Tag Archives: poetry

Week 94: At Castle Boterel, by Thomas Hardy

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I once tried to make a list of my ten favourite Hardy poems, but ended up with nearer to a hundred and a great reluctance to discard any of them. But I think in any shortlist I made ‘Castle Boterel’ would have to figure high, with its honest solipsism, its vision of human love pitted against the vastness of geological time, and its achingly sad last stanza.

At Castle Boterel

As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
I look behind at the fading byway,
And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
Distinctly yet

Myself and a girlish form benighted
In dry March weather. We climb the road
Beside a chaise. We had just alighted
To ease the sturdy pony’s load
When he sighed and slowed.

What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of
Matters not much, nor to what it led, —
Something that life will not be balked of
Without rude reason till hope is dead,
And feeling fled.

It filled but a minute. But was there ever
A time of such quality, since or before,
In that hill’s story? To one mind never,
Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore,
By thousands more.

Primaeval rocks form the road’s steep border,
And much have they faced there, first and last,
Of the transitory in Earth’s long order;
But what they record in colour and cast
Is — that we two passed.

And to me, though Time’s unflinching rigour,
In mindless rote, has ruled from sight
The substance now, one phantom figure
Remains on the slope, as when that night
Saw us alight.

I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking,
I look back at it amid the rain
For the very last time; for my sand is sinking,
And I shall traverse old love’s domain
Never again.

Thomas Hardy, March 1913

Week 93: From ‘Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan’ by Vachel Lindsay

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Vachel Lindsay’s ‘Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan’, a long poem chronicling Democrat William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 election campaign and ultimate defeat by the Republican candidate William McKinley, is a strange beast, part political rant, part lyrical evocation of youthful idealism, part elegy for lost love and lost dreams. The politics may be a bit dated now – most outside the US will remember Lindsay’s hero William Jennings Bryan, if at all, as an opponent of Darwinism in the Scopes trial – but the lyrical and elegiac parts seem as fresh as ever, and I give here two extracts that seem to me to represent those best.

From ‘Bryan, Bryan, Bryan Bryan’

The long parade rolled on. I stood by my best girl.
She was a cool young citizen, with wise and laughing eyes.
With my necktie by my ear, I was stepping on my dear,
But she kept like a pattern without a shaken curl.
She wore in her hair a brave prairie rose.
Her gold chums cut her, for that was not the pose.
No Gibson Girl would wear it in that fresh way.
But we were fairy Democrats, and this was our day.

……………

Where is McKinley, Mark Hanna’s McKinley,
His slave, his echo, his suit of clothes?
Gone to join the shadows, with the pomps of that time,
And the flames of that summer’s prairie rose.

Where is Cleveland whom the Democratic platform
Read from the party in a glorious hour?
Gone to join the shadows with pitchfork Tillman,
And sledge-hammer Altgeld who wrecked his power.

Where is Hanna, bulldog Hanna,
Low-browed Hanna, who said: ‘Stand pat’?
Gone to his place with old Pierpont Morgan.
Gone somewhere…with lean rat Platt.

Where is Roosevelt, the young dude cowboy,
Who hated Bryan, then aped his way?
Gone to join the shadows with mighty Cromwell
And tall King Saul, till the Judgement Day.

Where is Altgeld, brave as the truth,
Whose name the few still say with tears?
Gone to join the ironies with Old John Brown,
Whose fame rings loud for a thousand years.

Where is that boy, that Heaven-born Bryan,
That Homer Bryan, who sang from the West?
Gone to join the shadows with Altgeld the Eagle,
Where the kings and the slaves and the troubadours rest.

Vachel Lindsay

Week 92: An Die Entfernte, by Nikolaus Lenau

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This lyric by the Austrian Romantic poet Nikolaus Lenau (1802-1850) was one of the first German poems I ever got by heart; it seemed to me to have the plangent sweetness of a folksong .

The translation that follows is my own.

An Die Entfernte

Diese Rose pflück ich hier,
In der fremden Ferne;
Liebes Mädchen, dir, ach dir
Brächt ich sie so gerne!

Doch bis ich zu dir mag ziehn
Viele weite Meilen,
Ist die Rose längst dahin,
Denn die Rosen eilen.

Nie soll weiter sich ins Land
Lieb von Liebe wagen,
Als sich blühend in der Hand
Lässt die Rose tragen,

Oder als die Nachtigall
Halme bringt zum Neste,
Oder als ihr süsser Schall
Wandert mit dem Weste.

To One Far Away

See the rose that I pluck here
In foreign land afar –
Oh, could I but bring it, dear,
To you, to where you are.

Yet, before we met, before
I crossed so wide a way,
Long the rose would be no more
For roses do not stay.

Nevermore must love from love
Adventure in the land
Further than a rose may live
Borne blooming in the hand,

Further than the nightingale
Can bring straws to the nest,
Further than its sweet song fill
The wind out of the west.

Week 91: Alone, by E.J.Scovell

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For me, this love poem by the English poet Edith Joy Scovell (1907-1999) more than makes up in resonance for what it lacks in length.

Alone

Nothing will fill the salt caves our youth wore:
Happiness later, nor a house with corn
Ripe to its walls and open door.
We filtered through to sky and flowed into
A pit full of stars; so we are each alone.
Even in this being alone I meet with you.

E.J.Scovell

Week 90: Written in a Copy of Swift’s Poems, for Wayne Burns, by James Wright

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Tributes from one poet to another can get a bit incestuous, but I really like this one by the American poet James Wright (1927-1980), which made me take a fresh look at one of the better things to come out of the eighteenth century. Just not sure about the penultimate line, which seems not quite in keeping with the general register of the poem.

If anyone can point me to the words of Brinsley MacNamara’s ‘lovely elegy’ I’d be grateful – haven’t managed to track that one down.

Written in a Copy of Swift’s Poems, for Wayne Burns

I promised once if I got hold of
This book I’d send it on to you.
These are the songs that Roethke told of,
The curious music loved by few.
I think of lanes in Laracor
Where Brinsley MacNamara wrote
His lovely elegy, before
The Yahoos got the Dean by rote.

Only, when Swift-men are all gone
Back to their chosen fields by train
And the drunk Chairman snores alone,
Swift is alive in secret, Wayne:
Singing for Stella’s happiest day,
Charming a charming man, John Gay,
And meeting, now their bones are lost,
Pope’s beautiful electric ghost.

Here are some songs he lived in, kept
Secret from almost everyone
And laid away, while Stella slept,
Before he slept and died, alone.
Gently, listen, the great shade passes,
Magnificent, who still can bear,
Beyond the range of horses’ asses,
Nobilities, light, light and air.

James Wright

Week 89: In Bertram’s Garden, by Donald Justice

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This sharp yet tender study of seduction by the American poet Donald Justice (1925-2004) seems to me a beautiful poem, though the consolation it offers Jane for her loss of innocence is anything but consoling. There are literary echoes to be appreciated here, notably of Ben Jonson, but it is the movement of the lines, especially in the last stanza, that I find so masterly and so haunting.

In Bertram’s Garden

Jane looks down at her organdy skirt
As if it somehow were the thing disgraced,
For being there, on the floor, in the dirt,
And she catches it up about her waist,
Smooths it out along one hip,
And pulls it over the crumpled slip.

On the porch, green-shuttered, cool,
Asleep is Bertram, that bronze boy,
Who, having wound her around a spool,
Sends her spinning like a toy
Out to the garden, all alone,
To sit and weep on a bench of stone.

Soon the purple dark must bruise
Lily and bleeding-heart and rose,
And the little Cupid lose
Eyes and ears and chin and nose,
And Jane lie down with others soon,
Naked to the naked moon.

Donald Justice

Week 88: The Tinkerman’s Daughter, by Sigerson Clifford/Michael McConnel

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I first got to know this ballad through the singing of the wonderful Irish folk-singer Niamh Parsons. The main credit for its composition, it seems, has to go to the Irish poet Sigerson Clifford (1913-1985), but it was then adapted and shortened by Michael McConnel (this sort of thing tends to happen to ballads) and that is the version that Niamh sings (with some minor changes of her own); the version I give here is Niamh’s.

It’s not that long ago, it seems, that women could be bought and sold – compare the famous opening scene in ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’. At least the red-headed Ann was feisty enough to rebel.

Incidentally Niamh has recorded another stunning performance of a poem by Sigerson Clifford, ‘The Boys of Barr na Sráide’, which should not be missed.

The Tinkerman’s Daughter

The small birds were lining the bleak autumn branches
Preparing to fly to a far sunny shore
When the tinkers made camp at the bend on the river
Returning from the horse fair in Ballinsloe.

Now the harvest being over the farmer went walking
All along the Faele River that borders his land
And ’twas there he first saw her twixt firelight and water
The tinkerman’s daughter, the red-headed Ann.

Next morning he rose from a night without slumber
He went straight to the tinker and he made his case known
And at a pub in Listowell they struck out a bargain
To the tinker a pony, to the daughter a home.

Where the trees cast their shadows along the Faele River
The tinker and the farmer inspected the land
And a wild gallant pony was the price they agreed on
For the tinkerman’s daughter, the red-headed Ann.

Now the wedding soon over the tinkers departed
They were eager to travel on south down the road
But the crunch of the iron-shod wheels on the gravel
Was as bitter to her as the way she’d been sold.

But she tried hard to please him she did all his bidding
She slept in his bed and she worked on his land
But the walls of that cabin pressed tighter and tighter
Round the tinkerman’s daughter, the red-headed Ann.

Now as white as the hands of a priest or a hangman
The snow spread its blanket the next Christmas round
And the tinkerman’s daughter got out from the bedside
Turned her back to the land and her face to the town

And it’s said someone saw her at dusk that same evening
She was making her way down by Lyreacrompane
And that was the last that the settled folk saw her
The tinkerman’s daughter, the red-headed Ann.

Where the north Kerry hills cut the Faele at Listowell
At a farm on its banks lives a bitter old man
And he swears by the shotgun he keeps at his bedside
That he’ll kill any tinker that camps on his land

And yet, when he hears iron-shod wheels crunch on gravel
Or a horse in the shafts of a bright caravan
His day’s work’s tormented, his night’s sleep demented
By the tinkerman’s daughter, the red-headed Ann.

Week 87: Good, by R.S.Thomas

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Time for another of my favourite R.S.Thomas poems: here is a poet who no longer has to strain for any kind of ornamentation, achieving his effects by apparently plain statement coupled with a mastery of cadence.

Good

The old man comes out on the hill
and looks down to recall earlier days
in the valley. He sees the stream shine,
the church stand, hears the litter of
children’s voices. A chill in the flesh
tells him that death is not far off
now: it is the shadow under the great boughs
of life. His garden has herbs growing.
The kestrel goes by with fresh prey
in its claws. The wind scatters the scent
of wild beans. The tractor operates
on the earth’s body. His grandson is there
ploughing; his young wife fetches him
cakes and tea and a dark smile. It is well.

R.S.Thomas

Week 86: Threshing Morning, by Patrick Kavanagh

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Another of my favourite Patrick Kavanagh poems, that combines his sensuous delight in the physical world with a vision of some secret, immortal country parallel to it that haunts the Irish mind.

May I just mention that a selection of sixty of my own poems is now available from the Amazon Kindle store; see News page for more details. 

Threshing Morning

On an apple-ripe September morning
Through the mist-chill fields I went
With a pitchfork on my shoulder
Less for use than for devilment.

The threshing mill was set-up, I knew,
In Cassidy’s haggard last night,
And we owed them a day at the threshing
Since last year. O it was delight

To be paying bills of laughter
And chaffy gossip in kind
With work thrown in to ballast
The fantasy-soaring mind.

As I crossed the wooden bridge I wondered
As I looked into the drain
If ever a summer morning should find me
Shovelling up eels again.

And I thought of the wasps’ nest in the bank
And how I got chased one day
Leaving the drag and the scraw-knife behind,
How I covered my face with hay.

The wet leaves of the cocksfoot
Polished my boots as I
Went round by the glistening bog-holes
Lost in unthinking joy.

I’ll be carrying bags today, I mused,
The best job at the mill
With plenty of time to talk of our loves
As we wait for the bags to fill…

Maybe Mary might call round…
And then I came to the haggard gate,
And I knew as I entered that I had come
Through fields that were part of no earthly estate.

Patrick Kavanagh

Week 85: In Morte Del Fratello Giovanni, by Ugo Foscolo

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The Italian romantic poet Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827) spent the last eleven years of his life in a voluntary exile in England, where he was initially lionised but fell out of favour and died at Turnham Green after a spell in debtor’s prison. This poem clearly owes much to Catullus’s famous elegy ‘Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus’, but Foscolo adds a measure of Italian pathos to Roman gravity: Catullus, for example, makes no mention of his mother.

The translation that follows, which makes no attempt to imitate Foscolo’s rich rhyme scheme, is my own.

In Morte Del Fratello Giovanni

Un dí, s’io non andrò sempre fuggendo
Di gente in gente, me vedrai seduto
Su la tua pietra, o fratel mio, gemendo
Il fior de’ tuoi gentili anni caduto.

La madre or sol, suo dí tardo traendo,
Parla di me col tuo cenere muto,
Ma io deluse a voi le palme tendo;
E se da lunge i miei tetti saluto.

Sento gli avversi Numi, e le secrete
Cure che al viver tuo furon tempesta,
E prego anch’io nel tuo porto quïete.

Questo di tanta speme oggi mi resta!
Straniere genti, almen le ossa rendete
Allora al petto della madre mesta.

On The Death of His Brother Giovanni

One day, brother, when I’m done with this
Wandering from tribe to tribe, you’ll find me
Seated by your stone at last, lamenting
The fallen flower of your gentle years.

Our mother, left alone now, drawing out
Her late days, speaks of me to your mute ashes,
While I reach out vain hands to both of you
Greeting my homeland from afar, and yet

I feel the adverse Fates, the secret cares
That were a tempest to you while you lived,
And I would share with you your quiet haven.

That much of so much hope is left to me!
Strangers, when that day comes, give my bones
Back to the bosom of my grieving mother.