A Divine Image

Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secresy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace sealed,
The human heart its hungry gorge.

William Blake



When looking for A Divine Image I also found The Divine Image, so I am posted it as well as it is quite a contrast.



The Divine Image
By William Blake 1757–1827 William Blake

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.


For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man, his child and care.


For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.


Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.


And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew;
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.

realiz wrote: Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock
Wallace Stevens

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers
In red weather.

Interpretation of "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" from Wikipedia:

The poem allows the reader to linger over the possibility of colors, of strangeness, and of unusual dreams. Imagination that is absent from a mundane orderly life is represented, not by a dandified aesthete, but instead by a drunken sailor dreaming of catching tigers in red weather. The poem itself shows that imagination has its own order, so the representation should be kept distinct from what it represents. Thus following one of the main facets necessary for modernist literature to function: that the object or idea being represented exists in and for itself, and only itself. On this reading the poem is not an indictment of middle-class values, though that is one interpretive option, but rather the "haunted house" of white night-gowns represents life without imagination.

I think one of the best poems in the Top 500 was the Stevens poem "The Emperor of Ice Cream".

Next on the list, one we have posted here before.

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


I know this poem is about the dying and not giving up on life easily, but it also makes me think about not giving up on dreams and ambitions as you age and not deciding that you are too old to still have a burning passion for life, even if there is only a short time remaining.

Yes, its quite easy to use aging as an excuse to let opportunities in life slide by rather than make the effort to pursue them no matter how old one gets. I think Thomas goes a step further in this poem with his line 'rage, rage against the dying of the light' in that he urges one to actively fight back against aging/dying. His shift from talking to his father directly to third person and back again is interesting, its as if his father joins him and participates in a different way in the middle three stanzas.

giselle wrote:

realiz wrote: Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock
Wallace Stevens

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers
In red weather.

Interpretation of "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" from Wikipedia:

The poem allows the reader to linger over the possibility of colors, of strangeness, and of unusual dreams. Imagination that is absent from a mundane orderly life is represented, not by a dandified aesthete, but instead by a drunken sailor dreaming of catching tigers in red weather. The poem itself shows that imagination has its own order, so the representation should be kept distinct from what it represents. Thus following one of the main facets necessary for modernist literature to function: that the object or idea being represented exists in and for itself, and only itself. On this reading the poem is not an indictment of middle-class values, though that is one interpretive option, but rather the "haunted house" of white night-gowns represents life without imagination.

I think one of the best poems in the Top 500 was the Stevens poem "The Emperor of Ice Cream".

This one rings my bell. I read it not as the indictment of middle-class values, but of the second interptation put forth in the Wikipedia article.

Hello, just back from our holiday in Scotland. It was good but I fell downstairs in the hotel and have a fat foot on one leg and a swollen knee on the other. Hurts when I stand up and sit down. Couldn't get out of the bath this morning.

And, no it was NOT caused by too many wee drams. It happened on my way down to breakfast and was caused by my being gormless.

I'm going to catch up with the pomes now.

Welcome back, sorry to hear about your fall. I'll put off posting another poem for a little bit until you have time to catch up and add comments on the poems you've missed.

Thanks Liz, but don't wait for me because I can't always think of anything to say but always enjoy reading them.

Okay, then I'll move forward. Here is a little write up about the translation/translator of this poem:
"Rarely does a translation so stunningly refresh the language it enters as this week's poem, "Donal Og" ("Young Donal") by Lady Augusta Gregory. It owes its power to a variety of attributes. One is its lyric economy. The only version I could find of the original 8th century Irish ballad has 14 stanzas, whereas Gregory manages with a mere nine. Then there's the strong but non-metrical rhythm, borne on incantatory psalm-like repetitions. Most importantly of all, the Hiberno-English grammatical structures have been allowed to remain intact.

Lady Gregory learned Irish as an adult. The English she chooses to work in is not the standard variety one might perhaps expect from a member of the Protestant aristocracy, but it would have been the dialect she heard spoken in her area, the barony of Kiltartan, County Galway. Her contribution to the Irish literary revival was not only to translate the legends, folk-tales and ballads from their original Gaelic but to do so in a way that could almost make the Irish language available to the non-Irish-speaker."


Donal Og

It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;
the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.
It is you are the lonely bird through the woods;
and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me,
that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked;
I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,
and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

You promised me a thing that was hard for you,
a ship of gold under a silver mast;
twelve towns with a market in all of them,
and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

You promised me a thing that is not possible,
that you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish;
that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird;
and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.

When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness,
I sit down and I go through my trouble;
when I see the world and do not see my boy,
he that has an amber shade in his hair.

It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you;
the Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday
and myself on my knees reading the Passion;
and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.

My mother has said to me not to be talking with you today,
or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;
it was a bad time she took for telling me that;
it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.

My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,
or as the black coal that is on the smith's forge;
or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;
it was you put that darkness over my life.

You have taken the east from me, you have taken the west from me;
you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;
you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;
and my fear is great that you have taken God from me!

Anon

Translated from the Irish by Lady Augusta Gregory

The universal language of a broken heart.

Penelope wrote:Hello, just back from our holiday in Scotland. It was good but I fell downstairs in the hotel and have a fat foot on one leg and a swollen knee on the other. Hurts when I stand up and sit down. Couldn't get out of the bath this morning.

And, no it was NOT caused by too many wee drams. It happened on my way down to breakfast and was caused by my being gormless.

I'm going to catch up with the pomes now.

Ouch, sounds painful. Falling down stairs, especially a lot of stairs, is one of those things where there is time to think 'I can't believe it - I'm falling down the stairs' .. then you go clunk at the bottom. Oh well, could be worse, you could have got charged by one of those long horn highland cows! Now that would hurt! 'Gormless' is a funny word ... it just sounds funny and it does not mean 'lacking in gorm' .. I looked up 'gorm' because I wasn't sure if it is a word .. it is but means basically the same as 'gormless'. So you could have said 'my being gorm' and it would still make sense.