Poetry of Elation

This poem is called 'Waking with Russell,' by a not very-well-known Dundonian poet called Don Paterson:

Whatever the difference is, it all began
the day we woke up face-to-face like lovers
and his four-day-old smile dawned on him again,
possessed him, till it would not fall or waver;
and I pitched back not my old hard-pressed grin
but his own smile, or one I'd rediscovered.
Dear son, I was mezzo del cammin
and the true path was as lost to me as ever
when you cut in front and lit it as you ran.
See how the true gift never leaves the giver:
returned and redelivered, it rolled on
until the smile poured through us like a river.
How fine, I thought, this waking amongst men!
I kissed your mouth and pledged myself forever.

This is a treat, Drom... to read flowery and uplifting poetry.
I am not sure everyone would find the PARTING of ways a joyful event, but in some situations, it brings peace and a climate for joy.
I just know when I read this.... this following prose.... I feel elation.
Best to you, jackie.


Theseus and Ariadne

High on his figured couch beyond the waves He dreams, in dream recalling her set walk
Down paths of oyster-shell bordered with flowers And down the shadowy turf under the vine.
He sighs: "Deep sunk in my erroneous past
She haunts the ruins and the ravaged lawns."
Yet still unharmed it stands, the regal house Crooked by age and overtopped by pines
When first he wearied of her constancy.

And with a surer foot she goes than when
Dread of his hate was thunder in the air,
When the pines agonized with flaws of wind
And flowers glared up at her with frantic eyes.
Of him, now all is done, she never dreams
But calls a living blessing down upon
What he supposes rubble and rank grass;
Playing the queen to nobler company.

Robert Graves

Hey, Jackie; nice to see you here and around again . I very much liked that poem; are you a big admirer of Graves?

Where the Bee sucks, there suck I,
In a Cowslip's bell, I lie,
There I couch when owls do cry,
On the Bat's back I do fly
After Summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily, shall I live now,
Under the blossom that hangs on the Bow.

Yes, Drom, I like Robert Graves. Read his take on criticism (to an ungentle critic).

Thieves
Everyday, they the act dispense
With such meum-teum sense
As might warningly reveal
What they must not pick or steal,
And their nostrum is to say:
I and you are both away.

After, when they disentwine
You from me and yours from mine,
Neither can be certain who
Was that I whose mine was you.
To the act again they go
More completely not to know.

Theft is theft and raid is raid
Though reciprocally made.
Lovers, the conclusion is
Doubled sighs and jealousies
In a single heart that grieves
For lost honor among thieves.

I've not before, but I will try to find it right now, Jackie.

One of my favourite happy poems that Sylvia Plath wrote:

Morning Song

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

The Lake Isle of Inisfree
W.B. Yeats


I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

AFTERNOON ON A HILL
I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!


Edna St. Vincent Millay

Going on drom's excellent comment on how people abuse poetry as a funnel for misery:

but if a living dance upon dead minds... (LXVIII)
e.e. cummings

but if a living dance upon dead minds
why,it is love;but at the earliest spear
of sun perfectly should disappear
moon's utmost magic,or stones speak or one
name control more incredible splendor than
our merely universe, love's also there:
and being here imprisoned,tortured here
love everywhere exploding maims and blinds
(but surely does not forget,perish, sleep
cannot be photographed,measured;disdains
the trivial labelling of punctual brains...
-Who wields a poem huger than the grave?
from only Whom shall time no refuge keep
though all the weird worlds must be opened?
)Love

Yes! No!
Mary Oliver

How necessary it is to have opinions! I think the spotted trout
lilies are satisfied, standing a few inches above the earth. I
think serenity is not something you just find in the world,
like a plum tree, holding up its white petals.

The violets, along the river, are opening their blue faces, like
small dark lanterns.

The green mosses, being so many, are as good as brawny.

How important it is to walk along, not in haste but slowly,
looking at everything and calling out

Yes! No! The

swan, for all his pomp, his robes of grass and petals, wants
only to be allowed to live on the nameless pond. The catbrier
is without fault. The water thrushes, down among the sloppy
rocks, are going crazy with happiness. Imagination is better
than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless
and proper work.



Also by Mary Oliver... Fall Song

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

Mary Oliver; thank you, Piffka for the introduction...

I agree. And that eec poem of yours, Cav, was wonderful.

This is one of my favourite 'happy' Lorca poems. Be warned that he never really did atypically happy poems, but rather he used an ambiguous state to develop everything. I'll give it in Spanish first, as it's a joy just to read through, and then I'll translate (fiddled around with a bit so as to fit the rhythm.)

Bajo el naranjo lava
pañales de algodón.
Tiene verdes los ojos
y violeta la voz.

¡Ay, amor,
bajo el naranjo en flor!

El agua de la acequia
iba llena de sol,
en el olivarito
cantaba un gorrión.

¡Ay, amor,
bajo el naranjo en flor!

Luego, cuando la Lola
gaste todo el jabón,
vendrán los torerillos.

¡Ay, amor,
bajo el naranjo en flor!

Lola

Under the orange-tree
she washes baby-clothes.
One sees her green eyes and her violet voice


Ay, love,
under the orange-tree in bloom!

The water in the ditch
flowed, filled with light,
a sparrow chirped
in the little olive-tree.

Ay, love,
under the orange-tree in bloom!

Later, when Lola
has used all the soap,
young bullfighters will come.

Ay, love,
under the orange-tree in bloom!

You're welcome. There are some people for quasi-political reasons who don't embrace Mary Oliver whole-heartedly, but I love how she finds the mystic in the natural world.

Here's a poem of elation from a favorite, Emily Dickinson:

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol.

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

'Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tipplelr
Leaning against the sun!

(This is the source of that signature I used to have about Emily Dickinson getting drunk on dew.)

Recuerdo
Edna St. Vincent Millay

We were very tired, we were very merry -
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable -
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon; And
The whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry -
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
[And] you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry -
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

I love that Dickinson poem, Piffka. Why is it that people dislike Oliver for political reasons? I'm unfamiliar with her...

She's a lesbian, but though it was "known" she didn't come out for a long time, which angered some people. Also, they didn't like that she doesn't write about her sexuality. (Obviously, a lesbian should ONLY write about that.)

She writes in a tone that the feminists didn't like -- a complaint I don't quite "get" but it had to do with her willingness to lose herself within nature. Real women... feminist women... were supposed to be strong and above that... not spiritual or soft or able to transcend themselves. That falling into nature is what I LOVE about her.

She has won loads of prizes including the Pulitizer Prize for Poetry, so these complaints did not affect her too much, for which I am very glad.

What ridiculous prejudices! They can only serve to demean literature even further. Wilde was right with what he said that there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book-- 'books are well-written or badly-written. That is all.

As for feminists' not meant to be involved with nature, that's absurd. (I'm feminist to the bone, but I think that feminism should be about equal rights, not about gender rôles, which the whole thing has disintegrated to; saying that women shouldn't lose themselves in nature is just like saying women belong in the kitchen; it's putting a bar on our existence... but they can't see the similarity.)

That's what I like about her, too. I've been searching the Net for more.

I could not agree more, Drom. These false boundaries do nothing good.

Have been searching madly for a poem about a horse, as a poem of elation. It's in a book someone gave me about literature and horses, but can I find it? Akkk. No.