Ten thousand things are growing in the radiance

Today is the first day of Spring (at least in the southern hemisphere - what's the deal with the northern hemisphere??), and it deserves some literary eclat. There are some well-loved lines about Spring, though fewer than for Autumn, as I noted here.  In Canberra, the cherry trees are blossoming in earnest and a lot of the big bare trees are covered in tiny buds. So here are Blake and Wordsworth, to represent the orthodox tradition. 

William Blake "To Spring", 1793

O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down
Through the clear windows of the morning, turn
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!

The hills tell one another, and the listening
Valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turn’d
Up to thy bright pavilions: issue forth
And let thy holy feet visit our clime!

Come o’er the eastern hills, and let our winds
Kiss thy perfumèd garments; let us taste
Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls
Upon our lovesick land that mourns for thee.

O deck her forth with thy fair fingers; pour
Thy soft kisses on her bosom; and put
Thy golden crown upon her languish’d head,
Whose modest tresses are bound up for thee.

William Wordsworth "Lines Written in early spring", 1798  

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:--
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

I also like these lines (loosely translated) from a Han dynasty Fu - somehow more outdoorsy than Blake or Wordsworth ever sound:

Sunflowers in the field are purest green,
The morning dew awaits the sun to dry it.
The warm spring spreads round its favours,
Ten thousand things are growing in the radiance.

Something there is that doesn't love a stonewall

Here is a very good article from the NY Times about the failure of spin and stonewalling in some high-profile disasters. BP's failure to speak honestly and remorsefully, instead making things worse with attempts to trivialise the disaster, is particularly egregious, proving how vast an echo a leader's words can have. CEO Tony Hayward's "I want my life back" will probably live in memory the way Clinton's "I did not have relations with that woman" has, or Nixon's "I am not a crook."  There's much to be said for speaking the truth.

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

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.