P.B.S: Poems by Shelley

Shelley's is another life cut short, at the age of 29. And yet another who was not fully appreciated in his time either. Some say he drowned himself, others that it was an accident in a storm. Either way, it is incredible how much work he managed to put out into the world in such a short time.

I often come to research a poet and find that I have read one of their works before. This time, I find it is Shelley's poem 'Ozymandias', which I rather enjoyed when I came across it at GCSE level. The poem I have chosen, however, has a different focus from that of ancient kingdoms to the very present, written perhaps about one of his two wives, or even many of his female companions, with whom he often had platonic relations.


Good Night

Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill
Which severs those it should unite;
Let us remain together still,
Then it will be good night.

How can I call the lone night good,
Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?
Be it not said, thought, understood --
Then it will be -- good night.

To hearts which near each other move
From evening close to morning light,
The night is good; because, my love,
They never say good-night.                         

This poem revolves around a rather solemn pun; that the 'good' in 'good-night' might be an elliptical phrase, wishing someone well on departure, but can be received by that someone bitterly due to the very fact of the departure.

The poem begins as if a mental musing after being wished a 'good-night'. The narrator questions himself as to how the speaker could have truly wished this if they loved him as equally as he loves them. For surely, he thinks, they would have stayed 'unite[d]' in order for all to be happy and good.

The questioning continues in the second stanza, with less violent and angry a temperament as in the first ('severs'). He admits that his lover's use of the 'good night' phrase is a 'sweet' one, as if to calm himself in an afterthought through right branching. He follows his question with an imperative prayer, augmented from the hortatory 'let us', to relay his increasing passion on the subject. The repetition of 'be' emphasises his focus on the state of separate existence of the two lovers, of what is and is not.

He then focuses on the distance itself, with the spatial adjectives 'near' and 'close' juxtaposed line by line. The hypallage of the the latter depicts the evening as a time to be spent intimately with a companion, meaning that separation should occur rather in the day, when 'light' comes. The rhyme with 'light' and 'night' following shortly links the two part of the day, however, suggesting that he wishes the night to be spent as they do the days. It almost appears paradoxical, then, that when the night is good, good-night is 'never' said. But perhaps the implication is that words are not needed when the physical will suffice during the night time.

Kinky Catullus

Now we can return to my random weekly posts. As I received a book of the Roman poet Catullus' poems when leaving school, I thought it would be worth while looking at one of them (in translation of course!).

Catullus' moods vary greatly, from lovelorn to erotic. I thought the latter might be fun to attempt for once!

So, here we have:

Poem 69

Wonder not, Rufus, why none of the opposite sex
wishes to place her dainty thighs beneath you,
not even if you undermine her virtue with gifts of choice
silk or the enticement of a pellucid gem.
You are being hurt by an ugly rumour which asserts
that beneath your armpits dwells a ferocious goat.
This they fear, and no wonder; for it's a right rank
beast that no pretty girl will go to bed with.
So either get rid of this painful affront to the nostrils
or cease to wonder why the ladies flee.

This is a invective poem, written to a man who once was Catullus' friend, until perhaps he slept with Catullus' lover. He wrote many poems to or about people he knows, attacking their personalities and habits in order to make the reader laugh, as they perhaps recognise the common traits in others they know.

Here the problem is that Rufus supposedly has personal odour issues. The argument that Rufus has stolen Catullus' lover, Clodia, is supported by this poem, as the effect of his smell is that he fails to charm the ladies, an insult which would have been pertinent in this case.

Thus, Catullus opposes the 'dainty' women, evoking an image of purity and cleanliness, including in their appearance and smell, with his 'rank' manner. Even labelling the rumour as 'ugly' implies Rufus himself suits it.

The choice of the goat for the smelly animal is an interesting one, because goats are often associated with sexual excess, as donkeys and apes are. So Catullus makes the matter even worse for Rufus, as not only is he unable to obtain the women for his pleasures, but he is in a state of perpetual unfulfilled desire.

While this poem may seem trivial, others about Catullus bemoan their lost friendship in a much more sincere manner, and his love poems to Lesbia or even his lamentations of his brothers' death portray a much more forlorn side to the poet. Well worth a read.

Edward Thomas

So, we have reached the final poet of the Dymock group. This one apparently was the last to actually start writing poetry, in 1914, partly due to the war (which eventually led him to his death) and due to his discussions with Frost, his now close friend. Thus, I have chosen a poem which can be read either with or without the war context, as it is called,

LIBERTY
The last light has gone out of the world, except
This moonlight lying on the grass like frost
Beyond the brink of the tall elm's shadow.
It is as if everything else had slept
Many an age, unforgotten and lost --
The men that were, the things done, long ago,
All I have thought; and but the moon and I
Live yet and here stand idle over a grave
Where all is buried. Both have liberty
To dream what we could do if we were free
To do some thing we had desired long,
The moon and I. There's none less free than who
Does nothing and has nothing else to do,
Being free only for what is not to his mind,
And nothing is to his mind. If every hour
Like this one passing that I have spent among
The wiser others when I have forgot
To wonder whether I was free or not,
Were piled before me, and not lost behind,
And I could take and carry them away
I should be rich; or if I had the power
To wipe out every one and not again
Regret, I should be rich to be so poor.
And yet I still am half in love with pain,
With what is imperfect, with both tears and mirth,
With things that have an end, with life and earth,
And this moon that leaves me dark within the door.

It is rather an eerie thought, to imagine oneself as the only person on the planet, or for time to have stopped and only you left in motion. Thus, Thomas takes the warmth from the envisioned place in the poem, by providing the cold moonlight over the sun, and likening it to 'frost'. I am reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles at the minute, and this scene reminds me of when Tess wishes to become one with the forest and seclude herself from human relations, at liberty to have no responsibility in the world.

The 'things done long ago' interest me. It is hard to comprehend, sometimes, that past ages have really occurred, that regimes and empires have really fallen, making one feel rather insignificant, a complete contrast to the absolute significance of being the only person alive.

Yet the narrator is not entirely alone, as the moon is personified as a companion, watching on as he contemplates life, linking to the stationary trees we covered before; neither can move to enact their desires, which makes man lucky. The fact that we can perceive the difference between good and bad, depicted in the final four lines, adds to our fortune, whether we always remember that in the bad times or not.

Wilfrid Gibson

The next poet was very popular in his time (1910s). All the other poets in the group found him very amicable and were very fond of him. He had previously written rather like Tennyson, but then decided to branch out into more vernacular poetry.

Apparently the poem 'The Golden Room' depicts the group together of an evening, which I think would be a lovely poem to look at, but alas I cannot find a free version online. Do please look into it if you are interested, however, (and tell me if you can find a free version!).

One poem which exemplifies the colloquial style is 'Nightmare', which is beautifully concise (as are most of his poems, as far as I can see) , so I would recommend that one as well.

Today, however, we are looking at

Hit

Out of the sparkling sea
I drew my tingling body clear, and lay
On a low ledge the livelong summer day,
Basking, and watching lazily
White sails in Falmouth Bay.

My body seemed to burn
Salt in the sun that drenched it through and through,
Till every particle glowed clean and new
And slowly seemed to turn
To lucent amber in a world of blue . . .

I felt a sudden wrench—
A trickle of warm blood—
And found that I was sprawling in the mud
Among the dead men in the trench.

This poem encapsulates so much of the trauma of war. From the beginning denial and wish to be in a better place, to the final realisation of war which always haunts soldiers, Gibson has managed to write a poem that captures the internal conflict of the individual soldier rather than the outward conflict of the war.

Without the title's suggestion of battle, the poem starts as any other nature poem would, praising the relaxation which is found is natural surroundings, perhaps on a holiday, ironically a much more peaceful type of travel than that of war campaigns.

Apparently, when a person is shot, the first thing they feel is nothing, especially if you do not know that you have been shot. The reactions that we see on TV and film are in fact learnt reactions, from watching people react in such a way. Thus, the narrator talks of a 'tingling' first, and then a 'burning', although these both at first appear to be but the effects of a hot sun on the beach.

The third stanza disrupts the previous two. The ellipsis has led the reader to imagine the narrator as dreaming, perhaps, relaxing as he wishes. But then the 'sudden wrench' changes the perspective, and the title of the poem is remembered, almost with a pang of guilt rom the reader, who has been drawn in by an innocent and happy vision, when they were warned of the dangerous setting before. Even the five-line structure is changed, with four lines suggesting that the end for the narrator has come too soon. The different chiastic rhyme mimics how he is surrounded by 'the dead men', whom he is now to join.

It seems that Gibson is rather good at jolting the reader's attention away from an assumption and into a harsh reality, which I think is one of my favourite things about a poem, or any story.

Robert Frost

I hope you feel lucky that you are being saved the pain of my puns as I refrain from them while I go through the Dymock poets. They wouldn't seem apt somehow.

Robert Frost was an American, who moved to England for a long stay at the age of 38 in 1912. He had not been published for long and so new opportunities arose across the sea. Edward Thomas, who will be the final poet I study in the group, became one of his closest friends, with poems written for him, especially after his traumatic death. Before that, though, he stayed with Abercrombie at one point, when he wrote the following poem:

The Sound of Trees

Related Poem Content Details

I wonder about the trees.

Why do we wish to bear

Forever the noise of these

More than another noise

So close to our dwelling place?

We suffer them by the day

Till we lose all measure of pace,

And fixity in our joys,

And acquire a listening air.

They are that that talks of going

But never gets away;

And that talks no less for knowing,

As it grows wiser and older,

That now it means to stay.

My feet tug at the floor

And my head sways to my shoulder

Sometimes when I watch trees sway,

From the window or the door.

I shall set forth for somewhere,

I shall make the reckless choice

Some day when they are in voice

And tossing so as to scare

The white clouds over them on.

I shall have less to say,

But I shall be gone.

To me, it seems, Frost's travelling nature impresses upon this poem. He perhaps recognises in the trees the wish to get 'going', but the inertia causing him to 'never [get] away'. This is just one of the things that the trees make him 'wonder'; what would it be like to never move? Yes, you might grow 'wiser', but would you be happier for it? Perhaps there is a suggestion that if you fall too deeply in love with one place, or one part of nature, you might never want to leave, which is why he suddenly breaks from the reverie into, 'I shall set forth for somewhere'.
Having taken this approach to the poem, the final line now has a different meaning to when I first read it. Then, I took it as an acknowledgement of human mortality, particularly short in comparison to that of trees, or nature itself. Now I see it more as the promise that he shall not become like a tree entirely, as although he will 'have less to say', like the trees, he will not remain where he perhaps is happy, but will move on again, 'gone' to even better things. For if you never try other places, you will never know where you belong, nor can you be truly grateful for something you have not had the chance to miss.

John Drinkwater

I apologise for my long absence; I had A Level exams which are now completed and so I can focus on what I love most again. One a day from now on until I catch up! I had forgotten I was doing the Dymock poets, and was about to study a Catullus poem or two, but that will have to wait!

So John Drinkwater. He joined the poets when Abercrombie wrote a good review of his poems. He also wrote plays during the period. He became close friends with Robert Brooke, but when he died three years after in 1915, the whole group were saddened, and began to fall apart, as others died too.

The poem I have chosen today seems to fit the nature bill, and is also very apt for today (at least where I live) as summer has not yet arrived, according to the rain clouds.

Late Summer

Though summer long delayeth
 Her blue and golden boon,
Yet now at length she stayeth
 Her wings above the noon;
She sets the waters dreaming
 To murmurous leafy tones,
The weeded waters gleaming
 Above the stepping-stones.

Where fern and ivied willow
 Lean o'er the seaward brook,
I read a volume mellow—
 A poet's fairy-book;
The seaward brook is narrow,
 The hazel spans its pride,
And like a painted arrow
 The king-bird keeps the tide.

This poem casts up images of grey days that for a few lovely moments are dispersed with a gleam of sunshine, lifting the spirits of all who witness. Thus, the poet has personified both 'summer' and the nature affected by it; the waters are 'dreaming', which is an interesting, languid image, perhaps evoking the sleepy feeling of relaxing in the sunshine. The idea that the sun affects the sound of the water is also intriguing. Drinkwater might be implying that our perspective of the world is changed by the weather, for one might listen to the water in a more peaceful vein if relaxed by the sun. Without this, it might sound cold and uninviting, I suppose.

There is also the image of nature mixing. The willow is 'ivied', inventing a perfect participle to make the tree appear matched with the ivy, perhaps as a partner. The adjective 'seaward' denotes the fact that the stream which he sits by leads on to greater things, although it may only be 'narrow' now. This latter adjective is the juxtaposed with the verb 'spans' on the next line, again suggesting summer lets us stretch outside our natural habitats.

The final couplet are a little more of a mystery to me. I am assuming that my literal reading of a bird keeping a tide is not what is intended/ possible, and yet I do not know what the metaphor could imply. I have found that kingbirds are insect- eating birds, and so as it hunts it must appear as an 'arrow'. Perhaps Drinkwater wanted to give the only animal in the poem a little more power over the flora, and so personified it to be in charge of its hunting ground.

Overall, this is an evocative poem, recalling sweet summer days, which we all await through the seasons. The lilting rhythm of the poem (7 syllables, 6 syllables) adds to the relaxed tone, mimicking the timelessness that summer brings.