The Splendour Falls on Castle Walls by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

When I was a kid, I had a book called The Children's Treasure House.  It was published by Odhams Press in 1935 and has over 750 pages of stories and poems chosen for a young readership.  This book was a marvellous companion during my childhood.  I still have it even though, lamentably, it is now falling to pieces.

There are two odd things about that book.  First, it contains Tennyson's poem 'The Splendour Falls on Castle Walls' twice - once under its shorter title 'The Splendour Falls' and once under the title 'Echo Song'.  Secondly, someone decided this was a poem fit for children.

I went through a Tennyson phase in primary school and could recite this poem, 'Break, Break, Break', and 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' by heart. No such luck nowadays.  Those circuits have long since been over-written  Of course, at that time, I didn't really understand what the poem was about.  I was taken by the imagery of castles, mountains and lakes, and of the sound of the horns of Elfland.  I liked that kind of thing then, and I still do; however, upon re-reading the poem in my much later life, I realised - if I may invert St Paul's metaphor - I no longer see it through a glass, darkly.

What do we have then?  The narrator, presumably a  man, is standing where he can see the slanting evening sun (or is it the morning sun?) shining on an old castle and its surrounding mountains and lakes.  He can also see a waterfall.  He hears a bugle (or does he order a bugle to be blown?) and imagines it to be the distant horns of Elfland (or is it really the Elves having a toot?), and the sound of it echoes in the valleys and dies away.  He then addresses a person - we do not know who it is, or whether they are present - and draws a metaphor between the echoes and ourselves.  The narrator then repeats the refrain about bugles and dying echoes.

I think the poem is a meditation on mortality, and immortality through posterity.  

The castle is old, the day is drawing to a close; and while the cataract leaps, it can only leap downwards; the echo of the bugle's sound dies away: all metaphors for mortality.

On the other hand, our own echoes 'roll from soul to soul' and 'grow for ever and for ever'.  Did Tennyson mean the echoes of our words and deeds and the effect we have on others, either personally or through the works we leave behind; or did he mean we echo in our children and their descendants?  Both interpretations suggest a kind of immortality through posterity.

There is a tension between hope and despair in the poem.  While we may suspect the narrator is feeling his age and his mortality, he still exhorts the bugle - an instrument actuated by the breath of life - to blow; but eventually it will cease to sound and its echo will die away. He then asserts our own echoes, unlike the bugle's, will go on forever; and again the narrator exhorts the bugle to blow, perhaps calling for the cycle to echo ad infinitum.  Or so it seems to me.

On a lighter note (toot), if Tennyson were alive today and knew HTML coding, he almost certainly would have written a poem called '<br>, <br>, <br>'.  Boom! Tish!

The Splendour Falls on Castle Walls

The splendour falls on castle walls
       And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
       And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hear, O hear! how thin and clear,
       And thinner , clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
       The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
       They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
       And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

The Broad Bean Sermon by Les Murray

Over thirty years ago, I was compelled to study Les Murray's poetry. It was an ugly encounter. Let's just say I did not have the ears to hear what he was saying. Even now, after so much time, I find his poems rarely make me feel or think.

On one poem I am willing to shift ground and give a nod of approval, and that is The Broad Bean Sermon.  And what happened to bring about this change?  Answer: I grew my first crop of broad beans and had the joy of hunting through the "thin bean forest", finding "shirtfulls" of the stuff in all their weird and wonderful shapes.

I think joy is the word.  Murray does manage to communicate the sense that a mundane chore, such as picking beans, can put us in touch with something that is greater, perhaps transcendent, and joyous. I suppose it is like an in-joke: only members of the gang get it.  Well, Les, I get it now.  

The Broad Bean Sermon

Beanstalks, in any breeze, are a slack church parade

without belief, saying trespass against us in unison,

recruits in mint Air Force dacron, with unbuttoned leaves.

Upright with water like men, square in stem-section

they grow to great lengths, drink rain, keel over all ways,

kink down and grow up afresh, with proffered new greenstuff.

Above the cat-and-mouse floor of a thin bean forest

snails hang rapt in their food, ants hurry through Escher’s three worlds,

spiders tense and sag like little black flags in cordage.

Going out to pick beans with the sun high as fence-tops, you find

plenty, and fetch them.  An hour or a cloud later

you find shirtfulls more.  At every hour of daylight

appear more that you missed: ripe, knobbly ones, fleshy-sided,

thin-straight, thin-crescent, frown-shaped, bird-shouldered, boat-keeled ones,

beans knuckled and single-bulged, minute green dolphins at suck,

beans upright like lecturing, outstretched like blessing fingers

in the incident light, and more still, oblique to your notice

that the noon glare or cloud-light or afternoon slants will uncover

till you ask yourself Could I have overlooked so many, or

do they form in an hour? unfolding into reality

like templates for subtly broad grins, like unique caught expressions,

like edible meanings, each sealed around with a string

and affixed to its moment, an unceasing colloquial assembly,

the portly, the stiff, and those lolling in pointed green slippers …

Wondering who’ll take the spare bagfulls, you grin with happiness

—it is your health—you vow to pick them all

even the last few, weeks off yet, misshapen as toes.

Lollingdon Downs by John Masefield

Ever since I was old enough to go out and look at the night sky, I have gone out and looked at the night sky.  I do it almost every night, noting how the constellations rise and fall with the seasons, how the planets wander in and out of the spangled starscape, how the moon waxes and wanes. Lo! there is Orion the hunter and his faithful dog in summer, and now Scorpio, his bane, in winter; and all the time the Southern Cross wheels about an unseen axis.

At the time of writing, Venus is riding high in the sky as the evening star.  I think of Tolkien and his invented mythology of Middle Earth.  There is Eärendil the mariner in his heavenly ship, and the silmaril bound to his brow and shining with the mingled lights of the two trees. 

And at such times, I think of what it might be like to roam the aether, sailing on invisible tides, the solar winds in my hair, feeling in the rawest form the cosmogonic forces that have shaped us all.

I am not alone.  Tolkien got there before me, as did John Masefield, and the Silver Surfer.  I provide here an excerpt from Masefield's extended poem Lollingdon Downs.  Sometimes, I too wish that my soul might sail for a million years in such a fashion: no death, no tears.

I could not sleep for thinking of the sky,
The unending sky, with all its million suns
Which turn their planets everlastingly
In nothing, where the fire-haired comet runs.

If I could sail that nothing, I should cross 
Silence and emptiness with dark stars passing, 
Then, in the darkness, see a point of gloss 
Burn to a glow, and glare, and keep amassing, 

And rage into a sun with wandering planets 
And drop behind, and then, as I proceed, 
See his last light upon his last moon's granites 
Die to a dark that would be night indeed. 

Night where my soul might sail a million years 
In nothing, not even Death, not even tears.

Pangur Bán by Anonymous

I came across this poem today and instantly fell in love with it.

Pangur Bán is a poem written in Irish Gaelic in the 9th century C.E., and composed in what is now southern Germany.  

The author is unknown, but it is thought he was an Irish Monk who worked as a scribe employed to copy books by hand.  It becomes obvious from the text of the poem that the author loved both his work and his cat Pangur the White.  

Eight clever stanzas draw parallels between the author (and his work) and his cat (and his work): hunting, practicing, enjoying, capturing, trying, and enjoying some more. 

Having said that, I'll let the poem do its own talking.

Pangur Bán

I and Pangur Bán, my cat
'Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will,
He too plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way:
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our tasks we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

(Translation by Robin Flower (1881-1946))

The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B. Yeats

"There midnight's all a glimmer"

Recently, a friend and I were talking about Thoreau's Walden.  My friend surprised me by reciting The Lake Isle of Innisfree.  The poem was very pertinent to our conversation about solitude, nature and growing one's own food.  Afterwards, I thought that if the poem is important enough for my friend to learn by heart, then it is worth taking a close look at it.  

I have included the poem at the end of this document.  You may like to read it first.

The poet tells us that he is going to make a sea-change in his life and move to the countryside.  He intends to build his own dwelling and grow his own food there.  He believes he will have peace by living close to nature; and he tells us that no matter where he is in the urban landscape, he hears nature calling him from the depths of his being.

Looking at some of the verbs in the first stanza we find arise, go, build.  Apart from their plain meanings, these words give us a sense of growth and of ascending to a better mode of being - a spiritual flourishing rather than a material one, perhaps.  And although the poet intends to construct a dwelling and practice horticulture (both, in a sense, unnatural activities), he introduces us to the raw elements of clay and wattle, of bean-rows and hives.  The final line of the stanza gives us a vivid and evocative picture of the poet's vision: And live alone in the bee-loud glade.  Gee, Dylan Thomas could not have written it any better.

In the second stanza, the poet evokes more images of the natural world.  He uses the words morning, midnight, noon and evening.  His world, he says, will be filled with the sounds of crickets singing and of birds beating their wings, and the sky will glow by day and glimmer by night.  It is from this sensuous tapestry that the poet's sought-after peace will come.  He says peace comes dropping slow, and the reader can almost see it dropping, like morning dew on a green lawn or raindrops on the receiving flower.

In the final stanza, the poet repeats the opening phrase of the poem: I will arise and go now.  But this time he tells us about his motivation rather than his intentions.  The poet is driven by a feeling that comes from his deep heart's core.  He likens it to hearing lake water lapping, and he says he hears it for always day and night.  And to heighten the reader's appreciation of what has transpired earlier in the poem, the poet introduces  the contrasting image of roadways and pavements grey.  The image is  hard and bleak and lifeless. And so the poet ends the poem with what really matters: the deep heart's core.

I enjoyed this poem, and it does make me wonder what lies calling  to me from my deep heart's core.  Accumulate appreciating and income producing capital!  Nope, that's not it.  Leave it with me, I'll work on it.  Meanwhile, here's the poem ... 

The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B. Yeats 

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

John Gilpin by William Cowper

When I was a child, I had a book that referred to famous works of fiction.  One of the illustrations (which showed a frightened man clinging to a runaway horse) was entitled "John Gilpin by William Cowper", but the text of the book made no mention of the genre or content of the story.  Decades later one thing led to another and something reminded me of that illustration, and so I finally looked into the matter of John Gilpin.

The Diverting History of John Gilpin is a poem written by Cowper and was published in 1782.  Supposedly based on a real event, the poem tells the tale of an Englishman who is travelling to a neighbouring town to join his family in a celebration when his horse bolts and takes him miles past his intended destination.  If that isn't bad enough, the horse bolts a  second time.

Well, I'll never die wondering.  Cowper's poem is diverting and can still entertain after 230 years or so.  Perhaps a copy of it came to Australia with the First Fleet in 1788.  Who knows?  Read it by all means - it will take you only a few minutes - but remember, those were simpler times.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning

Illustration by Kate Greenaway

I have found that quite a few things escaped my notice when I was a child; one of them was Robert Browning's The Pied Piper of Hamelin.  Of course, I knew the story, but I had never heard or read Browning's version.  I mentioned this to my wife and to my surprise she started reciting parts of the poem.

According to Browning, the people of Hamelin were happy and prosperous, except in one respect: their city was heavily infested with rats, which were getting into every cellar and cupboard in town.  One day a piper dressed in red and yellow turns up at the Town Hall and he tells the mayor and aldermen that for a thousand guilders he will rid the city of the rats.  The Piper's terms are accepted, and he delivers on his promise; however, the Council refuse to uphold their side of the bargain, and they offer to pay only fifty guilders.  The Piper exacts his revenge by enchanting away the children of Hamelin, and they are last seen following the Piper into a cave entrance, which shuts forever when the Piper's music stops.  Despite their best efforts, the people of Hamelin never have news of their children again.

Browning's poem is very readable.  He does tend to pile up the end-rhymes throughout the stanzas of the poem, and the meter is wayward in places.  Even so, Browning's apt choice of words to paint brief but vivid scenes redeems the poem, and we can forgive any resemblance it bears to doggerel. Anyway, the kids will love it.

The moral of the tale seems straightforward - don't break your promises - but I've often wondered about the symbolism of this tale.  The Piper has supernatural talents.  He can punish as well as reward, and he does punish those who do not keep their promises.  Krishna is traditionally depicted as a piper, for it is he who bestows the breath of life.  And we know how judgemental and vengeful the God of Abraham can be to anyone who breaks His covenant.  The Piper offers both the rats and the children a vision of paradise (as is reported by the one surviving rat and the one remaining child).  Yes, I think there are quite a few avenues of metaphorical speculation that the willing reader can stroll down at their leisure, should they read the poem.

Publishing details: The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning (originally published 1842)

A copy of the poem can be found at: The Pied Piper of Hamelin

The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun by J.R.R. Tolkien

In this volume of posthumously-published work by J.R.R. Tolkien, we are treated to his reworking of two related tales  - from the Poetic or Elder Edda -  which  Tolkien's cast into modern(ish) English poems that follow the rules of Norse poetry. Christopher Tolkien guesses that his father wrote these poems some time in the early 1930s.

The two poems are preceded by an foreword by Christopher Tolkien which explains his father's interest in legends from "the nameless North", an essay by Tolkien, which probably was to be the basis of a lecture on the Elder Edda, and some brief notes related to the history and subject matter of the poems.  They are followed by three more broadly explanatory appendices by Christopher Tolkien regarding the origins of the legends, and the history of Attila the Hun.

The two poems themselves are a bit hard to follow if one is not already familiar with the original legends; however, Christopher Tolkien has provided helpful explanatory notes after each poem.  The difficulty of the poems is intentional: Tolkien was mimicking style of Old Norse poetry.  Here finesse in the form of the story was not paramount, what was desired was energy and the impact of the language and the sound of the language. As Tolkien says:

...Old English verse does not attempt to hit you in the eye. To hit you in the eye was the deliberate intention of the Norse poet ... Few who have been through this process can have missed the sudden recognition that they had unawares met something of tremendous force, something that in parts (for it has various parts) is still endowed with an almost demonic energy, in spite of the ruin of its form.

In short, the poems are fleet and vigorous, and they are short on narration and exposition.  And so it is with Tolkien's poems in this volume.  I admit I lost the thread of the story on more than one occasion, but I was rescued by the explanatory notes. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

So do you want to know what the poems were about? Well, read the book.

Publishing details: The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun by J.R.R. Tolkien (edited by Christopher Tolkien, HarpersCollins, London, 2009, pp.376)

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by S.T. Coleridge

("A thousand thousand slimy things lived on,
and so did I."
The Mariner, with albatross hung around his neck,
cannot see the beauty of his fellow creatures,
the sea snakes. Etching by Gustave Doré)

A recent encounter with someone about twenty years my junior made me remember that the Western Canon is no longer something automatically transmitted to the next generation.  "Dead white males", I think sums up the  pedagogical argument that killed the transmission of the Canon.  Oh well, I liked most of what I read of it, and it is now that I return to one of its quirkier constituents: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".

The Rime is the longest poem that Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote.  It is the story of a man who does not know how to love the world.  Being insensitive to the wonders of nature, he shoots an albatross that had befriended the crew of his ship in the Southern Ocean.  Shortly afterward, a supernatural revenge for the slaying takes place.  The Mariner, at this time a young man, is stranded "alone, alone, all, all alone" without human companionship until such time as he has learned to love the world.

There are plenty of critiques of the poem available, so I won't try to write a new one;  I do want to say a thing or two about my latest reading of this poem.

Firstly, when I re-read the passage about the killing of the albatross, I suddenly had the image of John Lennon in my mind.  As you will remember, Lennon sang about peace and love and about how we are really all one and the same ("Tomorrow Never Knows", for example), and someone shot him for his troubles.  The end of the beginning of the Mariner's troubles starts when he realises the beauty in even the ugliest of creatures and loves them.

Secondly, when I re-read the passage where the Mariner's ship becomes immobilised in the ocean:

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean

I was reminded of the film Groundhog Day.  There are definite parallels in the two stories. For instance, just as Bill Murray's character is released from his curse when he learns to be other-centered, the Mariner learns his lesson too: "He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small".

Survival ends and living begins when Love starts.

Publishing details: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (in Coleridge, OUP, Oxford, 1965, ed. J.Colmer)