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“Now My Life Is Done”

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Headman’s Axe

There are some strange byways in English poetry, such as Chidiock Tichborne’s “Elegy,” written the night before his execution for treason on September 20, 1586. At the age of twenty-four, he was eviscerated, hanged, and then drawn and quartered. His crime? Taking part in a plot to murder Queen Elizabeth I. He and all his co-conspirators were rounded up, tried, and executed.

Elegy

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain;
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

My tale was heard and yet it was not told,
My fruit is fallen, and yet my leaves are green,
My youth is spent and yet I am not old,
I saw the world and yet I was not seen;
My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death and found it in my womb,
I looked for life and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made;
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

“To See the World in a Grain of Sand”

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Self-Portrait of William Blake

A great poet, a magnificent artist, a deep visionary—William Blake (1757-1827) was all of these. And one of the poems where the visionary is predominant is his “Auguries of Innocence” (ca. 1803).

Auguries of Innocence

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 
And Eternity in an hour

A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage 
A Dove house fill’d with Doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions 
A dog starv’d at his Masters Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State 
A Horse misus’d upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood 
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fibre from the Brain does tear 
A Skylark wounded in the wing 
A Cherubim does cease to sing 
The Game Cock clip’d & arm’d for fight
Does the Rising Sun affright 
Every Wolf’s & Lion’s howl
Raises from Hell a Human Soul 
The wild deer, wandring here & there 
Keeps the Human Soul from Care 
The Lamb misus’d breeds Public Strife
And yet forgives the Butchers knife 
The Bat that flits at close of Eve
Has left the Brain that wont Believe
The Owl that calls upon the Night
Speaks the Unbeliever’s fright
He who shall hurt the little Wren
Shall never be belov’d by Men 
He who the Ox to wrath has mov’d
Shall never be by Woman lov’d
The wanton Boy that kills the Fly
Shall feel the Spiders enmity 
He who torments the Chafer’s Sprite
Weaves a Bower in endless Night 
The Catterpiller on the Leaf
Repeats to thee thy Mother’s grief 
Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly 
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh
He who shall train the Horse to War
Shall never pass the Polar Bar 
The Beggar’s Dog & Widow’s Cat 
Feed them & thou wilt grow fat 
The Gnat that sings his Summer’s Song
Poison gets from Slander’s tongue 
The poison of the Snake & Newt
Is the sweat of Envy’s Foot 
The poison of the Honey Bee
Is the Artist’s Jealousy
The Prince’s Robes & Beggar’s Rags
Are Toadstools on the Miser’s Bags 
A Truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent 
It is right it should be so 
Man was made for Joy & Woe 
And when this we rightly know 
Thro’ the World we safely go 
Joy & Woe are woven fine 
A Clothing for the soul divine 
Under every grief & pine
Runs a joy with silken twine 
The Babe is more than swadling Bands
Throughout all these Human Lands
Tools were made & Born were hands 
Every Farmer Understands
Every Tear from Every Eye
Becomes a Babe in Eternity 
This is caught by Females bright
And return’d to its own delight 
The Bleat the Bark Bellow & Roar 
Are Waves that Beat on Heaven’s Shore 
The Babe that weeps the Rod beneath
Writes Revenge in realms of Death 
The Beggar’s Rags fluttering in Air
Does to Rags the Heavens tear 
The Soldier arm’d with Sword & Gun 
Palsied strikes the Summer’s Sun
The poor Man’s Farthing is worth more
Than all the Gold on Afric’s Shore
One Mite wrung from the Labrer’s hands
Shall buy & sell the Miser’s Lands 
Or if protected from on high 
Does that whole Nation sell & buy 
He who mocks the Infant’s Faith
Shall be mock’d in Age & Death
He who shall teach the Child to Doubt
The rotting Grave shall ne’er get out 
He who respects the Infant’s faith
Triumphs over Hell & Death 
The Child’s Toys & the Old Man’s Reasons
Are the Fruits of the Two seasons 
The Questioner who sits so sly 
Shall never know how to Reply 
He who replies to words of Doubt
Doth put the Light of Knowledge out 
The Strongest Poison ever known
Came from Caesar’s Laurel Crown 
Nought can Deform the Human Race
Like to the Armour’s iron brace 
When Gold & Gems adorn the Plow
To peaceful Arts shall Envy Bow 
A Riddle or the Crickets Cry
Is to Doubt a fit Reply 
The Emmet’s Inch & Eagle’s Mile
Make Lame Philosophy to smile 
He who Doubts from what he sees
Will ne’er Believe do what you Please 
If the Sun & Moon should Doubt 
They’d immediately Go out 
To be in a Passion you Good may Do 
But no Good if a Passion is in you 
The Whore & Gambler by the State
Licenc’d build that Nation’s Fate 
The Harlot’s cry from Street to Street 
Shall weave Old England’s winding Sheet 
The Winners Shout the Losers Curse 
Dance before dead England’s Hearse
Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born 
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight 
Some are Born to sweet delight, 
Some are Born to Endless Night 
We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see not Thro’ the Eye
Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night 
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light 
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day

“To Television”

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Not too many people have anything good to say about television, except maybe poet Robert Pinsky in his poem “To Television.” I have long thought that his poem “Samurai Song” is one of the past poems written since WW2. Three times, he has served has poet laureate of the United States.

To Television

Not a “window on the world”
But as we call you,
A box a tube.

Terrarium of dreams and wonders.
Coffer of shades, ordained
Cotillion of phosphors
Or liquid crystal

Homey miracle, tub
Of acquiescence, vein of defiance.
Your patron in the pantheon would be Hermes

Raster dance,
Quick one, little thief, escort
Of the dying and comfort of the sick,

In a blue glow my father and little sister sat
Snuggled in one chair watching you
Their wife and mother was sick in the head
I scorned you and them as I scorned so much

Now I like you best in a hotel room,
Maybe minutes
Before I have to face an audience: behind
The doors of the armoire, box
Within a box—Tom & Jerry, or also brilliant
And reassuring, Oprah Winfrey.

Thank you, for I watched, I watched
Sid Caesar speaking French and Japanese not
Through knowledge but imagination,
His quickness, and Thank you, I watched live
Jackie Robinson stealing

Home, the image—O strung shell—enduring
Fleeter than light like those words we
Remember in: they too are winged
At the helmet and ankles.

Jade Flower Palace

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Beijing Palace Ruins

Du Fu (aka Tu Fu) was born in AD 712 and died in 770. The following poem is from Kenneth Rexroth’s One Hundred Poems from the Chinese. It is a great favorite of mine.

Jade Flower Palace

The stream swirls. The wind moans in
The pines. Grey rats scurry over
Broken tiles. What prince, long ago,
Built this palace, standing in
Ruins beside the cliffs? There are
Green ghost fires in the black rooms.
The shattered pavements are all
Washed away. Ten thousand organ
Pipes whistle and roar. The storm
Scatters the red autumn leaves.
His dancing girls are yellow dust.
Their painted cheeks have crumbled
Away. His gold chariots
And courtiers are gone. Only
A stone horse is left of his
Glory. I sit on the grass and
Start a poem, but the pathos of
It overcomes me. The future
Slips imperceptibly away.
Who can say what the years will bring?

Stanzas to ————

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Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë

The above painting of the Brontë sisters was done by none other than their brother, Patrick Branwell Brontë. Originally, his own image appeared in the space between Emily’s and Charlotte’s portraits; but for various reasons, his image was painted over. For an interesting discussion of the original image in London’s National Portrait Gallery, click here.

I am including here a poem by Emily paying tribute to an unnamed person of mixed reputation who has died:

Stanzas to ————

Well, some may hate, and some may scorn,
And some may quite forget thy name;
But my sad heart must ever mourn
Thy ruined hopes, thy blighted fame!
‘Twas thus I thought, an hour ago,
Even weeping o’er that wretch’s woe;
One word turned back my gushing tears,
And lit my altered eye with sneers.
Then “Bless the friendly dust,” I said,
“That hides thy unlamented head!
Vain as thou wert, and weak as vain,
The slave of Falsehood, Pride, and Pain–
My heart has nought akin to thine;
Thy soul is powerless over mine.”


But these were thoughts that vanished too;
Unwise, unholy, and untrue:
Do I despise the timid deer,
Because his limbs are fleet with fear?
Or, would I mock the wolf’s death-howl,
Because his form is gaunt and foul?
Or, hear with joy the leveret’s cry,
Because it cannot bravely die?
No! Then above his memory
Let Pity’s heart as tender be;
Say, “Earth, lie lightly on that breast,
And, kind Heaven, grant that spirit rest!”

“You Are Inside Me Now”

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El Jardin Botanico in the Palermo Neighborhood of Buenos Aires

Since I wrote about Buenos Aires being one of my favorite cities yesterday, I thought I would present a sonnet by Jorge Luis Borges, the poet of Buenos Aires, translated by Stephen Kessler from his collection of Borges’s sonnets:

Buenos Aires

Before, I looked for you within your limits
bounded by the sunset and the plain
and i the fenced yards holding an old-time
coolness of jasmine and of cedar shade.
In the memory of Palermo you were there,
in its mythology of a lost past
of cards and daggers and in the golden
bronze weight of the useless door knockers
with their hands and rings. I felt a sense of you
in the Southside patios and in the lengthening
shadows that ever so slowly obscured
their long right angles as the sun went down.
You are inside me now. You are my blurred
fate, all those things death will obliterate.

“The City”

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Alexandria, Egypt in the 19th Century

Every once in a while, when I’m feeling restless, I think of the poet of Alexandria, Egypt: Constantine P.Cavafy (1863-1933). I first learned about him from reading Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet, where he is referred to as “the poet of the city.” Appropriately, here is one of his best poems, which is called, simply:

The City

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
And my heart lies buried like something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You’ll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.
Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.

“You Have To Swing”

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Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

Jack Kerouac is not best known for his poetry, but his can be fun to read, such as this short lament:

Woman

A woman is beautiful
   but
      you have to swing
      and swing and swing
      and swing like
      a handkerchief in the
                                        wind

“A Song on the End of the World”

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Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004)

Born in Lithuania, but known primarily as a Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz is perhaps my favorite Eastern European poet of the 20th century. In 1980, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here is one of my favorites among his works, written in Warsaw in 1944:

A Song on the End of the World

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

Morning

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The following short poem from William Blake’s MS. book and is typical of his best work early in his career (around 1800-1903).

Morning

To find the Western path
Right thro’ the Gates of Wrath
I urge my way.
Sweet Mercy leads me on.
With soft repentant moan
I see the break of day.

The war of swords & spears
Melted by dewy tears
Exhales on high.
The Sun is freed from fears
And with soft grateful tears
Ascends the sky.