Poetry of Elation

Drom: The Hughes poem is a first for me (I love it) as are Deb's Blue Arab (won't Piffka love that one?) and Bree's O'Driscoll (I'm going to look further into his poems). (I have Bree to thank for introducing me to Elizabeth Spires and Linda Pastan, but as I read their poems, many of which have become favorites, I realize that there are none that really fit into a thread of "elation". (Oh, perhaps one by Elizabeth Spires, The Rose, that I might post here a little later. )

I've been digging out old notebooks searching for "I cannot/have not dreamed things lovelier than the first dream I had of you", to no avail, but believe me, I did not dream those lines. (lol) Thanks for your interest.

You're right, Aggie... I did love Deb's Blue Arab. I love all blue horses -- a fancy that started with a Franz Marc postcard:


Have had no success finding your poem though. What a mystery! Thanks for all the reporting re. Millay... she was a Savage Beauty.

Here's something taken from a longish poem by Yeats... perhaps because I'm older than I once was, I am pleased by his description of the Queen:


The Old Age of Queen Maeve
W.B. Yeats

MAEVE the great queen was pacing to and fro,

... Though now in her old age, in her young age
She had been beautiful in that old way
That's all but gone; for the proud heart is gone,
And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all
But soft beauty and indolent desire.
She could have called over the rim of the world
Whatever woman's lover had hit her fancy,
And yet had been great-bodied and great-limbed,
Fashioned to be the mother of strong children;
And she'd had lucky eyes and high heart,
And wisdom that caught fire like the dried flax,
At need, and made her beautiful and fierce,
Sudden and laughing....
. . . . . .

Lovely picture, Piffka.

Drom: I do hope you enjoy Savage Beauty.

I just don't seem to have many favorite elation poems, but here's one that does make me smile.

The Rose by Elizabeth Spires

We waited for the roses to bloom.
They were your flower. Always in my mind,
Your face on the first day, a tightly folded rose.
But the roses were a month away.

There, on the lawn, you moved from isle
to lit isle, choosing the tulip, the daffodil,
the dandelion. You made no distinction,
Everything was yours for the taking.

the pale wisteria, a bloom of the dogwood,
diffuse and free and calm as a mind
that spends itself completely on its blossoming.
You forgot me, you left me behind,

stepping in and out of shadow, as if the grass
were water, the pooling light a stepping-stone.
Quick-footed, sure, never for a moment
would you be lost in a rushing stream of years.

And then, hands full of flowers,
how easily you ran back to where I stood-----
O, I stood in a place different from you-----
and said, These are for you....

I stared at you over a great chasm of time
as, over and over, you brought me spring flowers.

Wonderful poems, you two. I have never heard of Spires before, but I loved that poem that you just posted.

Here's a favourite song from 'As you like it.'

Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither;
Here shall he see
No enemy
But Winter and rough weather.
.
Who doth ambition shun
And loves to live i'th sun,
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleas'd with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither;
Here shall he see
No enemy
But Winter and rough weather.

That's a wonderful one, Drom... those last lines ought to be given to the Hurricane Frances thread and all those a2kers in Florida waiting for the storm.

There's still a hurricane about? Heavens! do they get no respite? When is it predicted to pass, do you know? I do hope that we won't have trailer-park deaths and the like, like last time.

Drom, I am not too much on top of this, having no personal knowledge of a hurricane, this one or any other, and can make little sense of the weather maps & diagrams. I do know that the hurricane Frances has had the good sense to slow down from a category 4 to a category 3 and now a category 2 storm. Still, the winds are expected to be 115 miles per hour & higher (which is, thankfully, much less than the 145 originally predicted).

One of the big worries is that since the storm has slowed and is so huge (check any of the maps and you'll see it is a monster)... there will be a lot of flooding. The highest point anywhere in Florida is something silly like 75 feet above sea level (though someone mentioned a bridge which was slightly higher). The storm is expected to hang over Florida, spewing rain and pitching waves through two or even three high tides. If you've ever lived on salt water and known a high tide, then you know they are inexorable.

So, yeah. There are likely to be some deaths. There has already been at least one in the Bahamas (a man was electrocuted while dealing with a generator). The people of Florida have evacuated en masse. It is a very sad thing... and this... a holiday weekend. Hard to find much to be elated about, though here, I am greeted, as usual, by milder than mild weather.

Damn, Piffka. I've never lived in the way of a hurricane path, but I do know what living by salt-water is like... where are all these people going to evacuate? Western Florida? I quite fear for them...

I thought so. The tides are expected to have storm surges of 5-10 feet. And from what I saw on their tide tables, unlike inland seas, their tides don't shift more than 5 feet between high and low. Ours, in the Puget Sound, are easily double that.

Rae & her mom, Misti, went north towards the BPB region -- N. Carolina. Panzade said his family had evacuated to Florida's western side -- Tallahasee. Letty said she was in a shelter near her home -- part of a grade school. O'Bill & Panzade are staying put <scary>.

Here are a pair of Tennyson poems about the sea, from Juvenilia, though some of these images are hardly for children!

The Merman

WHO would be
A merman bold,
Sitting alone
Singing alone
Under the sea,
With a crown of gold,
On a throne?


I would be a merman bold,
I would sit and sing the whole of the day;
I would fill the sea-halls with a voice of power;
But at night I would roam abroad and play
With the mermaids in and out of the rocks,
Dressing their hair with the white sea-flower;
And holding them back by their flowing locks
I would kiss them often under the sea,
And kiss them again till they kiss'd me
Laughingly, laughingly;
And then we would wander away, away,
To the pale-green sea-groves straight and high,
Chasing each other merrily.


There would be neither moon nor star;
But the wave would make music above us afar --
Low thunder and light in the magic night --
Neither moon nor star.
We would call aloud in the dreamy dells,
Call to each other and whoop and cry
All night, merrily, merrily.
They would pelt me with starry spangles and shells,
Laughing and clapping their hands between,
All night, merrily, merrily,
But I would throw to them back in mine
Turkis and agate and almondine;
Then leaping out upon them unseen
I would kiss them often under the sea,
And kiss them again till they kiss'd me
Laughingly, laughingly.
O, what a happy life where mine
Under the hollow-hung ocean green!
Soft are the moss-beds under the sea;
We would live merrily, merrily.



The Mermaid

WHO would be
A mermaid fair,
Singing alone,
Combing her hair
Under the sea,
In a golden curl
With a comb of pearl,
On a throne?

I would be a mermaid fair;
I would sing to myself the whole of the day;
With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair;
And still as I comb'd I would sing and say,
"Who is it loves me? who loves not me?"
I would comb my hair till my ringlets would fall,
Low adown, low adown,
From under my starry sea-bud crown
Low adown and around,
And I should look like a fountain of gold
Springing alone
With a shrill inner sound,
Over the throne
In the midst of the hall;
Till that great sea-snake under the sea
From his coiled sleeps in the central deeps
Would slowly trail himself sevenfold
Round the hall where I sate, and look in at the gate
With his large calm eyes for the love of me.
And all the mermen under the sea
Would feel their immortality
Die in their hearts for the love of me.


But at night I would wander away, away,
I would fling on each side my low-flowing locks,
And lightly vault from the throne and play
With the mermen in and out of the rocks;
We would run to and fro, and hide and seek,
On the broad sea-wolds in the crimson shells,
Whose silvery spikes are nighest the sea.
But if any came near I would call, and shriek,
And adown the steep like a wave I would leap
From the diamond-ledges that jut from the dells;
For I would not be kiss'd by all who would list,
Of the bold merry mermen under the sea;
They would sue me, and woo me, and flatter me,
In the purple twilights under the sea;
But the king of them all would carry me,
Woo me, and win me, and marry me,
In the branching jaspers under the sea;
Then all the dry pied things that be
In the hueless mosses under the sea
Would curl round my silver feet silently,
All looking up for the love of me.

And if I should carol aloud, from aloft
All things that are forked, and horned, and soft
Would lean out from the hollow sphere of the sea,
All looking down for the love of me.

Wow; those poems are beautiful, Piffka.

I do hope that Occom and Panzade are all right; it would slay me if anything should happen to them. Do you know why they didn't move away?

The poem reminds me of something from Plath's juvenilia:



Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea
Cold and final, the imagination
Shuts down its fabled summer house;
Blue views are boarded up; our sweet vacation
Dwindles in the hour-glass.

Thoughts that found a maze of mermaid hair
Tangling in the tide's green fall
Now fold their wings like bats and disappear
Into the attic of the skull.

We are not what we might be; what we are
Outlaws all extrapolation
Beyond the interval of now and here:
White whales are gone with the white ocean.

A lone beachcomber squats among the wrack
Of kaleidoscope shells
Probing fractured Venus with a stick
Under a tent of taunting gulls.

No sea-change decks the sunken shank of bone
That chucks in backtrack of the wave;
Though the mind like an oyster labors on and on,
A grain of sand is all we have.

Water will run by; the actual sun
Will scrupulously rise and set;
No little man lives in the exacting moon
And that is that, is that, is that.

Occam lives in a particularly secure building and his place in it is several stories up. Panzade had many tasks to do to button up a couple of the construction sites he had been working on, plus their own place. He had found a presumably safe nook in it..

I worry too.

Drom, I love this!