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The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God’s last Put out the light was spoken.
— Robert Frost
April is over. May moon.
How many more for my regard,
hundreds, a handful?
Better not trouble the dark water due north of north.
Better to concentrate on something close, something small.
This stick, for instance. This word.
–Charles Wright
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Gerard Van der Leun
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Before listening, I went and got my Yeats off the shelf so I could read and listen at the same time.
As usual for Yeats, he hammered out the form and format quite precisely; four stanzas, each eight lines of iambic pentameter, stuffed with concepts and constructs,, forcing the reader to pause and contemplate.
I was a bit shocked and startled being reminded of his old man thoughts and laments while in his early sixties but I must allow that when he wrote it, close to a hundred years ago, many, if not most, were old, quite old, in their sixties.
Though thinking back I most allow, that when I first read ‘Sailing to..’ in my late teens or early twenties, I absolutely knew that those in their sixties, those doddering tottering tatter coated sticks, were worn and rusted ancient fossils whose mere continued existence challenged belief.
Needless to say, as I contemplate firing up my chainsaw and cutting some brush after finishing this post, I find myself chuckling at my youthful naivety.