Week 202: The Death of Socrates, by Plato

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I think it is possible to respond to philosophy in general and Plato in particular with that usefully indolent modernism ‘Whatever!’, but still to be moved by this account of the death of Plato’s mentor, which has a particularity and humanity that mark it out from the somewhat tedious discussions about the afterlife and immortality of the soul that form the bulk of the accompanying dialogue. 

And it is hard not to wonder about the Shakespearean echo here. Though Shakespeare had, according to Ben Jonson, ‘small Latin and less Greek’, there were certainly Latin translations available to him, from which he might have got enough to inspire the following lines from the account of the death of Falstaff in ‘Henry V’.

‘So a’ bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and they were as cold as any stone, and so upward and upward, and all was as cold as any stone.’

The Death of Socrates

Socrates alone retained his calmness: ‘What is this strange outcry?’ he said. ‘I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not misbehave in this way, for I have been told that a man should die in peace. Be quiet then, and have patience’.

When we heard his words we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed his foot hard, and asked him if he could feel; and he said, No; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them himself, and said: When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end.

He was beginning to feel cold about the groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said – they were his last words – ‘Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?’

‘The debt shall be paid’, said Crito. ‘Is there anything else?’. There was no answer to this question.

From Plato’s ‘Phaedo’, translated by Benjamin Jowett

Week 201: The Homecoming, by Anna Wickham

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Anna Wickham (the pen-name of Edith Alice Mary Harper, 1883–1947) wrote this sad poem after her husband was killed in an accident in 1929. The marriage had been a troubled one: he was a solicitor who would have preferred his wife to be less bohemian and was hostile to her poetry-writing, while she came to despise his middle-class respectability, which explains why her grief in the poem is compounded by more than the usual measure of regret for what might have been, should have been and had not been.

The Homecoming

I waited ten years in the husk
That once had been our home,
Watching from dawn to dusk
To see if he would come.

And there he was beside me
Always at board and bed;
I looked – and woe betide me
He I had loved was dead.

He fell at night on the hillside,
They brought him home to his place,
I had not the solace of sorrow
Till I had looked at his face.

Then I clasped the broken body
To see if it breathed or moved,
For there, in the smile of his dying,
Was the gallant man I had loved.

O wives come lend me your weeping,
I have not enough of tears,
For he is dead who was sleeping
These ten accursed years.

Anna Wickham

Week 200: Ardglass Town, by Richard Rowley

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The anonymity of great cities naturally inspires poems of exile, and London has produced its fair share of them – one thinks of Housman’s desolate lines ‘Here I lie down in London/And turn to rest alone’, and Patrick Kavanagh, exiled in Ealing Broadway, naming the pieces of a harness for comfort in ‘Kerr’s Ass’. Here is another of them, a simple but effective lament by the Irish poet Richard Rowley (1877-1947); Richard Rowley was actually a penname of Richard Valentine Williams.

A loaning is a lane, or in particular an open space for passage between fields.

Ardglass Town

The sun is hid in heaven,
The fog floats thick and brown,
I walk the streets of London,
And think of Ardglass town.

About the point of Fennick,
The snowy breakers roll,
And green they shine in patterned squares,
The fields above Ardtole.

Oh, there by many a loaning,
Past farms that I could name
Thro’ Sheeplands to Gun Island,
The whins are all aflame.

And my heart bleeds within me
To think of times I had,
Walking with my sweetheart
The green road to Ringfad.

Richard Rowley

Week 199: To An Athlete Dying Young, by A.E.Housman

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The Olympic Games are with us again, and as a one time runner myself of rather modest accomplishment – as many a poet must come sadly to accept, it is quite possible to be passionately devoted to a pursuit while having no great talent for it – I take as much pleasure as anyone in watching the world’s young strut their hour upon the global stage, bringing to mind those lines of Marlowe’s: ‘Is it not passing brave to be a king/And ride in triumph through Persepolis’ (or, as the case may be, Rio de Janeiro). And yet, how brief that hour really is, and how quickly our heroes and heroines must come to terms with physical decline and the anonymity of oblivion. For which of those golden lads and lasses, I wonder, will be remembered in a hundred years’ time, or even fifty? The mighty Bolt, maybe, in the way that some fabled racehorse is remembered. But all those others, now for a short while instantly recognisable by forename alone, Jess and Mo, Laura and Jason, Max and Adam, Alistair and Johnny? Almost certainly not. Well, as usual A.E.Housman has the words to match a mood tinged with rue.

To An Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

A.E.Housman

Week 198: Confessions, by Robert Browning

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Robert Browning is a mixed bag if ever there was one, his work ranging from the masterly to the unreadable, the best of his poems showing a gift for the vivid and concrete hardly to be matched in English poetry, but too many others prosy or populist or just too damn long. If I had to choose one poem to attest to his stature, it would have to be ‘My Last Duchess’, but that’s surely too well known to need my espousal, and I suspect the same goes for the fine monologues ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’ and ‘Andrea del Sarto’, the poignant ‘A Toccata of Galuppi’s’, and the grimly enigmatic ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’. So here’s a lighter yet touching piece in which an old man on his deathbed remembers with a joyous lack of repentance a romantic escapade of his youth, which I take from the mention of an attic to be with the servant-girl of a grand house.

Confessions

What is he buzzing in my ears?
‘Now that I come to die,
Do I view the world as a vale of tears?’
Ah, reverend sir, not I!

What I viewed there once, what I view again
Where the physic bottles stand
On the table’s edge,—is a suburb lane,
With a wall to my bedside hand.

That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,
From a house you could descry
O’er the garden-wall; is the curtain blue
Or green to a healthy eye?

To mine, it serves for the old June weather
Blue above lane and wall;
And that farthest bottle labelled ‘Ether’
Is the house o’ertopping all.

At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper,
There watched for me, one June,
A girl: I know, sir, it’s improper,
My poor mind’s out of tune.

Only, there was a way… you crept
Close by the side, to dodge
Eyes in the house, two eyes except:
They styled their house ‘The Lodge.’

What right had a lounger up their lane?
But, by creeping very close,
With the good wall’s help,—their eyes might strain
And stretch themselves to Oes,

Yet never catch her and me together,
As she left the attic, there,
By the rim of the bottle labelled ‘Ether,’
And stole from stair to stair,

And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,
We loved, sir—used to meet:
How sad and bad and mad it was—
But then, how it was sweet!

Robert Browning

Week 197: Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard

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This great ballad, Child 81, is probably best known these days in the version belted out by Sandy Denny on the seminal folk album ‘Liege and Lief’ under the alternative title ‘Matty Groves’, but I’ve slightly reluctantly gone back to the primary Child version, confining myself to a little modernisation of the spelling (a bolder soul than I might be tempted to make a composite text from the best the numerous versions have to offer, but at least this version includes the lady’s beautiful injunction to her lover to ‘huggle me from the cold’).

One of the things I like about these ballads is the sheer feistiness of their heroines, forever seeing what they want and going for it, which acts as a useful corrective to the demure passivity of the females in so much courtly verse of the past. Let’s face it, poor Little Musgrave never had a chance…

Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard

It fell out one holy-day,
As many be in the year,
When young men and maids together did go,
Their mattins and mass to heare,

Little Musgrave came to the church-door;
The priest was at private masse;
But he had more mind of the fair women
Then he had of our lady’s grace.

The one of them was clad in green,
Another was clad in pall,
And then came in my lord Barnard’s wife,
The fairest amongst them all.

She cast an eye on Little Musgrave,
As bright as the summer sun;
And then bethought this Little Musgrave,
This lady’s heart have I won.

Quoth she, I have loved thee, Little Musgrave,
Full long and many a day;
‘So have I loved  you, fair lady,
Yet never word durst I say.’

‘I have a bower at Bucklesfordbery,
Full daintily it is dight;
If thou wilt wend thither, thou Little Musgrave,
Thou’s lig in mine arms all night.’

Quoth he, I thank yee, faire lady,
This kindness thou showest to me;
But whether it be to my weal or woe,
This night I will lig with thee.

With that he heard, a little tiny page,
By this lady’s coach as he ran:
‘All though I am my lady’s foot-page,
Yet I am Lord Barnard’s man.

‘My lord Barnard shall know of this,
Whether I sink or swim;’
And ever where the bridges were broke
He laid him down to swim.

‘Asleep or wake, thou Lord Barnard,
As thou art a man of life,
For Little Musgrave is at Bucklesfordbery,
Abed with thy own wedded wife.’

‘If this be true, thou little tiny page,
This thing thou tellest to me,
Then all the land in Bucklesfordbery
I freely will give to thee.

‘But if it be a lie, thou little tiny page,
This thing thou tellest to me,
On the highest tree in Bucklesfordbery
Then hanged shalt thou be.’

He called up his merry men all:
‘Come saddle me my steed;
This night must I to Bucklesfordbery,
For I never had greater need.’

And some of them whistled, and some of them sung,
And some these words did say,
And ever when my lord Barnard’s horn blew,
‘Away, Musgrave, away!’

‘Methinks I hear the thresel-cock,
Methinks I hear the jay;
Methinks I hear my lord Barnard,
And I would I were away.’

‘Lie still, lie still, thou Little Musgrave,
And huggle me from the cold;
’Tis nothing but a shepherd’s boy,
A-driving his sheep to the fold.

‘Is not thy hawk upon a perch?
Thy steed eats oats and hay;
And thou a fair lady in thine arms,
And wouldst thou be away?’

With that my lord Barnard came to the door,
And lit a stone upon;
He plucked out three silver keys,
And he opened the doors each one.

He lifted up the coverlet,
He lifted up the sheet:
‘How now, how now, thou Little Musgrave,
Doest thou find my lady sweet?’

‘I find her sweet,’ quoth Little Musgrave,
‘The more ’tis to my paine;
I would gladly give three hundred pounds
That I were on yonder plain.’

‘Arise, arise, thou Little Musgrave,
And put thy clothes on;
It shall ne’er be said in my country
I have killed a naked man.

‘I have two swords in one scabbard,
Full dear they cost my purse;
And thou shalt have the best of them,
And I will have the worse.’

The first stroke that Little Musgrave struck,
He hurt Lord Barnard sore;
The next stroke that Lord Barnard struck,
Little Musgrave ne’er struck more.

With that bespake this faire lady,
In bed whereas she lay:
‘Although thou’rt dead, thou Little Musgrave,
Yet I for thee will pray.

‘And wish well to thy soul will I,
So long as I have life;
So will I not for thee, Barnard,
Although I am thy wedded wife.’

He cut her paps from off her breast;
Great pity it was to see
That some drops of this lady’s heart’s blood
Ran trickling down her knee.

‘Woe worth you, woe worth, my mery men all
You were ne’er born for my good;
Why did you not offer to stay my hand,
When you see me wax so wood?

‘For I have slain the bravest sir knight
That ever rode on steed;
So have I done the fairest lady
That ever did woman’s deed.

‘A grave, a grave,’ Lord Barnard cried,
‘To put these lovers in;
But lay my lady on the upper hand,
For she came of the better kin.’

Anon

Week 196: Queen Street, Cardiff, by Idris Davies

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The Welsh poet Idris Davies (1905-1953) is probably best known now for his poem ‘The Bells of Rhymney’, which was set to music by Pete Seeger and has entered the folk tradition. Davies is not the most subtle of poets: the mainspring of his work is a fine socialist anger (he worked for some years as a miner and participated in the General Strike of 1926), but it is also characterised by a poignant urban lyricism, a genuine sense of identification with his fellow men and a deep rootedness in his time and place, Wales between the wars.

Queen Street, Cardiff

When the crowds flow into Queen Street from the suburbs and the hills
And the music of the hour is the music of the tills,
I sometimes gaze and wonder at my fellows passing by
Each one with dreams and passions, each one to toil and die.

And I almost hear the voices of a throng I never knew
That passed through this same Queen Street, and under skies as blue,
And they too had their laughter, their sorrow, in their day
And they too went a journey with an unreturning way.

And other generations in distant years to be
Shall walk and crowd through Queen Street, in joy or misery,
And they shall laugh and grumble and love and hate and lust,
Their living flesh oblivious of our eternal dust.

But banish all such brooding, for May is in the air,
And Jack from Ystrad Mynach loves Jill from Aberdare,
And however Life shall use them, they shall talk in years to be
Of when they were young in Queen Street in the city by the sea.

Idris Davies

Week 195: Swan, from the Exeter Book

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If I were asked to rank the four languages that I studied for my degree as part of the Cambridge Anglo-Saxon Tripos – Old English, Old Norse, Old Irish and Old Welsh – according to the literary merit/interest of what survives in them, then Old Norse would come in a clear winner with Old English, I am sorry to say, limping in a somewhat distant fourth; this may, of course, simply be a reflection of how much of our native heritage has been lost. True, we have ‘Beowulf’, and ‘Beowulf’ has its moments, but not enough of them to sustain a poem of over 3000 lines, and if it was really ever meant for recitation then I like to think of some small Anglo-Saxon child, allowed to stay up late in the mead-hall, tugging at his father’s sleeve saying ‘Dad, when do we get to the bit with the monsters?’.

Still, there are other things in Old English besides ‘Beowulf’, and one of them is this rather beautiful riddle from the Exeter Book, to which the answer is generally assumed to be ‘Swan’. The slightly free translation that follows is my own.

Hrægl min swigað     þōn ic hrusan trede
oþþe þa wic buge     oþþe wado drefe
hwilum mec ahebbað  ofer hæleþa byht
hyrste mine  þeos hea lyft
mec þōn wide     wolcna strengu
ofer folc byreð     frætwe mine
swogað hlude    swinsiað
torhte singað    þōn ic getenge ne beom
flode ond foldan     ferende gæst

My garb is silent when I go on earth
Where men abide, or when I stir the stream.
Sometimes, though, I harness the high air,
Men’s dwellings dwindle as I mount above
Borne on the mighty sky. What music then
My rustling raiment makes, what melodies
It sings in splendour as I soar aloft,
A faring spirit far from field and flood.

Week 194: Long Distance, II, by Tony Harrison

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Tony Harrison (1937-) writes a bracingly acerbic poetry in which anger mingles with compassion: in this one the compassion dominates. I much admire his ability to extract poetry from what on the face of it is plain colloquial speech.

Long Distance, II

Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.

You couldn’t just drop in. You had to phone.
He’d put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.

He couldn’t risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he’d hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He knew she’d just popped out to get the tea.

I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven’t both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there’s your name
and the disconnected number I still call.

Tony Harrison

Week 193: Millom Old Quarry, by Norman Nicholson

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I love this poem by Norman Nicholson (1914-1987) – such a sensuous evocation of a northern town’s back streets – those gables ‘sanded with sun’, that ‘smoke of lilac’ – combined with a startling geological perspective.

Millom Old Quarry

‘They dug ten streets from that there hole,’ he said,
‘Hard on five hundred houses.’ He nodded
Down the set of the quarry and spat in the water
Making a moorhen cock her head
As if a fish had leaped. ‘Half the new town
‘Came out of yonder – King Street, Queen Street, all
‘The houses round the Green as far as the slagbank,
‘And Market Street, too, from the Crown allotments
‘Up to the Station Yard.’ – ‘But Market Street’s
‘Brown freestone’, I said. ‘Nobbut the facings
‘We called them the Khaki Houses in the Boer War
‘But they’re Cumberland slate at the back.’

I thought of those streets still bearing their royal names
Like the coat-of-arms on a child’s Jubilee Mug –
Nonconformist gables sanded with sun
Or branded with burning creeper; a smoke of lilac
Between the blue roofs of closet and coal-house;
So much that woman’s blood gave sense and shape to
Hacked from this dynamited combe.
The rocks cracked to the pond, and hawthorns fell
In waterfalls of blossom. Shed petals
Patterned the scum like studs on the sole of a boot
And stiff-legged sparrows skid down screes of gravel.

I saw the town’s black generations
Packed in their caves of rock, as mussel or limpet
Washed by the tidal sky; then swept, shovelled
Back in the quarry again, a landslip of lintels
Blocking the gape of the tarn.
The quick turf pushed a green tarpaulin over
All that was mortal in five thousand lives.
Nor did it seem a paradox to one
Who held quarry and query, turf and town
In the small lock of a recording brain.

Norman Nicholson