'Our Sweetest Songs Are Those That Tell Of Saddest Thought"

"We look before and after, 

And pine for what is not --

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught --

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought." 

Shelley's "To a Sky-Lark" begs the reader to ask, can a poem merely be beautiful without possessing a deeper and potentially sadder meaning? Can something exist for the mere sake of existing? The speaker admires the sky-lark for appearing to have this pure quality to it, although he seems skeptical that it lacks any hidden agenda. The speaker asks the bird, “what objects are the fountains of thy happy strain?...or how could thy notes flow in such chrystal stream?” There appears to be a doubt that pure happiness and beauty can exist without pain. The fact that the bird sings, “when it is too high to be visible,” as the footnote states, gives the speaker a sense of the unattainable – a sense that this music is almost a surreal creation that can never actually be achieved.

“Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow

The world should listen then – as I am listening now.”

The speaker appears jealous of the skylark in this last stanza – begging it to teach him how to be purely glad, as if only then will the world read his poems. The poem seems to suggest that humanity contains too much sadness and therefore appreciates it in poetry: “our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.” However, the speaker yearns for a simpler world where poetry does not have to contain this pain and he can merely exist with “clear keen joyance”

To Wordsworth

I commented on Jared’s blog post last night as I was half through with contemplating what I was going to post myself. I thought I had my understanding of “To Wordsworth” completely down; however now, I’m second-guessing myself. As I mentioned in my comment, I originally read “To Wordsworth” as a 19^th century Mean Girls post -- where Shelley is the Regina George trying to taunt and mock Wordsworth while also demonstrating his own skill. Throughout the poem he does this by treating the poem as a fake and satirical eulogy where he acknowledges that, “deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve” (13).

However, after reading Jared’s thoughts on what he called a “love poem,” I can read the poem slightly differently. While I still see it as somewhat of a faux eulogy, perhaps it is not actually malicious. Perhaps Shelley is genuinely upset by Wordsworth’s changing of views and potential decline as a great poet. I am now struggling with the authenticity/ genuineness of Shelley’s comments. Is he mocking Wordsworth? Is he merely trying to flaunt his own poetical prowess?

Some notes on Shelley's "Defence"

Since I'm at home sick, and we have a lot of poetry to cover in class next Tuesday, I thought I'd share some thoughts on Shelley's great "Defence of Poetry." The essay is provocative and influential (on Yeats, for instance, who pretty much adopts much of its philosophy as his own), and is the strongest statement on the importance, beauty, and power of poetry in the Romantic period, or ever, really.

A key aspect of his argument is that poetry can be expanded to include all creativity and originality that has some relation to language (an argument Emerson takes up later). Thus, Shelley says, the language of poets is "vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before unapprehended relations of things" (858). He continues that the poet "not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time." There is in Shelley's thinking about poets and poetry a strong link to ideas also found in Hegel (a more or less contemporaneous writer). That is, both believe that truth is progressive, not fixed, and that it is revealed in bits and pieces by great, insightful minds, responding to the ideas and writings of others. Deep thinkers are able somehow to anticipate future progressive ideas, and bring them into the present, even if they don't fully understand them yet. This is what Shelley means in the final great sentences of his essay, that "Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present, the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves" (868). Poets engage the world around them, see what it is and what it might be, and produce language that taps into this zeitgeist. In making truth apparent, poetry helps bring those new ideas into being, even though they are not really the ideas of individual genius, but of the world itself. This is how poets might be thought of as prophets, not in the religious sense, but in a philosophical one. And this is what Shelley hoped to do himself--to represent new kinds of truth to the world, just as he felt the early Wordsworth had done.

Another great passage, one I find fairly moving, is  on page 862, in which he discusses the moral effects of great poetry. Poetry, he says "awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended [that word again] combinations of thought." So, again, poetry shows us truth that other kinds of art or representation can't, not because of the manner of its expression so much as because of the manner of its creation--that it gets at something below the surface, heretofore "unapprehended" but out there nonetheless. But poetry also gets us to "go[] out of own nature," which is the "great secret of morals." "A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause." There has always been  debate about whether art can make us better somehow (and it's really not clear how you could ever measure or know this), but Shelley's claims here are ones of belief and faith in the power of literature. I have to say that they are beliefs I share--that they come with the sense of committing one's life to the study of literature and poetry, that it does some good in the world.

He goes on to make the dubious claim that poets must therefore themselves be "of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest, and the most illustrious of men.... The greatest poets have been men of the most spotless virtue" (867). This can't be true, of course, any more than the idea that meat is the root of all evil (as he says in his tract on the vegetable diet), but it's a nice idea. In any case, he goes on to say that any actual sins of poets are washed clean by the virtue in their work, a kind of utilitarian idea that your ultimate virtue is not about purity, but about the amount of lasting good your work does in the world.

The Mariner's Revenge

"The Mariner's Revenge" is a long, (quite strange) song by the band The Decemberists. When first showed the song by a friend, I was struck the darkness of the chorus, but also its ballad qualities, the length, the focus on telling a story, and even the unusual rhythm (though I doubt it is ballad rhythm precisely). Now, after reading "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" I see many many parallels between the song and the poem. Both involve a speaker within the poem captivating another character with a story from his life, in this case detailing the two's prior relationship through the speaker's mother. The setting also blends elements of the real and fantastic. As the song begins the narrator says "We are two mariners / Our ship's sole survivors / In this belly of a whale / It's ribs are ceiling beams / It's guts are carpeting." The song reverses the situation of "Rime," the story is being told in a fantastic setting while the story itself takes place in a realistic one. In the middle of the poem, the speaker here's his mother speak to him on the wind, which reminded me of the spirits of the dead sailors and how they interacted with the Ancient Mariner. The ending of the song also bears similarities to "Rime," the whale's attack leaves only The Mariner and his target alive inside the whale, much like how all but the Ancient Mariner drop dead in the poem. The whale itself parallels the great spirit which brings about the Ancient Mariner's suffering, creating extraordinary circumstances so that the Mariner's target might be punished. This too, reverses the situation of the poem, the narrator is not one who has been punished by nature but the tool by which nature, or some other force, is punishing another. The song is quite and experience, and I think it is worth a listen especially given its ties to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEmy2DBaeTc

Imagine: Sir Francis Bacon On "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"

I am studying Sir Francis Bacon in my Renaissance Literature course at the moment, and I think this essay provides an interesting backdrop for which to think about Shelley's poem. Specifically, Bacon's last paragraph seems to converse well with the poem (although the two authors obviously lived in very different eras--Bacon was writing largely in the 16th century). Bacon seems to believe that the "first entrance" into nature makes it easy to become disposed to atheism. But, he counters, "wading deep" into nature, becoming very entrenched, will actually "bring about men's mind to religion." This philosophy is interesting to think about in relation to all of the romantic poets we have studied thus far, I think. As a class, we have frequently discussed the seeming presence of a spirit in nature throughout the romantic works. How do the different poets interact with/view this spirit? What would each of them say about Bacon's argument? Does Shelley have a true grasp of his own spirituality? Lastly, it seems like Shelley recognizes much of the same wonders in nature that Wordsworth does, so why does this lead him in particular to atheism? Below is Sir Francis Bacon's essay:

SIR FRANCIS BACON: OF ATHEISM.

"The fool hath said in his heart there is no God."

First, it is to be noted, that the Scripture saith, "The fool hath said in his heart, and not thought in his heart;" that is to say, he doth not so fully think it in judgment, as he hath a good will to be of that belief; for seeing it makes not for him that there should be a God, he doth seek by all means accordingly to persuade and resolve himself, and studies to affirm, prove, and verify it to himself as some theme or position: all which labour, notwithstanding that sparkle of our creation light, whereby men acknowledge a Deity burneth still within; and in vain doth he strive utterly to alienate it or put it out, so that it is out of the corruption of his heart and will, and not out of the natural apprehension of his brain and conceit, that he doth set down his opinion, as the comical poet saith, "Then came my mind to be of mine opinion," as if himself and his mind had been two divers things; therefore the atheist hath rather said, and held it in his heart, than thought or believed in his heart that there is no God; secondly, it is to be observed, that he hath said in his heart, and not spoken it with his mouth. But again you shall note, that this smothering of this persuasion within the heart cometh to pass tor fear of government and of speech amongst men; for, as he saith, "To deny God in a public argument were much, but in a familiar conference were current enough:" for if this bridle were removed, there is no heresy which would contend more to spread and multiply, and disseminate itself abroad, than atheism: neither shall you see those men which are drenched in this frenzy of mind to breathe almost any thing else, or to inculcate even without occasion any thing more than speech tending to atheism, as may appear in Lucrecius the epicure, who makes of his invectives against religion as it were a burden or verse of return to all his other discourses; the reason seems to be, for that the atheist not relying sufficiently upon himself, floating in mind and unsatisfied, and enduring within many faintings, and as it were fails of his opinion, desires by other men's opinions agreeing with his, to be recovered and brought again; for it is a true saying, "Whoso laboureth earnestly to prove an opinion to another, himself distrusts it:" thirdly, it is a fool that hath so said in his heart, which is most true; not only in respect that he hath no taste in those things which are supernatural and divine; but in respect of human and civil wisdom: for first of all, if you mark the wits and dispositions which are inclined to atheism, you shall find them light, scoffing, impudent, and vain; briefly of such a constitution as is most contrary to wisdom and moral gravity.

Secondly, amongst statesmen and politics, those which have been of greatest depths and compass, and of largest and most universal understanding, have not only in cunning made their profit in seeming religious to the people, but in truth have been touched with an inward sense of the knowledge of Deity, as they which you shall evermore note to have attributed much to fortune and providence.

Contrariwise, those who ascribed all things to their own cunning and practices, and to the immediate, and apparent causes, and as the prophet saith, "Have sacrificed to their own nets," have been always but petty counterfeit statesman, and not capable of the greatest actions.

Lastly, this I dare affirm in knowledge of nature, that a little natural philosophy, and the first entrance into it, doth dispose the opinion to atheism; but on the other side, much natural philosophy and wading deep into it, will bring about men's minds to religion; wherefore atheism every way seems to be combined with folly and ignorance, seeing nothing can can be more justly allotted to be the saying of fools than this, "There is no God"

He is not dead, he doth not sleep - He hath awaken from the dream of life.

Percy Shelley directly addresses Wordsworth in this poem and ends the sonnet by saying “Thou leavest me to grieve, / Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.” My first interpretation of this poem, without any background knowledge, was that Shelley was mourning the death of Wordsworth. Shelley speaks about Wordsworth as if he no longer exists and he discusses the works of Wordsworth’s past. But Wordsworth outlived Shelley by a number of years.

Shelley happened to write this poem around the time that Wordsworth strayed from his original, radical philosophies and converted into a conservative, fundamentalist. During this time too, Wordsworth started to work for the government, almost completely abandoning his poetry. This most likely seemed very un-romantic and was considered shameful to Shelley because he wrote this poem which speaks of Wordsworth as if he no longer existed.  It’s almost as if Shelley suggests that Wordsworth was nothing without his poetry and that he was somewhat of a coward for abandoning his craft.

This entire poem is meant to defy Wordsworth and his career decisions which makes the structure particularly interesting to me. Wordsworth loved to write sonnets and he usually wrote sonnets in the traditional form: octave and sestet. Instead this poem is written with the sestet first and the octave last. Wordsworth’s poetry usually had an abbaabba rhyme scheme while this poem has an ababcdcd pattern (until we get closer to the last six lines where things get weird.)

Knowing the background information about this poem makes it pretty hilarious to me. It’s really funny that Shelley wrote a sonnet about Wordsworth’s life changes as if his changes made him lose his original identity, which lead to his death (or lack of existence.) 

To Wordsworth

The first footnote prefaces this poem by suggesting that Shelley's motivations involved his shift to a more conservative view. Initially reading the footnote I was slightly confused as to why Shelley would feel the need, not only to inform Wordsworth in such dramatic fashion of this shift in thinking, but also why Shelley would want this seemingly private conversation to be published. After reading the poem, I could not help but compare this poem to something of a love poem. It is not that the content of the poem that signifies this romance, but more the tone of the poem. Shelley starts the poem by referring to Wordsworth as the "Poet of Nature" (1), not only is this a very generous title to give a poet, but it is also very similar to the way couples give one another pet-names. Beginning the poem in this way is almost like writing a letter to a significant other and addressing him or her as "My love." He then insinuates that Wordsworth is so moved by Shelley's knew perspective that he expects Wordsworth to have "wept" (1), once again evoking the image of a relationship.
Shelley goes on to discuss all that he has lost now that his views are more conservative, and many of these losses seem to suggest that Shelley has lost the ability to be a romantic, yet the irony is, as Shelley writes about how "friendship and love's first glow / have fled like sweet dreams" (3-4), he is gushing to Wordsworth, almost begging for attention. Shelley also refers to Wordsworth at one point as "a lone star" (7), and then Shelley continues with this image as he discusses how Wordsworth's "light did shine" (7), and it is all very beautiful, but I just cannot figure out how the tone of the poem fits with what Shelley is actually saying. Why is Shelley so emotionally attached to what Wordsworth would think of all this in the first place, and if Shelley is so concerned with Wordsworth's opinion, enough to "grieve" (13), how can he possibly say that he has lost love and friendship when he is addressing Wordsworth as if they are romantically involved?