Day 31: George Herbert's Easter Wings

Happy Easter!  We finish this month of Welsh and Irish poetry (mostly Welsh) with the 17th century Welsh poet, George Herbert's, Easter Wings.  Herbert was Welsh-born (Montgomeryshire), educated at Cambridge, represented Montgomeryshire in Parliament, and then took up residence as an Anglican minister in Wiltshire, where he died in 1633 from tuberculosis, at the age of 39.  All of his poems were religious in theme; a few, like Easter Wings, also were "pattern poems" in which the format of the lines also formed a pattern related to the theme.  If you rotate the poem to the right, the two stanzas appear to be wings of  a bird in upward flight.  I've included an image of the poem as originally printed below (thanks to Wikipedia).


EASTER WINGS

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
    Though foolishly he lost the flame,
       Decaying more and more,
         Till   he   became
            Most poore:
            With     thee
         O   let   me  rise
       As  larks, harmoniously,
    And sing this  day  thy victories:
Then  shall  the  fall  further  the  flight  in me.

My   tender  age   in   sorrow  did   beginne
     And still with sicknesses and shame
       Thou didst so punish sinne,
          That      I     became
             Most thinne.
            With   thee
          Let    me     combine,
       And feel this day thy victorie:
     For,  if  I  imp  my  wing  on  thine,
Affliction   shall   advance  the  flight   in  me.   

Day 30: Englynion-- Welsh Short Poems

When most of us think of short poems with rules governing form and number of syllables, we likely think of haiku.  Welsh poetry has its own short form in the englyn (plural englynion).  There are eight types of englynion, which you can read about here.  The most commonly used is the englyn unodl union-- the straight, one-rhyme englyn.  This consists of four lines of ten, six, seven, and seven syllables, respectively.  the seventh, eighth, or ninth syllable of the first line introduces the rhyme, which then appears at the end of each successive line.

Like haiku, englynion sometimes offer a seemingly simple image, from which the reader can derive deeper meanings (or not).  The following englyn by Walter Davies (Gwallter Mechain, 1761-1849) offers one example:

CYFNOS (NIGHTFALL)

Y nos dywell yn distewi,-- caddug
          Yn cuddio Eryri,
     Yr Haul yng ngwely'r heli,
     A'r lloer yn ariannu'r lli.

Silence brought by the dark night:  Eryryi's
          Mountains veiled by mist:
     The sun in the bed of brine,
     The moon silvering the water.


Howell Elvet Lewis' Gobaith Dibrofiad (Life's Morning) is more direct in its feeling and meaning.  Lewis also makes use of internal rhymes-- the "ai" in the second and third lines-- and the near "mirror image" sounds in "blodau" (Welsh for "flower") and "bladur" ("blade") in the fourth line.

GOBAITH DIBROFIAD (LIFE'S MORNING)

Bore oes--O! mor brysur--y gwibia
          Gobaith ar ei antur:
     Canai lai pe gwelai gur
     Y blodau dan y bladur

Life's morning--O, how quickly-- fleets
          Hope on its adventure:
     It would sing less if it saw the pain
     Of the flowers beneath the scythe.

(Welsh originals from the Oxford Book of Welsh Verse; English translations from the Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English).

Day 29 (belated): Fern Hill

Yesterday, I posted one of my son Dylan’s favorite poems by Dylan Thomas. Now for one of mine. Fern Hill was inspired by childhood trips to his aunt and uncle’s farm in rural Carmarthenshire. The poem captures the magical quality that the farm must have had for a boy from the city, and reminds us of how, when we were children, simple, everyday things took on new and special meaning in our imaginations.



FERN HILL

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
     The night above the dingle starry,
          Time let me hail and climb
     Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
          Trail with daisies and barley
     Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
     In the sun that is young once only,
          Time let me play and be
     Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
          And the sabbath rang slowly
     In the pebbles of the holy stream.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
     And playing, lovely and watery
          And fire green as grass.
     And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
     Flying with the ricks, and the horses
          Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
     Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
          The sky gathered again
     And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
     Out of the whinnying green stable
          On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
     In the sun born over and over,
          I ran my heedless ways,
     My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
     Before the children green and golden
          Follow him out of grace,
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
     In the moon that is always rising,
          Nor that riding to sleep
     I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
          Time held me green and dying
     Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

At the Center of the US Population

My poem "At the Center of the US Population" was posted on Orion Magazine's blog site on March 29.  Orion published an article on the 2010 center of population written by Jeremy Miller in this month's issue.  Jeremy, a free-lance writer, accompanied the small group of us geodesists, surveyors, and geographers in March 2011 as we journeyed to Plato, Missouri to identify a good location to place the center of population marker.  It was great to see Jeremy's article finally published.  By coincidence, I had just written my poem only a few weeks before.  I shared it with him, and he forwarded it on to Orion's editors. 

The blog post is here.  Jeremy Miller's article is here.

Here's our group, standing next to the "Center Tree;" from left to right:  Derick Moore (Census Bureau), Mike Ratcliffe (Census Bureau), Darrell Pratte (Missouri Land Survey Program), Dave Doyle (National Geodetic Survey), Brian Ward (NOAA).

Day 28: Time for Dylan

No survey of Welsh poets would be complete without poems by Dylan Thomas.  No intro or background about him is needed, but if you do want to read more, you can do so on the website devoted to his life and work. 

I'll devote the next few blogs to his work, starting with a poem that is a favorite of my son, Dylan (who, like Dylan Thomas, is named after Dylan Eil Ton, a character in the Mabinogion).

From The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, New Directions, 1971


THE HAND THAT SIGNED THE PAPER

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The finger joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose's quill has put an end to murder
That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor stroke the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.

Day 27: Another by Idris Davies

Another poem by Idris Davies for today.  From the Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English, Gwyn Jones, editor. 


CONSIDER FAMOUS MEN, DAI BACH

Consider famous men, Dai bach, consider famous men,
All their slogans, all their deeds,
And follow the funerals to the grave.
Consider the charlatans, the shepherds of the sheep!
Consider the grease upon the tongue, the hunger of the purse!
Consider the fury of the easy words,
The vulgarity behind the brass,
The dirty hands that shook the air, that stained the sky!
Yet some there were who lived for you,
Who lay to die remembering you.

Mabon was your champion once upon a time
And his portrait’s on the milk-jug yet.
The world has bred no champions for a long time now,
Except the boxing, tennis, golf, and Fascist kind,
And the kind that democracy breeds and feeds for Harringay,
And perhaps the world has grown too bitter or too wise
To breed a prophet or a poet ever again.


This and other poems by Idris Davies have been collected on-line by another blogger, and are available at http://dru-withoutamap.blogspot.com/2009/07/poetry-of-idris-davies.html.

Day 26: Idris Davies and the South Wales Coalfield

It was probably sometime in the early 1990s when I heard “The Bells of Rhymney” by Robyn Hitchcock and the New Egyptians. I liked the song for its tune, and because I was familiar with all of the places mentioned in the song from my trips to the valleys of South Wales while in grad school at Oxford, and the words tugged at my socialist heart. I mention this because, while researching the life and poetry of Idris Davies, I learned that the words to the song are from his poem, originally published in 1938 in his book Gwalia Deserta, and put to music by Pete Seeger.

Idris Davies was the son of a collier, and a poet of the South Wales coalfields. North Wales, with its steep, alpine mountains, maintains its place as the heartland of the Welsh-speaking Wales and the historical home of the Welsh Princes who defied England. Mid and West Wales has small fishing villages (the kind that inspired Llareggub in Dylan Thomas’ Under Milkwood) and a rural countryside of green hills dotted with sheep. South Wales was the industrial heartland, its valleys lined with iron mills and coal mines. And, South Wales was the heartland of radical politics in Wales; the home of Chartists, trades unions, Labour, socialists, and communists. Idris Davies, writing in both Welsh and English, was their poetic voice from the 1920s until his death in 1953. You can read more about Idris Davies in the Welsh Biography Online and also here .

The first poem for today, “Do you remember 1926?” recalls the nine-day General Strike called throughout the UK by the Trades Union Congress in a failed attempt to stop wage reductions and to halt worsening working conditions for miners. An interesting animation of Davies reciting the poem is available here. The second, “Mrs. Evans fach, you want butter again” provides an commentary on the strike from a small shopowner’s point of view. Both poems are from The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English, Gwyn Jones, editor.


DO YOU REMEMBER 1926?

Do you remember 1926? That summer of soups and speeches,
The sunlight on the idle wheels and deserted crossing,
And the laughter and the cursing in the moonlit streets?
Do you remember 1926? The slogans and the penny concerts,
The jazz-bands and the moorland picnics,
And the slanderous tongues of famous cities?
Do you remember 1926? The great dream and the swift disaster,
The fanatic and the traitor, and more than all,
The bravery of the simple, faithful folk?
‘Ay, ay, we remember 1926,’ said Dai and Shinkin,
As they stood on the kerb in Charing Cross Road,
‘And we shall remember 1926 until our blood is dry.’


MRS. EVANS FACH, YOU WANT BUTTER AGAIN

Mrs. Evans fach, you want butter again.
How will you pay for it now, little woman
With your husband out on strike, and full
Of the fiery language? Ay, I know him,
His head is full of fire and brimstone
And a lot of palaver about communism,
And me, little Dan the Grocer
Depending so much on private enterprise.

What, depending on the miners and their
Money too? O yes, in a way, Mrs. Evans,
Yes, in a way I do, mind you.
Come tomorrow, little woman, and I’ll tell you then
What I have decided overnight.
Go home now and tell that rash red husband of yours
That your grocer cannot afford to go on strike
Or what would happen to the butter from Carmarthen?
Good day for now, Mrs. Evans fach.