Autumn Song By Paul Verlaine – 1844-1896 Translated by Arthur Symons
When a sighing begins In the violins Of the autumn-song, My heart is drowned In the slow sound Languorous and long
Pale as with pain, Breath fails me when The hours toll deep. My thoughts recover The days that are over, And I weep.
And I go Where the winds know, Broken and brief, To and fro, As the winds blow A dead leaf.
Chanson d’automne By Paul Verlaine – 1844-1896
Les saglots longs Des violons De l’automne Blessent mon coeur D’une langueur Monotone.
Tout suffocant Et blême, quand Sonne l’heure, Je me souviens Des jours anciens Et je pleure;
Et je m’en vais Au vent mauvais Qui m’emporte Deçà, delà, Pareil à la Feuille morte.
About the Poem:
“Chanson d’automne” (“Autumn Song”) is a poem by Paul Verlaine (1844–1896), one of the best known in the French language. It is included in Verlaine’s first collection, Poèmes saturniens, published in 1866 (see 1866 in poetry). The poem forms part of the “Paysages tristes” (“Sad landscapes”) section of the collection.
In World War II lines from the poem were used to send messages from Special Operations Executive (SOE) to the French Resistance about the timing of the forthcoming Invasion of Normandy. In preparation for Operation Overlord, the BBC’s Radio Londres had signaled to the French Resistance with the opening lines of “Chanson d’Automne” were to indicate the start of D-Day operations under the command of the Special Operations Executive. The first three lines of the poem, “Les sanglots longs / des violons / de l’automne” (“Long sobs of autumn violins”), would mean that Operation Overlord was to start within two weeks. These lines were broadcast on June 1, 1944. The next set of lines, “Blessent mon coeur / d’une langueur / monotone” (“wound my heart with a monotonous languor”), meant that it would start within 48 hours and that the resistance should begin sabotage operations, especially on the French railroad system; these lines were broadcast on June 5 at 23:15.
In 1940, Charles Trenet made changes to the words of the poem in order to change it into a song. There has been speculation that it was the popularity of his version that led to the use of the poem by SOE.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
“The Second Coming” is a poem written by Irish poet W. B. Yeats in 1919, first printed in The Dial in November 1920, and afterwards included in his 1921 collection of verses Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and Second Coming to allegorically describe the atmosphere of post-war Europe. It is considered a major work of modernist poetry and has been reprinted in several collections, including The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.
The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence that followed the Easter Rising, at a time before the British Government decided to send into Ireland the Black and Tans (constables recruited into the Royal Irish Constabulary as reinforcements during the Irish War of Independence to Ireland). The poem is also connected to the 1918–1919 flu pandemic. In the weeks preceding Yeats’s writing of the poem, his pregnant wife Georgie Hyde-Lees caught the virus and was very close to death. The highest death rates of the pandemic were among pregnant women—in some areas, they had up to a 70 percent death rate. While his wife was convalescing, he wrote “The Second Coming.”
“The Second Coming” has become perhaps the most plundered poem in the English language. At 164 words, it is short and memorable enough to be famous as a whole, but it has also been disassembled into its various phrases by books, albums, movies, TV shows, comic books, computer games, political speeches, and newspaper editorials. If you don’t know the poem, you will certainly recognize some of the phrases contained within. While many of Yeats’s poems have contributed unforgettable lines to cultural imagination (“no country for old men”; “the foul rag and bone shop of the heart”), “The Second Coming” consists of almost nothing but such lines. Someone reading it for the first time in 2020 might resemble the apocryphal theatergoer who complained that Hamlet was nothing but a bunch of quotations strung together. Whether or not it is Yeats’s greatest poem, it is by far his most useful. As Auden wrote in “In Memory of WB Yeats” (1939), “The words of a dead man / Are modified in the guts of the living.”
A 2016 analysis by research company Factiva showed that lines from the poem were quoted more often in the first seven months of 2016 than in any of the preceding 30 years. In the context of increased terrorist violence (particularly in France), political turmoil in the Western world after the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, and the election of Donald Trump as the US President shortly thereafter, commentators repeatedly invoked its lines: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” The post-2016 turn to Yeats is no surprise, because the image of the centre not holding has long made the poem a touchstone for frightened moderates. Shortly before running for president in 1968, Robert F Kennedy warned: “Indeed, we seem to fulfil the vision of Yeats.”
As the world is wrenched out of joint by the coronavirus pandemic, many people are turning to poetry for wisdom and consolation, but “The Second Coming” fulfils a different role, as it has done in crisis after crisis, from the Vietnam war to 9/11 to the election of Donald Trump: an opportunity to confront chaos and dread, rather than to escape it. Fintan O’Toole has proposed the “Yeats Test”: “The more quotable Yeats seems to commentators and politicians, the worse things are.”
It would be unwise to claim that “The Second Coming” is more relevant than ever because that has been said so many times before. If it feels especially compelling now, perhaps it is because we have become painfully accustomed to the idea that progress is fragile, and it is all too easy to fall back. In an age of shocking reversals, Yeats’s theory of historical cycles – “day & night, night & day for ever,” as he once put it—rings true. The only consolation the poem offers is the knowledge that, for one reason or another, every generation has felt the same apocalyptic shudder that Yeats did 100 years ago. That’s why it is a poem for 1919 and 1939 and 1968 and 1979 and 2001 and 2016 and today and tomorrow. Things fall apart, over and over again, yet the beast never quite reaches Bethlehem.
From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were-I have not seen As others saw-I could not bring My passions from a common spring- From the same source I have not taken My sorrow-I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone- And all I lov’d-I lov’d alone- Then-in my childhood-in the dawn Of a most stormy life-was drawn From ev’ry depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still- From the torrent, or the fountain- From the red cliff of the mountain- From the sun that ’round me roll’d In its autumn tint of gold- From the lightning in the sky As it pass’d me flying by- From the thunder, and the storm- And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view-
Born during the early 19th century, Edgar Allen Poe’s characteristic mood swings were probably symptoms of Poe suffering from bipolar depression which may have led to his alcoholism and other self-destructive behaviors. Poe exhibited many of the symptoms of a man who suffered from mental illness. Trauma can cause mood disorders, and Poe was orphaned at a young age. He was also believed to be an alcoholic, likely the cause of his untimely death at the age of 40. When his beloved foster mother died in 1829, he wrote perhaps one of his most famous poems about depression, “Alone.” The poem illustrates loneliness associated with depression that leaves many feeling disconnected from others.
Each year, millions of Americans face the reality of living with a mental health condition. However, mental illness affects everyone directly or indirectly through family, friends or coworkers. Despite mental illnesses’ reach and prevalence, stigma and misunderstanding are also, unfortunately, widespread. That is why each year, the first week of October (October 4-10 in 2020) has been set aside for raising awareness of mental illness. Each year, mental health professionals focus on educating the public, fighting stigma, and providing support. While mental health conditions are important to discuss year-round, highlighting them during Mental Illness Awareness Week provides a dedicated time for mental health advocates across the country to come together as one unified voice. Since 1990, when Congress officially established the first full week of October as Mental Illness Awareness Week, advocates have worked together to sponsor activities, large or small, to educate the public about mental illness.
Below are only a few of the reasons why it’s important to take part in promoting awareness for Mental Illness Awareness Week. Please use these facts and others to encourage discussions about mental health.
1 in 5 U.S. adults experience mental illness each year
1 in 25 U.S. adults experience serious mental illness each year
1 in 6 U.S. youth aged 6-17 experience a mental health disorder each year
Mental illness affects:
37% of LGBTQ+ adults
27% Mixed/Multiracial adults
22% of American Indian or Alaska Native
20% of White adults
17% of Latinx adults
16% of Black adults
15% of Asian adults
Annual prevalence among U.S. adults, by condition:
Anxiety Disorders: 19.1% (estimated 48 million people)
Major Depressive Episode: 7.2% (17.7 million people)
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: 3.6% (estimated 9 million people)
Bipolar Disorder: 2.8% (estimated 7 million people)
Borderline Personality Disorder: 1.4% (estimated 3.5 million people)
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: 1.2% (estimated 3 million people)
Schizophrenia: <1% (estimated 1.5 million people)
Remember, people with mental illness need your support, not your pity. Talking to friends and family about mental health problems can be an opportunity to provide information, support, and guidance. People with mental health problems deserve respect, compassion, and empathy.
For most of my life I’ve walked around blind Never watching the news Kept an open mind
One day I was informed “You sound like a liberal” I felt rather scorned The subject was literal
I took a step back And replied, “okay” I love the blacks And respect the gays
Perhaps the left wing Has a vacant seat But what shall I bring I refuse kissing feet
So very unworthy To judge another When my hands are dirty Dear sister, brother
But I’ve come to see Accusations weren’t true You don’t know me As I don’t know you
Not defined by race Class or career We all deserve grace Redneck or queer
I’m tired of the hate And our pride being burned The art of debate Is yet to be learned
There will be a lot of debate over the next several weeks. Tonight begins the first in a series of presidential debates. They’re always unpredictable. There will also be debates over the Supreme Court nomination hearings. The politics in America will get nastier and nastier as we draw closer to the election, and I don’t expect it will end with election night. We have a hard fight ahead of us on all fronts. In the debate tonight and the ones in the future, I hope Biden crushes Trump, but I’d be stupid not to worry a little about the debates. If you think you know what will happen in the coming presidential debates, think again. Even the best debaters have stumbled during debates in the national spotlight.
The first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, when the two candidates squared off in the first televised presidential debate, is a good example. Most commentators expected Richard Nixon to win the debate handily. Not only did he have eight years of experience as vice president, but he also had a reputation as a skilled debater. But when the camera came on and began to broadcast, Nixon came across as pale and weak. John F. Kennedy appeared cool, tanned, and in command. Nixon, unlike Kennedy, seemed nervous and declined to wear makeup. While Nixon fared better in the second and third debates, and on October 21, when the candidates met to discuss foreign affairs in their fourth and final debate, Nixon’s one-point polling edge before the first debate turned into a three-point lead for Kennedy after the debate. JFK went on to win the election by a hair.
In 2000, observers expected Vice President Al Gore, a capable debater, to wipe the floor with Texas Governor George W. Bush, who was not then and is still not known for his eloquence. But that’s not what happened. In their first debate, Gore sighed, huffed and puffed, and left a poor impression. It was an impression that was lampooned on Saturday Night Live, and it stuck with him throughout the race. His pre-debate lead was wiped out. After all three debates, it was Bush who emerged the winner of the election, but not without controversy (see Gore v. Bush).
Debates, however, are lost, not won. That was apparent in 1976 when President Ford intimated that Eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination. It was a big blunder that played into the negative stereotype of Ford as dimwitted. Jimmy Carter didn’t win that debate, Gerald Ford lost it — and with it the election. Self-inflicted injuries are the worst kind. Americans like debates. They offer voters a chance to see candidates side-by-side. They motivate supporters and serve as tiebreakers for undecided voters. Debates can make voters more comfortable with candidates and lessen doubts. The smartest debaters use them to identify with the nation’s political temperament.
Debates have big audiences with enormous media buildups. They work best for candidates who use them to clarify the choice that voters are about to make. They offer valuable opportunities to sharpen messages and sort out issues that have become jumbled in the fog of campaign warfare. That’s why the question Reagan posed at the end of his debate with Carter—“Are you better off than you were four years ago?”—was so effective. It’s a question everyone needs to consider in this election. There are many unknowns when going into a debate, and one thing is for certain, Trump is full of surprises. He will lie about anything and say anything to get a positive reaction from his base, which they will believe because he has them believing anything they disagree with is fake news. However, in debates, surprise can kill––putting the target, and sometimes the aggressor, at risk.
As the underdog in the polls, Trump has less to lose. He needs to change the dynamics of the race. He will likely position himself as the only defense against a takeover by the radical left and portray Biden as a left-wing zealot, which Biden is decidedly not. Viewers will be watching this debate to see what happens. For supporters of Trump, it will be an opportunity to reinforce cult-like devotion; for his opponents, it will be an opportunity to reinforce deepening revulsion. For the percentage of the electorate that is undecided or not happy with either candidate, it could be an opportunity for them to actually make a choice.
There is little doubt that Trump will be nasty in his remarks and try to bully Biden. Biden needs to stand firm. Trump’s usual dirty political tactics could open himself up for tough counterattacks, especially if Biden goes after Trump on the coronavirus and healthcare and emphasizes the Trump administration’s uncaring and reckless policies. Biden will need to hammer Trump on his and the Republican strategy of ramming a conservative judge through the Supreme Court confirmation process before they lose the election. Biden needs to focus on the hypocrisy of the Republicans. The revelations about Trump not paying taxes for a decade will surely be a topic that is discussed, and Biden has a chance to show the American people that Trump is a liar, a cheater, and a fraud.
Anything goes in this election. And in the debate tonight, anything can happen. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Trump has a lot to answer for, and if Biden stays calm, hits back hard and effectively, and doesn’t falter or stumble, Biden will most likely come out on top in this debate. There is a lot of opportunities to make Trump look small, weak, and petulant. There is little that Trump can claim the higher ground on, and therefore, he will hit below the belt and show his lousy temperament, which will not sway his cult followers who love that about him, but it could sway the undecided against him if Biden plays his cards right. Biden needs to remember what Michelle Obama always says, “When they go low, we go high.” There is no doubt that Trump will go low, but Biden needs to stay above that and come across as a strong defender of democracy.
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past, But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82) is best known for “The Song of Hiawatha.” He also wrote many other celebrated poems. And then there’s ‘The Rainy Day’, which isn’t numbered among his most famous. But it is one of the finest poems written about rain, so deserves a few words of analysis for that reason alone.
Rain and misery are two certainties in life, at least in the New England that Longfellow knew so well. Longfellow’s poem uses the rain/misery connection to offer a misconception about life. In the first stanza, Longfellow talks of the rain and wind outside. He uses the second stanza to discuss the internal, miserable weather raging within his heart. For the final stanza, he shifts from simply describing his mood to the authoritative, as he commands his heart to be of good cheer and remember that, although it may be raining now, the sun is still shining behind the clouds, though he can’t currently see it. When we’re miserable or sad, it can be very difficult to recall happiness, to remember what’s now out of sight. In his penultimate line, we find the most famous line in this poem: ‘Into each life some rain must fall.’ Misery is part of a common lot of humanity. Oscar Wilde is quoted as saying, “When it rains look for rainbows when it’s dark look for stars.” Longfellow might have been well-advised to listen to Wilde’s advice.
There Will Come Soft Rains By Sara Teasdale
(War Time)
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.
Unlike the majority of Teasdale’s war poems, “There Will Come Soft Rains” has not been entirely forgotten. Three decades after its initial publication, in the wake of World War II, Ray Bradbury featured the poem as the foundation of a similarly post-apocalyptic short story, also titled “There Will Come Soft Rains,” in his 1950 novel The Martian Chronicles. In his re-appropriation, Bradbury portrays a future world that has been destroyed by mankind’s heedless progress, in a gruesome fashion that I don’t want to discuss. Bradbury’s story shares with Teasdale’s poem the terrifying insight that mankind is no longer connected, organically, to the natural world. The only species capable of mass, mechanized, self-destruction, humans are utterly alone, detached from a natural world that no longer even notices we are there. Imported into the futuristic world of 2057, Teasdale’s words become bitterly ironic. As early as World War I, Bradbury implies, mankind had been warned.
The poem awakens that old sentimental longing to return to a state of deep connectedness with nature. It even deploys a set of familiar stylistic markers that seem to have been borrowed directly from a nineteenth-century aesthetic economy. The poem’s alliteration, for instance — “whistling their whims,” “feathery fire”— and the sing-song rhymes— “ground/sound,” “night/white,” “fire/wire,” all evoke a sense of comforting gentility. But this veneer of conventional sentimentality merely heightens the profound impact of nature’s heartlessness. The poem’s sweet, sentimental quality and its tranquil, idyllic descriptors are deceiving. Ultimately, all of our sentimental feelings about “frogs” and “wild-plum trees,” as well as the language through which we have constructed those myths of a connection to nature, are tossed, mockingly, back at us. The reader is led to believe that the “soft rains” will signal our own renewal and that the birds will sing to celebrate our salvation.
The poem challenges those idyllic fantasies with the reality of a natural world dominated by indifference, motivated only by its own survival, and oblivious to the existence or extinction of man. However, Teasdale locates a kernel of hope in this harsh vision. Devoted exclusively to its own survival, nature, in Teasdale’s conception, proffers no comfort to mankind, but can, nonetheless, provide the key to our own preservation. Rather than a retreat into an irrecoverable, idealized past. Teasdale was influenced to write this poem by reading Charles Darwin’s 1859 book On the Origin of Species. In such, she was urging her audience to adopt the ways of nature—to focus more whole-heartedly on their own survival.
“There Will Come Soft Rains” first appeared in Harper’s Monthly Magazine in July 1918—less than two months after the passage of the Sedition Act. Meant to strengthen the provisions of the already-repressive Espionage Act, the Sedition Act of May 16, 1918, was designed to quash American opposition to the war, outlawing “virtually all criticism of the war or the government.” Following its passage, anthologies and magazines continued to publish a small number of anti-war poems, but only if the poems were strategically nonspecific in their critique and refrained from offering a political alternative to the war. This climate of censorship casts a different light on the apparent obliqueness of Teasdale’s anti-war poems. Rather than a limitation, their historical imprecision might be what enabled their circulation at the height of World War I. It is possible, in fact, that Teasdale’s cultivation of a demure, “poetess” persona might have, contradictorily, enabled her to publish anti-war poetry more freely.
I am not here to be your label; To fit inside your box
I am not here to change my colors; To a hue you understand
I am not here to accept the comfort; You offer from behind your protective glass
I am not here to be pinned against your wall; My body on display
I am not here to be wrapped up in your blankets of security; Which reek with your fear of the different and unknown
I will shed your perfectly maintained preconceptions; Breaking away from your claustrophobic cage
I will burst forth as a mosaic of colors; Every unique piece creating the beautiful whole of my wingspan
I will stand shivering and bare; For the world to see
And I know that I am free; Moving from the water to the sky To fly. To grow. To be.
Vermont Pride was virtual this year, as were most pride celebrations. That meant even the Pride Magazine that Vermont Pride publishes and hands out each year was also virtual. The above poem came from their Prize Zine 2020. I really liked the poem and wanted to share it with you, but I know nothing about the poet C. Thomen-Brown. When I tried to search for more of their poetry, the only person I came across was an independently licensed clinical social worker named Camille Thomen-Brown at the Vermont Center for Anxiety Care located in Burlington, Vermont. I am guessing that this is the same person who wrote the poem. It was just such a lovely poem about being yourself and embracing your diversity.
O how far away everything is And long since gone. I think that the star From which I receive radiance Has been dead for thousands of years. I think, from the boat Drifting past, I heard some frightening words. Inside the house a clock Has struck … In which house? … I would like to step out of my heart To walk under the immense sky. I would like to pray. And one of all these stars Must surely still exist. I think I might know Which alone of them, Endures – Like a white city, Standing in the heavens at the end of the ray …
Klage By Rainer Maria Rilke
(In original German)
O wie ist alles fern und lange vergangen. Ich glaube, der Stern, von welchem ich Glanz empfange, ist seit Jahrtausenden tot. Ich glaube, im Boot, das vorüberfuhr, hörte ich etwas Banges sagen. Im Hause hat eine Uhr geschlagen … In welchem Haus? … Ich möchte aus meinem Herzen hinaus unter den großen Himmel treten. Ich möchte beten. Und einer von allen Sternen müßte wirklich noch sein. Ich glaube, ich wüßte, welcher allein gedauert hat, – welcher wie eine weiße Stadt am Ende des Strahls in den Himmeln steht …
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist. He is “widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets.” He wrote both verse and highly lyrical prose. Several critics have described Rilke’s work as inherently “mystical”. His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry, and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes haunting images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the indefinable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety. These deeply existential themes tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist writers.
The earliest poems by Rilke mainly featured two topics: religion and nationalism. While the very first poems show strong adherence to the canon of Christian stories, later poems take Christianity on a whole different journey. Later in his career, Rilke moved ever further away from his Christian roots, starting to bring Greek mythological characters into his stories. Transformed into Christian symbology, these Greek characters offered a whole new world for Rilke, in which he dove willingly. However, true to the romantic spirit of his time, religion and mythology did not stay the only topics on which he focused. From the middle of his career until his death, his poetry was mainly focused on the emotional description of true events. Two main areas of interest are evident during this period. The first is nature and the will of nature to survive. The second is the human struggle. Rilke put his focus mainly on individuals, expressing his points of view through the eyes of fictitious individuals. In general, most of Rilke’s poetry should be understood through the lens of his time and physical location. The struggles of the multicultural state of Austria-Hungary, which would be dissolved in his lifetime, play a pivotal role within his poetry and often individual poems make more sense seen this way.
About the Poem:
Berlin in the early 1900s was a hotbed for ‘art for art’s sake.’ Put simply, this expresses the belief that writers and artists needed no justification for their art. Their work did not need to serve political, moral, or any other end. Artists, especially those of Aestheticist and Romanticist conviction, had begun to discover progressive modernism, with its penchant for avant-garde art, fueled by inner creativity alone. Rilke found himself caught in this rise of modernism, with its conflict between the burden of tradition and a desire to break free of it. Rilke’s poetic development is a key example of this tension at work. For example, his poem ‘Klage’ likens the failure of creative power to the destruction of a tree by a storm.
The poem opens by expressing a longing for something passed. It captures the sense of distance and time which separates each of us from those we have lost. The line “under the immense sky” depicts the poet’s wishes to be outside himself, a part of the greater cosmos where perhaps he may be able to lose himself. As with the notion of loss, one must contemplate the loss of self as well, thinking of stepping out from our own hearts into a time and place in which the physical appearance is not an adequate definition of things. The last section of the poem conjures something which is “like a white city” only found at the end of the radiant universe. It is a call to a longing from the heart. Life beyond mere life, an experience that cannot be held as an ordinary experience. Rilke wishes and believes “something” still exists, after all is said and done.
I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism’s face And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; “I will be true to the wife, I’ll concentrate more on my work,” And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the deaf, Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.
“September 1, 1939,” as its title signals, was written by W.H. Auden in the days immediately following Germany’s invasion of Poland, which marked the start of World War II. Auden had left his native England and moved to New York City some nine months earlier, and the famous opening lines of the poem are rooted in the dingy geography of his new home.
This poem achieved great resonance after the events of September 11, 2001—it was widely reproduced, recited on NPR, and interpreted with a link to the tragic events of that day. But it captured Auden’s reaction to the outbreak of World War II. The poem expresses anger and sadness towards those events, and it questions the historical and mass psychological process that led to the war. It focuses on the political psychosis of the German people, echoing a few lines of Nietzsche (“Accurate scholarship can / Unearth the whole offence / From Luther until now / That has driven a culture mad”). It then turns to the effect that this war will have on the world and its people, again with psychological overtones.
The poem was first published on 18 October 1939 in the American magazine, the New Republic. Auden had arrived in New York with his friend and fellow writer Christopher Isherwood. The two men quickly established themselves on the US literary scene: schmoozing, partying, making contact with editors, and undertaking speaking and lecturing engagements. In April 1939, Auden had met an 18-year-old, Chester Kallman, 14 years his junior, who was to become his life partner: in the new world, Auden was making a new life for himself. Back in Europe, meanwhile, the storm clouds were gathering.
W. H. Auden wrote the poem while visiting the father of his lover Kallman in New Jersey. Dorothy Farnan, Kallman’s father’s second wife, in her biography Auden in Love (1984), wrote that it was written in the Dizzy Club, an alleged gay bar in New York City, as if the statement in the first two lines, “I sit in one of the dives / On Fifty-second Street,” were literal fact and not conventional poetic fiction (she had not met Kallman or Auden at the time). Auden later clarified that the poem’s beginning in Manhattan, “in one of the dives on Fifty-second Street,” was, in fact, the Dizzy Club at 62 West 52nd Street.
Auden hated the poem and believed it to be of poor quality. Despite this, the poem became famous and widely popular. E. M. Forster wrote, “Because he once wrote ‘We must love one another or die’ he can command me to follow him” (Two Cheers for Democracy, 1951). Soon after writing the poem, Auden began to turn away from it, apparently because he found it flattering to himself and his readers. In 1957, he wrote to the critic Laurence Lerner, “Between you and me, I loathe that poem” (quoted in Edward Mendelson, Later Auden). He resolved to omit it from his further collections, and it did not appear in his 1966 Collected Shorter Poems 1927–1957.
In the mid-1950s, Auden began to refuse permission to editors who asked to reprint the poem in anthologies. In 1955, he allowed Oscar Williams to include it complete in The New Pocket Anthology of American Verse but altered the most famous line to read, “We must love one another and die.” Later, he allowed the poem to be reprinted only once, in a Penguin Books anthology Poetry of the Thirties (1964), with a note saying about this and four other early poems, “Mr. W. H. Auden considers these five poems to be trash which he is ashamed to have written.”
IT was six men of Indostan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind.
II.
The First approached the Elephant, And happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to bawl: “God bless me!—but the Elephant Is very like a wall!”
III.
The Second, feeling of the tusk, Cried: “Ho!—what have we here So very round and smooth and sharp? To me ‘t is mighty clear This wonder of an Elephant Is very like a spear!”
IV.
The Third approached the animal, And happening to take The squirming trunk within his hands, Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant Is very like a snake!”
V.
The Fourth reached out his eager hand, And felt about the knee. “What most this wondrous beast is like Is mighty plain,” quoth he; “‘T is clear enough the Elephant Is very like a tree!”
VI.
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said: “E’en the blindest man Can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can, This marvel of an Elephant Is very like a fan!”
VII.
The Sixth no sooner had begun About the beast to grope, Than, seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope, “I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant Is very like a rope!”
VIII.
And so these men of Indostan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong!
MORAL.
So, oft in theologic wars The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen!
About the Poem and the Parable of the Blind Men and an Elephant:
The parable of the Blind Men and an Elephant originated in the ancient Indian subcontinent, from where it has been widely diffused. It is a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and conceptualize what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant’s body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest, and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people’s limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true.
An alternate version of the parable describes sighted men, experiencing a large statue on a dark night, or feeling a large object while being blindfolded. They then describe what it is they have experienced. In its various versions, it is a parable that has crossed between many religious traditions and is part of Jain, Hindu and Buddhist texts of 1st millennium CE or before. The story also appears in 2nd millennium Sufi and Bahá’í lore. The tale later became well known in Europe, with 19th century American poet John Godfrey Saxe creating his own version as a poem, with a final verse that explains that the elephant is a metaphor for God, and the various blind men represent religions that disagree on something no one has fully experienced. Natalie Merchant sang this poem in full on her Leave Your Sleep album (Disc 1, track 13). The story has been published in many books for adults and children and interpreted in a variety of ways.
About the Poet:
John Godfrey Saxe was born on June 2, 1816, in Highgate, Vermont. He was born on his family’s farm, Saxe’s Mills, to Peter Saxe, a miller and judge, and Elizabeth Jewett. In 1835, Saxe went to Wesleyan University. After only a year, he transferred to Middlebury College, where he graduated in 1839. In 1841, he married Sophia Newell Sollace, whom Saxe had met through a classmate. Together they had a son, John Theodore Saxe.
In 1843, Saxe was admitted to the Vermont bar association. Saxe continued to work in the legal field in Franklin County. In 1850, he became the state’s attorney for Chittenden County. From 1850-1856, Saxe served as the editor of the Sentinel in Burlington, Vermont, and in 1856, he served as the attorney-general of Vermont. Legal work did not hold Saxe’s attention through this period, however. He began publishing poems for a literary magazine in New York, The Knickerbocker. His poems gained the attention of a Boston publishing house, Ticknor and Fields, and his first volume of poetry ran for ten reprintings.
His poetry also could be serious and somber, such as a ballad he wrote about the sad death of the man who ran the sawmill on his father’s property. Probably Saxe’s most notable achievement as a poet was introducing western audiences to the fable of “The Blind Men and The Elephant.” In total, he published nine volumes of his poetry, and it was collected and republished many times. He died in 1887 in Albany, N.Y.
Saxe became a highly sought-after speaker. He toured and wrote prolifically throughout the 1850s. In 1859, Saxe ran for governor of Vermont. He lost due to his Democratic learning, particularly on issues of slavery and his support of “popular sovereignty.” Following his defeat, he left Vermont for Albany, New York, in 1860, where he continued to contribute articles for Harper’s, The Atlantic, and The Knickerbocker. After moving to New York, his life suffered from a series of tribulations.
The death of his oldest brother in 1867 made Saxe’s already unsteady temperament even more erratic. His son took control of the family’s finances and business interests. Starting the 1870s, Saxe experienced a series of unfortunate events. In the earlier part of the decade, his youngest daughter died of tuberculosis. In 1875, he suffered head injuries from which he never fully recovered. Over the next several years, his two oldest daughters, his oldest son, and his daughter-in-law also died of tuberculosis. In 1879, his wife died from a burst blood vessel in her brain. Saxe began to suffer from a deep depression. Saxe eventually died in 1887. The New York State Assembly, sympathizing with the poet’s swift decline, ordered Saxe’s likeness to be chiseled into the “poet’s corner” of the Great Western Staircase in the New York State Capitol.
Back when I was in school, it was very popular for teachers to make students memorize poetry. I had to memorize “Because I could not stop for death” by Emily Dickinson, Mark Antony’s Speech “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and numerous other poems and speeches I can no longer remember. The two mentioned, I can still at least recite the first few lines. When I was teaching, the other English teacher at my school required her English Lit class to memorize and recite the first stanza of the “General Prologue” of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer in Middle English with the correct pronunciation. This assignment is one of the toughest memorization assignments I know, and I too learned part of it when I was producing a play called The Canterbury Tales or Geoffrey Chaucer’s Flying Circus by Burton Bumgarner, which was a cross between The Canterbury Tales and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The only poem that I ever actually memorized and retained was one that I learned in second grade called “The Backwards Poem.” I cannot find an author from it, and I remember that it was supposedly Anonymous. This is the version I memorized and can still remember today:
Backwards Poem By Anonymous
One bright day, in the middle of the night, Two dead boys got up to fight. Back to back, they faced each other, Drew their swords and shot each other. A deaf policeman heard the noise, And came and shot the two dead boys. If you don’t believe this lie is true, Ask the blind man; he saw it, too.
In spite of clearly remembering the poem for decades, I one day decided to look up the poem and learn more about it. I was working on a skit for my drama club and thought this poem would be a funny one to act out. So, I decided to look it up on the Internet to see if I remembered the poem correctly and to find out who the author was.
It turns out that it’s an anonymous “folk” poem, one that has innumerable versions and has probably been around for at least a century and many different versions exist. It is also a much longer poem than I originally learned. One key point about folk poetry is that it invariably rhymes, so variations that have the odd non-rhyming line are personalized versions of it.
The poem is essentially a sandwich-style story, but with only one slice of bread. If a narrator is brought in at the end, there should be one at the beginning, too. The main story starts well. It provides a brief description of the setting for context and then plunges into the action. Except that there is no follow through. A story consists of series of events, not just one. So, what happens next? Surely there would be consequences to something that results in two dead people. But most damning of all, where did the blind man come from? You can’t just throw in a brand-new character right at the end to help you wrap up a story. Further research allowed me to piece together the complete poem. I also learned the poem is most often known as “Two Dead Boys” or “One Fine Day.”
One Fine Day By Anonymous
Ladies and gentlemen skinny and scout I’ll tell you a tale I know nothing about The admission is free so pay at the door Now pull out a chair and sit on the floor
On one bright day in the middle of the night Two dead boys got up to fight Back to back they faced each other Drew their swords and shot each other
The blind man came to see fair play The mute man came to shout “Hooray!” The deaf policeman heard the noise And came and shot the two dead boys
He lived on the corner in the middle of the block In a two-story house on a vacant lot A man with no legs came walking by And kicked the lawman in his thigh
He crashed through a wall without making a sound Into a dry creek bed and suddenly drowned A long black hearse came to cart him away But he ran for his life and is still gone today
I watched from the corner of the table The only eyewitness to facts of my fable If you don’t believe this lie is true, Ask the blind man; he saw it, too.
With the exception of the addition of the first stanza, I like the version I memorized better. Therest of the poem seems to muddle things even further and, in my opinion, breaks up the flow of the poem.
Joe
The Closet Professor 