Meditation on a Bone A.D. Hope
 

Meditation on a Bone
by A. D. Hope

A piece of bone, found at Trondhjem in 1901, with the following runic inscription (about A.D. 1050) cut on it:

I loved her as a maiden; I will not trouble Erlend's detestable wife; better she should be a widow.

Words scored upon a bone,
Scratched in despair or rage—
Nine hundred years have gone;
Now, in another age,
They burn with passion on
A scholar's tranquil page.

The scholar takes his pen
And turns the bone about,
And writes those words again.
Once more they seethe and shout,
And through a human brain
Undying hate rings out.

“I loved her when a maid;
I loathe and love the wife
That warms another's bed:
Let him beware his life!”
The scholar's hand is stayed;
His pen becomes a knife

To grave in living bone
The fierce archaic cry.
He sits and reads his own
Dull sum of misery.
A thousand years have flown
Before that ink is dry.

And, in a foreign tongue,
A man, who is not he,
Reads and his heart is wrung
This ancient grief to see,
And thinks: When I am dung,
What bone shall speak for me?




A piece of bone found at Trondhjem, Norway, in 1901 was inscribed with runes probably cut in the eleventh century. The inscription translated reads: I loved her as a maiden; I will not trouble Erlend's detestable wife; better she should be a widow. The inscription is probably a spell to bring about the husband's death by magic. Such runes were cut, the grooves filled with blood, and the whole buried with appropriate magic rites.

Thanks for sharing this, Jan. I had forgotten it.

The trouble with a lot of poems based on other masterpieces is that the ekphrasis is rarely another masterpiece to rival the first. This one is.

For me, the poem is effective despite itself. The image is strong & the poem communicates primal emotion. But i stumble on some of the rhymes & word choices (some seem rhyme forced). The poem's dark effectiveness for me makes me hope it's not some kind of subtle parody.

S1L5 - rhymes on on - Read aloud, this is no problem. On the page, among end stopped strong rhymes it forces too much emphasis on the word on.

S2L5 - and through a human brain - brain is misused - hate etc. can run through a mind, not through a brain. Rhyme forced.

S5L5 - And thinks: when I am dung, - rhyme forced

The poem might do better without S5. The point that despair, hate, etc. ring down the ages has already been made. It would be better, I think, to end with the effect on the scholar.

I think I will probably remember the image of the scholar and the bone.

Cross posted with Julie.

— Woody

Quite true Julie.

I think you have nailed it Woody when you said it works despite itself.

To me the first and only thing is:
Does the poem work?

I think it works magnificently

Regards,

Jan