The Hot 100

[Saffron]

What to do? I don't know. It's spring, and the poetic thing to do would be to be to wander lonely as a cloud, see the cherry hung with snow, etc. etc. Just loaf, in other words. That's probably the goal I'll have.

loafing, yes, 4 dings and 4 more for wandering.

I never could have imagined the discussion that "Dover Beach" caused!

Not in a million years!

[Penelope]

Dwill wrote:

I have been silently giving almost all the top 15 poems four dings. Exception: the John Donne.

yeah! well, it is John Donne - up yer bum....

DWill wrote:

I never could have imagined the discussion that "Dover Beach" caused!

Well it is only through the wonders of the internet that Robert Tulip and I have our altercations!!! It would NEVER, NEVER happen in real life!!

[froglipz]

It is funny the things that bring about debate, and the things that pass by unnoted.

I like the pied beauty, by Hopkins, but maybe it is just because of my own freckles and those of my grandchildren (they seem to have skipped a generation, my daughters only got a few angel kisses) Three dings.

[DWill]

4. "That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold" (Sonnet 73), by William Shakespeare. This might be my favorite sonnet of his, so I'm glad it's no. 4. I do like the other type of sonnet better, though, the Petrarchan, that has an 8/6 structure. The Shakespearean or Elizabethan has more of a 12/2 structure, and that means that it ends with sort of a quip or epigram as a wrap-up. Here, the whole point of the brilliant imagery in 1-12, is summed up in 13-14 as to make the lover realize that he has to appreciate what she's (he's?) about to lose. That's a bit of a letdown for me.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

[Robert Tulip]

7. "Kubla Khan," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Having gone through Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner line by line, I feel compelled to do the same for Kubla Khan, which of course has always been among my great favourites as a particularly inspired moment of poetic vision.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

Coleridge, taught at Cambridge by the navigator of Captain James Cook in his intrepid voyages of pioneering discovery to the South Seas, had a strong sense of geography, albeit an imaginary one, at a time when travel was quite risky. Britain was in the throes of enslaving China with opium, a substance that had found its way to the languid rooms of the upper classes of England, including Coleridge. The legend is that the poem would have been even more luridly hallucinogenic had not the celebrated man from Porlock disturbed the fantastic reveries with genius interruptus. Xanadu is China, so from the start we see that Coleridge's remarkable geographical sense, which in the ancient mariner had flown in dreams near to the South Pole, flies in this pipe dream straight through the earth, somewhat like Lewis Carroll, digging a hole to China.

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

One thinks of Saint Paul's Cathedral, described by King James with the Triple A certificate, amusing, artificial, awful, lending an element of stability and purpose to the wild natural imagery and heretical visions of the poem.

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
.

I earlier mentioned Alph, the secret river of Greece. Xanadu/China has become the cradle of civilization for Coleridge, the eastern mystical source of western logic.

Alfeios
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Origin Peloponnese
Mouth Ionian Sea
Alfeiós (Greek: Αλφειός, also romanized as Alpheus, Alpheios, Alfiós) is the longest river in the Peloponnese, in Greece. The river is 110 km long, flowing through the prefectures of Arcadia and Ilia. Its source is near Megalopoli in the highlands of Arcadia. The river begins near Davia in central Arcadia, then flows between Leontari and Megalopoli through a wooded valley and south of Karytaina, then north of Andritsaina. The Alfeios then flows west along Olympia and empties into the Ionian Sea in the prefecture of Ilia, near Pyrgos. The ancient highway linking Patras and Kalamata ran along this river for most of the length east of Olympia. In Greek mythology, the Peneus and Alpheus were two rivers re-routed by Heracles in his fifth labour in order to clean the filth from the Augean Stables in a single day, a task which had been presumed to be impossible. A poem by Roger Caillois, called Le fleuve Alphée (the Alpheus River), is mainly about this river. "Underground river" in Western esotericism According to the 1982 controversial non-fiction book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, 15th century French king René of Anjou, who contributed to the formation of the Western esoteric tradition, used the theme of an "underground river" that was equated with the Alfeios River to represent a subculture of Arcadian esotericism, which was seen as an alternative to the mainstream spiritual and religious traditions of Christendom. The book claims that the myth of Arcadia and its underground river became a prominent cultural fashion and inspired various artistic works such as Jerusalem Delivered (1581) by Torquato Tasso, Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (1590) by Philip Sidney, Les Bergers d’Arcadie (1637 - 1638) by Nicolas Poussin and the poem Kubla Khan (1816) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The book speculates that the "underground stream" might also have connoted an unacknowledged and thus "subterranean" bloodline of Jesus.

Coleridge stops half way on his Marco Polo journey of the mind to collect the river of dreams from the western cradle. And then anticipating Jules Verne and Alice's rabbit hole, the journey to the centre of the earth goes

Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea

down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

I wonder what sinuous rills are? In any case it is a beautiful big walled garden. The forests ancient as the hills are a wistful nod to the spirit of the earth, revealed in old trees, hinting at eternal wisdom.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

This dream of China becomes emotional. In linking the romance of Chinese landscape to a witches' or ghosts' lament, Coleridge creates images which in fact are very unsettling, especially for orthodox Christian opinion. This idea that a savage place can be holy and enchanted is rather heretical.

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

Here we get the anthropomorphism of the earth, the Gaia spirit, rather like Leonardo da Vinci's comment that the earth can be modelled on a man. Coleridge establishes a relentless volcanic rhythm.

A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:

The eruption of water, tossing boulders, also invites the Biblical idea of the river of life in the midst of the holy city, but as active, not passive, exhibiting the full force of nature on vast scale.

And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

The mazy Alph, flowing from the dancing rocks sinks to the underground sea of the human unconscious. These dancing rocks are a bit like the Hellespont in Jason and the Argonauts, or Scylla and Charybdis in the Odyssey. Tumult at one end of the maze gives way to further chthonic tumult. The measureless caverns are an unknown mystery of the potential discoveries beneath the surface.

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

Old Kubla Khan, son of Ghenghis Khan, emerges as the warrior. Apparently Ghenghis is a direct ancestor of one man in two hundred alive today (source)

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

This reminds me of my theory that humanity can move to the sea by living on large floating bags of fresh water.

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.

And Ethiopia, home of the Holy Grail, enters the story. So far we have Greece, China and now Africa forming the reference points of Coleridge's hymn of the earth.

Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,

This theme of recollection of the greatest song, lost in the fragmented wisps of waking, is presented here as the basis of creativity, practical architectural construction, a holy vision that gives the divine plan for a holy city.

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

The flashing eyes and floating hair suggest Christ Pantokrator, or perhaps Syd Barrett. There is a paranoid schizophrenic sense of delusion of grandeur here. Again with the honey-dew we are taken to Greece, to sip ambrosia, the nectar of the Gods, among the Olympian Pantheon. This ambrosia might be a dull opiate emptied to the drains, but in the moment of seeing it presents a megalomania of infinite power, a frightening and awe-filled vision of a transformed world.

[lady of shallot]

WOW, WOW, WOW about the Shakespere sonnet. That really hits home with me as we are about to celebrate our 50th. How beautiful it is. Not exactly our story but now, at my present age it resonates strongly

[DWill]

3. "To Autumn," by John Keats. I included a note appended to the poem I copied. Harmon is the editor of the Top 500, the 1992 book from which of course all these poems are taken. I wonder how he determined in 1998 that "To Autumn" was no. 1. Anyway, I wouldn't argue if it was, because I like it more than Blake's "The Tyger." This was the last, in order of composition, of the five great odes. Keats had an amazingly fertile year in 1819, just before becoming seriously ill with tuberculosis. This poem seems to exist for its own sake and not to prove anything or assert anything, but it does have a role in culminating Keats' thinking about process, which includes but is not the same as death. This to me is one of the best love poems in the language.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.


# Harmon lists To Autumn as the most anthologized poem in the English language. It was written on September 19, 1819, and published the following year. To Autumn can be found in: Keats, John. Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems. London: Talor and Hessey, 1820. (as found in the Noel Douglas replica edition printed by London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Co. Ltd., 1927.)
# Harmon, William, ed. The Classic Hundred Poems (Second Edition). New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

[Robert Tulip]

3. "To Autumn," by John Keats.

Good Friday is a pleasant day to read great poetry. I will comment on this poem by Keats as I read it for the first time.

I included a note appended to the poem I copied. Harmon is the editor of the Top 500, the 1992 book from which of course all these poems are taken. I wonder how he determined in 1998 that "To Autumn" was no. 1. Anyway, I wouldn't argue if it was, because I like it more than Blake's "The Tyger." This was the last, in order of composition, of the five great odes. Keats had an amazingly fertile year in 1819, just before becoming seriously ill with tuberculosis. This poem seems to exist for its own sake and not to prove anything or assert anything, but it does have a role in culminating Keats' thinking about process, which includes but is not the same as death. This to me is one of the best love poems in the language.

Thanks DWill, we are now in the home stretch of the top ten. Your comment about Keats' interest in process as more than death points to the interplay of life and death

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Oh, this is a famous line. Autumn comes after summer, with the heat of growing now moving toward the cool of winter. We are in autumn now in Australia, with the deciduous oaks red in leaf and fertile harvest after a wet summer.

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

The sun has an annual life, born in spring, full in summer, old in autumn and dead in winter.

Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

All the natural results of summer growth come to the full in autumn, as the plant grows its seed for new life.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Autumn is personified, sitting carelessly on a granary floor. The opium drug of the romantics makes its appearance as the poppy loses its flower and swells to give its juice. The patient gleaning of autumn harvest.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Autumn rivals spring, just as John rivals Christ. From John 3, 'you rise, I fall'. The music of fall is the maturity of the new life from spring. The September equinox when the tropical zodiac moves from Virgo to Libra has now moved in the sky to early Virgo. We see in the night sky the stars of the September sun, with Saturn in the middle of the virgin. Keats offers a hymn to the natural cycle of the year, celebrating the cornucopia of harvest. The lamb is ready for slaughter, and the pumpkin is ripe, ready for the hallowed evening and thanksgiving. The birds are ready to fly south for winter.

# Harmon lists To Autumn as the most anthologized poem in the English language. It was written on September 19, 1819, and published the following year. To Autumn can be found in: Keats, John. Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems. London: Talor and Hessey, 1820. (as found in the Noel Douglas replica edition printed by London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Co. Ltd., 1927.)
# Harmon, William, ed. The Classic Hundred Poems (Second Edition). New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

[Penelope]

Ode To Autumn - by John Keats

This is one of the poems which I 'chose' to learn by heart, rather than being instructed to do so.

I just love it.....but really because it conjurs up the joys of middle to old age.

I feel as though I have reached a season of misty, mellow fruitfulness....

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

As I've grown older I often feel I have learned how to access the joy in life, and combat melancholy. But the maturing sun, is different in nature than the hot sun of summer......and the joys of maturity are different from the joys of youth.....

I have liked growing older.....and I would not have liked to have missed it for anything.....which John Keats did....so I know what a privilidge it is.

[DWill]

I have "Nightingale" by heart, but not this one. This one is at least as good. The personification of Autumn must be the best that anyone has done with that device.

2. "Sir Patrick Spens," Anonymous. We can probably explain the placement of this poem by the need for anthologies to account for the history of English poetry, and this one is about as early as English poetry gets. But it has qualities. I'll quote William Harmon's comment on the poem: "The poem presents its dramatically elliptical narration in the simplest ballad measure with superlative economy of design: just a few quick bold strokes and a thoroughgoing reliance on concrete detail. We are not told that the king was worried in some vague way; he is drinking and asking for help. Four brief speeches (king, knight, Sir Patrick, a nameless sailor) and then a focus on the marvelous detail of "cork heel'd shoon" (the last word in medieval chic) and floating hats. (Note that: "skeely" is "skillful"; "lift" is ""sky"; "lap" is "sprang"; "laith" is "unwilling"; "aboon" is "above"; "flatter'd" is "floated"; "kames" is "combs.")"

Poetry once had much more of of a narrative function than it has now. It's good to allow room for that.

"In the reign of Alexander III of Scotland, his daughter Margaret was escorted by a large party of nobles to Norway for her marriage to King Eric; on the return journey many of them were drowned. Twenty years later, after Alexander's death, his grand-daughter Margaret, the Maid of Norway, was heiress to the Scottish throne, and on the voyage to Scotland she died.

The ballad; which exists in several versions, combines these two incidents."


Sir Patrick Spens

THE SAILING

The King sits in Dunfermline town,
Drinking the blood-red wine;
"O where shall I get a skeely skipper
To sail this ship or mine?"

Then up and spake an eldern knight,
Sat at the King's right knee:
"Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor
That ever sailed the sea."

The King has written a broad letter,
And sealed it with his hand,
And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens,
Was walking on the strand.

"To Noroway, to Noroway,
To Noroway o'er the foam;
The King's daughter of Noroway,
'Tis thou must fetch her home."

The first line that Sir Patrick read,
A loud laugh laughed he;
The next line that Sir Patrick read,
The tear blinded his ee.

"O who is this has done this deed,
Has told the King of me,
To send us out at this time of the year,
To sail upon the sea?

"Be it wind, be it wet, be it hail, be it sleet,
Our ship must sail the foam;
The king's daughter of Noroway,
'Tis we must fetch her home."

They hoisted their sails on Monenday morn,
With all the speed they may;
And they have landed in Noroway
Upon a Wodensday.

II. THE RETURN

They had not been a week, a week,
In Noroway but twae,
When that the lords of Noroway
Began aloud to say, -

"Ye Scottishmen spend all our King's gowd,
And all our Queenis fee."
"Ye lie, ye lie, ye liars loud!
So loud I hear ye lie.

"For I brought as much of the white monie
As gane my men and me,
And a half-fou of the good red gowd
Out o'er the sea with me.

"Make ready, make ready, my merry men all,
Our good ship sails the morn."
"Now, ever alack, my master dear
I fear a deadly storm.

"I saw the new moon late yestreen
With the old moon in her arm;
And if we go to sea, master,
I fear we'll come to harm."

They had not sailed a league, a league,
A league but barely three,
When the lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud,
And gurly grew the sea.

The ankers brake and the top-masts lap,
It was such a deadly storm;
And the waves came o'er the broken ship
Till all her sides were torn.

"O where will I get a good sailor
Will take my helm in hand,
Till I get up to the tall top-mast
To see if I can spy land?"

"O here am I, a sailor good,
Will take the helm in hand,
Till you go up to the tall top-mast,
But I fear you'll ne'er spy land."

He had not gone a step, a step,
A step but barely ane,
When a bolt flew out of the good ship's side,
And the salt sea came in.

"Go fetch a web of the silken cloth,
Another of the twine,
And wap them into our good ship's side,
And let not the sea come in."

They fetched a web of the silken cloth,
Another of the twine,
And they wapp'd them into the good ship's side,
But still the sea came in.

O loth, both, were our good Scots lords
To wet their cork-heel'd shoon,
But long ere all the play was play'd
They wet their hats aboon.

And many was the feather-bed
That fluttered on the foam;
And many was the good lord's son
That never more came home.

The ladies wrang their fingers white,
The maidens tore their heair,
All for the sake of their true loves,
For them they'll see nae mair.

O lang, lang may the maidens sit
With their gold combs in their hair,
All waiting for their own dear loves,
For them they'll see nae mair.

O forty miles of Aberdeen,
'Tis fifty fathoms deep;
And there lies good Sir Patrick Spens,
With the Scots lords at his feet.