Monsieur Magus
There are moments of sentimental and mystical experience . . . that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. But they come so seldom, and they do not come to everyone; and the rest of life makes either no connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them.
--William James
In the South of France the peasants had the gall
To squint and snicker when they read my name,
Hold discourse with a hydrant or a wall,
Falling through manholes in their silly game.
What did their cries of "Waldo!" signify?
How could my faithful camel miss the turns
And bring me here, while in the evening sky
The star, albeit faintly, plainly burns?
Too many years of study by the dim
Glow of the midnight oil have left these eyes
Two cloudy windows on a clouded mind.
Now I wonder at the meaning of that hymn
That lifted up our thoughts to touch the skies.
Wonder and wander. The blind shall lead the blind.
Days later, I am still trying to figure this one out, but
then the James epigraph seems to give me permission
to fail. That mystery is in a sense the poem’s theme.
That is, there is an air of the faintly ridiculous tinged with true pathos and regret. The poet roughs up the meter skillfully with substitutions. Lost causes and lost opportunities for a “wise” man? Call Yeats.
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