Verdurous glooms

Today is the anniversary of the death of the poet Keats, who was 25 when he died in 1821. On this day it is traditional to recite “Ode to a Nightingale.”

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South!
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ‘tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?

Keatsian advent calendar

I thought I was flirting with blasphemy in my last entry, but this beats all. Thanks to my Eastern European friend for recommending this devotional practice.

I probably won’t be posting for a while. Merry Christmas, blogosphere!

Righteous are you, O Lord,
and right are your rules.
You have appointed your testimonies in righteousness
and in all faithfulness.
My zeal consumes me,
because my foes forget your words.
Your promise is well tried,
and your servant loves it.
I am small and despised,
yet I do not forget your precepts.
Your righteousness is righteous forever,
and your law is true.
Trouble and anguish have found me out,
but your commandments are my delight.
Your testimonies are righteous forever;
give me understanding that I may live.

Trolleys, bunnies, and Keats

Three inordinate affections of mine in one entry!

The trolley is decked out for Christmas. I have not mastered the art of photographing it, although I try every chance I get. But I think you can at least dimly sense how attractive it is.

About the bunny: the more I think about this adorable creature that will soon share my home, the less I can understand why anyone would ever want any other kind of animal. Bunnies seem to have all the merits and none of the drawbacks of pets in general. My friend cautioned me tonight—after I had mentioned how much I already missed having the bunny, and when I dismissed today’s woes by saying that everything would be better when I got a bunny—that maybe I needed to lower my expectations or risk serious disappointment. All I can say is, be prepared for Christmas cards with photos of me and the bunny next year. Maybe the best way to end one’s annoyance with pet-obsessed people is to become one.

Now I’m going to finally catch up with my reportage of Keatsmas. There’s no way I can write about it without writing about my friend the gorgon. I feel like an imposter, really, when people act like Keats is my specialty, because Medusa is the one who first loved Keats. I enjoy Keats, but I’m sure I’ve never understood him like she did.

Our little group of literature majors studying abroad one summer found no end of amusement at how seriously she took the dead poet. I must admit some embarrassment, some uncertainty about whether to lose track of the rest of the group or leave her behind as she trudged ever more slowly up Hampstead Heath to the house where Keats had stayed in his illness, muttering things like, “I’m not sure I can handle this.” The towering, brooding Greek with her long, dark waves of hair and the five-foot-two-inch Cockney poet, existential status aside, were an odd couple indeed.

Inside I was wholly charmed by her passionate spirit, her determination to care about things. The day we spent at Blenheim Palace—she, I, and the complete poems and letters of Keats that she insisted on reading entirely, no matter what the syllabus said—is one of the most perfect days of my life. I have no idea what I was reading or writing on that grassy bank overlooking the water, but I relished the frequent excerpts and reactions erupting by my side.

I have celebrated the high holy days pretty religiously, reciting “To Autumn” on October 31, his birthday, and eating only bread and water on February 23, the day of his death at 25. I’m pretty good at slavish rituals, even though for the last few years I thought Medusa had moved on. It has occurred to me that in venerating Keats maybe I have really been venerating my dear gorgon. It made me so happy, almost Blenheim-happy, when she e-mailed me this year and said we must celebrate together.

I never let myself have high expectations for Keatsmas—the only time we’ve celebrated it together in person, it went so dreadfully wrong that Medusa has forbidden me to ever speak of it.

This year I had two pleasant Keatsmas experiences. A few days early I recited “To Autumn” in a dugout for the first time, with an intensely poetic friend, someone who recites poetry better than anyone I’ve ever heard, as we gazed at barred clouds across the baseball diamond; and then that evening I recited it via cell phone to the gorgon as she was being rowed to her sailboat in a dinghy off the coast of Massachusetts. I’m sure she had never heard “To Autumn” in a dinghy.

I hate the double-minded,
but I love your law.
You are my hiding place and my shield;
I hope in your word.
Depart from me, you evildoers,
that I may keep the commandments of my God.
Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live,
and let me not be put to shame in my hope!
Hold me up, that I may be safe
and have regard for your statutes continually!
You spurn all who go astray from your statutes,
for their cunning is in vain.
All the wicked of the earth you discard like dross,
therefore I love your testimonies.
My flesh trembles for fear of you,
and I am afraid of your judgments.

Herbsttag

Keatsmas is coming fast, and I’ve been meaning to build up to it with at least one other poem. Here it is:

Herbsttag

Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr gross.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
Und auf den Fluren lass die Winde los.

Befiel den letzten Früchten voll zu sein;
Gib ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage,
Dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
Die letzte Süsse in den schweren Wein.

Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben,
Wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
Und wird in den Alleen hin und her
Unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben.

–Rainer Maria Rilke

Here is my very unscholarly translation. (Feel free to improve it, Scharnhorst!)

Lord: It is time. The summer was enormous.
Lay your shadows along the sundial,
And let the winds loose across the acres.

Tell the last fruits to reach full size;
Give them yet two southerly days,
Bring them to perfection, and chase
The last sweetness in the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house will not build now.
Whoever is alone will stay that way for a long time,
Will wake up, read, write long letters,
And wander up and down the avenues,
Restless, when the leaves follow.

I found an interesting walk-through translation of this poem, in case you’re leery of mine. Of course you lose everything in translation. A particularly problematic line is the first one of the last stanza, which is unforgettable in the German and impossibly awkward in English.

I have no end of admiration for Rilke’s rhythm and beauty of language. I wonder if this poem is something to the Germans like “To Autumn” is to us. It seems likely, and I was delighted to see it on my friend’s German mom’s blog, along with—what joy!—an excellent picture of stubble plains.

Countdown to Keatsmas

As October 31 approaches, I recommend that all aesthetes memorize “To Autumn.” It’s a life-strengthening task, a sense-thickening feat, a time-enriching devotion. I can still remember how it felt to exist the morning I began to memorize it. I spent an hour or two in the periodicals section of Buswell Library, not the most picturesque location in the world, but the one that consistently won the Record’s award for “best chairs to sleep in” on campus. There are windows in that part of Buswell, and the light elated me as I half-drowsed and drank in the words of that great, ambitious, lively poet of indolence.

Every year I have found a willing or quasi-willing audience for a recitation of this poem. More often than not this weird birthday celebration is disappointing and humiliating for me. But I still recommend the memorization experience for everyone, whether anyone ever cares to listen to you or not. There is no doubt that you will be the happier for learning this poem.

1.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,*
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

* The picture above is the closest thing I have to a picture of barred clouds. Usually the venue for a Keatsmas recitation is selected for the presence of stubble plains, or at least an open sky upon which to observe said clouds. In the absence of stubble plains, a lake makes a very pleasant setting.