Evening Bell Appendix N—poems, fragments, prose

[hengest]

A thread for posting things that I like and that contribute to or hint at what I want in Evening Bell.

[hengest]

Thy face was so familiar grown,
Thyself so often by,
A moment's memory when alone
Would bring thee to mine eye;
But now my very dreams forget
That witching look to trace;
Though there thy beauty lingers yet
It wears a stranger face.

-John Clare, from "First Love's Recollections"

[hengest]

It is easy to fall into the delusion that the few things thus distinctly remembered and visualized are precisely those which were most important in our life, and on that account were saved by memory while all the rest has been permanently blotted out. That is indeed how our memory serves and fools us; for at some period of a man's life—at all events of some lives—in some rare state of the mind, it is all at once revealed to him as by a miracle that nothing is ever blotted out.

—William Henry Hudson, "Far Away and Long Ago"

[hengest]

The mighty thought of an old world
Fans, like a dragon’s wing unfurled,
The surface of my yearnings deep;
And solemn shadows then awake,
Like the fish-lizard in the lake,
Troubling a planet’s morning sleep.

My waking is a Titan’s dream,
Where a strange sun, long set, doth beam
Through Montezuma’s cypress bough:
Through the fern wilderness forlorn
Glisten the giant harts’ great horn,
And serpents vast with helmed brow.

The measureless from caverns rise
With steps of earthquake, thunderous cries,
And graze upon the lofty wood;
The palmy grove, through which doth gleam
Such antediluvian ocean’s stream,
Haunts shadowy my domestic mood.

—Thomas Lovell Beddoes

[hengest]

Song: Last Day


There is a day a dreadfull day
Still following the past
When sun & moon are past away
& mingle with the blast
There is a vision in my eye
A vacuum oer my mind
Sometimes as on the sea I lye
Mid roaring waves & wind

When valleys rise to mountain waves
& mountains sink to seas
When towns & cities temples graves
All vanish like a breeze
The skyes that was are past & oer
That almanack of days
Year chronicles are kept no more
Oblivions ruin pays.

Pays in destruction shades & hell
Sin goes in darkness down
& therein sulphurs shadows dwell
Worth wins & wears the crown
The very shore if shore I see
All shrivelled to a scroll
The Heaven's rend away from me
& thunders sulphurs roll.

Black as the deadly thunder cloud
The stars shall turn to dun
& heaven by that darkness bowed
Shall make days light be done
When stars & skys shall all decay
& earth no more shall be
When heaven itself shall pass away
Then thou'lt remember me.

—John Clare

[hengest]

Decay A Ballad


O poesy is on the wane
For fancys visions all unfitting
I hardly know her face again
Nature herself seem on the flitting
The fields grow old & common things
The grass the sky the winds a blowing
& spots where still a beauty clings
Are sighing 'going all a going'
O poesy is on the wane
I hardly know her face again

The bank with brambles over spread
& little molehills round about it
Was more to me than laurel shades
With paths & gravel finely clouted
& streaking here & streaking there
Through shaven grass & many a border
With rutty lanes had no compare
& heaths were in a richer order
But poesy is in its wane
I hardly know her face again

I sat with love by pastures streams
Aye beautys self was sitting bye
Till fields did more than edens seem
Nor could I tell the reason why
I often drank when not a dry
To pledge her health in draughts divine
Smiles made it nectar from the sky
Love turned een water into wine
O poesy is on the wane
I cannot find her face again

The sun those mornings used to find
When clouds were other-country-mountains
& heaven looked upon the mind
With groves & rocks & mottled fountains
These heavens are gone - the mountains grey
Turned mist - the sun a homeless ranger
Pursuing on a naked way
Unnoticed like a very stranger
O poesy is on its wane
Nor love nor joy is mine again

Loves sun went down without a frown
For very joy it used to grieve us
I often think that west is gone
Ah cruel time to undecieve us
The stream it is a naked stream
Where we on sundays used to ramble
The sky hangs oer a broken dream
The brambles dwindled to a bramble
O poesy is on its wane
I cannot find her haunts again

Mere withered stalks and fading trees
& pastures spread with hills & rushes
Are all my fading vision sees
Gone gone is raptures flooding gushes
When mushrooms they were fairy bowers
Their marble pillars overswelling
& danger paused to pluck the flowers
That in their swarthy rings were dwelling
But poesys spells are on the wane
Nor joy nor fear is mine again

Aye poesy hath passed away
& fancys visions undecieve us
The night hath taen the place of day
& why should passing shadows grieve us
I thought the flowers upon the hills
Were flowers from Adams open gardens
& I have had my summer thrills
& I have had my hearts rewardings
So poesy is on its wane
I hardly know her face again

& friendship it hath burned away
Just like a very ember cooling
A make believe on april day
That sent the simple heart a fooling
Mere jesting in an earnest way
Decieving on and still decieving
& hope is but a fancy play
& joy the art of true believing
For poesy is on the wane
O could I feel her faith again

late 1832

—John Clare

[hengest]

The Oven Bird

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

—Robert Frost

[hengest]

When hill, tree, cloud, those shadowy forms

Ascending heaven are seen,

Their mindless beauty I from far

Admire, a gulf between;

Yet in the untroubled river when

Their true ideas I find,

That river, joined in trance with me,

Becomes my second mind.



George Rostrevor Hamilton (1888 – 1967)

[hengest]

"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land,
"This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.

A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke,
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset-flush'd: and, dew'd with showery drops,
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.

The charmed sunset linger'd low adown
In the red West: thro' mountain clefts the dale
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
Border'd with palm, and many a winding vale
And meadow, set with slender galingale;
A land where all things always seem'd the same!
And round about the keel with faces pale,
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.

Excerpt from "The Lotos-Eaters," Alfred Tennyson

[hengest]

Written in a Thunder storm July 15th 1841



The heavens are wrath — the thunders rattling peal
Rolls like a vast volcano in the sky
Yet nothing starts the apathy I feel
Nor chills with fear eternal destiny

My soul is apathy — a ruin vast
Time cannot clear the ruined mass away
My life is hell — the hopeless die is cast
& manhoods prime is premature decay.

Roll on ye wrath of thunders — peal on peal
Till worlds are ruins & myself alone
Melt heart & soul cased in obdurate steel
Till I can feel that nature is my throne

I live in love sun of undying light
& fathom my own heart for ways of good
In its pure atmosphere day without night
Smiles on the plains the forest & the flood.

Smile on ye elements of earth & sky
Or frown in thunders as ye frown on me
Bid earth & its delusions pass away
But leave the mind as its creator free

John Clare

[hengest]

Dream-Pedlary



I.

If there were dreams to sell,
   What would you buy?
Some cost a passing bell;
   Some a light sigh,
That shakes from Life’s fresh crown
Only a rose-leaf down.
If there were dreams to sell,
Merry and sad to tell,
And the crier rung the bell,
   What would you buy?

II.

A cottage lone and still,
   With bowers nigh,
Shadowy, my woes to still,
   Until I die.
Such pearl from Life’s fresh crown
Fain would I shake me down.
Were dreams to have at will,
This would best heal my ill,
   This would I buy.

III.

But there were dreams to sell,
   Ill didst thou buy;
Life is a dream, they tell,
   Waking, to die.
Dreaming a dream to prize,
Is wishing ghosts to rise;
   And, if I had the spell
   To call the buried well,
      Which one would I?

IV.

If there are ghosts to raise,
   What shall I call,
Out of hell’s murky haze,
   Heaven’s blue pall?
Raise my loved long-lost boy
To lead me to his joy.—
   There are no ghosts to raise;
   Out of death lead no ways;
      Vain is the call.

V.

Know’st thou not ghosts to sue?
   No love thou hast.
Else lie, as I will do,
   And breathe thy last.
So out of Life’s fresh crown
Fall like a rose leaf down.
   Thus are the ghosts to wooe;
   Thus are all dreams made true,
      Ever to last!

–Thomas Lovell Beddoes 

[hengest]

I, Penelope Taberner Cameron, tell this story of happenings when I was a young girl. To this day every detail of my strange experience is clear as light. I see the beautiful countryside with its woods and gentle hills stretching out infinitely green, and the little brook shimmering with sunlight as it fows under the hazel groves. I hear the murmur of wood-pigeons, sleepy and monotonous in the beech wood, and the warm intimate call of the cuckoo in the orchard by the house. Ice-cold water springs from the mossy earth and I stoop with cupped hands, one clasping the other, to sip the draught, and the taste of that water is on my lips many years afterwards. I smell the hot scents of the herb garden drenched in sunshine, and the perfume of honeysuckle after rain, but stronger than these is the rich fragrance of the old house, made up of wood-smoke, haystacks, and old old age, mingled together indissolubly. All these scents and sounds are part of the story I have come to tell, with light and darkness, shadows and tragedy interwoven.

A Traveller in Time, Alison Uttley

[hengest]

This has little to do tonally with the core EB material, but I'm listing it anyway.

The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes is the best illustration of what it is like to be immersed in a game as we want to be immersed.

Stylistically this thing looks simple but is a masterpiece.  Estes depicts an older child's "imagination games" in a completely plausible way.  That she even was able to conceive of this book, let along write it, makes her a genius in my book.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Feb 24, 2021 0:26:23 GMT -5 hengest said:

This has little to do tonally with the core EB material, but I'm listing it anyway.

The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes is the best illustration of what it is like to be immersed in a game as we want to be immersed.

Stylistically this thing looks simple but is a masterpiece.  Estes depicts an older child's "imagination games" in a completely plausible way.  That she even was able to conceive of this book, let along write it, makes her a genius in my book.

Eleanor Estes She started writing in 1941 when she was confined to bed with TB and wrote until her death in 1988 at the age of 82. She wrote 20 books in all. 

According to reviewer Carolyn Shute, Estes had the "ability to distill the very essence of childhood." Anita Silvey said she possessed a "rare gift for depicting everyday experiences from the fresh perspective of childhood." Estes is primarily recognized as a writer of family stories, and as one who "shaped and broadened that subgenre's tradition", primarily through her "seemingly artless style". Eleanor Cameron, in an article for The Horn Book Magazine, included Estes' Moffat books among "those that sit securely as classics in the realm of memorable literature".

The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes at goodreads

You want to read the review by snowplum.

[hengest]

Feb 24, 2021 1:40:05 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes at goodreads
You want to read the review by snowplum.

Great find and accurate review.

[hengest]

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound  me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending 
Their bare boughs weighed with snow, 
And the storm is fast descending 
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

Emily Brontë

[hengest]

The Semi-Retired Gamer The Perilous Dreamer I need to go to sleep, but I thought you guys had to see this poem. It seems to be from the perspective of a statue guarding a tomb.

Ruth Pitter

A Trophy of Arms

The primrose awakens, but
I lean here alone
Where the proud helmet is cut
In the hard stone:
Where the true sword is hung
With the straight spear,
When all is said and sung
My heart is here.

A nameless tomb I guard,
I know not for whose sake,
Nor for what far reward;
Yet I hear wake
The voice of honor, calling
From the bones I have cherished:
"The mighty are not fallen, 
Nor the weapons of war perished."

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Feb 17, 2024 1:11:20 GMT -5 hengest said:

The Semi-Retired Gamer The Perilous Dreamer I need to go to sleep, but I thought you guys had to see this poem. It seems to be from the perspective of a statue guarding a tomb.

Ruth Pitter

A Trophy of Arms

The primrose awakens, but
I lean here alone
Where the proud helmet is cut
In the hard stone:
Where the true sword is hung
With the straight spear,
When all is said and sung
My heart is here.

A nameless tomb I guard,
I know not for whose sake,
Nor for what far reward;
Yet I hear wake
The voice of honor, calling
From the bones I have cherished:
"The mighty are not fallen, 
Nor the weapons of war perished."

I had not thought about that, but I think you are right. That poem seems familiar and I have read a lot of poetry so it could have been read over 50 years ago. But familiar.

Good catch!

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

This is great! I get vibes like The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier or something similar.