Whatever

Please forgive me, but I wish to post another of my own poems called, "Whatever".

This is intense imperfect.

Only when what thing is in me is in truth identified, and when that thing in me is true in and of itself, and if its definition in linguistic expression merits universal agreement, may I entreat my love to respond to the thing with her always virtuous purpose.

Whatever

Whatever is beautiful in me, sense it.
Whatever is truthful in me, believe it.
Whatever is wild in me, tame it.
Whatever is a dream in me, be in it.
Whatever is generous in me, receive it.
Whatever is fi nal in me, remember it.
Whatever is trite in me, embellish it.
Whatever is a cliché in me, find newness in it.
Whatever is noble in me, use it.
Whatever is eternal in me, be it.
Whatever is thoughtful in me, debate it.
Whatever is kind in me, embrace it.
Whatever is first in me, move ahead of it.
Whatever is blind in me, teach it.
Whatever is jealous in me, destroy it.
Whatever is bold in me, temper it.
Whatever is deaf in me, sign to it.
Whatever is language in me, understand it.
Whatever is a song in me, listen to it.
Whatever is dead in me, bury it.
Whatever is moral in me, test it.
Whatever is lost in me, find it.
Whatever is a question in me, answer it.
Whatever is fear in me, make me face it.
Whatever is needed in me, fulfill it.
Whatever is blasé in me about the wonder of the universe, show me the wonder of it.
Whatever is stubborn in me, let me let go of it.
Whatever is mystery in me, let me keep it.
Whatever is taut in me, loosen it.
Whatever is poison in me, neutralize it.
Whatever is impulsive in me, quiet it.
Whatever is lazy in me, stimulate it.
Whatever is hatred in me, excise it.
Whatever is false in me, let truth cleanse it.
Whatever is didactic in me, show me new ways to do it.
Whatever is gluttonous in me, starve it.
Whatever is covetous in me, chasten it.
Whatever is forgetful in me, remind it.
Whatever dwells in the past in me, bring the present to it.
Whatever lives in the future in me, show the present to it.
Whatever you don't want in me, tell me it.
Whatever is excessive in me, make it simple.
Whatever it is that you see in me, thank you for it.
Whatever are lips in me, kiss them.
Whatever is beating in me, it is yours.
Whatever is love in me, it is you.

A Sonnet for Friday

It is with trepidation that I post a sonnet of my own. It is Friday and I guess we can dress down.

I just heard a reading of a Shakespeare sonnet (116) by two college girls that they put to their own piano music. The music was innocently sweet and this just got into me as long as the music played. So I typed it out and here I'll move on.

Life's your fate's finger being burned by flames.
Life is reading a sonnet that crushes
Your heart of all life that's never the same
Again when you've kissed and caused her blushes
That rush throughout all your crazy love songs
You saved for her though you never met yet.
And the guitar strings break when your heart longs
To bring her to linger like you first met.
The harmony screams louder now, sweet pain --
Dreaming doesn't assuage the intensity
Of knowing you'll never see her again
Because you once lost love's faith's density.

There's no room in the heart at all for doubt --
Think about what love's really all about.

The Lunar Eclipse

Last evening I was so fortunate to witness two rare events, a lunar eclipse and a crystal clear night in New York City where a fair number of celestial objects were visible. In a way the moon, turning red when the earth's shadow had waxed to a totality over her, transfixed the earth with her beauty.

Great poets have celebrated the beauty of the moon and her goddesses. The most ambitious of these certainly was the epic, "Endymion", by John Keats. The opening lines are justly famous. Here is the first stanza from
Book I:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darken'd ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

Here is Emily Dickinson's homage to the moon:

The moon was but a chin of gold
A night or two ago,
And now she turns her perfect face
Upon the world below.
Her forehead is of amplest blond;
Her cheek like beryl stone;
Her eye unto the summer dew
The likest I have known.
Her lips of amber never part;
But what must be the smile
Upon her friend she could bestow
Were such her silver will!
And what a privilege to be
But the remotest star!
For certainly her way might pass
Beside your twinkling door.
Her bonnet is the firmament,
The universe her shoe,
The stars the trinkets at her belt,
Her dimities of blue.

And William Wordsworth wrote a sonnet to this celestial majesty:

Who but is pleased to watch the moon on high
Travelling where she from time to time enshrouds
Her head, and nothing loth her Majesty
Renounces, till among the scattered clouds
One with its kindling edge declares that soon
Will reappear before the uplifted eye
A Form as bright, as beautiful a moon,
To glide in open prospect through clear sky.
Pity that such a promise e'er should prove
False in the issue, that yon seeming space
Of sky should be in truth the stedfast face
Of a cloud flat and dense, through which must move
(By transit not unlike man's frequent doom)
The Wanderer lost in more determined gloom.

And here are the lyrics by Lorenz Hart, (music by Richard Rodgers) to the popular song, "Blue Moon":

Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own

Blue Moon, you knew just what I was there for
You heard me saying a prayer for
Someone I really could care for

And then there suddenly appeared before me
The only one my arms will ever hold
I heard somebody whisper, "Please adore me"
And when I looked, the moon had turned to gold

Blue Moon, now I'm no longer alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own

So, while we wait again for that "once in a blue moon" event, a total lunar eclipse, we can always celebrate the moon's mystery in verse.

John Keats' Sonnet on Hero and Leander

Today, I am happy to present a sonnet that John Keats composed upon receiving a painting on the Hero and Leander myth from Mrs. John Hamilton Reynolds. I find the final couplet quite striking and sad with Leander's last amorous breath in bubbles escaping from the cold waters.

“On a Picture of Leander"

Come hither all sweet maidens soberly,
Down looking aye, and with a chasten’d light
Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white,
And meekly let your fair hands joined be,
As if so gentle that ye could not see,
Untouch’d, a victim of your beauty bright,
Sinking away to his young spirit’s night,
Sinking bewilder’d ’mid the dreary sea.
’T is young Leander toiling to his death.
Nigh swooning he doth purse his weary lips
For Hero’s cheek, and smiles against her smile.
O horrid dream! see how his body dips
Dead-heavy; arms and shoulders gleam awhile;
He’s gone; up bubbles all his amorous breath!”

The Beginning of Hero and Leander

I write today of my love of the mythical story of Hero and Leander, a tale having roots in Ovid and in a work by Musaeus Grammaticus writing in Greek sometime in the fifth century of our era. The "beginning" marks only this, my own start, to a series on the literature of this love legend.

Hero, a priestess to Venus, is sublimely beautiful, who had maintained her chaste ways until Leander challenged her sacred virginity. Hero and Leander lived in towns on opposite sides of the Hellespont, the strait that separates the seas of the Aegean and the Black. Leander fell deeply in love with Hero and, each day after dusk fell, he swam to Hero's tower to be with his beloved every night of a glorious summer. Hero had lit a lamp that shone light in the night like a lighthouse to guide Leander's arduous swim to her side. Winter brought rough seas and Hero's lamp still shone for Leander, but the wind blew out her light and Leander lost his way and drowned, his body washing ashore at the foot of her tower. When she saw his lifeless form strewn on the rocks, she tore off her clothing and leapt to her death beside her one true love.

The legend of Hero and Leander flowed like sweet nectar from the quill of Christopher Marlowe, the great Elizabethan playwright and poet, who fashioned perhaps the finest epyllion (an epic poem of short length) ever written, which was published after his tragic death at the hands of a murderer. Alas, Marlowe did not complete "Hero and Leander"; so what we have is a fragment, which I will have something to say in a future blog. Marlowes' great poem has been often compared and contrasted with Shakespeare's great work of the same genre, "Venus and Adonis".

For now I would like to post two poems relevant to this love legend. The first is by Musaeus Grammaticus, translated by John Addington Symonds in 1879. The second is by George Gordon, Lord Byron, who swam the Hellespont in 1810, not for love, but for glory.

Hero and Leander

Tell, goddess, of the lamp, which was the confidant of secret loving, and of the youth who swam by night to wed across the sea; and of his dark marriage upon which no dawn ever shone.
Sestus and Abydus are divided by the sea, but Eros united them with an arrow which struck the fair Hero and Leander. Leander lived at Abydus, and Hero at Sestus, where she dwelt in a tower outside the town with one old servant. Hero ministered to Aphrodite and to her son Eros. Yet even so she did not avoid the boy's shafts, for at a festival of Adonis she met Leander, and they fell in love with one another. In the early evening twilight they stood like beautiful shapes carved upon a relief, and Hero listened to Leander's pleas, and was persuaded. She told him of her home, and he vowed to swim to her by night; she must light a lamp to guide his journey.
They prayed for night to fall, and when it was dark and the lamp shone out, he came to her.
His skin she bathed, and anointed his body fragrantly
With oil of roses, to take away the harsh tang of the sea;
Then in her bed, piled deep with rugs, laid him to rest,
Still breathing hard, and drew him with fond words to her breast-
"Ah love so sorely tried as never lover yet,
O dear and sore-tried love, the bitter waves forget !
Forget the booming breakers, the harsh, fish-reeking brine,
And rest thy weary body within these arms of mine !"
He hearkened, then her girdle he loosened, and the will
Of glorious-hearted Cypris they turned them to fulfil.
A bridal it was where no man danced; no voice of minstrel praised
Hera, Queen of Wedlock; no marriage-hymn was raised.
Round that marriage-bed no torches filled the night with flame,
No revellers light-footed whirling about them came,
Their bridal-song no father and well-loved mother led-
Nay, in Love's crowning hour 'twas Silence strewed their bed
And shut their marriage-chamber;'twas Darkness decked the bride,
And night that gave them blessing.
And so they made love through many summer nights.
But when winter came, and the sea grew stormy, Hero ought to have refrained from lighting her lamp. Yet love and destiny compelled her, and the fatal night arrived. Leander struggled with the waves, but his strength failed him- and Hero's lamp was blown out by the wind. When the grey morning dawned, he still had not reached her tower.
Everywhere over the sea's wide plains with straining eyes
She searched for sight of him, lest perchance his way was lost
When the light of her lamp was gone. And when she saw him dead,
Torm by the rocks and lying at her tower's foundation,
About her breast she tore the wondrous woven mantle
And from the sheer crag plunged in hurtling headlong fall
To find with her dead love a death among the waves
And the joy of love together in life's last separation.

Now here is Byron's poem on his triumphal swim across the storied strait.

If, in the month of dark December,
Leander, who was nightly wont
(What maid will not the tale remember?)
To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont!
If, when the wintry tempest roared,
He sped to Hero, nothing loath,
And thus of old thy current poured,
Fair Venus! how I pity both!
For me, degenerate modern wretch,
Though in the genial month of May,
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
And think I've done a feat today.
But since he crossed the rapid tide,
According to the doubtful story,
To woo -and -Lord knows what beside,
And swam for Love, as I for Glory;
'Twere hard to say who fared the best:
Sad mortals! thus the gods still plague you!
He lost his labour, I my jest;
For he was drowned, and I've the ague.

Here are links to the above two works:
http://www.nzscribble.net/ancmusaeus.html
http://www.thewordtravels.com/byrononswimmingthehellespont.html

Quantum Theory In The Elizabethan Age?

Funny how quantum theory and particle annihilation can have in some way been thought about by Elizabethan poets. Yet, strange as it may seem, two poets of the golden age, Sir Philip Sidney and William Shakespeare, may have had these seemingly paradoxical thoughts. Were they ahead of their time? Did they have a crystal ball?

Let's see two of the sonnets that contain the paradoxes.

Here is Sir Philip Sidney's Sonnet 60 from the series "Astrophel and Stella":

When my good Angell guides me to the place
Where all my good I doe in Stella see,
That heau'n of ioyes throwes onely downe on me
Thundring disdaines and lightnings of disgrace;
But when the ruggedst step of Fortunes race
Makes me fall from her sight, then sweetly she,
With words wherein the Muses treasures be,
Shewes loue and pitie to my absent case.
Now I, wit-beaten long by hardest fate,
So dull am, that I cannot looke into
The ground of this fierce loue and louely hate.
Then, some good body, tell me how I do,
Whose presence absence, absence presence is;
Blest in my curse, and cursed in my blisse.

Here now is Shakespeare's Sonnet 45:

The other two, slight air, and purging fire,
Are both with thee, wherever I abide,
The first my thought, the other my desire,
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
For when these quicker elements are gone
In tender embassy of love to thee,
My life being made of four, with two alone,
Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy.
Until life's composition be recured,
By those swift messengers returned from thee,
Who even but now come back again assured,
Of thy fair health, recounting it to me.
This told, I joy, but then no longer glad,
I send them back again and straight grow sad.

Sidney, in line thirteen uses, "presence absence, absence presence", which refers to a this love - hate he feels simultaneously -- there and not there, perhaps at the same time. Shakespeare in line four uses, "present-absent," which is a paradox. Shakespeare seems to be saying that thought and desire are both present and absent at once.
Maybe they were just playing with words and not with an incredible idea akin to something being a wave and a particle at the same time a la quantum theory. If there is the presence of absence, then, whatever the subject may be, it is not there. Absence presence could mean the subject is not there -- an absence of presence!

I have no idea of course, but I do wonder what they were really thinking.

And there is another possible meaning for the use of present-absent (Shakespeare) and presence absence (Sidney) and that is that the appearance and disappearance of the entities referred occurred so quickly that they seemed to be and not to be simultaneously. Hah, that makes me think of Hamlet's puzzling "to be or not to be" query ... It seems as though Shakespeare was really caught up in all of this being and non-being stuff. I guess we all are.


Here are the links for these sonnets:

Sir Philip Sidney http://www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/stella.html
William Shakespeare http://poetry.eserver.org/sonnets/045.html

Welcome

Welcome to my blog, "The Angel's Quill", which shall be an effort, hopefully inspired from above, to wax upon all things in poetry and prose literature. In a larger sense, there will sometimes appear a commentary on the arts and humanities.

Here I shall post poems, including some of my own, and stories and anecdotes about the art and craft of this sacred place where the Muses gather as they always have and always will. There may be as well posts related to the theory of this poetry art culled from various sources, scholarly and otherwise. From time to time, there will be posts on short stories, novels and about the writers who graced pages with their wondrous prose.

For the sake of form and function, all works that I post here are copyright © 2008 by doctormate (my pseudonym). Thank you.

I thought it would be well to begin with a poem by Sappho, The Tenth Muse. She was born sometime between 630 an 612 B.C. Sappho was a great Greek "lyrist" who composed lyrical verses to be accompanied by a musical instrument called the lyre. Interestingly, woefully, only one of her complete poems exist, the rest being extant only in fragments ...

I have not had one word from her

Frankly I wish I were dead
When she left, she wept

a great deal; she said to me, "This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly."

I said, "Go, and be happy
but remember (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love

"If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared

"all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck

"myrrh poured on your head
and on soft mats girls with
all that they most wished for beside them

"while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no woodlot bloomed in spring without song..."

--Translated by Mary Barnard