SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2017
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY
1688 – 1744
ALEXANDER POPE
▸ He is the second-most frequently quoted writer
in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations after
Shakespeare.
▸ Pope's most famous poem is The Rape of the
Lock. A mock-epic, it satirizes a high-society
quarrel between Arabella Fermor (the
"Belinda" of the poem) and Lord Petre, who
had snipped a lock of hair from her head
without her permission.
Though Pope is considered an Enlightenment writer in that he seeks to explain
our place in the universe through reason and without recourse to the scriptures,
much of his work mounts a critique of the Enlightenment in that it chastises the
blasphemous pretensions of modern science to probe into realms only God can
know and exhorts contemporaries to return to traditional humanistic studies
(ethics, history, poetry).
“THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER” - ALEXANDER POPE
Father of all! in every age,
In every clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!
Yet not to earth’s contracted span,
Thy goodness let me bound,
Or think thee Lord alone of man,
When thousand worlds are round:
Teach me to feel another’s woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.
Thou Great First Cause, least understood:
Who all my sense confined
To know but this—that thou art good,
And that myself am blind:
Let not this weak, unknowing hand
Presume thy bolts to throw,
And deal damnation round the land,
On each I judge thy foe.
Mean though I am, not wholly so
Since quickened by thy breath;
Oh lead me wheresoe’er I go,
Through this day’s life or death.
Yet gave me, in this dark estate,
To see the good from ill;
And binding Nature fast in fate,
Left free the human will.
If I am right, thy grace impart,
Still in the right to stay;
If I am wrong, oh teach my heart
To find a better way.
This day, be bread and peace my lot:
All else beneath the sun,
Thou know’st if best bestowed or not,
And let thy will be done.
What conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns me not to do,
This, teach me more than Hell to shun,
That, more than Heaven pursue.
Save me alike from foolish pride,
Or impious discontent,
At aught thy wisdom has denied,
Or aught thy goodness lent.
To thee, whose temple is all space,
Whose altar, earth, sea, skies!
One chorus let all being raise!
All Nature’s incense rise!
What blessings thy free bounty gives,
Let me not cast away;
For God is paid when man receives,
To enjoy is to obey.
“THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL” - ALEXANDER POPE
I
VITAL spark of heav’nly flame,
Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame!
Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying,
Oh, the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life!
II
Hark! they whisper; Angels say,
Sister Spirit, come away.
What is this absorbs me quite,
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my Soul! can this be Death?
III
The world recedes; it disappears;
Heav’n opens on my eyes; my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy Victory?
O Death! where is thy Sting?
1770 – 1850
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
▸ William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge helped to launch the Romantic Age
in English literature with their joint publication
Lyrical Ballads (1798).
▸ Wordsworth’s most famous work, The Prelude
(1850), is considered by many to be the
crowning achievement of English romanticism.
The poem, revised numerous times, chronicles
the spiritual life of the poet and marks the birth
of a new genre of poetry.
THEMES OF THE ROMANTIC POETS
▸ Feelings, emotions, and imagination take priority over logic and facts
▸ Belief in children's innocence and wisdom; youth as a golden age; adulthood as
corruption and betrayal
▸ Nature as beauty and truth, especially the sense of nature as the sublime (god-like
awesomeness mixing ecstatic pleasure mixed with pain, beauty mixed with terror)
▸ Heroic individualism; the individual separate from the masses
▸ Nostalgia for the past
▸ Desire or will as personal motivation
“MY HEART LEAPS UP WHEN I BEHOLD” - WORDSWORTH
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, SEPTEMBER 3, 1802
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Photo taken on
Westminster Bridge
near above plaque
that includes text of
poem.
IT IS IRONIC THAT PERHAPS THE MOST FAMOUS POEM ABOUT LONDON IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE SHOULD HAVE BEEN
COMPOSED BY A POET WHO ELSEWHERE CLAIMED TO BE APPALLED AND ALIENATED BY THE METROPOLIS, AND WHO SOUGHT A
REAL AS WELL AS POETIC REFUGE IN THE DISTANT LAKE DISTRICT. YET IN THIS SONNET LONDON, TO THE POET’S ELOQUENT
SURPRISE, BECOMES AS BEAUTIFUL AS A NATURAL LANDSCAPE. IT IS TRANSFORMED BY THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE MORNING
AND IS APPARENTLY UNPEOPLED. THE REFERENCE TO ‘THE SMOKELESS AIR’ SHOULD ALERT US TO THE FACT THAT, FROM EARLY
IN THE MORNING WHEN HOUSEHOLDS LIT THEIR FIRES, THE CAPITAL WOULD NORMALLY BE SHROUDED IN SMOKE. TO SEE IT
‘SMOKELESS’ WOULD BE AN EXTRAORDINARY THING. EQUALLY, THE STREETS WOULD USUALLY BE FULL NOT JUST OF PEOPLE,
BUT ALSO OF HORSES AND WAGONS, AND WOULD ECHO WITH THE CRIES OF EVERY KIND OF VENDOR. THE CITY’S SILENCE IN
THE POEM IS AS MAGICAL AS ITS GLITTER.
John Mullan
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY
{READING FROM WORDSWORTH’S PREFACE}
“ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY” - WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (SELECTED SNIPPETS)
I
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
V
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Pope
I
VITAL spark of heav’nly flame,
Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame!
Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying,
Oh, the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life!
II
Hark! they whisper; Angels say,
Sister Spirit, come away.
What is this absorbs me quite,
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my Soul! can this be Death?
III
The world recedes; it disappears;
Heav’n opens on my eyes; my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy Victory?
O Death! where is thy Sting?
Wordsworth
V
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.