

Or range of evil between death and birth,

That I should fear, – if I were loved by thee!

The first and last lines rhyme and specifically reference the love. The middle lines rhyme and mention what would not be feared.

The second stanza has alternating rhymes. This stanza breaks down into parallel propositions:

All the inner, all the outer world of pain,

Clear love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine;

As I have heard that somewhere in the main

Fresh-water springs come up through bitter brine.

The final sestet

‘I were joy, not fear, clasped hand in hand with thee,

To wait for death – mute – careless of all ills,

Apart upon a mountain, though the surge

Of some new deluge from a thousand hills

Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge

Below us, as far on as eye could see.

The first and last lines rhyme and both refer to the physical participation with the beloved. The middle lines draw together what they jointly see. (Although this does not perfectly work with lines 10-11a.)

And so the rhyme scheme helps provide instruction on how to read the poem.

The First Stanza

But were I loved as I desire to be!

What is there in the great sphere of the earth,

Or range of evil between death and birth,

That I should fear, – if I were loved by thee!

The initial stanza sets out the basic proposition of the whole: If I were so loved, I would not fear.

The love is defined twice, “as I desire to be”. This is ambiguous and standing alone sounds merely self-centered. But the further definition moves this from something self-centered, “If I were loved by thee.

This is the “If.”

The “then” is fear. Fear is defined first by location

What is there in the great sphere of the earth,

Then by time (the duration of his life)

Or range of evil between death and birth,

That I should fear, –

What is not answered here is why he would not fear. That comes next.

The Second Stanza

All the inner, all the outer world of pain,

Clear love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine;

As I have heard that somewhere in the main

Fresh-water springs come up through bitter brine.

Love has the capacity to “pierce and cleave” pain wherever it might be found:

All the inner, all the outer world of pain,

Clear love would pierce and cleave,

Notice the subtle shift here from fear to pain. I would fear something because it would bring about pain. He has moved from the cause to the result. But since love can obviate pain, he has no need to fear some circumstance. He will not feel the pain because he feels the love.

Again, the condition: if thou wert mine;

He now provides the prove and illustration of the proposition that love drives out fear:

As I have heard that somewhere in the main

Fresh-water springs come up through bitter brine.

I have heard of this circumstance in which a fresh-water spring pushed out the salt water. The idea here is that one cannot experience the depth of love and feel fear in the same moment. If I am filled with love, then I will not fear.

This concept comes from 1 John 4:18, which in the KJV (which Tennyson would have known) reads

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love

And so Tennyson is appropriating a concept which the Apostle John used of God’s love and applies the same psychology to human love. If I am filled with love to you and love from you, I will not fear anything in this life. Tennyson also stops short of misappropriating John’s logic, because John is referencing the fear of judgment to come. Tennyson does not say that love of a woman will stave off future judgment. He carefully limited this power to his life and this world.

The Sestet

‘I were joy, not fear, clasped hand in hand with thee,

To wait for death – mute – careless of all ills,

Apart upon a mountain, though the surge

Of some new deluge from a thousand hills

Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge

Below us, as far on as eye could see.

I could wait for death with joy and not be afraid if I were with you “clasped hand in hand with thee”.

He then specifies what could befall them as they wait:

Apart upon a mountain, though the surge

Of some new deluge from a thousand hills

Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge

Below us,

And this would spread out “as far eye could see.”

If you were to love me, I could be ennobled, heroic. To love you, to be loved by you would make me a morally better man. We could face the world together.

That last move in the sestet is interesting, because he says that the love would make her brave, too.

‘I were joy, not fear, clasped hand in hand with thee,

To wait for death – mute – careless of all ills,

Apart upon a mountain,

They together would be brave. Their love would be mutually strengthening. This is appropriate, because it would not be love if it were simply centered upon him alone.

Edward Taylor, Meditation 37, My soul, Lord, quails

08 Saturday Jan 2022

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My soul, Lord, quails to think that I should be

So high related, have such colors fair

Stick in my hat, from heaven: yet should see

My soul thus blotcht. Hell’s livery to bear.

What thine? New naturalized? Yet this relation

Thus barren, though’t’s a privilege-foundation?

The motto for this poem is again 1 Cor. 3:23, and here he has come to the words, “You are Christ’s.” And so, the poet contemplates what does this mean, I belong to Christ.

In this stanza, he compares himself to an attendant upon a king who wears the king’s uniform and yet seems himself as the ultimate imposture: I belong to this King in all my privilege and uniform, but look at me! I am not what my title claims.

The effect of this incongruity is fear and confession

My soul, Lord, quails

Quail is an archaic if not obsolete word by our day. The root meaning is along the lines of becoming ill. Entymology online gives this useful note: “Sense of “lose heart or courage, shrink before a danger or difficulty, cower” is attested from 1550s. According to OED, the word was common 1520-1650, then rare until 19c., when apparently it was revived by Scott. Related: Quailed; quailing.”

And thus, the word “quail” is especially fitting here: The poet is losing heart, I will be found out and found to be an impostor.  It is also interesting that it is his “soul” which quails. My life at its base, the thing I am: I am growing fearful at my core.

The break in the second foot, and the piled accents, opens the poem in a slow, even deliberate manner:

my SOUL [pause] LORD [pause] QUAILS

It frames the whole of the poem.

The poem then moves paradoxically to not a fearful thing but something which would seemingly bring joy:

                        to think that I should be

So high related, have such colors fair

Stick in my hat, from heaven

He has a claim to relationship with the King. He has fine clothing “colors fair”. Next there is a “stick in my hat.” I don’t know the details of 17th century court dress well enough to know if there was a stick which was displayed in a hat, or whether this was a mistake for “stick in hand,” which would then refer to some sort of cane.  The whole is “from heaven.”

What then is the problem?

                        yet should see

My soul thus blotcht.

Even though I dress so well, my soul – the soul has now returned as the scene of the crime—is “bloched.” His soul is stained. Underneath the heavenly dress, hidden from view in the soul, is a stain. I look like one thing but in my soul, I am another.

The whole is then reversed: Rather than being heaven’s livery, he is bearing the livery of hell!  His fearfulness is not merely the fear of the impostor, it is the fear of the traitor. I am in the court of a king and I am showing loyalty to his enemy.

At this point, an aspect of Taylor’s psychology, which is profoundly different from our post-Rousseau, post-Freud world. He does not look at the “natural” bent of his desire as good and “authentic” and his “true” self. That is the posture of therapy which seeks to have us feel good about desires (whatsoever they may be). Instead, Taylor would see this self as “natural” and corrupt. He does not begin with the premise that whatever he happens to want is morally neutral and good only because he wants it (“love is love”).

What is good and true is not defined by the desires of Taylor’s soul, but by the Lord of Taylor’s soul. The Lord has come to raise Taylor up. That is an idea which lies at the heart of Taylor’s project, but it is an idea which utterly foreign to our culture.

Taylor’s calls this rebellion, “Hell’s livery.”  And this is the paradox in Christianity: God’s love for his enemies. But it is not a love which merely receives the “prostitutes and sinners,” but a love which transforms them. Our culture would be fine with a God who merely receives but does not forgive (because there is nothing to be forgiven).

And that leads to the conflict in Taylor: God forgives and transforms: this is granted. But then why has God not transformed me:

What thine? New naturalized? Yet this relation

Thus barren, though’t’s a privilege-foundation?

I belong to you? I am a new citizen of this Kingdom? How is it that having received such a privilege, beginning from such a privileged place, I have produced nothing: I have a new relationship and there is nothing to show for it?

This is a struggle with identity: Who am I? I am really in Christ? Do I really belong to Christ?

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton, Part II.a

23 Monday Aug 2021

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We come to the second division of the poem. The first 15 lines which comprise a stanza and certainly must be understood together read:

II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud

Clot the bedded axle-tree.

The trilling wire in the blood

Sings below inveterate scars

Appeasing long forgotten wars.

The dance along the artery

The circulation of the lymph

Are figured in the drift of stars

Ascend to summer in the tree

We move above the moving tree

In light upon the figured leaf

And hear upon the sodden floor

Below, the boarhound and the boar

Pursue their pattern as before

But reconciled among the stars.

Garlic and sapphires in the mud

Clot the bedded axle-tree.

The mud thrown-up by the wagon as it plunges along spray up, unto the axle and would “clot” it. That makes plain sense. Yet is not the mud which is send to clot the wagon but the “garlic and sapphires.” This is a striking and strange phrase. Why would there be garlic or sapphires in the mud. Certainly one wouldn’t leave them there – certainly not sapphires. And then to have them merely muck thrown-up to the underside of a wagon. The world is certainly mixed up. But to what end is not apparent in these lines.

The trilling wire in the blood

Sings below inveterate scars

Appeasing long forgotten wars.

The precise nature of the “trilling wire” is not exactly clear. I certainly don’t think he intends any precise physiology on this point. Then what do we have: I take this as something similar to Whitman’s “I sing the body electric” or perhaps Thomas’ “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” It is some sort of live force that runs through all things. I think he means some sort of force in all living things (even all moving things) and more than just human life. 

The “scars” above the blood here will become stars above all the rest. The combination of scars and wars works well: The war brought about the scar. The scar will never be removed, it is “inveterate”. And this life at work even beneath the scars of war appease the wars. But how so appease? To appease is to bring to rest some anger. There is a life which runs through and under even wars

Eliot writing after WWI and written during at least the first part of WW2 would not have a dim idea of war. But here the wars are “long-forgotten.” In saying this, he seems to be moving in a dim history. He is not speaking of his own life, but something of life. There is a history written in the life and in the scars. This present is not sharply marked-off from the past. The present bears the scars of the long forgotten wars and the same life sings beneath.

The dance along the artery

The circulation of the lymph

Are figured in the drift of stars

Ascend to summer in the tree

The distinctions between the life of his body and the life of nature also become lost. The life in his body is the life of the movement of the stars. The parts are mysteriously linked together. My pulse is tied up with the movement of stars (and visa-versa). 

The effect is quite pagan, where gods become animals or have human lovers and humans have half-god children and humans may find themselves transformed into something quite different. (For a less poetic and more philosophical consideration, see Peter Jones, The Other Worldview)

What is important here for the overall theme of the poem is that it is not just time as an abstraction, but the all things which are bound up together in this moment which is present. 

Next, it is the movement above and below which are reconciled and coordinated. The sky above and the mud below:

We move above the moving tree

In light upon the figured leaf

And hear upon the sodden floor

Below, the boarhound and the boar

Pursue their pattern as before

But reconciled among the stars.

The chase of animals on the ground is the chase of animals in the stars. The music of the spheres is transported to what we “hear upon the sodden floor.”

But there is something else here than bare correlation of opposites or even all things are one: The verb “reconciled” is interesting. What is reconciled? Most directly the chase of the boar and the boarhound. Their conflict and fight is “reconciled” above. 

This moves us in a somewhat different mood than bare pagan all is one and inter-vesting each the other. The conflict upon the earth is not merely reflected in the heaven, it is reconciled. This introduces a Christian tone which moves beyond Greek or Norse mythology. Everything is telling one story, but there is a way to understand this story, if you will, in a higher key.

Johann Christof Merck, 1705

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.6 (Phantoms Dancing)

18 Wednesday Aug 2021

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Having come through the door we meet the “them” promised by the thrush. Here is what was lurking in the poet’s “first world”

There they were, dignified, invisible,

Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,

In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,

And the bird called, in response to

The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,

And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses

Had the look of flowers that are looked at.

There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.

The inhabitants are described as follows:

Dignified. That is a curious word to begin. We could just dismiss this as Eliot being proper. But something more seems here. Something which is unreal could easily be ridiculous: but there is an honor here of sorts.

Invisible: How then are known? Imagination. They cannot be remembered, because this is the world which has never been. And so we enter into the imaginary world somehow shared (whether Eliot with someone else, or perhaps with us the reader is unclear). 

Moving: The idea of moving is coupled with the “unheard music” compels me to think of a dance. These phantoms (I don’t think “ghost” or “spirit” is right) are dancing over “dead leaves” but they break nothing. They “mov[e] without pressure.” 

I’m not sure what to do with the “autumn heat” beyond notice that the whole has the feel of being stifling. There are phantoms, but nothing is stirring. It is hot, but there is no breeze. When this is coupled with the language from earlier about unstirred dust on rose leaves, there is a feeling of an utterly closed-up world. 

This was a choice Eliot has made: while this old, closed up world is one way to imagine the never-has-been past, it is also the case that he could have produced a chaotic and vibrant never-have-been. This was a choice. 

Notice the environment: the air is “vibrant” but like the dancers without pressure, the vibration is of a music which is not heard. Everything is it seems potential: this is what could have been: dancing, music. But not there.

The bird is here: it is the guide into this imaginary space. The bird calls to the unheard music: it is in the shrubbery, it is off-camera, coming from some place ou cannot see. 

The eyebeam crossed: This is an idea as far back as Plato in Timeaus who explained that the fire made within us can cross through the eye and shine upon things to give sight:

“And of the organs they first contrived the eyes to give light, and the principle according to which they were inserted was as follows: So much of fire as would not burn, but gave a gentle light, they formed into a substance akin to the light of every-day life; and the pure fire which is within us and related thereto they made to flow through the eyes in a stream smooth and dense, compressing the whole eye, and especially the centre part, so that it kept out everything of a coarser nature, and allowed to pass only this pure element. When the light of day surrounds the stream of vision, then like falls upon like, and they coalesce, and one body is formed by natural affinity in the line of vision, wherever the light that falls from within meets with an external object. And the whole stream of vision, being similarly affected in virtue of similarity, diffuses the motions of what it touches or what touches it over the whole body, until they reach the soul, causing that perception which we call sight.”

The idea had various uses in science and art thereafter. Eliot certainly was not proposing this as a real effect (no one believed such in the 20th century). So why then this reference here?

Eliot was influenced by the metaphysical poet John Donne (if you are interested, here is a paper on the topic, https://www.academia.edu/38522764/The_Poetry_of_John_Donne_T_S_Eliot_as_Critic_and_Poet) and perhaps these lines from Donne’s poem the Extasie were alluded to by Eliot

Our eye-beams twisted, and did thred

Our eyes, upon one double string;

If there is allusion to regret and love in the poem, then the reference to Donne would be appropriate and ironic.

Next comes a line which has always delighted me:

                                                for the roses

Had the look of flowers that are looked at.

for the roses

Had the look of flowers that are looked at

This speculative space of what has never been is inhabited and it effects and affects. The eyebeams of the phantoms (?) have seen the roses – which calls back to rose leaves above. The roses disclose the presence of the lovers seeing one-another. The roses evidence the crossed gazed. The reality of this love played out in the unseen world.

And finally:

There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.

This raises a question: Is this imaginary space the poet’s own life? Are these true third parties. Or is this some alternative to himself: this is me if the world had been different?

And how then are they here as guests? They are not recriminating: accepted and accepting. 

He never quite defines these phantoms. I think they must be poet and someone else (again a lover, the reader, is this written to a particular person and we are overhearing?) are the ones at issue. The “they” is not someone else but rather a who Eliot could have been.

The reference to the “eyebeams crossed” makes this intimacy a moment of lovers. And the prove of their presence is shown in the roses. 

And for a moment, there is peace. We are permitted in; and we are at peace with this other self.

In the next movement, this equipoise will be dissolved.

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.5

12 Thursday Aug 2021

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            Other echoes

Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?

Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,

Round the corner. Through the first gate,  (20)

Into our first world, shall we follow 

The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.

To put these lines into their context, here are the lines already considered. I have also added an underscore to the word “echo”.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable. (5)
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present. (10)
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.                                   (15)
                              But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
                        Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate, (20)
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.

Looking back we can a major shift in line 11 with the first “echo”. The first ten lines are philosophical and distant. But at line 11 we enter into some sort of memory and that memory is an “echo”. The echo is of “footfalls” and so of some movement which never happened (down the passage which we did not take). At line 15 there is a bit of a pause, should we follow after this memory?

Then in middle of line 17, someone else intrudes and pulls the “we” toward the door which was never opened. Here there are “other echoes”. We will meet these phantoms in a bit, but here are just sounds. 

So why this word “echo”. It is not a sound but the echo of the sound; it is not the original but the copy. By using the word “echo”, Eliot increases the dream quality. Also, these sounds are “echoes” because the original happened (or did not happen) in the past, but they are being experienced in the present. 

We also learn what is on the otherside of the door which was never opened, “the garden.” 

Raising the image of a “garden” holds all sorts of allusions, particularly in the hands of someone like Eliot. There is archetypal garden of Eden. There are also all of the wall, specially kept places as gardens. 

Here the garden is “an abstraction” and a “perpetual possibility” which exists “only in a world of speculation.” To enter through this door in the memory is to enter into this “world of speculation.” 

The image of the rose-leaves now comes into focus for we know where the roses came from: the garden in this memory. 

But how could there be “other echoes” in this space? If the first echoes were the hurried steps to the door, who is on the other side of this door. But the “reality” (if you will) of the echoes beckon: 

He then turns to the reader (?) “Shall we follow?” We could be overhearing his conversation with someone, or we could be the one spoken to: This would mean that in reading the poem, you are being addressed in the lines, “My words echo/Thus, in your mind.”  And even if the poem is addressed to a particular “you” and “we”, the fact remains that the reader of the poem is the one who is following down the path toward the garden.

There is something quite mythical about a speaking bird leading one toward a garden. I feel there must be a particular allusion here, but I do not know what it is. It might be an allusion to the Norse god of poetry, Bragi. Whatever the allusion, the image is charming. 

This bird calls “us” on quickly, and now we are hurrying down the pathway through the door, through the gate.

In lines 20-22 we have the word “first” used three times: It is the “first gate” and then twice “our first world.” When we couple this with the “garden” we have our first world is the garden: this points toward Eden – at least some pre-Fall world.

Now, Eliot will not actually place in the primeval garden, but there is a deliberate prelapsarian element: The fall may not be the fall of all humanity, but rather a much more personal “fall”. This is “our first world.”

Shall you (the reader, someone in particular to Eliot) and I (Eliot) open this gate in the memory and proceed to the world which didn’t happen and yet is this real to us?

There is one more point to consider, “The deception of the thrush.” What precisely is the thrush’s deception? That there is this “first world”? That we can enter it?  If I am being called into something which is abstraction and possibility, is the call to consider that at all a deception? 

Is it a deception to consider a world which never happened as a reality now?

And as we know from the first lines: this world which did not happen “point[s] to one end, which is always present.” This first world which did not happen brought about this present: a present where I am being deceived to enter a the garden of our first world.

It is fascinating because it allusive and difficult, but not muddled. He is describing something which cannot easily articulated: it is the vision out of the corner of your eye, the thought which startles and then slips away before you can focus. It is real and a deception; present and only a speculation.

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.4

10 Tuesday Aug 2021

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The previous post on the poem Burnt Norton may be found here

                        My words echo

Thus, in your mind.

                              But to what purpose

Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves

I do not know.

It is a path “we did not take”. My words echo in your mind. We are entering into a profoundly private space, a space of shared memory such that as the poet thinks, he sees the memory as a shared space.

Then we come to the word “But.” We are entering into this shared memory. We have come to the door which was never opened at the end of the path which we never took. And as he is standing at the door, he stops short: Why am I doing this?

It is interesting that here the metaphor changes from a door at the end of a pathway to a bowl of rose-leaves so long undisturbed they are covered in dust. To open this memory is to open a door, but it is also to trouble something which has long been a peace.

The movement from a door – which is outside – to a bowl rose-leaves – which is inside makes for a dreamlike movement: it is a shift from one place to another, from one scene to another which have some sort of association which is not clear to one from the outside. 

A pathway and a door have a certain usefulness and sturdiness which is completely absent from a bowl of rose-leaves. Someone has carefully placed the leaves in a bowl. They have grown dry and are so brittle that to touch them is to break them. 

Photo courtesy of Atves

The image of the bowl of rose-leaves strikes me as something we would find in a house which has long been unoccupied, or at least a room so.  If the door opens to a space we never entered, then the rose leaves are in a room to which we never returned.

And so he asks, Why? To what purpose am I disturbing this memory? I do not know.

When come to these memories, seemingly of regret: something undone, some place unvisited, what compels to visit them? The delicacy of the memory and the imagery together with the intimacy of the place seem to indicate a romantic regret so long undisturbed. 

Since Eliot will not answer the question plainly, we are left with the question for ourselves: Why would, why does one disturb the memory, the speculation of what did not happen? Is it, If I had done that differently, I would be happier now?

He is also trying to awaken this memory in the other: My words in your memory are disturbing the dust. 

The next movement in the poem is to advance into this “deception”, a land with “unheard music”, and phantoms that walk upon dead leaves “without pressure.”

John Keats, Analysis, When I Have Fear that I may Cease to be

23 Saturday Nov 2019

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WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,

Before high piled books, in charact’ry,

Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;

When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,         5

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!

That I shall never look upon thee more,               10

Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

 

This is a Shakespearian sonnet of three quatrains and a couplet. It follows the typical development, of three major propositions and a conclusion based upon the whole. The overall theme is a meditation on death: First, he thinks of the work and fame which he will not obtain by his early death. Then he considers the greater loss, which is the loss of his love (Fanny Brawne). He in fact died at age 25 in 1821.

 

He concludes with the realization that neither art nor love will be sufficient to stop the loss of all. In the end, there will be only “nothingness.”

 

First Stanza:

 

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,

Before high piled books, in charact’ry,

Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;

 

The first line introduces the theme: When I contemplate my death and what will be lost. Being an ambitious young man with prodigious talent, his first thought comes to his poetry. He uses the imagery of farming and harvest: His pen “gleans” from his brain. Books of his work are like barns filled with grain. There is a harvest of his imagination to be had.

 

There is an interesting meta-view of the whole: he is busy “gleaning” by writing this poem on gleaning. And so his fear of loss creates the gain.

 

Second Stanza:

 

When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,         5

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

 

In this stanza he makes use of the Romantic epistemology: the world is both objective and subjective: the meaning of that world is produced in my imagination working on the raw materials of the creation. As Shelley has in Mont Blanc:

 

My own, my human mind, which passively 

Now renders and receives fast influencings, 

Holding an unremitting interchange 

With the clear universe of things around; 

One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings 

Now float above thy darkness, and now rest 

Where that or thou art no unbidden guest, 

In the still cave of the witch Poesy, 

Seeking among the shadows that pass by 

Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, 

Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast 

From which they fled recalls them, thou art there

 

The sky and clouds are filled with potential tales. But these things will never be revealed if he, the poet, does not live to

 

live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance

 

 

Third Stanza:

 

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!

That I shall never look upon thee more,               10

Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore

 

He then looks upon his love. She also transient: “fair creature of an hour!” And he will never more have the joy of looking upon her.

 

But there is something different here. In his work of creating, he is making something from world about him. And, if he does not make it, it will not come to be. But this which comes from her is not some creation of his imagination. She radiates “the faery power/Of unreflecting love!”

 

A “faery power” would be something profound, preternatural. It is the sort of power that he seeks to lay hold of in his imaginative work, “cloudy symbols of a high romance.” His work only reaches toward those things. But, in this woman before him who loves, that which would seek to achieve is given to him.

 

This love given to him is more than the goal of all that he would desire.

 

Couplet

 

The couplet is interesting, because Keats does not make a clean break from the third stanza. It is as if the contemplation of the one he loves has not merely superseded his art, it has derailed his poem.

 

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think   

Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

 

And then he ends with the conclusion of vanity. Neither his art nor even her love are sufficient to stand before death. The only fitting reference here is Ecclesiastes. Keats would have known the Bible merely by normal exposure in his age (and from references in his work). Thus, a concept from Ecclesiastes being behind his work would not be a stretch:

 

Ecclesiastes 1:1–8 (AV)

1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. 2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. 3 What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

4 One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. 5 The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. 6 The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. 7 All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. 8 All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.