Clay Lies Still, but Blood's a Rover

I haven't memorized much poetry, for all my love of it.  My brother-in-law has memorized huge gobs of Shakespeare (or had, I'll have to ask Jim how much he still remembers). But I can't seems to make them stick, as much as I try.  When I was in school, our class had to recite Invictus by William Ernest Henley ("Out of the night that covers me. . . . "), The only thing worse was twenty of us, each giving the poem our own halting translation,   but I have remembered it, for all these years.  The second bit of poetry I found as a Freshman at the University of Maine written on a desk in an auditoreum.  I had no idea who wrote it or where it came from.  For years I assumed that it was a verse from a rock song which I was, naturally, ignorant of.  (Funny sidebar, when I came to school, I wrote my name on each record in my collection of mostly Gregorian chants and movie soundtracks, just in case anybody wanted to borrow them.  Oh Lord, what a simpleton!)

So it was with great joy that years afterwards I was reading a copy of the Collected Poems of A. E. Housman and realized that at last I had found the source of my quote.  I don't know how many times I had drug myself out of bed with the last stanza of this poem in my ear.  There is good anglo-saxon alliteration in the rest of the poem, I realize now.  The same marching of syllables that makes Beowulf such a joy (in good translation anyway).  Well, here is the poem, whole cloth.  I don't think I will ever remember the rest of the poem, or forget the end.

REVEILLE

by A.E. Housman

Wake: the silver dusk returning

Up the beach of darkness brims,

And the ship of sunrise burning

Strands upon the easter rims.

Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters,

Trampled to the floor it spanned,

And the tent of night in tatters

Straws the sky-pavilioned land.

Up, lad, up, 'tis late for lying:

Hear the drums of morning play;

Hark, the empty highways crying

'Who'll beyond the hills away?'

Towns and countries woo together,

Forelands beacon, belfries call;

Never lad that trod the leather

Lived to feast his heart with all.

Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber

Sunlit pallets never thrive;

Morns abed and daylight slumber

Were not meant for man alive.

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;

Breath's a ware that will not keep.

Up, lad: when the journey's over

There'll be time enough to sleep.

Ice Storm and Gettin' In Wood

The ice storm this past week took down part of one of the trees in my front yard. I heard the 'limb' (it was 18" in diameter), fall and went out to find the limb across the road. It brushed the telephone and power lines across the street, but didn't take them down. It did send a whiplash that pulled services from several houses across the street. About 200,000 Mainer's lost their power for part or all of Friday (ours was back by the end of the day). My parents lost power until Saturday night and as of tonight, there are still folks without power.

This afternoon, I went over to the Farm to help my Dad get up wood from the woodlot. He sold wood to a person in return for stove-length cut wood left in the lot. We still needed to split the wood and get it under cover. I worked there for the afternoon and we got up about a half a cord, split and stacked and probably another cord, unsplit. I thought I might find a good Robert Frost poem this week about chopping wood or something. But as I was looking through my copy of Come In and Other Poems, I found a poem I had written to a friend of mine in 1978. The title refers to the Fryburg Fair and the closing in of the season after October. I tried in that image of the smooth turn of a hawk's head to capture the inevitable turning of the seasons. The images of the farm are for the most part autobiographical. - real or imagined. At the time, I was pretty certain that I was going to live on a farm, learn to play the fiddle and smoke good dope with my friends for the rest of my days. I blame John Denver. But actually, people were flocking back to the land in Maine in the 1970's and it really wasn't so far fetched a future. Seems like another century . . . oh wait?! Well, maybe it would not be a bad idea to get a decent Jotul in the house after all?

AFTER THE FAIR

For David

The closure of a hawk's eye
Compass the stone field, dead leaf
Trampled path of cattle, woodchuck, cat.
All within the twisting fence road
Curl into the barnyard, closing
Like the last rose before the frost.
The herd deserts the lower pasture
For the barnyard feed bunk, jostling for
Summer's grass corpse of measured
Nourishment.

Hard wood, potato, beef in the freezer;
Short days, lamp light, laughter;
Cold curses, chores, wool and woodsmoke.

In the ice-flowered morning, the fox
Cannot hear the empty chicken coop,
Nor mice the sleeping bees.
Quicker than sunrise, the hawk's
Studied glance comes round

And it is Winter.

Is There, For Honest Poverty

Is there for honest poverty,
Wha hangs his head, and a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by;
We dare be poor for a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
Our toils obscure and a' that;
The rank is but the guinea's stamp, -
The man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin gray, and a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, -
A man's a man for a' that.
For a' that and a' that,
Their tinsel show, and a' that;
The honest man, though e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.

Ye see yon birkie ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, and stare, and a' that, -
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that;
For a' that, and a' that,
His riband, star and a' that;
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a' that.

A prince can make a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might, -
Guid faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Their dignities, and a' that;
The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth,
Are higher ranks that a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may, -
As come it will for a' that, -
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
May bear the gree, and a' that.
For a' that and a' that,
It's coming yet, for a' that, -
When man to man, the warld o'er,
shall brothers be for a' that!
Robert Burns

The video below is pretty good. Just wait for the music.


This song is a personal anthem of mine (Andy Stewart's version is the best, but this one is not bad). I like the spirit of the thing. To know how Burns struggled all his life and how wonderful his songs are is kind of sad. But then, I guess it adds to the power of them to know from whence they came - the man and the land. I can certainly sympathize with Burns as I listened to the wind howl around my crumbling chimney and thought about how my home is falling around my head. "Three o'clock thoughts", I call them , when the world seems bleakest and the litany of problems seems as long as the sea.

"We dare be poor for all that . . . our toils obscure and all that . . . the man is the gold for all that."

I guess many of us are feeling 'honest poverty' and setting ourselves above those bastards in their private jets and silk shirts coming to pretend to beg for money from those they own. Let's hope they get all they deserve.

At Grass

I started this blog one year ago and I am afraid I haven't done a very good job of keeping it up. In my defense, I would note that I work on computers all day and sometimes it is hard to face the screen again at night. Lately, too, my attention has been on Facebook and following friends and family there. Well, so be it. Here is a new start at least. Isn't that what birthdays are, an assessment and a prediction? I wanted to find a poem to post and I like this one very much. I have never been much of a horse racing fan, but certainly can sympathize with the subjects. I remember thinking that I could do anything, be anything, when I was young. I was certain that fortune waited just around the corner. Well, I have wandered in that maze for some time now and I haven't turned that particular corner.

At Grass, by Phillip Larkin

The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and mane;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
--The other seeming to look on --
And stands anonymous again.

Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps
Two dozen distances sufficed
to fable them: faint afternoons
Of Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,
Whereby their names were artificed
To inlay faded, classic Junes --

Silks at the start: against the sky
Numbers and parasols: outside,
Squadrons of empty cars, and heat,
And littered grass: then the long cry
Hanging unhushed till it subside
To stop-press columns on the street.

Do memories plague their ears like flies?
They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.
Summer by summer all stole away,
The starting-gates, the crowds and cries --
All but the unmolesting meadows.
Almanacked, their names live; they

Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,
And not a fieldglass sees them home,
Or curious stop-watch prophesies;
Only the groom, and the groom's boy,
With bridles in the evening come.

The Philosopher's Stone

I am reminded of the story of a boy walking along the road (don't they always start that way?) and encountering an old man weeping by the side of the road. The Boy stops to inquire why the man is so inconsolable and he notices that in spite of the pitiless rags the Old Man is wearing and his general look of poverty that his belt buckle is of purest gold. The Old Man tells his story, "I was once a great thinker and alchemist. I have sought my entire life for the Philosopher's Stone, that magic stone that will turn anything it touches into gold. I sought high and low, from Kings and Sages and Wizards of all kinds. Surely the Stone must exist! Every pebble and rock I touched to my buckle, in hopes of finding the Stone and so securing my fortune. I have wandered the Earth for years in search of the Philosopher's Stone."
The Boy cocks his head and scowls, "But Sir, surely you have found the Stone, since your buckle is of purest gold! Why do you weep so?"
And the Old Man answers, "Yes, my buckle is purest gold. But for years I tested hundreds, nay, thousands of stones. Every one was a failure. Over the years, I acquired the habit of picking up stones and touching them to my belt, one after another, and knowing they were not the Philosopher's Stone, I eventually ceased even looking at my buckle to confirm another failure."
"So you see", the Old Man goes on, " I kept on my quest until one day I chanced to look down and see my golden buckle. Then I realized I had found the Philosopher's Stone . . . yes, found the Stone. . . and had cast it away." With this the Old Man rises stiffly and hobbles down the road, picking up pebbles, one by one.