[Janice D. Soderling]

Marcia (post 9)

I didn't say anything about "non-rhymes". I said that the rhyme scheme established in S1 was abandoned. Unless dream cream is pronounced to rhyme with king thing, in which case asymmetry is achieved. S1 and S4 would then envelop symmetrical S2 and S3.

Someone better versed in the metaphysical poets than I may correct me, but I believe that the idea of harmony and symmetry was central to the architectonics of metaphysical poetry (as it was in philosophy/ theology and architecture). George Herbert's Easter Wings for instance is a conspicuous example of the symmetry of parts.

S1 a b a b c c d d b b e a e a 14
S2 a b a b c c d d e e f e f e 14
S3 a b a b c c d d e e f g f g 14
S4 a b a b c c d d e e f g f g 14

S1 a: came inflame came same
s1 b: there ear there ear
S1 c: meet sweet
S1 d: stood good
S1 e: embrace place

S2 a: things wings
s2 b: treasure pleasure
S2 c: gate recreate
S2 d: to view
S2 e: take make
S2 f: fain entertain
S2 g: within in

S3 a: inspire desire
s3 b: strong young
S3 c: knew view
S3 d: alone gone
S3e: this bliss
S3 f: seas please
S3 g: hand stand

S4 a: dream cream
s4 b: by lie
S4 c: gem diadem
S4 d: all ball
S4 e: eye sky
S4 f: were appear
S4 g: king thing

I hope this is helpful.

[Marcia Karp]

I see the stanzas as having a quatrain of alternating rhymes, 3 rhyming couplets, and another quatrain like the first. So, for me nothing is abandoned.

But, you've looked at it differently, so now I understand what you mean. Helpful? Yes, thank you.

Marcia

[Janice D. Soderling]

Yes, that would provide a symmetrical structure and perhaps is a better way to regard the poet's intentions. Possibly this was a standard pattern of the day (quatrain, three couplets, quatrain), one with which other poets were familiar so the symmetry was taken for granted. I haven't looked to see if it is a structure often used, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that it is.

For a modern reader like myself (and I may be the only one), the self-rhyme "came" creates confusion as it establishes a connection to the rhymes of the initial quatrain.

[Julie Steiner]

On prosimetra...

The Japanese haibun, traditionally based on a journey, intersperses prose with haiku.

[Don Jones]

I agree with Maryann that, as I would say it, this review could use a little bit of vermouth to smooth the reading.

These lines jump out from the point of view of craft.

What sacred instinct did inspire
My soul in childhood with a hope so strong?
What secret force moved my desire
To expect my joys beyond the seas, so young?

I have a problem with the last line of this stanza. It is something that would be brought up if posted by a writer to Eratosphere. It’s the kind of mistake or, at the very least, breach of best usage that a lot of us has committed in working and re-working our translations on the translation board here. It is almost a rookie mistake.

To expect my joys beyond the seas, so young? Were it not for the comma one might read that the “seas” are “so young.” If you hear this line and not see it on the page, what assumption would you make?

As I read this, Traherne wants to rhyme with “strong” but to do that he sacrifices syntactical integrity as if English were inflected the way ancient Greek and Latin are. The intervening phrase “beyond the seas” too far separates the noun “joys” from its modifier “young.” I think it’s a misuse of language that resorts to mere punctuation. Or is this a convention that I’m picking up on? I wonder if Donne had “done” this.

So, if, uh hem, Traherne were to submit this poem for critique on Eratosphere, what might we suggest to improve this line?

How about: To expect beyond the seas my joys so young?

Now one might say that with “expect” modified by the adverb “beyond” means “when I’m beyond the seas (that is, very far away) I expect my so youthful joys.” If so, I believe it less a violation than when we are expected to make a semantic leap to ensure that “seas” doesn’t go with “young,” especially if I’m hearing it. I believe with the rewrite the reader would make the leap that it means “to expect [that] beyond the seas [are] my joys so young.”

Don

[Bill Carpenter]

Wonderful poem -- many thanks to the presenter. Since this is a new event, may I make bold to suggest, Amit and Michael, that you might slow the pace of introducing new threads? If anyone feels the same, that is. Thanks, Bill

[Andrew Frisardi]

Traherne must have conceived of this poem while listening to music: that is the most common experience of the soul visiting the ear, where in fact it "entertains" (and is entertained by) “the unknown Good.” And an ecstatic experience of music really is like what it says in the first line of stanza 2: “As if the tidings were the things” themselves. (And maybe they are.) The poem’s subject is the internalization of this musical experience—to “stay within / . . . / And bring the tidings in.”

The penultimate stanza reflects on what in the speaker himself has an affinity with the experience that seems to come from outside. Traherne, well before Wordsworth, often reflected on “intimations of immortality recollected in childhood.” In infancy, he says, had a preternatural experience of preexistence—which then he lost hold of, as he says in stanza 3: “I thirsted absent bliss,” and searched for ways to recover it.

The infant self in the last stanza is reflected upon as a microcosm of creation—a local habitation of the “Heavenly eye” (so reminiscent of Emerson’s “transparent eyeball”). This is of course an allusion to the theological/biblical idea of the soul being “made in God’s image”; which itself is a variation on the cross-cultural, interdenominational, mystical idea that the self in its essence is one with the universal Self. This is why the ecstatic awareness that opens the poem at the portal of the ear, where the soul goes to meet it, turns out to be the soul itself: there is an identity of seer and seen, or rather, in the case of this poem, of hearer and heard.

For these reasons and more, I can’t agree with Michael that appreciation of this poem is “scholarly” as opposed to “writerly.” For me, its interest is human, in the sense that it is a meditation on what it means, essentially, to be human. Traherne generously offers the reader a way to share in his intimation—the poem is intimate like the soul in the ear.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Andrew (et al) you might find this interesting.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.230...21101190606813

[Gail White]

Oh wow. The Centuries is one of my favorite books. Let us swear eternal friendship.