Locksley Hall

It was my considered opinion that I never had the "poetry gene". As a very amateur singer / songwriter, I could certainly string together some thoughts that I could fashion into lyrics, but poetry eluded me.

What I "knew" about poetry is this: There are two types. Poetry that rhymes and poetry that does not rhyme. The stuff that rhymes makes a certain amount of sense if you like that sort of thing? (eg. there was a young girl from Nantucket ...). The stuff that doesn't rhyme is for elites to put on airs and pretend there is some esoteric something that the herd animals on this earth (like us) were never meant to understand.

If pushing 70 gets you anything, it gets you to question long held beliefs. So, two things have changed since I formed those opinions about poetry. An old workmate (who I really never got along with back in the day) has since retired, moved to California and we somehow remained connected through Facebook. His name is Sidney. Almost none of you would know him. He would occasionally post poetry to his FB account. I would occasionally read it, and get sent down "the rabbit hole". Usually, it is some famously quoted single line that gets me interested in the context that it was written under. Last year, you might remember the piece The New Colossus where the "give us your castoffs" line came from. This year, I used the famously misquoted line about "spring, when a young man's fancy turns to love". I became interested in where that came from? Hence, this weeks theme.

Secondly, when I think about "missing the poetry gene" it occurred to me that Dad was a big fan of Robert Service. To my knowledge, he never owned a book of Robert Service poetry in his adult life. But there'd we be, at the cottage, and out of the blue, he would rhyme off forty lines of The Shooting of Dan McGrew or some bawdy French Canadian thing that would make SWMBO laugh? So he memorized that ... when? Fifty years ago? Sixty years ago? I mean I can remember my street address growing up but forty lines of a poem that I learned when I was twelve? Not frigging likely. So if you are interested, here are my thoughts and suggestions on how you might want to tackle this:

I will place the poem at the end of this piece. Do not read it now. It is long and you need to prepare yourself if you decide to to attempt it. It is composed in 97 rhyming couplets(!) and is written in trochaic octameter. So, two lines at a time taken as a single thought. I found myself rushing, so don't do that. When I messed up the parsing of the syllables within the couplet, I could immediately see my error and would slowly read it again. I would suggest you get a cup of tea. Eat a gummy. Light a cigar. Whatever your deal is? I found it took about fifteen minutes to go through it. Let it wash up over you like the gentle wave after wave on a gravel shoreline long after a motorboat has passed.

The painting at the top of this piece sold at auction for $43 million in 2013! I simply do not get it. On the other hand, I found the reading of this poem in its entirety ... a worthwhile investment of my time. I hope you might as well!

Our Optimum Week

I wanted to share some Easter trivia I ran across last week. Athaea Officionalis is a herbaceous perennial found in Southern Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa. The ancient Egyptians found that by harvesting the root, beating it to remove a sap and mixing that with honey and nuts, they could produce a sticky thick paste that was sweet and had medicinal properties. Of course, they did not call it althaea officionalis, they called the plant mallow. It grew in marshes all around the the Nile. Today we place marshmallow inside chocolate bunnies to mark the crucifixion and subsequent reanimation of a Jewish carpenter. How they got those two things together is another story.

A couple of months ago, I told a bait and switch cookie story. Lo and behold, Zehr's has lost its' damn mind. Those fantastic in-stores cookies in four varieties had crept up to $7.50. This week, they are on sale for $5 with an additional 1500 points back per box. They freeze well, so we are going to load up. The flyer was kind of weak except for chicken and pork chops. There was more meat in the Offers this week so I gave you more of those.

Big redemption numbers at Shoppers (there a $700 level in your offers) but I am holding out for the garden centres with my 1.7 million points. Here is our list to add to your fridge list and at the bottom, I gave you my set piece redemption list. If you are going whole hog, you might get enough canned goods to get you into the fall. Soups, stews, tomatoes, canned pastas, tuna, mayo, etc. etc. Here it is:

We Are Watching

Mudtown on BBC - A likeable cast in a Welsh production about a young magistrate coping with a shady husband, shady gangsters, a daughter and her shady boyfriend. Off to a good start.

What I'm Reading

Well obviously Tennyson poetry. Time for a trip to Sunrise Used Books and a give Robert a small stipend. Sidney says: The Charge Of The Light Brigade, The Lady of Shallot and Ulysses, all by him, should be on my list.

Multiple articles online on raised bed garden design. I have the front yard staked out for my new (slightly) raised bed garden and have ordered the Enbridge locate. Lumber looks like $500 which I will fund from my Optimum points by moving grocery money over to the "She'll Never Find Out" account.

...and finally

Our story takes place on a bleak sandy Scottish shoreline. There are ramparts nearby. A fort or something. Our protagonist has sent his companions on ahead. The wind is blowing and he is lamenting the loss of love. How a distant (we hope) cousin is now been betrothed to another, older, more successful man by her uncaring father. He goes on to lament how this is just further evidence of a world gone mad with societal greed and industrialization. He mourns the fate of the simple noble savage trying to live in this world and makes some pretty spectacular predictions about the nature of war in the future. Remember this was written in 1835 and he talks about a nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue. In the end, while still bitter, he accepts the fate of his love, himself and indeed all of mankind as together they plunge into a world of change. Settle yourself? Take a deep breath? Give it a try?

Locksley Hall

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 't is early morn:
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn.

'T is the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,
Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed:

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;
Saw the Vision of the world and all the wonder that would be.—

In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,
And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.

And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me,
Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee."

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a colour and a light,
As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.

And she turn'd—her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs—
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes—

Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong";
Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin?" weeping, "I have loved thee long."

Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands;
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,
And her whisper throng'd my pulses with the fulness of the Spring.

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,
And our spirits rush'd together at the touching of the lips.

O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!
O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore!

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,
Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!

Is it well to wish thee happy?—having known me—to decline
On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!

Yet it shall be; thou shalt lower to his level day by day,
What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

What is this? his eyes are heavy; think not they are glazed with wine.
Go to him, it is thy duty, kiss him, take his hand in thine.

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought:
Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand—
Better thou wert dead before me, tho' I slew thee with my hand!

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace,
Roll'd in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule!
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of the fool!

Well—'t is well that I should bluster!—Hadst thou less unworthy proved—
Would to God—for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.

Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?
I will pluck it from my bosom, tho' my heart be at the root.

Never, tho' my mortal summers to such length of years should come
As the many-winter'd crow that leads the clanging rookery home.

Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind?
Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind?

I remember one that perish'd; sweetly did she speak and move;
Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.

Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?
No—she never loved me truly; love is love for evermore.

Comfort? comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,
In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall,
Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.

Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep,
To thy widow'd marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep.

Thou shalt hear the "Never, never," whisper'd by the phantom years,
And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;

And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain.
Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow; get thee to thy rest again.

Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry.
'T is a purer life than thine, a lip to drain thy trouble dry.

Baby lips will laugh me down; my latest rival brings thee rest.
Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast.

O, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due.
Half is thine and half is his: it will be worthy of the two.

O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part,
With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.

"They were dangerous guides the feelings—she herself was not exempt—
Truly, she herself had suffer'd"—Perish in thy self-contempt!

Overlive it—lower yet—be happy! wherefore should I care?
I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.

What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?
Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys.

Every gate is throng'd with suitors, all the markets overflow.
I have but an angry fancy; what is that which I should do?

I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground,
When the ranks are roll'd in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound.

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels,
And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels.

Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page.
Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age!

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife,
When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life;

Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield,
Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field,

And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn,
Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn;

And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then,
Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men:

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new:
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm;

Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

So I triumph'd ere my passion sweeping thro' me left me dry,
Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;

Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint:
Science moves, but slowly, slowly, creeping on from point to point:

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher,
Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire.

Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.

What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,
Tho' the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy's?

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore,
And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast,
Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest.

Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle-horn,
They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn:

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder'd string?
I am shamed thro' all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.

Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's pleasure, woman's pain—
Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain:

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match'd with mine,
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine—

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some retreat
Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat;

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starr'd,—
I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward.

Or to burst all links of habit—there to wander far away,
On from island unto island at the gateways of the day.

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,
Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,
Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag;

Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree—
Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.

There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind,
In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.

There the passions cramp'd no longer shall have scope and breathing space;
I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.

Iron-jointed, supple-sinew'd, they shall dive, and they shall run,
Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun;

Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks,
Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books—

Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I know my words are wild,
But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.

I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,
Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!

Mated with a squalid savage—what to me were sun or clime?
I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time—

I that rather held it better men should perish one by one,
Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon in Ajalon!

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range,
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day;
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun:
Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the Sun.

O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set.
Ancient founts of inspiration well thro' all my fancy yet.

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall!
Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.

Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over heath and holt,
Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.

Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow;
For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.

Redemption List: