Variations on a Theme of Romantic Character
1. Weather as a Device of Pathetic Fallacy
Low on the hills, a shank of cloud, and farther off
tin-rattling thunder jumpstarts yellow bolts
by Peldon fields.
The storm draws down, its boiling greys
stacking to a deeper black, the air
itching with current.
Someone struck might live, telling yet
what world the fusion makes −
skull rimmed in fire, fire drilling
soles and belly, through mossy seams
or gravel underfoot, lastly into clays.
Never twice, no second strike
to find you standing same and same again,
or how could we abide, again and again the same
short straw…?
In the field, a spool of barbed wire glints post to post,
but it’s the grounding flash
that urges livestock
in a press, under wind-snap branches.
Here is light’s perfection, pure products
of melted sky hammering
bone and memory, the broad oak sullied,
before this earthed expectancy,
everywhere, bright sheets of skimming rain.
2. The Exquisite Regard for Common Things
I walked the afternoon on the fells
with William and Coleridge, clouds eye-level
with the view, the wind abrupt by rocky verticals
helmed beyond the physical, in a first knowledge of spring,
on the stones a paint of lichen
as a grim regard of altitude, a toughness
we climbed to meet.
Time itself appeared dislocated. Birches rooted in granite
above the wreath of high lakes, waves
lapped in light, the changeful colours
of larch, or the lank habit of pine
studding the foreshore, affirmed wet dark days
were spent – closed in yet by clouds, Ullswater,
chased in butter flower and buds of alder.
We continued beyond Gowbarrow Park, the woods
twigged in purple, and along the path
wood-sorrel and anemones. Then by
the water lane, daffodils, a few, then further by,
yellow belts the width of a turnpike
thinning to knots of colour, stragglers
among the stones, the wind off the lake
lifting the heads, ever glancing, so, and so –
a view of simple unity we all remarked upon.
William went before us, that he return
to the building of the orchard wall – our bower –
begun the Wednesday, intended
as our shady spot amidst fits of thrush song
and ravens passing. I walked on with Coleridge,
speaking sweetly of the disposal
of our riches.
We stopped awhile in the meadow,
by then in twilight, with Jupiter, Venus,
and a perfect boat of moon between
just by the distant farms.
Discovering the cottage below, we could see William
sat by the open window with his books.
We returned upon the mountain road, observing
our shadows just visible before us, and, beneath glossy hollies,
these nameless, scarlet flowers.
3. Charles Lamb: a Letter
Speak no more to me of poetry
and vanities of that kind.
Bees at clover are wiser than sonnet writers
in their generation – I charge you leave me out of any publication,
or if so, without name or initial.
I will here have done with praise and blame,
I have written so much…
a deal of stuff on tenderness, imagination
in poetry of the highest species, and London too,
its squares, the room where I was born,
life awake
in watchmen, rattles, the dirty crowds in Fleet Street,
the city itself a masquerade unrivalled
in Cumberland groves.
Forgive me, my habits are changing. Writing now
familiar letters on common subjects,
I am reminded of Keswick, and Coleridge
receiving me so warmly – his kindness to Mary, too,
she being then improved somewhat in her mind –
his study large, antique, with folios
scattered about upon an old sofa… the Æolian harp…
the house itself set within a net of mountains, even then
it was London I thought of, its playhouses and pantomimes,
the motley Strand.
Coleridge gone now: it is said
he has left behind him
forty thousand treatises in metaphysical critique, none complete –
what destiny now, to wrap up spices – to Wordsworth, too, adieu,
and in the churchyard poor Godwin, his theories
six feet deep in Cripplegate mould.
Gather up your reliques, my friend, and come home,
that we should sup again with Ariel, in liquor
through Silver Street, on his shoulders
up Parson’s Lane, the neighbours
from their windows shouting, Pray, Sir, what o’clock?
In the finest movements
of the moment hand, a little present of eternity −
I think now we lost our time, looking what the time was,
lines in the Mad Scene, in a play now
out of fashion.
4. Lines from a Journal
I lived and died in drawing rooms, the English
indiscriminate between the prodigy
and monster, Life in ottava rima.
That which I invented, its wit
and roguery, the stanzas of stolen glances, lust,
invective, the simplicity, the largeness
of humanity mocked, raw, eclipsed
their petty ambitions.
I have no memory of my follies or crimes,
only that my delinquencies required a voice;
they looked upon my cantos as upon the Alps.
It was that nobler insight
that instructed my misery − the mountains at Jungfrau,
the air and lakes, and Shelley, a balm for my disquiet
and my changeful corruptions.
Are we other than scribblers, dreamers and spectators
of apathy, affecting that rhyme
prevents disorder? Against their scruples, I would mark
the naïveté of the Venetian dialect, always
pleasing in a woman’s mouth.
High winds out, across the sky, clouds in appearance
like milk blown from a pail.
Today I saw the remains of Actium, near which
Antony lost the world – of it
only a broken wall to be seen… I too would have the news,
the deaths and defeats,
that I may know the evils I avoided, preferring instead
to speak tolerable Greek
to Greeks, or to swim Sestos to Abydos,
with as much immortality as may suit
up to the present moment, writing six minutes
before eight o’ the clock – French hours, not Italian.
I am in love with a girl of twenty, like Caroline
but not so savage: her eyes almond-shaped, dark,
the eyelids tinged in the manner of the Ottomans.
Her husband is sixty, and returns with her
to winter in Ravenna, to keep her safe… too late, I think –
on her thigh a birthmark, the inky dribble
of a sparrow in flight….
Against my nature, une ame qui se tourmente, un esprit violent,
I was the true noblesse of patience.
Such prudence is tiresome enough, but a fallen spirit
must maintain it to be saved, as of my life to say,
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
5. Walking to Helpston
Who sowed the sun, that I might reap its bright rays,
or fall to hedges
sleepy under powder stars, pledges of dreams
more sweetly taken? A counsel I keep
with wrens, with derelicts and wander-men,
who showed me from Essex woods
the homeward road.
Here a simple thing, a simple thought
that went before me, but which
I might not grasp,
and how shall a thing be called, if not itself?
The dormouse chumbling root-scrape
makes napping room, so too I
set me to the cart lane
and my cottage under elm, in this journey
my own nature cured
of itself, to say, Here’s thy comfort, Solitude,
though my mind escape a little, and I am frighted
where my shadow drags, before this old deformity.
Perhaps tomorrow, kindness. Today the chaffinch pinks… pinks…
and vanishes.
A book I had me once, of seasons
and weathers, and a mighty pretty thing it was,
upon it a name
some said was mine.
The firestart looks to its bluey clutch.
It is a fine day for walking.
6. Of Time, and the Persuasion of Dreams upon It
In a previous lesson, I bested my master −
a blockhead with little Greek − and came down
from the Grammar against my guardian’s wishes.
From there to Wales, and wandering, in one pocket
a favourite English poet, in the other
Euripides, and a few guineas lent me
by my Mother’s friend.
Roofless all those days, beneath
the heaviest misconduct of weather, my meagre goods
no match for hunger when it bit,
I made acquaintance of the money-lender, Dell,
and hence to London, to a house of his tenancy
where in that gift
against the fleshly ills of cold, I stayed two months
in stupor of want, in fitful dogsleep,
in silence but for rats or ghosts
scuttling on the stairs.
In time, I came to Soho, and Ann, a prostitute
in age not more than sixteen years,
whose kindness in my fainting state − the violent aching
of my person assuaged with warmed, spice port −
reminds me yet my debt to her,
near the dreamy lamps
and barrel-organ airs of Oxford Street,
the fatal necessity of her wage.
These images return in laudanum.
Each day, in the ruby-coloured quart
the thousandth drop extracts from memory
the rose and chimney soot, the pole star
summoned in the chancery of dreams.
The recollection stirs, and again
I am in those roads, gone now thirty years.
Pale and piteous again she walks…
intuition clothed in her attendant circumstance.
Feeble Time, commanded in this tincture!
In this sleep the world is fire,
mazes, the pulse of secret rivers, in sleep
rehearsing these annihilations, in shuttered rooms
the coarse nerve soothed, dreamer,
painting on the darkness
these heraldries.
7. My Thoughts Have Turned Lately This Way
I write nothing of late, and probably shall write
no more, for I am offended
that my name is classed among those
who have no name.
I had rather be nothing, and not run
with the Literary, that most vulgar of crowds.
Each of the moderns governs his petty state,
and knows the count of straws
swept from causeways, and coppers
scoured to a worthy brightness − not so the Ancients
in their vast dominions, the cup justly given
to only one of an Age.
I think of Keats, and the promise of excellence
lost to us now.
Having sought to avoid system
and mannerism, and the infirm desire for fame,
I find too little certainty in the future, too little
satisfaction with the past, unlike Byron,
who fashions every word as a wing-beat
brushing immortality:
he is here with his falcons, a tame crow,
and a lady of rank, maintaining he’s done with
the degrading habits of Venice; he rises at two….
My inclinations were not to meet with him
or that set again… he understands many a beautiful thing,
but in explanation exercises such curious manners
that taste and self-love are offended.
As with Hunt, through which all things
become petty, I grow now indifferent
to Mozart and white busts.
My mind is a pack of scattered cards,
and I feel it worse upon opening any book.
I have an habitual feeling of my real life having passed.
Mrs Shelley and Clare rode out this morning,
but their pleasure was spoiled by the guides −
complete savages uttering horrible cries
and no one knows why.
I can scarce bid you goodbye, even in a letter;
I always made an awkward bow.
P.S. I am going to see the ruins,
the first day the sea is waveless.
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