Latest Loveliness of Alfred Lord Tennyson

COME into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, 5
And the musk of the rose is blown.

For a breeze of morning moves,
And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
On a bed of daffodil sky, 10
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light, and to die.

All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr’d 15
To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.

I said to the lily, “There is but one
With whom she has heart to be gay. 20
When will the dancers leave her alone?
She is weary of dance and play.”
Now half to the setting moon are gone,
And half to the rising day;
Low on the sand and loud on the stone 25
The last wheel echoes away.

I said to the rose, “The brief night goes
In babble and revel and wine.
O young lord-lover, what sighs are those,
For one that will never be thine? 30
But mine, but mine,” I sware to the rose,
“For ever and ever, mine.”

And the soul of the rose went into my blood,
As the music clash’d in the hall:
And long by the garden lake I stood, 35
For I heard your rivulet fall
From the lake to the meadow and on to the wood,
Our wood, that is dearer than all;

From the meadow your walks have left so sweet
That whenever a March-wind sighs 40
He sets the jewel-print of your feet
In violets blue as your eyes,
To the woody hollows in which we meet
And the valleys of Paradise.

The slender acacia would not shake 45
One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake
As the pimpernel doz’d on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
Knowing your promise to me; 50
The lilies and roses were all awake,
They sigh’d for the dawn and thee.

Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
Come hither, the dances are done,
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls, 55
Queen lily and rose in one;
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls,
To the flowers, and be their sun.

There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate. 60
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, “She is near, she is near;”
And the white rose weeps, “She is late;”
The larkspur listens, “I hear, I hear;” 65
And the lily whispers, “I wait.”

She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed; 70
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.

Some Thoughts on Burnt Norton, Section 2

When I first read this section, I knew I had no idea what it was talking about: so, please take all my speculations with a grain of salt. However, there are some things I am reasonably confident about. For example, the essential Christological meaning wrapped up in this poem. As before, we will approach the poem, more or less, line by line.

First, “garlic and sapphires in the mud / Clot the bedded axel-tree” Take garlic, a seasoning and preservative, also, almost a universal sign against evil, specifically, evil that feeds on the inherent life of mankind, namely the blood. Mix this with sapphires, the stone that signifies integrity and perfect truth. After this, you have these muddy sapphire garlics supporting, clotting, the machine of the world. Nothing can move without an axel. The axel is the center of the wheel, and without the wheel, nothing can move. In all, you begin with a very vivid, abstract picture of a great and profound….what? The mystery is reveled in the rest of the stanza. “Wire in the blood” that “sings below the inveterate scars.” The “circulation of the lymph” “figured in the drift of stars,” both images of a man, a man perpetually scarred who stands as the axel, the center of the world—a world he must serve from the mud as the embodiment of Perfect Truth and the one Ward against an evil as essential as our blood. The implications are stunning, and quickly narrow the field to one man.

Yet, Eliot is only beginning. We “ascend to summer in the tree.” Why summer? (Here we depart into crazed speculation.) I propose summer, because summer is a time of peace that exists to anticipate death. Crops grow quickly because soon the cold will kill them, babies grow, become strong, because soon the cold will test them, animals consume the plenty because soon there will be paucity. There, climbing the tree in the summer, he climbs knowing that by the time he reaches the top, he will face Death. In the “light upon the lighted leaf” we observe the world, “boarhound and boar” predator and prey living as they have done for hundreds of years—predatory killing prey to survive, sacrifice laid down for the more important life, essentially, life as the world was Fallen to be. A way of the world, that through this man’s climb to the tree is to be “reconciled among the stars."

The first stanza is a promise of a perfect man, yet a perfect man who is debased, muddied, and beating signs of an ancient fight. This man is scarred, he has both won the fight and also approaching it in the ascent to the tree. He is out of time, and yet in it. In the garlic and the sapphire he is an abstract symbol of cleansing and integrity, yet in the lymph and the arteries, he is essentially human. Bound and boundless in time, fully man and fully spirit—this is the character conjured by Eliot.

The second stanza is where things get a little weird. At the peak of the tree, “at the still point of the turning world” we lose all “normal” links. There is no flesh nor lack of it, no stillness or movement, neither a past nor a future, and yet it is everything, rather than nothing. It is at this still point where the earth comes fully alive in a dance, “Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only the dance.” It is a not-place in time that no one can define, and yet somehow, defines all of life. There can be only one center, one center of the world, time, and not-time, and that center is the axel-tree, the one clotted with much ascending to the tree. And this ascent, this scarred man on the tree, serves as both the center of all time and defines all time in one glorious, mysterious, and timeless dance.

The third stanza is glorious, and I use that almost as a technical term. It is in this stanza Eliot approaches an explanation of the mystery of the Incarnation. In this incarnation of a perfect man and yet wholly other: concrete and abstract, you have a man that is fully free from every human need, and yet is surrendered to them. In this “release from action and suffering, release from the inner and outer compulsion, yet surrendered” he becomes both “without motion, concentration, without elimination” and yet is human enough to be “made explicit, understood,” to complete this “partial ecstasy.” Yet how does this man complete the ecstasy? Become the white light, still and moving that surpasses and surrenders to all human desires? He surrenders to “The resolution of its partial horror.” Only “in the weakness of a changing body” can this perfect man bind “the enchantment of past and future” binding all of time and all of humankind to one common action—an action that will save, in one man and one act, from “heaven and damnation / which flesh cannot endure.” For human-kind can never bear damnation, and human-kind in its mud-touched state cannot bear the beauty of heaven, but in the binding of time to the consummation of the new Adam, man can be brought to a moment before the Fall where he can escape hell and endure the beauty of heaven—the rose garden.

The fourth stanza harkens back to the first part of Burnt Norton. “Time past and time future,” we go back to the snapshot of the timeless we all dance within. The timeless is not for us, the mortal man, for only in time can we reach “the moment in the rose-garden, / the moment in the arbour where the rain beat.” Only in time, did the perfect man conquer time, and buy us heaven and “the moment in the draughty church at smokefall.”

One of the things that most eludes me…is how this section follows the preceding section. I am missing the internal cohesion of the work. I would especially appreciate illumination on that regard. Otherwise, I just welcome any and all commentary on my 1000 word essay on Burnt Norton, Section 2.

Some Thoughts on Reading

First thought, I know next to nothing about anything I say on this blog. I am a perpetual student, and one of my recurring lessons is that there is way more to learn about everything. I still waffle on the issue of whether anyone under the age of 50 has any right to speak in public.

Anyhow, on Reading. Specifically, reading great books, or classics.

First, reading classics does not start fun--even for the whiz kid that has been reading at the college level since age 6. Philosophy is dense and boring, epic poetry takes 16 lines to say "Patrocles died," and history comes in 18 volumes to every particular bias of the writer. Reading great books in the beginning is straight, unvarnished, hard work. The joy of the thing though, is that is does not remain hard work. It is hard to see the progress, but be faithful in tackling the hard books and change will occur. I read The Republic in my Junior year of college, and it was one of the most dreadful dull books I had ever read. I learned nothing but facts and I decided I hated Plato. A year and a half later, I read Plato's Phaedrus, and I laughed at the jokes and got quite a bit out of his arguments. It was in fact, a pleasure to read. Trick to reading: persistence.

Second thing about reading. Books are not written in a vacuum. Every great or influential book in history was, well, influential. In other words, it actively interacted with the cultural and historical atmosphere. It was born of history and in turn, was the midwife of history. It is not necessary to have a profound understanding of the English Revolution to read Milton, but even a cursory knowledge of the times will make him much more clear. If you are confused, read a bit of the history of the time and it will help you appreciate the great book, and may even help your confusion. In a similar vein, Cliff Notes are your friend. Cliff Notes are not the equal of the great literature, but there are an excellent way to give the reader a general outline of what is going to happen and why it matters, thus freeing him to concentrate on the truly great and irreplacable parts of the work.

Third thing, if you are trying to read a great book for fun, read a great book you honestly want to read. Granted, it makes you look brilliant to be seen reading Les Miserables in public, but if it is putting you to sleep, there really isn't much point in reading it at this phase. Unless of course you are one of those people that can admit they don't find something interesting yet still give it its due. But, when browsing the shelves, looking for something impressive to read, pick something that actually sounds interesting. Having read numerous books just because I ought to read them, and getting absolutely nothing out of them, it really is a waste of time.

Fourth, some books just need and certain kinds of experience to understand. If you hate all things pertaining to the sea, you will hate Moby Dick, it has, roughly, 100 pages of marine biology, and 75 more on how to maintain a ship. Great Expectation needs an understanding of pain, lost hope, and ambition. Dostoevsky needs an understanding of suffering and the ability to grasp the brilliant agony of insanity. If you read a classic, and everything but the characters make sense, give it ten years and try again. It just may not make sense because you haven't lived enough yet to be able to hear it.

Fifth, some great books are not worth it. If the book is driving you insane, to gut-wrenching tears, or any other excessively damaging reaction, it is alright to put it away and never read it again. There are some great classics that exact an unbearable amount of confusion and pain for the sake of the story, and that story, objectively, may not be worth it for you. I will never read Tess of the D'Urberville's again, and Finnegan's Wake is never going to happen.

Reading is an art. It is an art for everyone, but it is not an art for everyone to approach in entirely the same way. When attempting the canon, give yourself space, acknowledge the masters, and bear in mind that there is a delicate balance between letting the work expand your horizons and forcefeeding yourself bricks the hard way. Give it time, and reading the greats will become a great pleasure.

Burnt Norton, Part 2

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
And reconciles forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear below the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Ehrebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.

Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.