ZOMBIE LOVE

Eliot's Unreal City

Yesterday’s poet was Alfred Lord Tennyson and the poem Marriage Morning. A perfect poem to read at a wedding!  Today I shall take a dramatic U-turn and write about love in a very different way. 

We are now in a new century, the 20^th, after a devastating First World War. I shall show you how the lack of moral and spiritual values in that period caused love to plummet into an abyss of squalor and apathy. The poet who best expressed this degradation was T. S. Eliot, who wrote a very long articulate poem with the symptomatic title, The Wast Land; a dry, new land, but also a dry new soul, made up of ashes and dust.

The Waste Land through the dead eyes of Dr. Eckleburg 

The extract from this long and difficult poem that best portrays the demise of love (and sex) in all its positive aspects, is The Fire Sermon. In this poem even sex is depicted as being as arid as the waste land. Let’s face it, sex is a beautiful and passionate part of love. Actually sex can be a beautiful act in itself, even without love. Eliot manages to portray the death of sexual pleasure and physical sensuality, describing sexual activity as frigid and robotic. A kind of zombie love. The narrator of the story is the mythological character Tiresias, a transsexual, blind seer. I shall be writing about Tiresias tomorrow.

Here is the story. A typist returns home in the evening after a long day at work, in a dystopian robotic world where the human engine waits like a taxi. She returns to her dingy little apartment which is untidy and messy. Her breakfast stuff is still around, her clothes strewn all over the place, and her washing is still hanging out the window. She clears up and starts preparing a meal for he boyfriend, who is about to arrive for dinner. What is she going to prepare? It is, after all, a special romantic evening with her boyfriend. Which crockery? Which porcelain? No, she simply “lays out food in tins.”

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back

Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits

Like a taxi throbbing waiting,

I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, 

Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see 

At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives

Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, 

The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights 

Her stove, and lays out food in tins. 

Out of the window perilously spread 

Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,

On the divan are piled (at night her bed) 

Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.

I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs 

Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest— 

I too awaited the expected guest.

She waits passively for her guest. He finally arrives. What’s he like? A knight in shining armour? No! He is an insignificant little man with pimples on his face and arrogance in his ways. They eat with lassitude and when he thinks the time is ripe, he tries to engage in sexual contact.  She is totally cold and apathetic. She doesn’t even react to his caresses and lets him do whatever he wants to do.  Any other man would stop and ask why she is being so cold. Any other man would be hurt that his approaches are being ignored. Any other man would be disgusted at her lack of reaction; at the fact that his partner is acting like an inanimate mannequin while he is trying to make love to her. No. Not at all. He is satisfied and “makes a welcome of indifference”. He ploughs forward to make love to this cold, lifeless being. He completes his physical sexual act and sees it as a victory, after all “His vanity requires no response”.

He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,

A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare, 

One of the low on whom assurance sits 

As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire. 

The time is now propitious, as he guesses, 

The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, 

Endeavours to engage her in caresses 

Which still are unreproved, if undesired. 

Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; 

Exploring hands encounter no defence; 

His vanity requires no response, 

And makes a welcome of indifference.

He is ready. His job is done. He gives her kiss; but not a loving kiss. It is a “patronising kiss”, a soulless kiss from a heartless man. When he leaves the apartment, he ominously walks into darkness, “finding the stairs unlit…”

(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all 

Enacted on this same divan or bed; 

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall 

And walked among the lowest of the dead.) 

Bestows one final patronising kiss, 

And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

The situation up to this point is squalid and depressing, but the final reaction of the typist is devastating. She barely notices that her lover has left and almost pragmatically says, “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.” She then continues with her robotic existence by fixing her hair with “automatic “ hand and putting on some music.

She turns and looks a moment in the glass, 

Hardly aware of her departed lover; 

Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: 

“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.” 

When lovely woman stoops to folly and 

Paces about her room again, alone, 

She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, 

And puts a record on the gramophone.

A devastatingly depressing description of love, sex and relationship.

THE ONLY GOLD

Today I am not writing about anyone, it will be the poet himself to reveal his worth. He is another 19th century writer who believed  that "It is better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all.".  Who is it? I shall tell you tomorrow.

He has several famous works which I am sure you will recognise, but I choose to leave you with a lesser known one written for love and marriage. 

Light, so low upon earth,
You send a flash to the sun.
Here is the golden close of love,
All my wooing is done.
Oh, the woods and the meadows,
Woods where we hid from the wet,
Stiles where we stay'd to be kind,
Meadows in which we met!


Light, so low in the vale
You flash and lighten afar,
For this is the golden morning of love,
And you are his morning start.
Flash, I am coming, I come,
By meadow and stile and wood,
Oh, lighten into my eyes and heart,
Into my heart and my blood!


Heart, are you great enough
For a love that never tires?
O' heart, are you great enough for love?
I have heard of thorns and briers,
Over the meadow and stiles,
Over the world to the end of it
Flash for a million miles.

...AS MY OWN BEING

Emily Bronte

When we talk of  love we cannot but talk about another 19th century woman, Emily Bronte (1816-1848). She only wrote her one novel, Wuthering Heights, but she also wrote fiery poems which emphasise her mysterious lovelorn soul. She is the fifth of six children. Charlotte, her elder sister, is the very well known writer of Jane Eyre, Villette, Shirley and The Professor. However, the passion and sensuality that transpires from Emily's only novel is unique and beyond comparison. I shall be looking at Wuthering Heights  and the profound, passionate and almost insane love it depicts.

The story is a simple straightforward one; it is the emotion that tumultuous. Catherine and Hindley Earnshaw live with their father at Wuthering Heights, an old farmhouse battered by the winds blowing from the moors. One day returning from Liverpool Mr. Earnshaw brings back a foundling boy, whom he calls Heathcliff. Catherine takes to him and becomes his friend, But Hindley is jealous and does not accept him. He treats him very badly, as a servant, and belittles him every chance he can. 

Hindley put out his tongue, and cuffed him over the ears. 'You'd better do it at once,' he persisted, escaping to the porch (they were in the stable): 'you will have to: and if I speak of these blows, you'll get them again with interest.' 'Off, dog!' cried Hindley, threatening him with an iron weight used for weighing potatoes and hay. 'Throw it,' he replied, standing still, 'and then I'll tell how you boasted that you would turn me out of doors as soon as he died, and see whether he will not turn you out directly.' Hindley threw it, hitting him on the breast, and down he fell, but staggered up immediately, breathless and white; and, had not I prevented it, he would have gone just so to the master, and got full revenge by letting his condition plead for him, intimating who had caused it.

After the death of Mr. Earnshaw, the situation gets steadily worse. As the children grow up, Catherine and Heathcliff become closer and their friendship develops into to love, a deep frenzied love. However, the situation with Hindley becomes untenable. The turning point comes when Edgar, a rich sophisticated neighbour, asks Catherine to marry him. Believing to protect her true love, Heathcliff, from the grasp of Hindley, Catherine accepts his proposal. Here she is talking to Nelly, the housekeeper, telling her that she will accept Edgar.

To-day, Edgar Linton has asked me to marry him, and I've given him an answer. Now, before I tell you whether it was a consent or denial, you tell me which it ought to have been.'
'Really, Miss Catherine, how can I know?' I replied. 'To be sure, considering the exhibition you performed in his presence this afternoon, I might say it would be wise to refuse him: since he asked you after that, he must either be hopelessly stupid or a venturesome fool.'
'If you talk so, I won't tell you any more,' she returned, peevishly rising to her feet. 'I accepted him, Nelly.

Catherine then tells Nelly that in reality she loves Heathcliff. Her words of love are perhaps the most heartrending and passionate expression of love ever written. Heathcliff sadly overhears only the part where she tells Nelly that it would degrade her to marry him and that she would marry Edgar. He therefore escapes from Wuthering Heights and disappears.

I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.Ere this speech ended I became sensible of Heathcliff's presence. Having noticed a slight movement, I turned my head, and saw him rise from the bench, and steal out noiselessly. He had listened till he heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him, and then he stayed to hear no further. 

Heathcliff returns three years later. He is now rich and full of vengeance. Catherine is married to Edgar, but her love for Heathcliff is still passionate and explosive. Heathcliff's revenge starts by his marrying Edgar's sister, only to make her life miserable. In the meantime both Catherine and Heathcliff develop an almost crazed relationship:

Heathcliff had knelt on one knee to embrace her; he attempted to rise, but she seized his hair, and kept him down.'I wish I could hold you,' she continued, bitterly, 'till we were both dead! I shouldn't care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn't you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years hence, "That's the grave of Catherine Earnshaw? I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I've loved many others since: my children are dearer to me than she was; and, at death, I shall not rejoice that I are going to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave them!" Will you say so, Heathcliff?' 'Don't torture me till I'm as mad as yourself,' cried he, wrenching his head free, and grinding his teeth.

 I shall refrain from telling you any more of this story in the hope that you will read it. Those who have already read it will know how lacerating and overwhelming their end is. 

I shall conclude with a very short poem by Emily Bronte on the theme of love, loss, and sorrow:

It will not shine again:Its sad course is done;I have seen the last ray waneOf the cold, bright sun.

A Woman of Substance

Today I’d like to turn my attention to a woman. A true feminist and a true talent. She married for love, but she didn’t subject herself to it. She fought for love and defended it. She was “…fearless, and therefore powerful.” She was Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly (1797–1851). 

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is best known for her writing, her stark feminism in an era, the 19th century, of bigotry, and of course, for being the lover first, and the wife later, of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary’s parents were both beacons of intellectuality, modernity and progress. Her father was William Godwin, a radical writer and political philosopher, and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, often considered the first feminist, was the author of The Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and a journalist.

It was inevitable that Percy would meet Mary at some point, considering her parent’s radical thinking. Percy used to frequent their cultural circle to discuss anything from economy and politics to poetry and philosophy. It was at one of these meetings, in 1812, that Mary met Percy Bysshe Shelley for the first time. In 1814 she began a relationship with him, she was only 17 years old and he was a married man. What do you think of her two lines?

The bubble floats before,
The shadow stalks behind.

The two met in secret, and once her father discovered their relationship, he tried to stop it, but failed. This was obviously a huge scandal in the London of respectability. In the same year, the couple left for France to travel across Europe, leaving behind them a wake of gossip and disgrace. Their relationship was a tumultuous one and riddled with intense passion and tragedy. Mary’s first 3 children died soon after birth, and only her fourth child, a son, lived to survive her. 
When in Italy, in 1822, Percy sadly drowned in a boating accident off the coast of Viareggio. Mary mourned his loss until she died several years later in 1851, at the age of 53. 

There are a few different tales of Percy’s death, but the one that is he most poignant is this. When Percy Shelley was being cremated on the beach, Lord Byron who was his friend and fellow poet, thrust his hand in the burning pyre and pulled out Shelley’s heart, saying that this great poetic heart could not be burnt away! The story goes that he kept the heart in alcohol and later gave it to Mary. The story slowly fell into legend, until Mary’s death, for it is believed that a pouch was found amongst her belongings, labelled, Percy’s heart! True or not, it’s a touching story.

One of Mary's short poem:

Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried,
What hell it is——
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares,
To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone.

Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, about the creation of a monstrous being by an eccentric genius (the modern Prometheus), was her masterpiece. The monster could also represent society’s creation of the industrial revolution, which turned against that same society that had created it. I shall return to this work in the future, as it deserves a page to itself. Several other of her novels are today considered praiseworthy by critics. Her nonfiction prose, like biographies, documentaries and travel essays are also worthy of note. Many critics believe, in fact, that her nonfiction work is even more significant.



The love between Percy and Mary was deep and boundless. Even though they both believed in free love and an open marriage, they were intrinsically bound to each other. His thoughts were always for her.

To Mary Shelley

The world is dreary,
And I'm weary
Of wandering on without thee, Mary;
A joy was erewhile
In thy voice and thy smile,
And 'tis gone, when I should be gone too, Mary.


Percy had also jotted down these words in his notebook when in Italy:

My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone,
And left me in this dreary world alone?
Thy form is here indeed—a lovely one—
But thou art fled, gone down a dreary road
That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode.
For thine own sake I cannot follow thee
Do thou return for mine.

To conclude, let Mary give you her Stanzas:

Stanzas

Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!
I will not ask a dearer bliss;
Come with the starry beams, my love,
And press mine eyelids with thy kiss.

’Twas thus, as ancient fables tell,
Love visited a Grecian maid,
Till she disturbed the sacred spell,
And woke to find her hopes betrayed.

But gentle sleep shall veil my sight,
And Psyche’s lamp shall darkling be,
When, in the visions of the night,
Thou dost renew thy vows to me.

Then come to me in dreams, my love,
I will not ask a dearer bliss;
Come with the starry beams, my love,
And press mine eyelids with thy kiss.

Natural and Supernatural

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834

Coleridge, like Wordsworth, loved nature and together they enjoyed walking in the Lake District, in the heart of the natural surroundings. However, Coleridge also loved the supernatural. His fantastic and mysterious imagination were an infinite source of inspiration.  It was this poetic process of creation that laid the foundations for the haunting scenes of The Rime of The Ancient Mariner and the visionary surrealistic world of Kubla Khan.

Coleridge did not find any solace in nature, like Wordsworth did. It was not something he could go back to with his memory in order to find joy and consolation. There was no “emotions recollected in tranquillity”. His relationship with nature was more philosophical, seeing it through his philosophical poetic faith: “No man was ever yet a great poet, without at the same time being a profound philosopher.” The intensity of the poet’s vision and imagination is best reflected by the lines from Dejection An Ode:

O Lady! We receive but what we give,And in our life alone does nature live;Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud.

What about love? Love was in every sinew of the poet’s very existence. When he lived in Malta in 1804, he kept a notebook in which he wrote:

 … While I am talking of War or Government or Chemistry there comes ever into my bodily eye some Tree beneath which we have rested, some rock where we have walked together, or on the perilous road edging, high above the Crummock Lake where we sate beneath the rock & those dear lips pressed on my forehead …

These words reflect his typically dreamlike state of mind. He delves into a surrealistic dimension within his philosophical reverie and there creates love and love and more love. In his lesser known poem, Recollections of Love, the poet expresses this reverie in a connotative sensual and physical way:

How warm this woodland wild Recess!
Love surely hath been breathing here;
And this sweet bed of heath, my dear!
Swells up, then sinks with faint caress,
 As if to have you yet more near.

The poem ends beautifully by blending the sensually physical with his dreams and with his dreams within dreams:

You stood before me like a thought,

A dream remembered in a dream

But when those meek eyes first did seem

O Greta, dear domestic stream

To tell me, Love within you wrought--

Has not, since then, Love's prompture deep, 

Has not Love's whisper evermore 

Been ceaseless, as thy gentle roar? 

Sole voice, when other voices sleep, 

Dear under-song in clamor's hour.

These words exemplify Coleridge’s essence; a poet of the natural, the supernatural, the surrealistic and of intrinsic love. Read the full poem.  

I’d like to conclude this brief peek into the soul of Coleridge by referring to another love poem entitled Love. This poem is a ballad, a short narrative tale encapsulating two stories. One is a tale of a woeful Knight who pines and dies for his love, and the other is the story of the poet who is relating the story of the knight to Genevieve, in order to win her love. He uses the story of the knight to focus on his own battle for love. Typically here,  Coleridge swings from the dreamlike tale of a medieval knight to the real tangible love he is feeling for Genevieve.

The knight is refused by his lady and after struggling with his efforts to win her, he wanders off and goes mad.

But when I told the cruel scorn
That crazed that bold and lovely Knight,
And that he crossed the mountain-woods,
Nor rested day nor night;

Eventually, after saving her from a “murderous band”, his lady realises that the love he had felt for her was indeed deep and sincere.  As he lies  on death’s door, she accepts him and although he regains his sanity, he sadly dies. The story is a sad and romantic one, but as I mentioned, it is a story to highlight another story, the poet’s real situation of love:

I told her how he pined: and ah!
The deep, the low, the pleading tone
With which I sang another's love,
Interpreted my own.

The poet believed that the imaginary tale from afar would fill his Genevieve with empathy and pity for the suffering of that knight. Therefore, he hoped that Genevieve would feel the same love and pity for the poet himself, the teller of the tale. He attempted to secure her love by portraying this very sad story and the happy conclusion of the ballad is the climax of this achievement:

She wept with pity and delight,
She blushed with love, and virgin-shame;
And like the murmur of a dream,
I heard her breathe my name. Her bosom heaved—she stepped aside,
As conscious of my look she stepped—
Then suddenly, with timorous eye
She fled to me and wept.
 She half enclosed me with her arms,
She pressed me with a meek embrace;
And bending back her head, looked up,
And gazed upon my face.
 'Twas partly love, and partly fear,
And partly 'twas a bashful art,
That I might rather feel, than see,
The swelling of her heart.
 I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride;
And so I won my Genevieve,
My bright and beauteous Bride.

Full poem here. 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an ethereal, yet very sensual human being and his poetry is testimony to this. The best way to conclude this short piece is with his the poet’s own word:

As I live and am a man, this is an unexaggerated tale - my dreams become the substances of my life.

LOVE IS MY RELIGION

I was going to write a few lines on S. T. Coleridge, but I realised that today is a very important anniversary I can’t ignore. Exactly 198 years ago today John Keats, the poet of love, passed away in the city I presently live in, Rome.

John Keats (1798 – 1821) is perhaps the poet who best exemplifies devotion to love. A couple of paragraphs on this blog could never capture this boundless devotion. I could write volumes on the love that transpires from his poetry and letters. Succinctly, I shall just use the words of the poet himself.

Let me start with Endymion. This is a long poem about the moon goddess Cynthia’s love for Endymion, a shepherd of Latmos. Endymion’s love for Cynthia foreshadows Keats’ own quest for ideal beauty. The poem is a love-bound labyrinth of symbolism and allegory. Keats says that it is “a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished.” However, the poem is gifted with outstanding passages, sentences and phrases. The very first line is a case in point: “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”.

Endymion look’d at her, and press’d her hand, 

And said, “Art thou so pale, who wast so bland 

And merry in our meadows? How is this? 

Tell me thine ailment: tell me all amiss!— 

Ah! thou hast been unhappy at the change            

Wrought suddenly in me. What indeed more strange? 

Or more complete to overwhelm surmise? 

Ambition is no sluggard: ‘tis no prize,  

That toiling years would put within my grasp, 

That I have sigh’d for: with so deadly gasp            

No man e’er panted for a mortal love. 

So all have set my heavier grief above 

These things which happen. Rightly have they done: 

I, who still saw the horizontal sun 

Heave his broad shoulder o’er the edge of the world,            

Out-facing Lucifer, and then had hurl’d 

My spear aloft, as signal for the chace— 

I, who, for very sport of heart, would race 

With my own steed from Araby; pluck down 

A vulture from his towery perching; frown            

A lion into growling, loth retire— 

To lose, at once, all my toil breeding fire, 

And sink thus low! but I will ease my breast 

Of secret grief, here in this bowery nest. 

You can read the poem here. 

Another favourite of mine is, Isabella And The Pot of Basil, a poem about the unrequited love between the rich Isabella and Lorenzo, a young man employed by her family in Florence. Her wicked brothers who are snobs and social climbers, do not bless this love, and warn their sister not to nurture the relationship. But their love is too overwhelming:

With every morn their love grew tenderer,     

With every eve deeper and tenderer still;                

He might not in house, field, or garden stir,         

  But her full shape would all his seeing fill;           

And his continual voice was pleasanter 

  To her, than noise of trees or hidden rill;             

Her lute-string gave an echo of his name,                  

She spoilt her half-done broidery with the same.              

Eventually the brothers realise that Isabella’s love will trump their will, and so they murder Lorenzo and bury his body in the forest. But love is greater than death. Lorenzo’s spirit appears to Isabella and tells her about the brutal murder. He begs her to go and weep over his buried body:

Saying moreover, “Isabel, my sweet!
  “Red whortle-berries droop above my head,
“And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet;
  “Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed   
“Their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheep-fold bleat       
  “Comes from beyond the river to my bed:   
“Go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom,
“And it shall comfort me within the tomb.

His spirit then guides Isabella to the body. She digs it up and cuts the head off to bury it in a pot in which she plants basil. Isabella slowly fades, crying  endlessly over the basil, which flourishes with her tears.

And so she ever fed it with thin tears,           

Whence thick, and green, and beautiful it grew,              

So that it smelt more balmy than its peers           

Of Basil-tufts in Florence; for it drew    

Nurture besides, and life, from human fears,      

From the fast mouldering head there shut from view:         

So that the jewel, safely casketed,          

Came forth, and in perfumed leafits spread.

The brothers are weary of their sister’s waning health and strange attachment to the pot of basil.  They eventually discover the truth and steal the pot. Shocked by what they find in it, they escape from Florence. Isabella pines for her pot of basil. She eventually goes mad and sadly dies.

The complete poem here.

Another long poem I would like to share with you is the haunting The Eve of St. Agnes.

The poem is set in a medieval castle on a very cold January 20th, the eve of St. Agnes; “ Ah, bitter chill it was! / The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold”.

Legend has it  that if a girl follows certain rules on this eve, she'll receive a vision of the man she will marry. Madeline does just this and sure enough, the man she loves, Porphyro, sneaks into the castle to meet with her lover and elope. Porphyro is regarded as the enemy by Madeline’s family and they would kill him on sight. Luckily he meets, Angela, Madeline’s old nurse.

—"Good Saints! not here, not here;
Follow me, child, or else these stones will be thy bier."

       He follow'd through a lowly arched way,
       Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume,
       And as she mutter'd "Well-a—well-a-day!"
       He found him in a little moonlight room,
       Pale, lattic'd, chill, and silent as a tomb.
       "Now tell me where is Madeline," said he,
       "O tell me, Angela, by the holy loom
       Which none but secret sisterhood may see,
When they St. Agnes' wool are weaving piously."

Angela leads him to Madeline’s chamber where he hides in a closet. After she falls asleep, Porphyro  wakes her up by playing a lute. The picture Keats paints here is so surreal that dream, poetry and narrative blend into a vision of ethereal love. The legend has come true, Madeline sees her lover, but frightened that her family will kill Lorenzo, she accepts to escape with him.  The couple surreptitiously leave the castle and disappear into the stormy night.  

They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall;

       Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide;

       Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl,

       With a huge empty flaggon by his side:

       The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide,

       But his sagacious eye an inmate owns:

       By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:—

       The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;

The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans.

       And they are gone: ay, ages long ago

       These lovers fled away into the storm.

 Read the poem here.

Keats' poems on love are a deluge of emotion and I shall certainly be returning to them. Poems like Ode on a Grecian Urn,  Bright Star, La Belle Dame Sans Mercy, Ode to Psyche and so many others are priceless gems “upon the night’s starr’d face”.

I will conclude with an extract from one of John Keats’ letters to the woman he loved, Fanny Brawne. These are spontaneous honest words from a passionate lover. They feel like a punch in the stomach.

Upon my Soul I can think of nothing else — The time is passed when I had power to advise and warn you against the unpromising morning of my Life — My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you — I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again — my Life seems to stop there — I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving—I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love — Your note came in just here — I cannot be happier away from you — ’T is richer than an Argosy of Pearles. Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion — I have shudder’d at it — I shudder no more. I could be martyr’d this for my Religion — Love is my religion — I could die for that — I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet — You have ravish’d me away by a Power I cannot resist; and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no more — the pain would be too great — My Love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.

The 'Nature' of Love

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is one of the most well-known poets of the First-Generation Romantics. William Blake, Samuel Coleridge and Robert Southey are the other famous poets of the period.  The First-Generation Romantics are characterised by their shift in style and subject manner from bombastic eloquence and elevated personalities, to simple colloquial language, nature and the focus on the common man and woman. 

Although Wordsworth and Coleridge co-authored an anthology entitled Lyrical Ballads, they were two very different men. Wordsworth was straight-laced and rather “dull”, according to Shelley and Byron. He had actually started off as being very daring and nonconformist. He sympathised with the French Revolution and anarchy, but he was later let down by the ensuing Reign of Terror and the rise of the despotic Emperor Napoleon. He changed and became the opposite of the free spirit he had been. His conservative nature, however, did fit in very well with the subsequent Victorian bigotry.

William Wordsworth is best known for his deep appreciation of nature. He lived with his sister, Dorothy, in the Lake District and was passionate about the natural beauty there. I’m sure many of you have read or heard the lines about the daffodils.

Daffodils "Beside the lake"

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

The poem ends with Wordsworth’s famous idea of “emotions recollected in tranquillity”. He believed that when we experience an overwhelming emotion, we should store it in our hearts and then when we are alone and in the right mood, we would be able to feel it all over again through our “inward eye”  and revive the same experience.

…

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

(Full poem here.)

As I mentioned, Wordsworth’s devotion was for nature, so it is understandable that his poems on love, even the love for a woman, would be seen through nature.  She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways is a prime example of this. Here he praises a beautiful young woman by associating her with the beauties of nature.

She dwelt among the untrodden ways

Beside the springs of Dove,

A Maid whom there were none to praise

And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye!

—Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

One of my favourite love poems written by Wordsworth is the ethereal touching, She Was a Phantom of Delight. The poem starts with a spiritually elevated quality:

She was a Phantom of delight

When first she gleamed upon my sight;

A lovely Apparition, sent

To be a moment's ornament;

Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;

Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;

But all things else about her drawn

From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;

A dancing Shape, an Image gay,

To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.

I saw her upon nearer view,

A Spirit, yet a Woman too!

Read the full poem here.

William Wordsworth loved nature, almost as though it were a human being: "Nature never did betray the heart that loved her"

I would say that Wordsworth’s passionate lover was nature itself.  The following lines seem to be those uttered by a sensual lover in a paroxysm of ecstasy.

If I should be, where I no more can hear

Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams     

Of past existence, wilt thou then forget 

That on the banks of this delightful stream          

We stood together; and that I, so long   

A worshipper of Nature, hither came,    

Unwearied in that service: rather say     

With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal         

Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,              

That after many wanderings, many years             

Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,  

And this green pastoral landscape, were to me  

More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake.

(Tintern Abbey)   

TinternAbbeybyAnthonyDaniels

Tomorrow I’ll be looking at William Wordsworth’s friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. From the natural to the supernatural.

THE GARDEN OF LOVE

I went to the garden of love and saw what I never had seen, a chapel was built in the midst where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this chapel were shut, And “Thou shalt not” writ over the door. So I turned to the garden of love, that so many flowers bore, and I saw it was filled with graves and tombstones where flowers should be, and priests in black gowns were walking their rounds and binding with briars my joys and desires.

These words were not originally written in prose; they are words from a poem structured poetically by the late 18^th century poet William Blake, The Garden of Love. Romantic poetry was dominated by the theme of love in all its facets. From the first generation romantics to the poetry of Shelley, Lord Byron and John Keats, love was a predominant feature. The Garden of Love was written to express Blake’s belief of the naturalness of sexuality and how organised religion, especially the orthodox Christian church, caused the repression of natural desire and stifled spontaneity. This was an extremely brave stance to take in a period when the church was so dominant and powerful. Blake’s indignation is evident from the words “…what I had never seen”. It is interesting that he says that he has “never” seen it, considering that he must have grown up as a child and young adult as being quite aware of the bigoted attitude of the church towards sexuality. It could be that he is speaking from the point of view of the innocent who has just entered the world of experience. This transition would have left him in a state of shock and sadness at how his previous freedom had been suddenly fettered and restrained by the church. The chapel was built in the middle, where he used to play, on the “green”.  The “green” has a special connotation here, as it mirrors the contrary poem, The Ecchoing Green. ( Read here.) This shows how “green” represents the previous, innocent freedom. To add to this, there is the obvious word “play” suggesting childhood. Refer to his Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience here.

Here is the poem in its original poetic structure:

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
 And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And Thou shalt not. writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.
 And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

 

Tomorrow I’ll be looking at other First Generation Romantics.