The darker odds, the dross

Since the polls open in less than 16 hours,  I thought Walt Whitman's “Election Day, November 1884” would do nicely.

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
’Twould not be you, Niagara—nor you, ye limitless prairies—nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon’s white cones—nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes—nor Mississippi’s stream:
—This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name—the still small voice vibrating—America’s choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen—the act itself the main, the quadrennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous’d-sea-board and inland-Texas to Maine—the Prairie States—Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West—the paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling—(a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:) the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity—welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
—Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify—while the heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.

Wordless as the flight of birds

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I came across this poem, ‘Ars Poetica’ by Archibald Macleish, while doing some work on poetics and poetic theory. I think it beautifully captures what a poem is or should be, without tedious explanations or what the Greeks called periergia. Macleish (1892-1982) was among other things America's Librarian of Congress. 

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown--

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

*

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind--

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

*

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea--

A poem should not mean
But be.

The Bunner Sisters

I’ve been reading this Edith Wharton novella in my idle hours. It has some really lovely evocations of loneliness, solitude, the pitiable smallness of the lives of these unmarried sisters, but the story seems to unspool and wind away as it grows more elaborate and emotive. While the events become more dramatic, more like the indulgent melodramas of their neighbour Miss Mellins, the subtle pathos of the early scenes is never recovered. The elder, Ann Eliza, is accustomed to give way to her younger, prettier, more petulant sister, Evelina, but when an intriguing German clockmaker intrudes on her emotional constitution, she feels for the first time some claims of her own. “Ann Eliza, in those days, had never dreamed of allowing herself the luxury of self-pity: it seemed as much a personal right of Evelina’s as her elaborately crinkled hair. But now she began to transfer to herself a portion of the sympathy she had so long bestowed on Evelina. She had at last recognised her right to set up some lost opportunities of her own; and once that dangerous precedent established, they began to crowd upon her memory.” However, she yields to her sister in this as in everything, and Evelina wins the hand of the clockmaker.

But the marriage is disastrous, and Evelina returns to her sister in an advanced state of consumption. As the passions of both sisters magnify, the pathos of their littleness is lost.  In tending her sister’s ruinous end, Ann Eliza experiences a realisation akin to the one just quoted. “For the first time in her life she dimly faced the awful problem of the inutility of self-sacrifice […] Self-effacement for the good of others had always seemed to her both natural and necessary […] Now she perceived that to refuse the gifts of life does not ensure their transmission to those for whom they have been surrendered; and her familiar heaven was unpeopled.”  This loss of self is more profound than her first, but it didn’t move me as much. Her sister’s loss in the marriage didn’t move me as much as Ann Eliza’s loss of the prospect of it. In this instance, as in many, less is more.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

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This is number 43 from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portugese. They were written in her happiest years - married to Robert Browning, with whom she had eloped in her late 30s, and living in Italy where her poor health improved and she had her first and only son, Pen. The first line of this sonnet has been bandied about somewhat, but the rest is probably unknown and quite breathlessly beautiful. 

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.