' Live-Poets Society ' – A Corner For Poetry

AC Benus · June 17, 2020

92.

How pure at heart and sound in head,

With what divine affections bold

Should be the man whose thought would hold

An hour's communion with the dead.

In vain shalt thou, or any, call

The spirits from their golden day,

Except, like them, thou too canst say,

My spirit is at peace with all.

They haunt the silence of the breast,

Imaginations calm and fair,

The memory like a cloudless air,

The conscience as a sea at rest:

But when the heart is full of din,

And doubt beside the portal waits,

They can but listen at the gates,

And hear the household jar within.

Edited June 17, 2020 by AC Benus

Renee Stevens · June 17, 2020

Hey all,

So, I'm still doing some checking to see if it's even feasible to do in a short time frame, but I am thinking of doing a "Pop Up Poetry Anthology" (for lack of a better term). The theme would be "Instinct" (this was one of the themes with the most 5's in round 2 of the last theme selection). Poets would be able to do up to 4 poems, each posted as their own chapter. I don't mind putting in the work if I have enough authors/poets commit to it. The deadline would be 2-3 months (I need to check my schedule so I know when I'll be around to post them). So my question is this: who would commit to doing poems for it? I would need to have at least 7 or 8 authors commit in order to actually do it. You can PM me or comment in here (just be sure to tag me so I see it). Or visit the poll:

AC Benus · June 18, 2020

93.

By night we lingered on the lawn,

For underfoot the herb was dry;

And genial warmth; and o'er the sky

The silvery haze of summer drawn;

And calm that let the tapers burn

Unwavering: not a cricket chirred:

The brook alone far-off was heard,

And on the board the fluttering urn:

And bats went round in fragrant skies,

And wheeled or lit the filmy shapes

That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes

And woolly breasts and beaded eyes;

While now we sang old songs that pealed

From knoll to knoll, where, couched at ease,

The white kine glimmered, and the trees

Laid their dark arms about the field.

But when those others, one by one,

Withdrew themselves from me and night,

And in the house light after light

Went out, and I was all alone,

A hunger seized my heart; I read

Of that glad year which once had been,

In those fall'n leaves which kept their green,

The noble letters of the dead:

And strangely on the silence broke

The silent-speaking words, and strange

Was love's dumb cry defying change

To test his worth; and strangely spoke

The faith, the vigour, bold to dwell

On doubts that drive the coward back,

And keen through wordy snares to track

Suggestion to her inmost cell.

So word by word, and line by line,

The dead man touched me from the past,

And all at once it seemed at last

His living soul was flashed on mine,

And mine in his was wound, and whirled

About empyreal heights of thought,

And came on that which is, and caught

The deep pulsations of the world,

Aeonian music measuring out

The steps of Time -- the shocks of Chance --

The blows of Death. At length my trance

Was cancelled, stricken through with doubt.

Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame

In matter-moulded forms of speech,

Or ev'n for intellect to reach

Through memory that which I became:

Till now the doubtful dusk revealed

The knolls once more where, couched at ease,

The white kine glimmered, and the trees

Laid their dark arms about the field:

And sucked from out the distant gloom

A breeze began to tremble o'er

The large leaves of the sycamore,

And fluctuate all the still perfume,

And gathering freshlier overhead,

Rocked the full-foliaged elms, and swung

The heavy-folded rose, and flung

The lilies to and fro, and said,

"The dawn, the dawn," and died away;

And East and West, without a breath,

Mixed their dim lights, like life and death,

To broaden into boundless day.

Edited June 18, 2020 by AC Benus

Parker Owens · June 18, 2020

@AC Benus This affects me so very much. The images and allusions come fast and furious, enough to overwhelm the reader with appeals to senses and intellect. This was Tennyson at his best.

AC Benus · June 18, 2020

My dear friend, I couldn't agree with you more

AC Benus · June 19, 2020

94.

You say, but with no touch of scorn,

Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes

Are tender over drowning flies,

You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.

I know not: one indeed I knew

In many a subtle question versed,

Who touched a jarring lyre at first,

But ever strove to make it true:

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,

At last he beat his music out.

There lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds.

He fought his doubts and gathered strength,

He would not make his judgment blind,

He faced the spectres of the mind

And laid them: thus he came at length

To find a stronger faith his own;

And Power was with him in the night,

Which makes the darkness and the light,

And dwells not in the light alone,

But in the darkness and the cloud,

As over Sinaï's peaks of old,

While Israel made their gods of gold,

Although the trumpet blew so loud.

Edited June 19, 2020 by AC Benus

AC Benus · June 21, 2020

95.

My love has talked with rocks and trees;

He finds on misty mountain-ground

His own vast shadow glory-crowned;

He sees himself in all he sees.

Two partners of a married life --

I looked on these and thought of thee

In vastness and in mystery,

And of my spirit as of a wife.

These two -- they dwelt with eye on eye,

Their hearts of old have beat in tune,

Their meetings made December June

Their every parting was to die.

Their love has never passed away;

The days she never can forget

Are earnest that he loves her yet,

Whate'er the faithless people say.

Her life is lone, he sits apart,

He loves her yet, she will not weep,

Though rapt in matters dark and deep

He seems to slight her simple heart.

He thrids the labyrinth of the mind,

He reads the secret of the star,

He seems so near and yet so far,

He looks so cold: she thinks him kind.

She keeps the gift of years before,

A withered violet is her bliss:

She knows not what his greatness is,

For that, for all, she loves him more.

For him she plays, to him she sings

Of early faith and plighted vows;

She knows but matters of the house,

And he, he knows a thousand things.

Her faith is fixed and cannot move,

She darkly feels him great and wise,

She dwells on him with faithful eyes,

"I cannot understand: I love."

Edited June 21, 2020 by AC Benus

AC Benus · June 21, 2020

In No. 95, Tennyson returns to the Orpheus theme, but now -- here, on the other side of glorious No. 93, where his suffering has become transcendental -- the ancient Greek demigod is triumphant. He is master of all the Nature he sees. This is so glorious to me.

In the same Classical tradition, the poet gives the female gender to his soul. Thus, all the times he speaks of 'her' he means his spirit -- he means his marriage to Arthur. Again, more that is glorious.

Those who want to erase Tennyson's love from the view of LGBT(Q - questioning) youth make an extraordinary claim when they say (on Wiki, for example) that In Memoriam is not "about that" -- LOVE -- but about "friendship." BS. If they wish to make such an outrageous claim in total contradiction to the work of art itself, they need to produce extraordinary evidence to support their oddball bias. Just wishing Tennyson and Hallam were not so inconveniently Gay is not enough anymore.

What if I went on Wiki and stated categorically that Abelard and Heloise were just pals, even though their letters indulged in a gross amount of "heteroerrotism", but that is meaningless, as their so-called love was nothing but asexual admiration for one another --- no sex to see here, nope -- you straight people have to go and appropriate some other body of work for your twisted "perversion."

Imagine? And yet that's what they do for every single Gay poet and writer on Wiki, and we stand back and let them continue to lie to our kids.

Edited June 22, 2020 by AC Benus

AC Benus · June 22, 2020

96.

You leave us: you will see the Rhine,

And those fair hills I sailed below,

When I was there with him; and go

By summer belts of wheat and vine

To where he breathed his latest breath,

That City. All her splendour seems

No livelier than the wisp that gleams

On Lethe in the eyes of Death.

Let her great Danube rolling fair

Enwind her isles, unmarked of me:

I have not seen, I will not see

Vienna; rather dream that there,

A treble darkness, Evil haunts

The birth, the bridal; friend from friend

Is oftener parted, fathers bend

Above more graves, a thousand wants

Gnarr at the heels of men, and prey

By each cold hearth, and sadness flings

Her shadow on the blaze of kings:

And yet myself have heard him say,

That not in any mother town

With statelier progress to and fro

The double tides of chariots flow

By park and suburb under brown

Of lustier leaves; nor more content,

He told me, lives in any crowd,

When all is gay with lamps, and loud

With sport and song, in booth and tent,

Imperial halls, or open plain;

And wheels the circled dance, and breaks

The rocket molten into flakes

Of crimson or in emerald rain.

Edited June 22, 2020 by AC Benus

AC Benus · June 23, 2020

97.

Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,

So loud with voices of the birds,

So thick with lowings of the herds,

Day, when I lost the flower of men;

Who tremblest throogh thy darkling red

On yon swoll'n brook that bubbles fast

By meadows breathing of the past,

And woodlands holy to the dead;

Who murmurest in the foliaged eaves

A song that slights the coming care,

And Autumn laying here and there

A fiery finger on the leaves;

Who wakenest with thy balmy breath

To myriads on the genial earth,

Memories of bridal, or of birth,

And unto myriads more, of death.

O, wheresoever those may be,

Betwixt the slumber of the poles,

To-day they count as kindred souls;

They know me not, but mourn with me.

Edited June 23, 2020 by AC Benus

AC Benus · June 23, 2020

Just bumped into this...Grrrrr....

"[It's a] mistake to over-emphasize the death of Arthur Hallam in explaining the genesis of In Memoriam."

William R. Brashear

And from which remote, bygone era was Brashear assured his love-denying thesis would be embraced as something reassuring -- 2015. 2 0 1 5 !!!

And what goads me the most is thinking the likes of a Brashear, or the even that man himself, would fawn all over In Memoriam as one of the greatest love poems of all time if Tennyson had only addressed it to a girl. What hypocrites

Edited June 23, 2020 by AC Benus

MichaelS36 · June 23, 2020

AC, while I am no scholar especially in connection with poetry. I understand that In Memoriam was not written in a matter of weeks or months, I believe, if I'm not mistaken it was years.

To be honest people saying Tennyson and Hallam were Gay is supposition. We really have no actual proof. However, that is on either hand, nor do our straight friends have any real proof of the relationship between them.

If, we go along with Mr. Brashear, then my question would be, why on earth, would anyone spend all the time and effort he obviously did to write about a man who was a friend only? I love my friends. I would write something for them possibly.

But I would write forever to remember the man I loved completely.

I don't how we will change these fearful people's minds who cannot even bend slightly in their feelings about what may have been.

But I have loved men and I know their hearts, as do you, AC. And I know that in the future, people will read your work, tim's, Parkers, Wolf's and they will know without a shadow of a doubt those poems were written by proud, Gay men, to and about the men they loved.

Edited June 23, 2020 by MichaelS36

AC Benus · June 23, 2020

@MichaelS36 Thanks, Mike. I was not planning on having a Tennyson afternoon, but things unfolded. The search for one particular essay brought a host of others to my eyes. Although the 2015 one has some weird agenda to denigrate the entire reason for In Memoriam's existence, another analysis I found seems to totally "get it". Henry van Dyke's "Studies in Tennyson" from 1919 ends his chapter on the Elegy like this:

(the "Threescore years and ten of earthly labour" means "Even is Hallam had lived to have a 70 year writing career, he could hardly have..." etc.)

"The promise of Arthur Hallam's life was not broken. Threescore years and ten of earthly labour could hardly have accomplished anything greater than the work which was inspired by his early death and consecrated to his beloved memory. The heart of man, which can win such victory out of its darkest defeat and reap such harvest from the furrows of the grave, is neither sprung from dust nor destined to return to it. A poem like In Memoriam -- more than all flowers of the returning spring, more than all shining wings that flutter above the ruins of the chrysalis, more than all sculptured tombs and monuments of the beloved dead -- is the living evidence of an endless life."

MichaelS36 · June 23, 2020

It sounds like he did get it. Brashear sounds like so many people who cannot see the forest for the trees. They remind me of people who love their conspiracy theories - they fall apart when you start asking logical questions.

AC Benus · June 24, 2020

Hehe, I was thinking about that oh so famous quote from this poem:

Um. No. The poem is about love, first and foremost. In fact, yesterday I thought I'd drop the whole In Memoriam into a Word doc and count just how many times the word love is used. Off hand, I can't seem to remember a single use of "like" applied to Hallam, but I could be mistaken

AC Benus · June 24, 2020

98.

I climb the hill: from end to end

Of all the landscape underneath,

I find no place that does not breathe

Some gracious memory of my friend;

No gray old grange, or lonely fold,

Or low morass and whispering reed,

Or simple stile from mead to mead,

Or sheepwalk up the windy wold;

Nor hoary knoll of ash and hew

That hears the latest linnet trill,

Nor quarry trenched along the hill

And haunted by the wrangling daw;

Nor runlet tinkling from the rock;

Nor pastoral rivulet that swerves

To left and right through meadowy curves,

That feed the mothers of the flock;

But each has pleased a kindred eye,

And each reflects a kindlier day;

And, leaving these, to pass away,

I think once more he seems to die.

Edited June 24, 2020 by AC Benus

AC Benus · June 25, 2020

99.

Unwatched, the garden bough shall sway,

The tender blossom flutter down,

Unloved, that beech will gather brown,

This maple burn itself away;

Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair,

Ray round with flames her disk of seed,

And many a rose-carnation feed

With summer spice the humming air;

Unloved, by many a sandy bar,

The brook shall babble down the plain,

At noon or when the lesser wain

Is twisting round the polar star;

Uncared for, gird the windy grove,

And flood the haunts of hern and crake;

Or into silver arrows break

The sailing moon in creek and cove;

Till from the garden and the wild

A fresh association blow,

And year by year the landscape grow

Familiar to the stranger's child;

As year by year the labourer tills

His wonted glebe, or lops the glades;

And year by year our memory fades

From all the circle of the hills.

Edited June 25, 2020 by AC Benus

AC Benus · June 26, 2020

100.

We leave the well-beloved place

Where first we gazed upon the sky;

The roofs, that heard our earliest cry,

Will shelter one of stranger race.

We go, but ere we go from home,

As down the garden-walks I move,

Two spirits of a diverse love

Contend for loving masterdom.

One whispers, "Here thy boyhood sung

Long since its matin song, and heard

The low love-language of the bird

In native hazels tassel-hung."

The other answers, "Yea, but here

Thy feet have strayed in after hours

With thy lost friend among the bowers,

And this hath made them trebly dear."

These two have striven half the day,

And each prefers his separate claim,

Poor rivals in a losing game,

That will not yield each other way.

I turn to go: my feet are set

To leave the pleasant fields and farms;

They mix in one another's arms

To one pure image of regret.

Edited June 26, 2020 by AC Benus

AC Benus · June 27, 2020

101.

On that last night before we went

From out the doors where I was bred,

I dreamed a vision of the dead,

Which left my after-morn content.

Methought I dwelt within a hall,

And maidens with me: distant hills

From hidden summits fed with rills

A river sliding by the wall.

The hall with harp and carol rang.

They sang of what is wise and good

And graceful. In the centre stood

A statue veiled, to which they sang;

And which, though veiled, was known to me,

The shape of him I loved, and love

For ever: then flew in a dove

And brought a summons from the sea:

And when they learnt that I must go

They wept and wailed, but led the way

To where a little shallop lay

At anchor in the flood below;

And on by many a level mead,

And shadowing bluff that made the banks,

We glided winding under ranks

Of iris, and the golden reed;

And still as vaster grew the shore

And rolled the floods in grander space,

The maidens gathered strength and grace

And presence, lordlier than before;

And I myself, who sat apart

And watched them, waxed in every limb;

I felt the thews of Anakim,

The pulses of a Titan's heart;

As one would sing the death of war,

And one would chant the history

Of that great race, which is to be,

And one the shaping of a star;

Until the forward-creeping tides

Began to foam, and we to draw

From deep to deep, to where we saw

A great ship lift her shining sides.

The man we loved was there on deck,

But thrice as large as man he bent

To greet us. Up the side I went,

And fell in silence on his neck;

Whereat those maidens with one mind

Bewailed their lot; I did them wrong:

"We served thee here," they said, "so long,

And wilt thou leave us now behind?"

So rapt I was, they could not win

An answer from my lips, but he

Replying, "Enter likewise ye

And go with us:" they entered in.

And while the wind began to sweep

A music out of sheet and shroud,

We steered her toward a crimson cloud

That landlike slept along the deep.

Edited June 27, 2020 by AC Benus

AC Benus · June 29, 2020

102.

The time draws near the birth of Christ;

The moon is hid, the night is still;

A single church below the hill

Is pealing, folded in the mist.

A single peal of bells below,

That wakens at this hour of rest

A single murmur in the breast,

That these are not the bells I know.

Like strangers' voices here they sound,

In lands where not a memory strays,

Nor landmark breathes of other days,

But all is new unhallowed ground.

Edited June 29, 2020 by AC Benus

AC Benus · July 1, 2020

I looked ahead a bit, and ran into this. I know you agree with me, but for anyone to read a love poem like this one and have the audacity to say it's not about love at all because it's Gay is galling. It's galling because if these few, godlike lines had not make clear it's Tennyson to Hallam, then all the straight world would quote it as among the greatest love poems there is. Why can't they accept black and white?

Dear friend, far off, my lost desire,

So far, so near in woe and weal;

O loved the most, when most I feel

There is a lower and a higher;

Known and unknown; human, divine;

Sweet human hand and lips and eye;

Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,

Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine;

Strange friend, past, present, and to be;

Loved deeplier, darklier understood;

Behold, I dream a dream of good,

And mingle all the world with thee.

Edited July 1, 2020 by AC Benus

AC Benus · July 1, 2020

103.

Tonight un-gathered let us leave

This laurel, let this holly stand:

We live within the stranger's land,

And strangely falls our Christmas-eve.

Our father's dust is left alone

And silent under other snows:

There in due time the woodbine blows,

The violet comes, but we are gone.

No more shall wayward grief abuse

The genial hour with mask and mime;

For change of place, like growth of time,

Has broke the bond of dying use.

Let cares that petty shadows cast,

By which our lives are chiefly proved,

A little spare the night I loved,

And hold it solemn to the past.

But let no footstep beat the floor,

Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm;

For who would keep an ancient form

Through which the spirit breathes no more?

Be neither song, nor game, nor feast;

Nor harp be touched, nor flute be blown;

No dance, no motion, save alone

What lightens in the lucid east

Of rising worlds by yonder wood.

Long sleeps the summer in the seed;

Run out your measured arcs, and lead

The closing cycle rich in good.

Note: I have been trying to present the poems as they appear in the first public edition of the book. For example, after the complete (original) In Memoriam is posted, I will post the five or so Tennyson added later to the collection. The exact number and sequence of the numbered parts is always an interesting topic, and just a few days ago I read that one of Tennyson's close inner circle was let read the printer's proof sheet for the first (private) edition. This gentleman wrote a paper on the contents in the early 1890s, and states there were only 118 numbered poems (as compared to the final 131).

Some alterations were made, and the opening strophe of this poem appears in the first public edition as:

This holly by the cottage-eave,

Tonight, ungathered, shall it stand:

We live within the stranger's land,

And strangely falls our Christmas eve.

I think I prefer the original. The idea of leaving the "laurel" behind, that is, Tennyson's efforts at writing about Hallam, seems forced. More natural to me is the idea that "outside" grows the holly (as metaphor for the world outside of Hallam's and Tennyson's love) in celebration of the season. But "we" -- meaning the partners -- are strangers in a strange land that does not care about their sorrows. That's a sterling allusion in my book :yes:

Edited July 1, 2020 by AC Benus

MichaelS36 · July 1, 2020

I wish I could answer. What makes them fear it so? Because they are straight and a lot of them never really have that connection. And if they don't have it, then no way can we? Maybe that's it. I don't know my friend. But this is blatant, as are many of the ones posted.

AC Benus · July 1, 2020

104.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light:

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more;

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

(A poem more fitting to our hopes for current times could not possibly be

)

Edited July 1, 2020 by AC Benus

Parker Owens · July 1, 2020

@AC Benus Thank you for posting 104. I cannot wait for these bells to ring.

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