Poetry of the Week: Emily Brontë

The first story that springs to mind when I think of Gothic novels is always Wuthering Heights. The haunting tale of Catherine and Heathcliff, told over generations across the moor. It's far from my favorite, but you could fill a list of classic Victorian Gothic tropes purely with selections from Wuthering Heights.  So it seems only right and proper to devote a week in my Gothic month to selections of Emily Brontë's poetry.


The Night is Darkening Round Me
The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go. 


I see around me tombstones grey
I see around me tombstones grey
Stretching their shadow far away
Beneath the turf my footsteps tread
Lie lone and lone the silent dead

Beneath the turf beneath the mould
Forever dark forever cold
And my eyes cannot hold the tears
That memory hoards from vanished years

For time and death and mortal pain
Give wounds that will not heal again
Let me remember half the woe
I've seen and heard and felt below
And heaven itself so pure and blest
Could never give my spirit rest

Sweet land of light thy children fair
Know naught akin to our despair
Nor have they felt nor can they tell
What tenants haunt each mortal cell
What gloomy guests we hold within
Torments and madness tears and sin

Well may they live in ecstasy
Their long eternity of joy
At least we would not bring them down
With us to weep with us to groan

No - Earth would wish no other sphere
To taste her cup of sufferings drear
She turns from heaven a careless eye
And only mourns that we must die

Ah mother what shall comfort thee
In all this boundless misery?
To cheer our eager eyes a while
We see thee smile how fondly smile

But who reads through that tender glow
Thy deep, unutterable woe!
Indeed no dazzling land above
Can cheat thee of thy children's love

We all in life's departing shine
Our last dear longings blend with thine
And struggle still and strive to trace
With clouded gaze thy darling face

We would not leave our native home
For any world beyond the tomb
No rather on thy kindly breast
Let us be laid in lasting rest

Or waken but to share with thee

A mutual immortality


Stanzas
Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be:

To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.

I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distinguished faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.

I'll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.

What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.

Poetry of the Week: Darkness by Byron

I've been delaying on the poetry front because I was uncertain whether or not I wanted to touch on recent events. But the truth is, I don't want to talk publicly about Pulse. And I don't know what I'd even say about BRExit and the political climate both here and abroad.

I joke about being a misanthrope and wanting to hide away from people, but I have a lot of faith in humanity. We tell stories around fires and we dream of the stars. We've created such beautiful things in our time here, but we do atrocious, bloody, cruel things to each other out of fear and anger and greed, and I don't know where we're headed at the moment.

So for now I'm going to focus on my small corner of the world, and my own narrow path, which means struggling to learn and make music and shake off all the rust and fear to start writing again, so that maybe one day I'll have easier access to words that might help.

In July I'm doing a miniature practice NaNoWriMo, and my story is, perhaps appropriately, a horror story. The genre I find most comforting. So for the next few weeks I'm falling entirely back to my roots, and you can expect a lot of Gothic poetry and hauntings. Today, "Darkness", primarily for a single line I think about when I start worrying about the world.

Darkness - Lord Byron
I had a dream, which was not all a dream,
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless; and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air        
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation: and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,        
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other’s face        
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contained;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks        
Extinguish’d with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest        
Their chins upon their clenched hands and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look’d up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again        
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash’d their teeth and howl’d: the wild birds shriek’d,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground.
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl’d        
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food:
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again:—a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart        
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;        
The meagre by the meagre were devour’d,
Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish’d men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead        
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer’d not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish’d by degrees; but two        
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place,
Where had been heap’d a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,        
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld        
Each other’s aspects—saw and shriek’d, and died—
Ev’n of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous, and the powerful was a lump,        
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless,
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr’d within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,        
And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp’d,
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air,        
And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe!

Poetry of the Week: Four in the Morning

Our brains don't always work for our best benefit. There are times when it seems as though nothing's working right or ever will work right. When insomnia or winter darkness or other helpless liminal period catches us, and all we can see is the worst in ourselves. I hope you don't grow too familiar with such times, but if you do, it helps to remember that they're temporary, and that you're not alone. Those traps catch everyone.

Four in the morning is a time I see more often than I'd like. Today, fortunately, I'm here through my usual sleep cycles, and I won't have any difficulty sleeping again after I post this. But it's also the time I associate with some of my darker thoughts, and it's comforting to know I'm not alone in that assessment. It's just an awful time of day.

Four in the Morning - Wislawa Szymborska
Translated by Magus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire

The hour from night to day.
The hour from side to side.
The hour for those past thirty.

The hour swept clean to the crowing of cocks.
The hour when earth betrays us.
The hour when wind blows from extinguished stars.
The hour of and-what-if-nothing-remains-after-us.

The hollow hour.
Blank, empty.
The very pit of all other hours.

No one feels good at four in the morning.
If ants feel good at four in the morning
--three cheers for the ants. And let five o'clock come
if we're to go on living.

Poetry of the Week: Character of the Happy Warrior

I'm always surprised by how little fencing or swordsmanship poetry I've found. The two arts seem a perfect match. Both track movement and stillness, and poetry is well-suited to capturing both the spectacle of watching a fight and the more visceral experience of fighting. Not something I'm inclined to tackle at the moment, but something I think about not infrequently.

Given that lack, though, I'll celebrate my one year fencing anniversary with a poem about whom "every man in arms should wish to be." It's well out of SCA period and I have my arguments with others of Wordsworth's ideals, but in this case his words well suit some of the values I've seen and admired within the community.

Character of the Happy Warrior - William Wordsworth
Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be?
—It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought:
Whose high endeavours are an inward light
That makes the path before him always bright;
Who, with a natural instinct to discern
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn;
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there,
But makes his moral being his prime care;
Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,
And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train!
Turns his necessity to glorious gain;
In face of these doth exercise a power
Which is our human nature's highest dower:
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives:
By objects, which might force the soul to abate
Her feeling, rendered more compassionate;
Is placable—because occasions rise
So often that demand such sacrifice;
More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure,
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
—'Tis he whose law is reason; who depends
Upon that law as on the best of friends;
Whence, in a state where men are tempted still
To evil for a guard against worse ill,
And what in quality or act is best
Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,
He labours good on good to fix, and owes
To virtue every triumph that he knows:
—Who, if he rise to station of command,
Rises by open means; and there will stand
On honourable terms, or else retire,
And in himself possess his own desire;
Who comprehends his trust, and to the same
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;
And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait
For wealth, or honours, or for worldly state;
Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall,
Like showers of manna, if they come at all:
Whose powers shed round him in the common strife,
Or mild concerns of ordinary life,
A constant influence, a peculiar grace;
But who, if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad for human kind,
Is happy as a Lover; and attired
With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired;
And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw;
Or if an unexpected call succeed,
Come when it will, is equal to the need:
—He who, though thus endued as with a sense
And faculty for storm and turbulence,
Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans
To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes;
Sweet images! which, wheresoe'er he be,
Are at his heart; and such fidelity
It is his darling passion to approve;
More brave for this, that he hath much to love:—
'Tis, finally, the Man, who, lifted high,
Conspicuous object in a Nation's eye,
Or left unthought-of in obscurity,—
Who, with a toward or untoward lot,
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not—
Plays, in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be won:
Whom neither shape or danger can dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray;
Who, not content that former worth stand fast,
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpast:
Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth
For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,
Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame,
And leave a dead unprofitable name—
Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;
And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause:
This is the happy Warrior; this is he
That every man in arms should wish to be.