October 7, 2020

I have copied various poems and statements that I plan to reflect on both to think about our place and how our living with the changes our living altered our being and our eventual end plays a part in our living. I have given the reader some commentary that may enhance the poems and statements presented. I hope you find them moving in your life as I do.

My cartoon is clearly myself with all my hubris!

Leonard

Emily Dickinson’s ‘This World is not Conclusion’

‘This World is not Conclusion’ is poem number 501 in Emily Dickinson’s Complete Poems. According to the best editorial guess, the poem was written in around 1862. ‘This World is not Conclusion’ sees Emily Dickinson exploring and analysing our attitudes to death and what awaits us beyond.

This World is not Conclusion.
A Species stands beyond –
Invisible, as Music –
But positive, as Sound –
It beckons, and it baffles –
Philosophy – don’t know –
And through a Riddle, at the last –
Sagacity, must go –
To guess it, puzzles scholars –
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown –
Faith slips – and laughs, and rallies –
Blushes, if any see –
Plucks at a twig of Evidence –
And asks a Vane, the way –
Much Gesture, from the Pulpit –
Strong Hallelujahs roll –
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul –

https://interestingliterature.com/2017/08/a-short-analysis-of-emily-dickinsons-this-world-is-not-conclusion/

Emily Dickinson (1830–86).  Complete Poems.  1924.

Part One: Life CXVI

I MEASURE every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.
I wonder if they bore it long,	5
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.
I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,	10
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.
I wonder if when years have piled—
Some thousands—on the cause
Of early hurt, if such a lapse	15
Could give them any pause;
Or would they go on aching still
Through centuries above,
Enlightened to a larger pain
By contrast with the love.	20
The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies,—
Death is but one and comes but once,
And only nails the eyes.
There ’s grief of want, and grief of cold,—	25
A sort they call “despair”;
There ’s banishment from native eyes,
In sight of native air.
And though I may not guess the kind
Correctly, yet to me	30
A piercing comfort it affords
In passing Calvary,
To note the fashions of the cross,
Of those that stand alone,
Still fascinated to presume	35
That some are like my own. https://www.bartleby.com/113/1116.html

"God, he says, either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able. If He is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? Or why does He not remove them?" Epicurus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus

The Second Coming 

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming

Adam's Curse

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

We sat together at one summer’s end,

That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,   

And you and I, and talked of poetry.

I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,   

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.   

Better go down upon your marrow-bones   

And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones   

Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;   

For to articulate sweet sounds together

Is to work harder than all these, and yet   

Be thought an idler by the noisy set

Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen   

The martyrs call the world.’

                                          And thereupon

That beautiful mild woman for whose sake   

There’s many a one shall find out all heartache   

On finding that her voice is sweet and low   

Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—

Although they do not talk of it at school—

That we must labour to be beautiful.’

I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing   

Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.

There have been lovers who thought love should be   

So much compounded of high courtesy   

That they would sigh and quote with learned looks   

Precedents out of beautiful old books;   

Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;   

We saw the last embers of daylight die,   

And in the trembling blue-green of the sky   

A moon, worn as if it had been a shell   

Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell   

About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:   

That you were beautiful, and that I strove   

To love you in the old high way of love;

That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown   

As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43285/adams-curse

Easter, 1916

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I have met them at close of day   

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey   

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head   

Or polite meaningless words,   

Or have lingered awhile and said   

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done   

Of a mocking tale or a gibe   

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,   

Being certain that they and I   

But lived where motley is worn:   

All changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent   

In ignorant good-will,

Her nights in argument

Until her voice grew shrill.

What voice more sweet than hers   

When, young and beautiful,   

She rode to harriers?

This man had kept a school   

And rode our wingèd horse;   

This other his helper and friend   

Was coming into his force;

He might have won fame in the end,   

So sensitive his nature seemed,   

So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart,   

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,   

Transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone   

Through summer and winter seem   

Enchanted to a stone

To trouble the living stream.

The horse that comes from the road,   

The rider, the birds that range   

From cloud to tumbling cloud,   

Minute by minute they change;   

A shadow of cloud on the stream   

Changes minute by minute;   

A horse-hoof slides on the brim,   

And a horse plashes within it;   

The long-legged moor-hens dive,   

And hens to moor-cocks call;   

Minute by minute they live:   

The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.   

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven's part, our part   

To murmur name upon name,   

As a mother names her child   

When sleep at last has come   

On limbs that had run wild.   

What is it but nightfall?

No, no, not night but death;   

Was it needless death after all?

For England may keep faith   

For all that is done and said.   

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;   

And what if excess of love   

Bewildered them till they died?   

I write it out in a verse—

MacDonagh and MacBride   

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

September 25, 1916

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43289/easter-1916

The “change” was the Easter Rising (or Easter Rebellion of 1916) of around a thousand Irish Republicans who wanted to secede from Great Britain and establish an independent Ireland. The insurrection was put down less than a week later, and many of its leaders were swiftly executed by firing squad. Although the original rebellion did not enjoy wide support among the general populace, the ruthlessness of the British response unnerved the Irish and led to the growth of the ultranationalist group Sinn Féin. “I had no idea that any public event could so deeply move me,” Yeats said, months later. In the wake of the courts-martial and executions of May 1916, he wrote to Lady Gregory that he was “trying to write a poem.” His simultaneous awe of and ambivalence toward the event are clearly coded in the both title and refrain. The Easter Rising is a double entendre on the holiday; the “terrible beauty” was “born” during Holy Week, which marks the occasion of Christ’s sacrifice. Hence, the Easter Rising is simultaneously crucifixion and resurrection, reality and archetype.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70114/william-butler-yeats-easter-1916

No Man Is An Island by John Donne

on 09/27/2020 with NO COMMENTS

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

"The passage above from Meditation XVII is one of Donne's most famous metaphysical conceits A conceit is a very elaborate and extended metaphor or comparison. The metaphysical poets, of whom Donne is probably the most famous, loved using these very elaborate, ornate, and unusual, shocking comparisons to make their points. In this passage, Donne is saying that all of humanity is connected. He is saying that no one is isolated from the rest of humanity; no one is separate from the "continent" of mankind; therefore, if one person dies, all of humanity is affected, even made less. He uses the comparison with an island because an island is separate from the main continents. He says that "[n]o man is an island" to convey the idea that none of us humans is alone in the world. We are not islands; we are part of the continent, which means we are connected. He goes on with his comparison and says that, just like when a piece of a continent, a "clod" washes away and makes the continent smaller, any death of any person makes the whole of humanity smaller. We lose something of ourselves because we are all connected. So, he says, when the bell tolls (which is the signal for a funeral or death), don't ask who the bell is for--it is for you, because you are part of the great continent of man, which is now smaller since one of it's members (or clods) has been taken away."

https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/meditation-17-donne-says-no-man-an-island-what-3264

Sylvia Plath – Bitter Strawberries

on 09/14/2020 with NO COMMENTS

All morning in the strawberry field
They talked about the Russians.
Squatted down between the rows
We listened.
We heard the head woman say,
‘Bomb them off the map.’

Horseflies buzzed, paused and stung.
And the taste of strawberries
Turned thick and sour.

Mary said slowly, ‘I’ve got a fella
Old enough to go.
If anything should happen…’

The sky was high and blue.
Two children laughed at tag
In the tall grass,
Leaping awkward and long-legged
Across the rutted road.
The fields were full of bronzed young men
Hoeing lettuce, weeding celery.

‘The draft is passed,’ the woman said.
‘We ought to have bombed them long ago.’
‘Don’t,’ pleaded the little girl
With blond braids.

Her blue eyes swam with vague terror.
She added petishly, ‘I can’t see why
You’re always talking this way…’
‘Oh, stop worrying, Nelda,’
Snapped the woman sharply.
She stood up, a thin commanding figure
In faded dungarees.
Businesslike she asked us, ‘How many quarts?’
She recorded the total in her notebook,
And we all turned back to picking.

Kneeling over the rows,
We reached among the leaves
With quick practiced hands,
Cupping the berry protectively before
Snapping off the stem
Between thumb and forefinger.

https://www.poetrygrrrl.com/sylvia-plath-bitter-strawberries/

Sonnet 30: When To The Sessions Of Sweet Silent Thought by William Shakespeare

on 09/13/2020 with NO COMMENTS

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.

Sonnet 30: Translation to modern English

When I summons the remembrance of past things to the court of sweet silent thought I regret not having achieved many of the things I strived for, and I add new tears to the old griefs, crying about the waste of my valuable time. It is then that I can drown my eyes, which don’t often flow, thinking about precious friends who are dead; and weep all over again for love that has lost its pain long ago; and cry over many a sight I’ll never see again. At those times I’m able to cry over sorrows I’ve long ago let go of, and sadly count them one by one, and feel them all over again, as though I hadn’t suffered their pain before. But if, while doing that, I think about you, my dear friend, all those losses are restored and my pain ends.

https://www.poetrygrrrl.com/sonnet-30-when-to-the-sessions-of-sweet-silent-thought-by-william-shakespeare/