Poetry

[Iota]

One of my favourite poems.


The Whitsun Weddings
By Philip Larkin

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
    Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense 
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence 
The river's level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept 
    For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept. 
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and 
Canals with floatings of industrial froth; 
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped 
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass 
Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth 
Until the next town, new and nondescript, 
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

At first, I didn't notice what a noise
    The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys 
The interest of what's happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls 
I took for porters larking with the mails, 
And went on reading. Once we started, though, 
We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls 
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils, 
All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event
    Waving goodbye
To something that survived it. Struck, I leant 
More promptly out next time, more curiously, 
And saw it all again in different terms: 
The fathers with broad belts under their suits 
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat; 
An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms, 
The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes, 
The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest. 
    Yes, from cafés
And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed 
Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days 
Were coming to an end. All down the line
Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
And, as we moved, each face seemed to define 
Just what it saw departing: children frowned 
At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical;
    The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared 
At a religious wounding. Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam. 
Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast 
Long shadows over major roads, and for
Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say
    I nearly died,
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower, 
And someone running up to bowl—and none 
Thought of the others they would never meet 
Or how their lives would all contain this hour. 
I thought of London spread out in the sun, 
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across 
    Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss 
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail 
Travelling coincidence; and what it held 
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power 
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower 
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

[DaveF]

short-shadowed cattle...

That's just perfect, isn't it?

I was in R.S. Thomas country at the weekend, visited the grave (well, tiny 30 x 15cm slate plaque) at Porthmadog church, and managed to recite from memory, with some degree of accuracy:

SERVANT

You served me well, Prytherch.
From my all questionings and doubts;
From brief acceptance of the times'
Deities; from ache of the mind
Or body's tyranny, I turned,
Often after a whole year,
Often twice in the same day,
To where you read in the slow book
Of the farm, turning the fields' pages
So patiently, never tired
Of the land's story; not just believing,
But proving in your bone and your blood
Its accuracy; willing to stand
Always aside from the main road,
Where life's flashier illustrations
Were marginal.
                          Not that you gave
The whole answer. Is truth so bare,
So dark, so dumb, as on your hearth
And in your company I found it?
Is not the evolving print of the sky
To be read, too; the mineral
Of the mind worked? Is not truth choice,
With a clear eye and a free hand,
From life's bounty?
                                  Not choice for you,
But seed sown upon the thin
Soil of a heart, not rich, nor fertile,
Yet capable of the one crop,
Which is the bread of truth that I break.

[Iota]

That's just perfect, isn't it?

I was in R.S. Thomas country at the weekend, visited the grave (well, tiny 30 x 15cm slate plaque) at Porthmadog church, and managed to recite from memory, with some degree of accuracy:

SERVANT

You served me well, Prytherch.
From my all questionings and doubts;
From brief acceptance of the times'
Deities; from ache of the mind
Or body's tyranny, I turned,
Often after a whole year,
Often twice in the same day,
To where you read in the slow book
Of the farm, turning the fields' pages
So patiently, never tired
Of the land's story; not just believing,
But proving in your bone and your blood
Its accuracy; willing to stand
Always aside from the main road,
Where life's flashier illustrations
Were marginal.
                          Not that you gave
The whole answer. Is truth so bare,
So dark, so dumb, as on your hearth
And in your company I found it?
Is not the evolving print of the sky
To be read, too; the mineral
Of the mind worked? Is not truth choice,
With a clear eye and a free hand,
From life's bounty?
                                  Not choice for you,
But seed sown upon the thin
Soil of a heart, not rich, nor fertile,
Yet capable of the one crop,
Which is the bread of truth that I break.

I like that a lot. It made much more sense to me once I found out about the generic figure of Prytherch and the poet's involvement with the hill farmers who inspired him. Very interesting poet.

[DaveF]

I like that a lot. It made much more sense to me once I found out about the generic figure of Prytherch and the poet's involvement with the hill farmers who inspired him. Very interesting poet.

Glad to have introduced you to that one (if indeed I did).  Yes, it helps to know who he's talking to.  It's a key work in his output, since it marks a turning-away from the hill-farmer figures ("You served me well") towards the spiritual concerns of his later work.  I like to imagine that he conceived the piece at the very instant of celebrating Mass, if you read the last line to mean "that I (now) break".  And typically of the cussed old so-and-so that he became in later years, he omitted such a crucial work (which even gave the title to the collection in which it appeared, The Bread of Truth) from an anthology that he compiled shortly before his death.

[Iota]

Glad to have introduced you to that one (if indeed I did).

You did! Thank you, glad of the introduction.

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

A rather moving poem from Tennyson:

A Farewell

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
    Thy tribute wave deliver:
No more by thee my steps shall be,
    For ever and for ever.

Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
    A rivulet then a river:
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be
    For ever and for ever.

But here will sigh thine alder tree
    And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
    For ever and for ever.

A thousand suns will stream on thee,
    A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
    For ever and for ever.

[DaveF]

A rather moving poem from Tennyson:

Hardy is good at that sort of thing too:

The Comet at Yell'ham

It bends far over Yell'ham Plain,
        And we, from Yell'ham Height,
Stand and regard its fiery train,
        So soon to swim from sight.

It will return long years hence, when
        As now its strange swift shine
Will fall on Yell'ham; but not then
        On that sweet form of thine.

Ah, those Victorians!

[Iota]

Another very affecting Hardy poem I think.


The Darkling Thrush

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

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

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

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

[LKB]

As an aside, when l saw the word " Poetry " l instantly recalled Haydn's Symphony No. 98. The last movement's principal theme is essentially a musical limerick.

There was a young man from Nantucket...

[foxandpeng]

Another very affecting Hardy poem I think.


The Darkling Thrush

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

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

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

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

Always valued this. He does, indeed, write affectingly.

[Mandryka]

The opening of the Hardy with its iambic rhythm made me instantly think of this

The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.

My father taught me this parody

The boy stood on the burning deck
His feet were full of blisters
The flames burned off his underpants
So now he wears his sisters

[LKB]

The opening of the Hardy with its iambic rhythm made me instantly think of this

The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.

My father taught me this parody

The boy stood on the burning deck
His feet were full of blisters
The flames burned off his underpants
So now he wears his sisters

Made me laugh, though l reckon His Majesty's Royal Navy wouldn't.