Auden on Yeats

In January 1939 William Butler Yeats died. The New Times ran an obituary acknowledging Yeats’s death, noting that “it will be for his verse that posterity will remember him.” One such remembrance was published by English poet W. H. Auden (1907-1973) in 1940, In Memory of W. B. Yeats in 1940. His elegy considers the nature of death, the enduring effect of poetry, and the poet’s relationship to society.

        In Memory of W. B. Yeats
                             I

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

 

II

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.

 

III

Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

The poem is organized into three sections. Part 1, stanza 1 offers a matter of fact, detached tone. The lines unfold with “cold,” meteorological precision and facts—"dead of winter”, “brooks were frozen.” At first glance, Auden’s language suggests the world’s indifference to Yeats’s death, but when taken together with the images of the “snow disfigured the public statues,” the “mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day” and the personification of “What instruments we have agree / The day of his death was a dark cold day”, the seeming indifference of the world recedes behind stringently potent and poignant loss and grief.

The rest of Part I meanders through nature, Yeats’s body and mind, cities, and finally the future. Somewhere far from his hospital room, nature continued as “wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,” and “The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays”. While the natural course of life and death proceeded, as the “provinces of his body revolted,” elsewhere the poet’s poetry escaped mortality: “By mourning tongues / The death of the poet was kept from his poems.” The death of the poet frees his poetry from the singular authority of the man, and “he became his admirers.”

In stanza 4, Auden continues to view Yeats’s poetry extracted from his personality and his poetic reputation and legacy “scattered among a hundred cities” as it is read and judged for its worth by “a foreign code of conscience” and “modified in the guts of the living.” He then imagines in the next stanza that Yeats’s death will go unnoticed in the “importance and noise of tomorrow,” and by the millions who will chase riches, endure “sufferings,” and “convince” themselves of their “freedom.” Apart from those indifferent many, a “few thousand will think of this day / As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.” This understatement muffles grief and the last two lines of the stanza bring us back to stanza 1 and the “dark cold” void that Yeats’s death leaves Auden with: “What instruments we have agree / The day of his death was a dark cold day.”

In the shorter section Part II of the poem, Auden shifts his perspective, adopts a familiar tone with the second personal pronoun “You.” He tells us Yeats was “silly like us,” like Auden and other poets—overly sensitive, introspective, imaginative, and declares Yeats’s “gift,” (poetry) will “survive” his mortality. He sums up the grist for Yeats’s poetic imagination— “the parish of rich women, physical decay, / Yourself mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.” Auden then poses the paradoxical effect poetry possesses: “Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, / For poetry makes nothing happen.” The four words, “poetry makes nothing happen,” are often quoted to argue the uselessness of poetry. But the lines that follow hinge on the verb “survives,” drawing out the true value of poetry’s numinous resonance in the human imagination, an art that endures through time. The poet dies, but Poetry is imperishable.

Part III, Auden assumes the tone of formal elegy, in which he changes the structure into a brief, lamenting address inviting the “Earth” to “receive an honored guest; / William Yeats is laid to rest; / Let the Irish vessel lie / Emptied of its poetry.” Then he shifts ominously to the political reality confronting Europe as Hitler’s armies began it conquest of the continent:

Earth, receive an honored guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.                                                                                               

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate; 

As Auden is writing his tribute in February 1939, with World War II approaching fast, he asks for Yeats’s poems to “persuade” humanity “to rejoice” in spite of the dark political time.  His request is a tenuous cry for the honesty of art to enable men to confront the “Intellectual disgrace,” that has permitted the rise of fascism. Of course, his entreaty could never forestall what was coming. However, his desire for Yeats’s poetry to “Sing of human unsuccess / In a rapture of distress;” and to “Teach the free man how to praise” should continue to call to us today, that within poetry (especially Yeats’s), there is possibility for human being to find hope for the future if we allow poetry to enter our lives.

Claude and Yeats

It seems that a week cannot pass without some story in the news that expresses concern about Artificial Intelligence. Yesterday 8/8/26, an essay in The Guardian by Kathrine Rundell, “Why I Hate What A.I. Is Doing to The Mind and Happiness of The Young” describes the harm A.I. is already inflicting on students in schools and universities. Her opening paragraph highlights the political danger this innovation could impose:

“If you set out to design from scratch a tool to facilitate authoritarian rule, it would look exactly like AI. You would cherish it for its ability to destabilise our shared reality and its creation of disinformation on a scale unprecedented in human history. With it you need no armies of typists and artists to spread your propaganda. It can enable mass surveillance and thereby put shackles on those who seek to resist you. Its lethal autonomous weapons systems can perfect and normalise remote killing. It will turbocharge inequality; it is already facilitating a breathtaking shift of power and wealth from the hands of the many to the hands of a tiny number of men who – to put it in terms for which I can’t be sued – seem to hold dangerously damaged views about the value and dignity of human life”

The claims she makes are not hyperbole or new. In 2023, Elon Musk stated that A.I. “has the potential of civilization destruction” and called for a six month pause in its development. Musk has modified his view and believes A.I. will likely lead to economic abundance and unlimited leisure time for humanity. So, even if A.I. might pose a risk, it also could offer untold benefits and therefore his “message” is one of optimism. But Rundell’s persuasive argument, along with an MIT study citing the risks from A.I., articles reporting A.I. escaping human control, and the godfather of A.I. Geoffrey Hinton warning that A.I. could lead to human extinction, should wake up everyone to the danger that might be approaching.

One A.I. investor has assured the world that not only are fears about A.I. overblown, but A.I. will be the greatest benefit humanity has ever experienced. In his June 6, 2023, post, venture capitalist and former software engineer Marc Andressenn of Silicon Valley dismisses the notion that Artificial Intelligence poses any threat and proclaims that it will save the world:

“The era of Artificial Intelligence is here, and boy are people freaking out.

Fortunately, I am here to bring the good news: AI will not destroy the world, and in fact may save it.”

Judging from the evangelical enthusiasm of his opening sentences, Andreessen comes across as a true believer in the beneficial potential of A.I. In fact, he offers with prophetic confidence several examples of what A.I. has in store for us. Two such examples are:

“Every child will have an AI tutor that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely helpful. The AI tutor will be by each child’s side every step of their [sic] development, helping them maximize their potential with the machine version of infinite love.”

“Every person will have an AI assistant/coach/mentor/trainer/advisor/therapist that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, and infinitely helpful. The AI assistant will be present through all of life’s opportunities and challenges, maximizing every person’s outcomes.”

This vision is utopian fantasy and quite creepy.

Will Artificial Intelligence bring on the apocalypse as predicted by the very men who created it? Or will it usher in the Edenic abundance Musk thinks it will?

A poem that is too frequently exploited to prophesy apocalyptic visions but, in this case, apropos to what might be coming is Yeats’s The Second Coming.

              The Second Coming

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?

“The Second Coming” was written in1919. On Yeats’s mind at the time was the horrific slaughter of WW I, the murderous violence of the Russian Revolution and the indiscriminate bloodshed of the Irish war for independence. These events and Yeats’s curious philosophy regarding the cycles of human history forged in his imagination the imagery and symbolism of the poem. The first line, “Turning and turning in a widening gyre” introduces the symbolic cone shaped figure that depicts the geometric rendering of Yeats’s vision of historical epochs. Yeats viewed the course of history as two interpenetrating “gyres”—cones:

Each one symbolizes a two-thousand-year epoch of human history. As the twentieth century moved forward, Yeats believed that the two-thousand-year Christian cycle was ending and its opposite or antithetical historical period was beginning. Though Yeats knew the history of the Christian era was particularly bloody, he felt the era about to supersede it was even more terrifying.

The terrifying reality foreseen is laid out in the poem in two distinct stanzas, the first eight lines long and the second fourteen. After the symbolic gyre in stanza 1, Yeats introduces in line 2 a metaphor suggesting loss of control: “The falcon cannot hear the falconer.” Then, a succession of metaphors follows that, though frightening, seem rather abstract:

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.   

These abstract metaphors quickly give way to the menacing images that rise up in the next fourteen lines. And the speaker slides from an objective tone to a subjective, personal one. Lines 9, 10 and 11 pulsate with fear as Yeats repeats words and phrases:

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming!

That fear is manifestly justified “When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi / Troubles my sight.” “Spiritus Mundi” is ‘spirit of the world’ an idea of the collective soul and cultural memories from all societies. From this storehouse of memories comes not the return of Christ; instead, “A shape with lion body and the head of a man, / A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun” appears. This image of a sphinx, dormant for “twenty centuries of stony sleep,” is a beast coming to replace the Christian God. The image suggests a return of pagan gods, perhaps Egyptian ones. But Yeats obscures what it is by ending the poem with a question:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

All he knows, “but now I know,” is “some rough beat” that will no doubt endanger humanity is approaching and there is nothing that can stop its progress. The same can be said for A.I. As for the A.I. cheerleaders above, they should read carefully and consider Yeats's awesome poem.

Milton "On His Blindness"

 John Milton (1608-1674) believed from an early age that he would become a great poet. He graduated from Cambridge University in 1629 and afterward continued to study for six year and travel through Europe to enhance his poetic ambition. He had written several shorter poems of exceptional quality by 1650 but had not yet written his great epic Paradise Lost, the poem that would elevate him in the canon of world literature alongside the greatest poets of western civilization. He also wrote many essays on such subjects as the freedom of the press, the monarchy, and the Church of England. However, by 1652 Milton had become completely blind. With the assistance of his daughters and scribes, he would overcome this handicap years later with their help, but before he did, he wondered how God could expect him to perform this one special talent given to him by the Almighty. In his poem, When I consider how my light is spent, Milton ponders the justice of being given this “talent” by God but being rendered incapable of fulfilling it:

When I consider how my light is spent

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere have my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged within me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask.  But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state
Is kingly.  Thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and oceans without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."

The reader should notice at the outset that Milton’s poem is a Petrarchan sonnet. This sonnet form presents an issue or problem in the first eight lines (the octave), then in line 9 of a Petrarchan sonnet begins the sestet which turns from problem to resolution. In the octave, Milton considers that since he is now blind, “my light is spent,” and “that one talent which is death to hide” is “lodged within me useless,” how can he be expected to “present / My true account,” fulfill his “one talent which is death to hide”? As we read through these lines, we sense an anger surfacing through the words. It is not only that he has suffered a terrible affliction, but that affliction struck him before half his life was over and, more importantly, before he achieved his ambition to compose truly great poetry: “Ere half my days in this dark world and wide.” Now God will “chide” him for his failure even though the means of employing “that one talent” has been stolen from him. And so, he asks, “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”

As a faithful Puritan, Milton knows his duty is to accept whatever challenges or adversities God sends his way. So, in the sestet, Milton offers a resolution. Or seems to. The resolution actually begins prematurely in the middle of line 8 when “Patience” cautions him: “But Patience, to prevent / That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need / Either man’s work or his own gifts[.]” In these lines, you again might hear resentment as the words of the octave still linger in one’s mind. If God does not need man’s “gifts,” then why would he “chide” him when man becomes bereft of the capacity to offer them up to him. They are followed by Patience’s admonition that he who bears “his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state / Is kingly.” The word “mild” strikes the reader as ironic and the clause “his state / Is kingly” as excessively compensatory. The sestet ends with a balanced, philosophical definition of true service to God:

...Thousands at his bidding speed,
and post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait

Given Milton’s condition, it seems that he could not do much more than become inactive and “stand and wait” though waiting and enduring idly someone such as Milton could withstand. The sonnet suggests that may not be the case, especially when the reader recalls the present verb tenses in the poem, which denote that Milton questioning of God is not a statement from the past but one that is regularly repeated, “When I consider (each time) and that the words “one talent which is death to hide” alludes to the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30 in which a servant is punished for not employing the “talents” his master had given him: “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

At 43 years old and blind, Milton peered into the future and “saw” a bleak, unproductive time after which he would be harshly judged by God for idly awaiting the end of his life. He must have been despondent and terrified with what he believed awaited him. Fortunately for him and us, there were those who not only believed in his prodigious talent but also were able to wait patiently, listen to his dictation and transcribe his words for posterity. Some might assert that this sonnet demonstrates Milton’s unshakeable faith and patient submission to God’s will. I did when I first read the poem many years ago, but these days I also hear anger and impatience rising from the page.

Wordsworth Westminster Bridge

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was a poet profoundly affected by nature. He was not only struck by its beauty, but also felt a deep, spiritual presence permeating trees, hills, valleys and rivers which one’s imagination could possess and later experience as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions recollected in tranquility.” For him, nature was a divine teacher through which human beings could attain a deep moral communion as he demonstrates in these lines from his poem Tintern Abbey.

                                 These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: — feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened: — that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on, —
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
                                                    (23-49)

Living on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, Wordsworth saw the incipient damage and dislocation the Revolution was having on society. London was becoming intensely urbanized as the population exploded and factories expanded across the city. From Tintern Abbey, one might sense that he clearly would prefer to live beyond the “din” of city life and reside in the quiet rural countryside surrounded by nature. He reinforces this notion in the opening of his epic, autobiographical poem The Prelude (1805), when he greets nature’s “gentle breeze” as he escapes the confines of the city:

Book First Introduction:
Childhood and School-time

OH, there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
That blows from the green fields and from the clouds
And from the sky; it beats against my cheek,
And seems half conscious of the joy it gives.
O welcome messenger! O welcome friend!
A captive greets thee, coming from a house
Of bondage, from yon city’s walls set free,
A prison where he hath been long immured.
Now I am free, enfranchised and at large,
May fix my habitation where I will.
What dwelling shall receive me, in what vale
Shall be my harbour, underneath what grove
Shall I take up my home, and what sweet stream
Shall with its murmurs lull me to my rest?
The earth is all before me—with a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
I look about, and should the guide I chuse
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud
I cannot miss my way. I breathe again—
Trances of thought and mountings of the mind
Come fast upon me. It is shaken off,
As by miraculous gift ’tis shaken off,
That burthen of my own unnatural self,
The heavy weight of many a weary day
Not mine, and such as were not made for me.
Long months of peace—if such bold word accord
With any promises of human life—
Long months of ease and undisturbed delight
Are mine in prospect. Whither shall I turn,
By road or pathway, or through open field,
Or shall a twig or any floating thing
Upon the river point me out my course?
                                                                 (1. 1-30)

On another occasion, Wordsworth saw a very different London, one dressed in beauty and “majesty.” This London appears in his Petrarchan sonnet Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802.

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, 
September 3, 1802

Earth has not any thing to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

In this poem Wordsworth is able to transform the ills of the city by comparing it to nature. The “City” is personified, clothed in the “The beauty of the morning.” Its “Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples, lie / Open unto the fields, and to the sky.” The city, illuminated in the morning sunlight, fills Wordsworth with a “calm so deep!”— a serenity akin to what he experiences in nature. Wordsworth transforms the city into a sublime vision not unlike what the reader encounters in the language of Tintern Abbey.

This poem illustrates what is essential for readers to fully appreciate Wordsworth’s poetry. If one thinks Wordsworth is just a “poet of nature,” and that the phrase “poet of nature” defines his work, one would be only partially right. Clearly, Wordsworth believed nature could be a spiritual guide that could teach morality and humility and connect humans with the Divine. Westminster Bridge demonstrates how the power of poetic imagination also can shape one’s perception of the world, enabling one to see transcendent beauty.

Andrew Marvell's "The Garden"

 In the Penguin Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets Series volume of Garden Poems, the editor John Hollander included well over a hundred poems about gardens. Gardens have not always been popular to grow, but also popular to write poems about. Their peacefulness, beauty, and order fascinate us and provide us with an undisturbed and serene sensibility. They are also a way of managing nature, of exercising creative, God-like power over our environment. The prototypal garden is the Garden of Eden. One of the poems in Hollander’s book is Andrew Marvell’s (1621-1678) “The Garden.” In this poem, Marvell engages in the debate between living the public, active life and residing in the seclusive country home with one’s garden. Marvell incorporates allusions to biblical and classical literature.

                  The Garden
I
How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays,
And their uncessant labours see
Crown’d from some single herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow verged shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
While all flow’rs and all trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose.

II
Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear!
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men;
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow.
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.

III
No white nor red was ever seen
So am’rous as this lovely green.
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress’ name;
Little, alas, they know or heed
How far these beauties hers exceed!
Fair trees! wheres’e’er your barks I wound,
No name shall but your own be found.

IV
When we have run our passion’s heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat.
The gods, that mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race:
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might laurel grow;
And Pan did after Syrinx speed,
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.

V
What wond’rous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Ensnar’d with flow’rs, I fall on grass.

VI
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find,
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.

VII
Here at the fountain’s sliding foot,
Or at some fruit tree’s mossy root,
Casting the body’s vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide;
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets, and combs its silver wings;
And, till prepar’d for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.

VIII
Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walk’d without a mate;
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share
To wander solitary there:
Two paradises ’twere in one
To live in paradise alone.

IX
How well the skillful gardener drew
Of flow’rs and herbs this dial new,
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And as it works, th’ industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckon’d but with herbs and flow’rs!

The poem champions the reclusive, solitary life in one’s garden contrasted with the folly of believing worldly success and honors bring happiness. In stanza 1, the speaker criticizes “vainly men” who pursue fame and glory, hoping to win “the palm, the oak, or bays,” which symbolize military victory, political victory, and artistic glory respectively. Nature mocks these efforts, “their toils upbraid” and in their place offers instead “all flowers and all trees” which “weave” a greater, more profound gift than any of these so-called honors.

In stanza 2, the speaker recognizes two personified entities, “Fair Quiet and “Innocence thy sister dear,” whom he once believed he would find in society, “In busy companies of men,” only to learn that “Society is all but rude” when compared to the “delicious solitude” of country life where “Fair Quiet…/ And Innocence” make their home. In Marvell’s time, “[R]ude” meant not only obnoxious, but also uncultivated,” when comparing the “quiet” and “innocence,” while one is among “delicious solitude” as compared to worldly pursuits” among men. The society of men is both ill-mannered and unsophisticated.

The speaker turns from the realm of politics and business to focus on love and passion in stanza 3. He cites “white and red,” the lily and the rose, as the true inspired passion of the garden. Love and lovers are “cruel as their flame,” and love itself is purely foolish and destructive, illustrated by the wounding of the tree bark: “Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, / Cut in these trees their mistress’ name.” Furthermore, the simple beauty of the garden trees “far…exceed” the attractiveness of the beloved’s beauty.

Continuing his discourse on love and passion in stanza 4, the speaker seems to reduce lovemaking to mere physical lust and wants to escape from this “degradation” to the sanctuary of the garden: “When we have run our passion’s heat / Love hither makes his best retreat.” He employs two Greek myths as a kind of locus classicus (classic case) to refashion human love into a love of nature and its lyricism. Apollo and Pan pursued Daphne and Syrinx not to make love to them, but rather to transform each into musical instruments. These two myths of unbridled lust become purged of carnal desire. From this stanza, it becomes obvious that the speaker is not only looking to escape the “rude” and fierce world politics and business. The idyllic serenity of a garden is also one in which solitude frees him from the messy complications of love and sexual passion.

Implicit in stanzas 3 and 4 is the speaker’s desire to exclude not only the world of politics and business from his garden, but also women. “What a wondrous life in this I lead!” he states in the first line of stanza 5, as if he has discovered true happiness and more importantly, the purest little world in which to live. Here he can indulge in the luscious clusters of the vine…/The nectarine and curious peach” without effort and without interference from other human beings. His delight carries him through the garden until he stumbles “on melons,” becomes “Ensnared with flowers” and falls “on grass.” His “fall” is a parody of the Fall of Adam and Eve, but being alone, safe from the temptation of an Eve, his fall lands him benignly and unsullied on soft grass.

The “fall” in stanza 5 initiates the speaker’s metaphysical meditation that follows in stanzas 6 and 7. The speaker professes how in this garden his “mind from pleasure less / Withdraws into its happiness,” then transcends the limits of physical life to create “Far other worlds, and other seas.” As the mind expands with this vital energy, with an almost God-like power, his imagination frees the soul from the body and glides into unity with nature:

Here at the fountain’s sliding foot,
Or at some fruit tree’s mossy root,
Casting the body’s vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide;
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets, and combs its silver wings;
And, till prepar’d for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.

The speaker’s fusing with the “boughs,” and “buds,” seems to look ahead to the 19th century the Romantic poet, William Wordsworth, who celebrated man by linking or connecting one with nature in a harmonious union.

In the eighth stanza, “Such was that happy Garde-state…”, the speaker explicitly refers to the “happy garden-state,” the Garden of Eden, but a garden before the creation of Eve, when “man walked without a mate.” Implicit is that God’s subsequent creation of Eve brought evil into paradise. Thus, “After a place so pure and sweet, / What other help could yet be meet!” For the speaker, solitude is just as essential for happiness as the beauty of the garden is.

In the ninth and final stanza, the speaker mentions the “skillful gardener” who made a sundial out of the flowers and herbs. This ordinary gardener is an artist, and his work/creation emulates God’s creation in Genesis. Planting the “dial new” effectively measures time, establishing control over the force in nature that rules over humanity. The metaphor extends not to the hours of the day, but the “zodiac,” the movement of time through the months.

Marvell’s The Garden exalts the solitary, contemplative life over the active one. But more than that, his poem reaches back through time searching for the perfect, harmonious state in which man enjoyed immorality in a garden replicating Adam’s experience before the creation of Eve. For modern readers, this “happy garden-state / While man there walk’d without a mate” will seem misogynistic because the speaker implies man needed no “mate,” no Eve. Yet, it is important to remember that the 17th man lived in a benighted age that did not possess the truth that men and women are equal in every imaginable way. Marvell’s poem is nevertheless a fascinating treatment of our desire to be at peace with ourselves through a unity with nature and our fantasy of living in a contemplative paradise.

Shakespeare and Jealousy

 Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmations strong / As proofs of holy writ.”

Othello, 3.3. 323-325

In Shakespeare’s plays, Characters are often beset by a destructive flaw that overwhelms their minds. For Julius Caesar it is vanity; for Macbeth it is ambition; and for poor Othello is jealousy. In fact, Othello is the iconic example of jealousy’s power to twist the mind into suspicious madness and murderous rage. In his 154 sonnets, Shakespeare occasionally probes the psychology of this pernicious passion in ways that are curiously subtle: Sonnet 61 offers an interesting example:

                               Sonnet 61

Is it thy will thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thy desire my slumbers should be broken
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?
O, no. Thy love, though much, is not so great.
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat
To play the watchman ever for thy sake.
  For thee watch I whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
  From me far off, with others all too near.

This sonnet is arranged in typical Shakespearean structure, with three quatrains, and a couplet. But as you read the sonnet, you might notice a second structural layer of the Petrarchan form of an octave and a sestet. The first quatrain (lines 1-4), poses two questions: “Is it thy will thy image should keep open / My heavy eye lids to weary sight?” and “Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken / While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?” The first question seems merely rhetorical, that the speaker might be so enamored of his beloved that his passion continually raises the beloved’s “image” in his mind, chasing off the heaviness of sleep. It does not appear in any way critical of the beloved.

The second question initially seems more or less similar in tone to the first, but the word “shadows” in the latter part of the question replaces “image,” which alters the tone and when reflected back upon the first question, the quatrain on the whole becomes tinged with something accusatory in the speaker’s voice. The accusation erupts as the fourth line ends with “do mock my sight?” In lines 1-2, the beloved’s image hovers in the speaker’s sight, but in lines 3-4 the beloved’s image darkens ominously and taunts the speaker.

Following the questions of the first four lines, the second quatrain asks a third question which introduces the sonnet’s general subject, “jealousy.” Now, the speaker appears to specify what is haunting his nights. It is his beloved’s jealousy that is torturing him so that sleep and its balm elude him:

 Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?

But not so fast. The third quatrain and the couplet combine to reverse what we have been told so far, and what we have come to expect from this poem. In doing so, they form a unified part of the sonnet and consequently create a sestet out of the third quatrain and the couplet. These six lines directly respond to the questions asked in the first two quatrains and reveal what is behind the speaker’s insomnia. First, he states that “Thy love, though much, is not so great.” Anxiety about the degree and quality of his beloved’s feelings for him might be what is preventing the speaker’s sleep. Then he acknowledges that “It is my love that keeps mine eyes awake, / Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat…” The speaker’s love is absolute (“true”) while the beloved’s is incomplete (“not so great”). But then drops this curious line: “To play the watchman ever for thy sake.” Why is the speaker “play[ing]" the watchman ever for thy shake?” The answer, both to that question and the diagnosis of the speaker’s insomnia unfolds in the couplet. “For thee watch I whilst thou dost wake elsewhere, / From me far off, with others all too near.”

It is not the “image,” “jealousy,” “true love,” or “watchman” (concern) of or for the beloved that nettles the speaker’s mind and deprives him of sleep. It is his own jealousy and anxiety that keeps him awake as he wonders where his beloved is and with whom.

At the beginning of this post, I used the adjective “poor” to describe Othello. No doubt it is Desdemona who really deserves our sympathy and compassion. Anyone who has read the play understands what I mean. Nevertheless, Othello remains for me also a victim whose innocence was preyed upon by the most cunning and malignant agent of evil Shakespeare ever created.

Shakespeare's Dark Lady and a Little Botox

 As I mentioned in my last post, Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. He addressed sonnets 1-126 to a young man, an idealized youth who has been labeled the “fair youth,” the object of the poet’s love. There have been many thoughts as to his identity, since the 1609 dedication to the sonnets is to a Mr. W. H., which has led to much speculation and research, but the real importance of the sonnets lay in the poems’ extraordinary linguistic play and intriguing themes. Sonnets 127-152 revolve around the “Dark Lady.” Unlike the idealized concepts of the “fair youth,” these sonnets about the Dark Lady, whose identity also remains a mystery, express a different dynamic, exploring such themes as genuine and false beauty, lust, infidelity, sexual jealousy and frustration. Sonnet 127 initiates this group and discusses the concept of female beauty in a nontraditional manner:

           Sonnet 127

In old days, black was not counted fair,
Or, if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
But now is black beauty's successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame.
For since each hand hath put on nature's power,
Fairing the foul with art's false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Sland'ring creation with false esteem.
  Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,
  That every tongue says beauty should look so.

In the first three lines of this sonnet, the speaker suggests that the conventional Elizabethan standard of female beauty, fair skin and light hair, has changed. The dark complexion and dark eyes of his mistress are “beauty’s successive heir,” to the fair complexion and light blue eyes that once embodied ideal beauty. However, in the fourth line of quatrain 1 appears something that disturbs the speaker. As if changing the subject, the speaker begins to describe how beauty in general is being “slandered with a bastard shame,” being defamed by a different, illegitimate form of beauty. That illegitimate beauty is produced by women who use cosmetics, since even a “foul” woman can transform herself into an image of beauty with the application of the right make-up.

Now focused on this second subject, the speaker in quatrain 2, draws an image of women using cosmetics to beautify their faces: “For since each hand hath put on nature’s power, / Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face”. The speaker’s words are cutting. Foul looking women can counterfeit their appearance with false art. Beauty has lost its sacred sanctuary, its “holy bower,” since it may be pilfered from nature easily by any woman applying cosmetics. As a result, the ideal sanctity of beauty itself is “profaned, if not lives in disgrace.”

Quatrain 3 unites the two subjects, black as the new standard of beauty and the “evil” of using cosmetics to transform one’s face. His mistress’ eyes are beautiful since they “are raven black” but their darkness suggests sadness since they “seem” to mourn those who “not born fair.” Yet, those who apply cosmetics to lighten their skin, falsify their appearance and artificially beautify their faces, succeeding in a deceit: “not born fair no beauty lack.” In the end, the speaker’s mistress commands true admiration for her natural appearance. In effect, according to the speaker, those who cosmetically alter their looks are “sland’ring creation with false esteem.”

An Additional note about Shakespeare’s “interest” in true, female beauty and facial appearance in general:

In Shakespeare’s play, a comedy, (1598) Love’s Labor’s Lost, the King of Navarre and three of his lords agree to avoid any contact with women, eat only once a day, sleep only three hours a night, so they can devote themselves to a three-year period of uninterrupted, intense study. Of course, this scheme goes awry when the Princess of France and her attending ladies visit the King’s court. All of the men fall in love with the ladies and one of the King’s lords, Berowne, falls in love with the Princess’ lady Rosaline, who happens to have black hair and dark eyes. When Berowne’s passion is revealed to the King, a comic scene ensues in which the King and Berowne argue over Rosaline’s beauty. The similarity between Berowne’s words and Sonnet 127 is interesting and highlights the issue of true versus false beauty.” Both the sonnet and the play may have been composed in the same decade, during the 1590’s. Yet, as we know, their official publications come later.

Act 4, 3, 267-285
KING 
 By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.
BEROWNE 
Is ebony like her? O word divine!
 A wife of such wood were felicity.
O, who can give an oath? Where is a book,
 That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack
If that she learn not of her eye to look?
 No face is fair that is not full so black.
KING 
O, paradox! Black is the badge of hell,
 The hue of dungeons and the school of night,
And beauty’s crest becomes the heavens well.
BEROWNE 
 Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.
O, if in black my lady’s brows be decked,
 It mourns that painting and usurping hair
Should ravish doters with a false aspect:
 And therefore is she born to make black fair.
Her favor turns the fashion of the days,
 For native blood is counted painting now.
And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise,
 Paints itself black to imitate her brow. 

The parallels between the sonnet and Berowne’s speech compel comparison. As we read one, the words of the other echo in our ears. When the King states “By heaven, thy love is as black as ebony!” Berowne replies:

O, who can give an oath? Where is a book?
That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack
If that she learn not of her eye to look?
No face is fair that is not full so black.

To counter the King’s argument, Berowne asserts that women in general need to learn from Rosaline’s dark appearance the true image of beauty. In the sonnet, we also read the words “beauty lack,” though there the speaker is criticizing women’s use of cosmetics to lighten their naturally dark complexion. In the play, when the King contradicts Berowne, saying:

O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,
The hue of dungeons and the school of night;
And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well. 

Berowne cleverly retorts:

Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.
O, if in black my lady’s brows be decked,
It mourns that painting and usurping hair
Should ravish doters with a false aspect:
And therefore is she born to make black fair.

Berowne posits that the devil make himself resemble “spirits of light,” and if Rosaline’s eyebrows were painted black instead of naturally black, she would deceive with a false appearance, in a similar manner the way the “foul” women attempt to do in Sonnet 127 when they, “Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face.” The logic of Berowne’s argument in the play corresponds in obvious ways to what the speaker offers in Sonnet 127, and his submission to the implacable Rosaline is delightfully entertaining.

A woman’s facial appearance was a popular topic in Elizabethan England. (See Hamlet, III, 1) And, for that matter, a young man’s. (See Sonnet 20) Today, women and men expend more time and money over their appearance than Shakespeare’s contemporaries did. How many use cosmetics and that magical elixir Botox to arrest the effect of the passing years? Is Hamlet right when he says,

I have heard of your paintings too, well
enough. God hath given you one face, and you
make yourselves another.

It is fascinating to witness how astutely Shakespeare renders in his plays and poems the ways we think and behave. Although reading him requires much more effort and time than many contemporary novels, plays and poems, the reward we receive always grows the more we continue to enjoy the brilliance of his works.