There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night
Ten to make and the match to win
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play, and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat.
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote
'Play up! Play up! And play the game!'
The sand of the desert is sodden red-
Red with the wreck of the square that broke
The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed its banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks-
'Play up! Play up! And play the game!'
This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the school is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind -
'Play up! Play up! And play the game!'
| The above poem was both highly regarded and repeatedly sung with fervor and feverish patriotism by those soldiers who experienced the horrors and the cruelty of World War I. Every poet keeps on returning to the stream of lovely things�the stream that flows and yet remains. This is for him the river of life�the brook that flows 'fast by the oracle of God'. Here the following beautiful lines of poetry from Lord Tennyson's (1809-1892) poem The Brook come to my mind: I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley. By thirty hills I hurry down, Or slip between the ridges, By twenty thorpes, a little town, |
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And half a hundred bridges.
Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.
I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;
And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
We can see from the above lines of poetry that the attitude of Lord Tennyson towards the brook varies from the divine ecstasy of his soul in the Creator of the deep and incessant waters of the brook to the delight of his eye in the play of its multifarious forms and dimensions form its source to the sea. But whatever be his attitude towards it, Tennyson knows that without it his world would be an England without the river Thames or Egypt without the Nile or India without the Ganga or Godavari or Cauvery rivers.
'Poetry is the whim of Nature in her lighter moods; it requires nothing but its own madness and, lacking that, it becomes a soundless symbol, a belfry without a bell', so wrote the Italian author, playwright, poet and satirist Pietro Aretino (1492 � 1556).
Emerson (1803-1882) said 'A poem is made up of thoughts, each of which filled the whole sky of the poet in its turn... Poetry makes its own permanence, and a single stanza outweighs a book of prose.'
Not philosophy, after all, not humanity, just sheer joyous power of song, is the primal thing in poetry. In the 1840s in America, Walt Whitman (1819-1892) heard Emerson delivering a lecture in New York in which Emerson asked the question: 'Is there such a thing as an American literature, an American poetry?' Emerson declared that there was no conflict between American poetry and American democracy.
Emerson said that America at that time badly needed a national poet who could deal with justice and fairness, with American trade, American industry, with the commonness, the cheapness and availability of American experience. Emerson concluded with great foresight and vision: 'America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not long wait for metres'.
This message went deep down into the soul of Walt Whitman who was present in the audience, thus leading him to produce his first great work of landmark poems 'The Leaves of Grass' in 1855. There is no doubt that Whitman gave a cubic content and form to the clairvoyant message and vision of Emerson.
In his introduction to 'The Leaves of Grass', Walt Whitman wrote 'The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem... Here at last is something in the doings of men that corresponds with the broadcast doings of day and night. Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves'. Let me quote my favourite lines of Whitman on AMERICA:
'Centre of equal daughters, equal sons
All, all alike endar'd grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love'
Talking about the kind of inner spiritual experience he felt in writing 'Leaves of Grass', Walt Whitman said: 'There is something in my nature furtive like an old hen! You see a hen wandering up and down a hedgerow, looking apparently quite unconcerned, but presently she finds a concealed spot, and furtively lays an egg, and comes away as though nothing had happened! That is how I felt in writing Leaves of Grass.'
I am presenting below two of my very favourite poems of Walt Whitman. The first poem describes the defiantly independent glory and greatness of an Oak tree in Louisiana. The second one is in praise of the solid and unbreakable culture and civilization of the animals.
I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the branches;
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself;
But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there, without its friend, its lover near'for I knew I could not;
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away'and I have placed it in sight in my room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them:)
Yet it remains to me a curious token'it makes me think of manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana, solitary in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life, without a friend, a lover, near,
I know very well I could not.
I Think I Could Turn and Live with Animals
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained;
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins; They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God; Not one is dissatisfied'not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity. No wonder Walt Whitman proclaimed in his preface to Leaves of Grass (1855 edition): 'I will not have in my writing any elegance or effect of originality to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing hung in the way, not the richest curtains'.
(To be contd...)
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