Strolling With that Old Romantic William Wordsworth—Me! for National Poetry Month 2022

William Wordsworth is often considered the godfather of English romantic poets.  Older than the rest of the pack, he was born on April 7, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland.  He was not dashing like John Keats or heroic like Lord Byron.  He was a writing partner, mentor, and benefactor to Samuel Coleridge but did not share his enthusiasm for the epic and esoteric. Instead, often enthused about nature and the beautiful Lake District where he lived and tramped on foot.  This identification with nature deeply influenced American Ralph Waldo Emerson who visited him on his Grand Tour of Europe.  He was raised to Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom and served from 1843 until his death on April 23, 1850.  He remains widely anthologized and admired in Britain.  His star dimmed in the U.S. with changing tastes and the almost complete abandonment of studying poetry as literature in American schools.  Interest has somewhat revived with the ecological movement which sees him as a pioneering voice.

Early April is the perfect time for Wordsworth, not only for his birthday, but for his nature verse, the best known of which is Daffodils.

Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

 

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

 

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

 

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils

 

—William Wordsworth

 

Wordsworth setting off on one of his tramps from Dove Cottage in the English Lake District.

This poem plows that ground as well but is a useful reminder to us now so concerned with the science and technology of trying to save the Earth from eminent destruction to literally take time to smell the flowers.

 

The Tables Turned

 

UP! up! my Friend, and quit your books;

Or surely you'll grow double:

Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;

Why all this toil and trouble?

 

The sun, above the mountain's head,

A freshening lustre mellow

Through all the long green fields has spread,

His first sweet evening yellow.

 

Books! ‘tis a dull and endless strife:

Come, hear the woodland linnet,

How sweet his music! on my life,

There’s more of wisdom in it.

 

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!

He, too, is no mean preacher:

Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your teacher.

 

She has a world of ready wealth,

Our minds and hearts to bless—

Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,

Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

 

One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

 

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;

Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—

We murder to dissect.

 

Enough of Science and of Art;

Close up those barren leaves;

Come forth, and bring with you a heart

That watches and receives.

 

—William Wordsworth

 

An uncharacteristically dour portrait of William Wadsworth now remembered best for his sunny nature verse inspired by the English Lake District.

This late life verse puts nature in the perspective of his own mortality.

 

I Have Thoughts that Are Fed by the Sun

 

I have thoughts that are fed by the sun:

The things which I see

Are welcome to me,

Welcome every one –

I do not wish to lie

Dead, dead,

Dead, without any company.

Here alone on my bed

With thoughts that are fed by the sun,

And hopes that are welcome every one,

Happy am I.

Oh life there is about thee

A deep delicious peace;

I would not be without thee,

Stay, oh stay!

Yet be thou ever as now –

Sweetness and breath, with the quiet of death –

Be but thou ever as now,

Peace, peace, peace.

 

—William Wordsworth 

In 2018 April is Indeed the Cruelest Month

It was supposed to be Opening Day at Wrigley Field.  Javier Baez looks for the seams on the ball....

Yesterday my Facebook pal JoAnne Gazarek Bloom messaged  me a plea.  It was time, she said, to post “April is the cruelest month” in the National Poetry Month series.  My post for that day had just gone up, but I had to agree.  I promised it for today.  Here you go, JoAnne!

After all, it was April the Friggin’ 9th and supposed to be the Cubs home opener.  But it’s been a long cold spring.  In my neck of the woods I haven’t even seen an open crocus yet.  The ground was covered not just with a dusting, but a blanket to new wet snow.   Scratch the opener, although further south the Sox got in their game before almost empty stands.

Of course, snowy Aprils are not as unusual as some folks think.  Another friend, Janet Burns pointed out “According to Tommy Skilling, [WGN-TV veteran weather maven for you outlanders] ‘Chicago gets snow in April most years...average snowfall is 1.2 inches.’ Chicago has seen major snow storms in April in 1920, 1938, 1961, 1970, 1975, and 1982 when we had 9.4 inches.”

True enough, but most Aprils there have been at least some warm days, the early bulb plants are not only spiked but in bloom and some trees are beginning to leaf out.  But I’m tough and experienced—I remember that 1975 snow that dumped nearly a foot of snow the day before another Cubs opener.  So yeah, I expect a little snow in April.  Hell, I’ve endured a couple of mighty cold and damp Memorial Days.

There are other reasons for April angst.  It’s tax time.  I spent yesterday, a day off from my job in Woodstock doing my taxes.  That’s always a high stress time for me.  I’m arithmetically challenged, a disorganized record keeper, intimidated and irritated by bureaucracy.  Even with the help of a good tax program that enters all my carryover info from last year and performs presumably accurate calculations, I am left in a cold sweat and in need of a stiff drink.  And this year went relatively smoothly, and we even will get sizable refunds, instead owing of stomach churning payments and penalties for not making estimated payments precisely the correct times.  And, despite the current Resident and maladministration, I don’t actually resent paying taxes, my dues for civilization, just the hoops you have to jump through to perform that civic duty.

And, of course, this April is chock-full-o-dreadfuls, from gas attacks in Syria and shoot-fish-in-a-barrel attacks in Gaza, to trade wars and stock market slumps, to the Cheeto-in-Charges daily depredations and incoherent bluster, to pick-your-poison.  We are fulfilling the ancient Chinese curse “living in interesting times.”

 

William Wordsworth was guilty of raising unrealistic expectations of April.

Maybe poets were to blame for impossible expectations for spring.  After all, Wadsworth went on and on about all of those bright daffodils and there were plenty of others gushing over flowers, birds, and fresh meadows.  Plus, all of the “young man’s fancy turns lightly to thoughts of love” and romance crap.

Others, have entertained reservations.  Walt Whitman’s “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed” were an omen of the death of Abraham Lincoln.”

But for a really dour vision, it is hard to beat T.S. Eliot in his signature long poem The Wasteland.  Eliot, as you probably know was an expatriate American living and working in England, a scion of the Unitarian elite Eliot clan who rejected their religion and liberalism.  He became a protégé of another run away American Ezra Pound and became the leading imagist and avant-garde poet of the post-World War I era.  He was generally regarded as the greatest English language poet of the 20th Century.  He is still widely admired, but the obscurity of his references, have somewhat eroded his reputation among those who prefer their verse to be more accessible. 

T.S. Eliot at work.

Here is the first section of The Wasteland, which is far too long to post in its entirety here. 

 

The Wasteland

                                  FOR EZRA POUND
                                IL MIGLIOR FABBRO

              I. The Burial of the Dead

  April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

  What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

                      Frisch weht der Wind

                      Der Heimat zu

                      Mein Irisch Kind,

                      Wo weilest du?

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

“They called me the hyacinth girl.”

—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

Oed’ und leer das Meer.

  Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,

Had a bad cold, nevertheless

Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,

With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,

Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,

(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)

Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,

The lady of situations.

Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,

And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,

Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,

Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find

The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.

Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,

Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:

One must be so careful these days.

  Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,

To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours

With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!

“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!

“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,

“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,

“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!

“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

—T.S. Eliot

The esteemed and prestigious literary magazine in which Ye Olde Proprietor made his debut as a published poet.

Here is another jaundiced look at April by a far less talented bard—a callow novice, really aping the style of his better, e.e. cummings half a century ago. 

April is a Bad Month For…

April is a bad month for Cokes

            and the flies

                        gather on the droppings

                                    drop, drop

            while the clods slip off

                        the steel plowshare.

Robins die with boyish arrows

            in their throats,

                        children dance

                                    round and again

            on silver-slick grass

                        of the graveyard.

Abortion with a knitting needle

            and greasy hands

                        interrupts prematurely

            the expected rebirth

                        of earth.

April is a very bad month for Cokes.

—Patrick Murfin,

From Apotheosis, 1967 Niles West High School literary magazine