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04-01-2017, 12:41 PM
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Hidden Gems
I was reading Thomas Hardy's Complete recently (I did not have time to finish it, but I made it fairly far), and I found that, aside from the poems I and everyone knows—"Channel Firing" and "The Darkling Thrush"—there was the occasional poem that I'd never heard and which absolutely bowled me over. Perhaps these poems aren't as unknown as I thought, but I'd like to share them here and see what you all think:
Mad Judy
When the hamlet hailed a birth
...Judy used to cry:
When she heard our christening mirth
...She would kneel and sigh.
She was crazed, we knew, and we
Humoured her infirmity.
When the daughters and the sons
...Gathered them to wed,
And we like-intending ones
...Danced till dawn was red,
She would rock and mutter "More
Comers to this stony shore!"
When old Headsman Death laid hands
...On a babe or twain,
She would feast, and by her brands
...Sing her songs again.
What she liked we let her do,
Judy was insane, we knew.
This poem is great for two reasons: one, here Hardy resists his often obnoxious tendency to ramble on forever (it's hardly a surprise he was a novelist), distilling his observation into three rather morbid, pointed stanzas. And secondly, the last line remains utterly contemporary in its sad wisdom and humour. Also, this poem seems to foreshadow Yeats' "Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop", though I doubt the influence is direct.
Then there's this:
The Church-Builder
The church flings forth a battled shade
...Over the moon-blanched sward:
The church; my gift; whereto I paid
...My all in hand and hoard;
......Lavished my gains
......With stintless pains
......To glorify the Lord.
I squared the broad foundations in
...Of ashlared masonry;
I moulded mullions thick and thin,
...Hewed fillet and ogee;
......I circleted
......Each sculptured head
......With nimb and canopy.
I called in many a craftsmaster
...To fix emblazoned glass,
To figure Cross and Sepulchure
...On dossal, boss, and brass.
......My gold all spent,
......My jewels went
......To gem the cups of Mass.
I borrowed deep to carve the screen
...And raise the ivoried Rood;
I parted with my small demesne
...To make my owings good.
......Heir-looms unpriced
......I sacrificed,
......Until debt-free I stood.
So closed the task. "Deathless the Creed
...Here substanced!" said my soul:
"I heard me bidden to this deed,
...And straight obeyed the call.
......Illume this fane,
......That not in vain
......I build it, Lord of all!"
But, as it chanced me, then and there
...Did dire misfortunes burst;
My home went waste for lack of care,
...My sons rebelled and curst;
......Till I confessed
......That aims the best
......Were looking like the worst.
Enkindled by my votive work
...No burning faith I find;
The deeper thinkers sneer and smirk,
...And give my toil no mind;
......From nod and wink
......I read they think
......That I am fool and blind.
My gift to God seems futile, quite;
...The world moves as erstwhile;
And powerful Wrong on feeble Right
...Tramples in olden style.
......My faith burns down,
......I see no crown;
......But Cares, and Griefs, and Guile.
So now, the remedy? Yea, this:
...I gently swing the door
Here, of my fane—no soul to wis—
...And cross the patterned floor
......To the rood-screen
......That stands between
......The nave and inner chore.
The rich red windows dim the moon,
...But little light need I;
I mount the prie-dieu, lately hewn
...From woods of rarest dye;
......Then from below
......My garment, so,
......I draw this cord, and tie
One end thereof around the beam
...Midway 'twixt Cross and truss:
I noose the nethermost extreme,
...And in ten seconds thus
......I journey hence—
......To that land whence
......No rumour reaches us.
Well: Here at morn they'll light on one
...Dangling in mockery
Of what he spent his substance on
...Blindly and uselessly!...
......"He might," they'll say,
......"Have built, some way,
......A cheaper gallows-tree!"
So: this one is good because, although it is rather long (in typically Hardy-ish style), it is also surprising. Too many of Hardy's long poems just kind of drag on, but this one certainly packs a punch. The enjambment of "and tie// One end thereof" is particularly uncharacteristic and brutally effective. The idea that the whole poem is spoken by a dead man is not wholly uncharacteristic of Hardy ("Channel Firing" is the same), but that he keeps that surprise for the end is also ingenious.
Anyway. I thought I'd post these up here and see if anyone else is familiar with them.
I also invite people to share poems they feel might be "hidden gems"—poems that particularly resonated with you, but are not well-known—along with a short paragraph or the like about why you like them.
Last edited by Ian Hoffman; 04-01-2017 at 12:43 PM.
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04-01-2017, 01:06 PM
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Location: NYC
Posts: 2,340
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I love this one by Hardy, an atomism in reverse, which Aaron Poochigian showed me:
Proud Songster
The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightingales
INDENTINDENTIn bushes
Pipe, as they can when April wears,
INDENTAs if all Time were theirs.
These are brand new birds of twelvemonths' growing,
Which a year ago, or less than twain,
No finches were, nor nightingales,
INDENTINDENTNor thrushes,
But only particles of grain,
INDENTAnd earth, and air, and rain.
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04-01-2017, 09:23 PM
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Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Berkeley, CA
Posts: 505
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Yeah, that's a good one. The rhyming is quite adventurous, even for TH.
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04-01-2017, 10:57 PM
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Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Arizona, USA
Posts: 1,844
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Holy moly - I'll be busy in this thread.
My first two recommendations are very old poems, but so worth reading that I almost can't believe we don't hear of them more often.
The first is Gavin Douglas, The Palis of Honoure. See a bit of info here. Ezra Pound was one of Douglas's champions.
Here's just one stanza. There are scads more I could cite that are just as beautiful:
The durris and the windois all war breddit
With massie gold, quhairof the fynes scheddit.
With birneist euir baith Palace and towris
War theikit weill, maist craftelie that cled it,
For sa the quhitlie blanschit bone ouirspred it,
Midlit with gold anamalit all colouris,
Importurait of birdis and sweit flouris,
Curious knottis, and mony hie deuise,
Quhilks to behald war perfite paradise.
***
The second is another great poem by the Scottish poet, David Lindsay, called The Dreme.
I really, really want to cite another very old Scottish poem, but I can't hunt it up, and I can't remember the author. The poem was called "The Cherry...something" Slaw, shaw...
Anyway, I'll find it. It's one of the best poems I've ever had the pleasure of reading.
Last edited by William A. Baurle; 04-24-2017 at 10:58 PM.
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04-02-2017, 08:17 AM
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Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: TX
Posts: 6,630
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Good morning, Ian,
Favorite Hardy poems. This one I like enough to copy the whole thing out. Though I believe it's pretty well-known:
The Voice
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Traveling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I: faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.
No comment, really. I just find this remarkably beautiful verse, with its weird rhythms. Perhaps especially the last quatrain. It all seems to step outside of time.
Cheers,
John
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04-02-2017, 08:24 AM
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Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: TX
Posts: 6,630
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My sister gave me Gavin Douglas's Virgil in 2013. I'm embarrassed to see I'm still on page 96. I find the Scots slow going...
"Ad hoc, ad loc., and quid pro quo;
So little time, so much to know."
Cheers,
John
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