"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti


[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]


Friday, June 3, 2011

Charles Dickens - Squire Norton's Song

HE child and the old man sat alone
In the quiet, peaceful shade
Of the old green boughs, that had richly grown
In the deep, thick forest glade.
It was a soft and pleasant sound,
That rustling of the oak;
And the gentle breeze played lightly round
As thus the fair boy spoke: -

"Dear father, what can honor be,
Of which I hear men rave?
Field, cell and cloister, land and sea,
The tempest and the grave: -
It lives in all, 'tis sought in each,
'Tis never heard or seen:
Now tell me, father, I beseech,
What can this honor mean?"

"It is a name - a name, my child  -
It lived in other days,
When men were rude, their passions wild,
Their sport, thick battle-frays.
When, in armor bright, the warrior bold
Knelt to his lady's eyes:
Beneath the abbey pavement old
That warrior's dust now lies.

"The iron hearts of that old day
Have mouldered in the grave;
And chivalry has passed away,
With knights so true and brave;
The honor, which to them was life,
Throbs in no bosom now;
It only gilds the gambler's strife,
Or decks the worthless vow."


by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

"George Edmunds' Song is reprinted from The Poems and Verse of Charles Dickens.
Ed. F>G> Kitton. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1903.

Charles Dickens - The Song of the Wreck

HE wind blew high, the waters raved,
A ship drove on the land,
A hundred human creatures saved
Kneel'd down upon the sand.
Threescore were drown'd, threescore were thrown
Upon the black rocks wild,
And thus among them, left alone,
They found one helpless child.

A seaman rough, to shipwreck bred,
Stood out from all the rest,
And gently laid the lonely head
Upon his honest breast.
And travelling o'er the desert wide
It was a solemn joy,
To see them, ever side by side,
The sailor and the boy.

In famine, sickness, hunger, thirst,
The two were still but one,
Until the strong man droop'd the first
And felt his labors done.
Then to a trusty friend he spake,
"Across the desert wide,
Oh, take this poor boy for my sake!"
And kiss'd the child and died.

Toiling along in weary plight
Through heavy jungle, mire,
These two came later every night
To warm them at the fire.
Until the captain said one day
"O seaman, good and kind,
To save thyself now come away,
And leave the boy behind!"

The child was slumbering near the blaze:
"O captain, let him rest
Until it sinks, when God's own ways
Shall teach us what is best!"
They watch'd the whiten'd, ashy heap,
They touch'd the child in vain;
They did not leave him there asleep,
He never woke again.


by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

"George Edmunds' Song is reprinted from The Poems and Verse of Charles Dickens.
Ed. F>G> Kitton. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1903.

Charles Dickens - Lucky's Song

OW beautiful at eventide
To see the twilight shadows pale,
Steal o'er the landscape, far and wide,
O'er stream and meadow, mound and dale!

How soft is Nature's calm repose
When ev'ning skies their cool dews weep:
The gentlest wind more gently blows,
As if to soothe her in her sleep!

The gay morn breaks,
Mists roll away,
All Nature awakes
To glorious day.
In my breast alone
Dark shadows remain;
The peace it has known
It can never regain.


by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

"George Edmunds' Song is reprinted from The Poems and Verse of Charles Dickens.
Ed. F>G> Kitton. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1903.

Charles Dickens - The Ivy Green


Van Gogh's Undergrowth with Ivy, 1889
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Van Gogh's Tree Trunks with Ivy, 1889
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands
The Ivy Green

Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green,
          That creepeth o'er ruins old!
Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
          In his cell so lone and cold
The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed,
          To pleasure his dainty whim:
And the mouldering dust that years have made
          Is a merry meal for him.
                    Creeping where no life is seen,
                    A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,
          And a staunch old heart has he.
How closely he twineth, how tight he clings
          To his friend the huge Oak Tree
And slyly he traileth along the ground,
          And his leaves he gently waves,
As he joyously hugs and crawleth round
          The rich mould of dead men's graves.
                     Creeping where no life is seen,
                     A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

Whole ages have fled and their works decayed,
          And nations have scattered been;
But the stout old Ivy shall never fade,
          From its hale and hearty green.
The brave old plant, in its lonely days,
          Shall fatten upon the past:
For the stateliest building man can raise
          Is the Ivy's food at last.
                    Creeping on where time has been,
                    A rare old plant is the Ivy green.


by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

"George Edmunds' Song is reprinted from The Poems and Verse of Charles Dickens.
Ed. F.G. Kitton. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1903.

Biography - Poetry Foundation & Wikipedia


Ivy vines girdling tree
Analysis
from Immortal Muse, comments by Zireaux

... Now, 200 years and 7 days after the birth of Charles Dickens, we look at the “rare old plant” which “slily” (snake-like) twists and twines around the greenwood tree: Ivy.

There’s nothing “rare” about ivy. Such words — including the two “daintys” in the first stanza — have less to do with describing ivy than with befriending it. The poem is loaded with these chummy terms of endearment; not just “dainty” (as in “excellent”), but stout (as in “strong”), staunch, rare, brave, hearty, hale and old. These are the words that sailors and ruffians sing in pubs to their fellow drunks — which is ironic, because “The Ivy Green” is recited in The Pickwick Papers not by a bunch of burly rogues, but by an old clergyman.
 
Composed with a healthy dose of hyberbaton (“ivy green,” “scattered been,” “fast he stealeth”), our “Ivy Green” — like Shakespeare’s “Greenwood Tree” — works best as music. Just read aloud the seventh line of all three stanzas. So rhythmically identical are they, so perfect for a pop-song, we could have Miley Cyrus sing them for us (“So I hopped off the plane at LAX” becomes “And the mouldering dust that years have made.”).
 
Yet here’s the wonder of it all: Sound and song, the visual arts and meaning — they’re constantly crossing over, changing sides. Sound creates sight, and sight creates sound, and meaning can’t live without this sort of constant synesthesia.
 
Let me explain what I mean: Vincent Van Gogh, the best of what can be called the “poet-painters” (Longfellow, Blake, Cummings, O’Hara, Tagore and so on) also befriended ivy. Sometimes ivy was a creative force: “Like the ivy on the walls, so my pen must cover this paper.” (I quote from van Gogh’s letters). Or a source of comfort, as when he described a new pair of black gloves as “good like ivy, good like going to church.” But equally, he saw ivy as a kind of killer, a strangler, an agent of death: “Illnesses…are perhaps to man what ivy is to the oak.”
 
He admired “The Ivy Green,” and even quoted two lines of the poem — from memory — to his brother Theo. (See one of the actual letters here). I say from memory because both lines are, in fact, misquoted, van Gogh preferring to follow meter rather than a direct transcription. “A strange [instead of "rare"] old plant is the ivy green;” and, most tellingly, from line 11, “which stealeth on though he wear no wings.”
 
Vincent recalls both lines in the same meter (iamb, iamb, anapest, iamb), whereas Charles’s line 11 is actually the most metrically unusual (five-footed, trochaic) of all the lines in the poem.
 
The point is this: The idea that ivy is like a snake (despite all those leaves, no winged angel, it!) — dangerous, untrustworthy, cold-blooded, slyly entwining an innocent oak — this idea no doubt resonated with van Gogh. But it’s the song that made it memorable to him; the song that produced the imprint in his mind.
 
That is to say, the song, the music — as much as text and meaning — creates the impression. If you look at van Gogh’s paintings of ivy, you can hear the leaves rustling in the wind. And if you recite Dickens’s “Ivy Green,” you glimpse the essence of that “rare old plant,” its duplicity, its ravenous hunger, its creepiness if you will, in a way that metaphor alone could never create. We sing out of dread, not love. Trying to appease the unappeasable, we make song.
 
“Ivy loves the trunk of the old oak tree,” writes van Gogh, “and so cancer, that mysterious plant, attaches itself so often to people whose lives were nothing but ardent love and devotion. So, however terrible the mystery of these pains may be, the horror of them is sacred, and in them there might indeed be a gentle, heartbreaking thing.”
 
Dickens, too, saw this sacred horror. It inhabits the undergrowth of everything he wrote, attaching itself to so many “heartbreaking things” in his books. Which is why “The Ivy Green” — a kind of snake-charmer’s hymn to death — is the perfect song for a clergyman after all.
 
 
 


Charles Dickens - The Hymn of the Wiltshire Laborers

GOD! who by Thy prophet's hand
Didst smite the rocky brake,
Whence water came, at Thy command,
Thy people's thirst to slake;
Strike, now, upon this granite wall,
Stern, obdurate, and high;
And let some drops of pity fall
For us who starve and die!

The God who took a little child
And set him in the midst,
And promised him His mercy mild,
As, by Thy Son, Thou didst:
Look down upon our children dear,
So gaunt, so cold, so spare,
And let their images appear
Where lords and gentry are!

O God! teach them to feel how we,
When our poor infants droop,
Are weakened in our trust in Thee,
And how our spirits stoop;
For, in Thy rest, so bright and fair,
All tears and sorrows sleep:
And their young looks, so full of care,
Would make Thine angels weep!

The God who with His finger drew
The judgment coming on,
Write, for these men, what must ensue,
Ere many years be gone!
O God! whose bow is in the sky,
Let them not brave and dare,
Until they look (too late) on high,
And see an Arrow there!

O God, remind them! In the bread
They break upon the knee,
These sacred words may yet be read,
"In memory of Me!"
O God! remind them of His sweet
Compassion for the poor,
And how He gave them Bread to eat,
And went from door to door!


by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

"A Child's Hymn" is reprinted from The Poems and Verse of Charles Dickens.
Ed. F.G. Kitton. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1903.

Charles Dickens - George Edmunds' Song

UTUMN leaves, autumn leaves, lie strewn around he here;
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, how sad, how cold, how drear!
How like the hopes of childhood's day,
Thick clust'ring on the bough!
How like those hopes in their decay -
How faded are they now!
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, lie strewn around me here;
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, how sad, how cold, how drear!

Wither'd leaves, wither'd leaves, that fly before the gale:
Withered leaves, withered leaves, ye tell a mournful tale,
Of love once true, and friends once kind,
And happy moments fled:
Dispersed by every breath of wind,
Forgotten, changed, or dead!
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, lie strewn around me here!
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, how sad, how cold, how drear!


by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

"George Edmunds' Song is reprinted from  The Poems and Verse of Charles Dickens.
Ed. F>G> Kitton. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1903.

Charles Dickens - Gabriel Grub's Song

RAVE lodgings for one, brave lodgings for one,
A few feet of cold earth, when life is done;
A stone at the head, a stone at the feet;
A rich, juicy meal for the worms to eat;
Rank grass overhead, and damp clay around,
Brave lodging for one, these, in holy ground!


by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

"Gabriel Grub's Song" is reprinted from The Poems and Verse of Charles Dickens.
Ed. F.G. Kitton. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1903.

Charles Dickens - A Child's Hymn

HEAR my prayer, O heavenly Father,
Ere I lay me down to sleep;
Bid Thy angels, pure and holy,
Round my bed their vigil keep.

My sins are heavy, but Thy mercy
Far outweighs them, every one;
Down before Thy cross I cast them,
Trusting in Thy help alone.

Keep me through this night of peril
Underneath its boundless shade;
Take me to Thy rest, I pray Thee,
When my pilgrimage is made.

None shall measure out Thy patience
By the span of human thought;
None shall bound the tender mercies
Which Thy Holy Son has bought.

Pardon all my past transgressions,
Give me strength for days to come;
Guide and guard me with Thy blessing
Till Thy angels bid me home.


by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

"A Child's Hymn" is reprinted from The Poems and Verse of Charles Dickens.
Ed. F.G. Kitton. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1903.