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May 25, 2021

Rose of God: Aurobindo

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

Rose of God, vermilion stain on the sapphires of heaven,
Rose of Bliss, fire-sweet, seven-tinged with the ecstasies seven!
Leap up in our heart of humanhood, O miracle, O flame,
Passion-flower of the Nameless, bud of the mystical Name.

Rose of God, great wisdom-bloom on the summits of being,
Rose of Light, immaculate core of the ultimate seeing!
Live in the mind of our earthhood; O golden Mystery, flower,
Sun on the head of the Timeless, guest of the marvellous Hour.

Rose of God, damask force of Infinity, red icon of might,
Rose of Power with thy diamond halo piercing the night!
Ablaze in the will of the mortal, design the wonder of thy plan,
Image of Immortality, outbreak of the Godhead in man.

Rose of God, smitten purple with the incarnate divine Desire,
Rose of Life, crowded with petals, colour’s lyre!
Transform the body of the mortal like a sweet and magical rhyme;
Bridge our earthhood and heavenhood, make deathless the children of Time.

Rose of God, like a blush of rapture on Eternity’s face,
Rose of Love, ruby depth of all being, fire-passion of Grace!
Arise from the heart of the yearning that sobs in Nature’s abyss:
Make earth the home of the Wonderful and life beatitude’s kiss.

Rose of God is one of those poems of Sri Aurobindo which remind us of the mystic vision of delving as it is visible in the poem. The poem is Blakian as well as Miltonic. It also tells about Savitri, Urvasie, Rambha, Menaka and so on indirectly. Here one can mark the George Bernard Shawian version of Robert Burns’ My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose. It is actually a  poem of love but explained in an anti-romantic, classical stance. It is inclusive of the love of all, a saint’s love, how does a saint God, a mystic’s love, how does a mystic, a metaphysician’s, how does a metaphysician. How does George Herbert see a red rose? How do the Valentine altar visitors view the roses offered to the Lord? What has a yogi to do with a rose? Is it a vision of God and His Beauty? A mystic, how does he take to the rose?

The rose as the flower of yoga or of St.Valentine or of Kabira or of Osho, whose is it? What the matter is? How the purview of dabbling? Rather than the lotus of meditation, why has Aurobindo taken to the rose of God? Is it about the colour impact? But George Herbertian Virtue matches it. It is definitely Western vision behind his seeing of the rose and the marking of the thin trickle of mysticism coming down to. Whatever be the things relating to the making of the poem, in Rose of God the yogi tries to see, feel and mark how the mysticism in the rose! How rose-coloured is the sky! How does it look the sky as Hopkins sees it in God’s Grandeur and Pied Beauty. How the dawn appears to be when seen from the Vedic hermitage! How the twilight! Even though there lie in the elements Keatsian and Marvellian inherent in the poem, as none can Cupid’s arrow is the truth, instead of it, it is a poem written in the admiration of the mystic loveiness of the rose as seen over the horizons.

Plainly speaking, whose rose is this? God’s, is the answer. Who the Maker of the rose? The Lord-god, whose intrinsic mythic art and beauty embedded in all one can mark in it.

The vermilion stain on the sapphires of heaven appears to be as Rose of God as for the aura  and glow ligthing the sphere. The skies alit, aglow with the fire, the Heavenly Fire or draped in that colour definitely catch our fancy and imagination in the same way as it has that of the poet. Again, the ;poet sys that it is rhe same see in the hues of he rain ow containing the seven wonder containing wonder colours.

The poet asks to strike wth the same inensity of miracle and wonder, the same element of mystery and awe as it has the potential of raking up something and moulding in its way. The mystical flame, flicker  is but the flame of Creation, the flame of Lord-god which mankind has been looking up in wonder and astonishment and which has also been elemental to his creative urge. The Miracle Divine, the Flame Divine is but the Passion-flower of the Nameless, the Bud of the Mystical Name.

In Rose of God, lie in Rose of Bliss, Rose of Light, Rose of Power and Rose of Life. Rose of God is one of those poems of Sri Aurobindo which tell about the Divine Rose rather than the Divine Lotus, its beauty and brilliance, mystery and glory which he tries to see with his mystic vision of delving and transcendental glance.  The same miracle, the same flame of fire and blaze can be seen in the vermilion stain of the sapphires over heaven. Such a scene one can mark during the dawn break and the dusk time. The red glowing disc of the sun catches our fancy and imagination, but here the poet is mystical about that. Whose mystic glow is herein? Who is behind the paints given to? Rose of God as Rose of Bliss can be felt through the rainbow colours and the ecstasies connected with. What it is needed most is the mystic eyes, the mystic vision with which one can see the marks of Divinity! Rose of God is the rose of yoga. How does a yogi take to a rose? What does it symbolize to him? How is the life force? What is it the metaphysics of life? What is it the metaphysics of the world? How the ascension of the Supreme Mind? How the Super Consciousness? How to feel it the rose, the rose of the heart, the rose of the mind, the rose of the soul? To go through the yogic poetry of Aurobindo is to traverse the course of George Bernard Shaw’s superman and his super mind.

Rose of God, great wisdom abloom on the summits of being as Rose of Light is the ultimate power of seeing the things, grappling with, is the sun on the head of the Timeless. Rose of God, damask force of Infinity, red icon of might is Rose of Power with its diamond halo piercing the night. Mortality, how does he make the image of the Immortality when endowed with light and thinking? Rose of God when smitten purple with the incarnate Divine Desire takes the form of Rose of Life, crowded with petals, colour’s lyre. Rose of Life has the power to transform our lives and mould bridging earthhood and heavenhood.

Rose of God, a blush of rapture on Eternity’s face is but Rose of Love, the ruby depth of all being, fire-passion of Grace which is but earthly and Nature-centric. Love’s world so full of affection, sympathy and attachment, nature’s world so full of vegetation and greenery, homely shelter and refuge tendering and catering to give a look of their own and the poet in abstract words wants to allude to allegorically.

Rose of God with the red strain on the sapphires of the skies takes to Rose of Bliss to Rose of Light to Rose of Power to Rose of Life to Rose of Love. Aurobindo’s poetry is the Superman’s poetry germinating in the Supermind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 20, 2021

The House of My Childhood: Dilip Chitre

By: Bijay Kant Dubey 

The house of my childhood stood empty
On a grey hill
All its furniture gone
Except my grandmother's grindstone
And the brass figurines of her gods

After the death of all birds
Bird-cries still fill the mind
After the city's erasure
A blur still peoples the air
In the colourless crack that comes before morning
In a place where nobody can sing
Words distribute their silence
Among intricately clustered glyphs

My grandmother's voice shivers on a bare branch
I toddle around the empty house
Spring and summer are both gone
Leaving an elderly infant
To explore the rooms of age

The house where he was born, where he grew up, where he spent his boyhood sharing his childhood memories, he remembers it in the poem going back to the days, slipping through the balconies of thought, idea and reflection, walking down the memory lanes, revisiting them as for a poetical reminiscence and sketch. How was his house one day? What did it turn into? A house when man lives in and when not, how the picture? How was the house when the grandmother was and how did it turn into when she was not? How was the old town? How is it today? Only her brass figurines of gods sustaining her faith are there. The grindstone is. But where her furniture?

How the bird cries used to rend the sky? How did they desert it? Now the birds are not. Only the music of memories, the music of their chirrup fills the vacnt mind. The cities have changed so have their landscape and scenery so have ideas and values.There is nothing as that of the relics of the old town and old people and old values, what it is good to be taken out and the bad to be left. But who hears it now-a-days? Who thinks about society and  environment, man and his relationship with the trees? The towns and cities bereft of Nature appear to be the dwellings of the hollow men.

Nobody lives in the house. The house lies it empty unattended and uncared for. The  ancestors have left for so have the descendents in search of greener pastures and better avenues. Who will remain concerned with pastoral, agrarian farmhouses and small opportunities? The old paternal, ancestral house lies it there abandoned just bearing their memories existent so far as long as as its span is.

The poet as a child fancies his days into it on finding none around him and the house lying closed nor can he feel spring and summer as both of them seem to be gone as is the case with the city people living in flats. Given the situation under, what can he do rather than exploring the rooms of age in the company of an elderly infant?

But we are not sure of who the elderly infant care-taker or watchman is here mentioned in this poem is. How the modern craze is without which one cannot? How the compulsions, fissures and frictions of time? How the bond of our relationships? How the times keep shifting? How do the images of life and the world? How do our systems and values? The house of time dilapidates it one day, but the memories connected remain with for sometime more.

A house remains a house as long as the people live in and since when they start leaving it, the same starts turning into a deserted mansion from the same moment. Tme develops cracks and fissures.To buld the house is not enough. There must be some to take care of. But our bondings and relationships keep canging under the pressure of time. Situations too compel one to take to different paths. But experience teaches it otherwise. There is something of Nissim Ezekiel’s  Enterprise and Thomas Hood’s My Childhood. One can also mark the traces of Charles Lamb’s Dream Children: A Reverie. The elderly fellow taking care of the house is but an infant of Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man.

 

May 19, 2021

The Indian to his Love: Yeats

By: Bijay Kant Dubey 

The island dreams under the dawn

And great boughs drop tranquillity;

The peahens dance on a smooth lawn,

A parrot sways upon a tree,

Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea.

 

Here we will moor our lonely ship

And wander ever with woven hands,

Murmuring softly lip to lip,

Along the grass, along the sands,

Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands:

 

How we alone of mortals are

Hid under quiet boughs apart,

While our love grows an Indian star,

A meteor of the burning heart,

One with the tide that gleams, the wings that gleam and dart,

 

The heavy boughs, the burnished dove

That moans and sighs a hundred days:

How when we die our shades will rove,

When eve has hushed the feathered ways,

With vapoury footsole by the water's drowsy blaze.

The Indian to His Love as a poem is similar to that one already titled as The Indian Upon God and both the poems are similar in style and penetration barring the thematic variation as because the latter is about how do the Indians see God while the former is all about Indian love-view. What is love? How is it the feeling and emotion of it? How do the Indians take to love?  ‘Amar-prem, nischal prem’, he talks it about, the sacred heart in which dwells it God, internal bonding so full of sympathy and affection. Who loves the soul? Who loves whom by heart, say you? ‘Pavitra mann’, pure inner mind, how many of us have it? As true friendship is rarer so is guileless love. Discard your ‘papa’, sin from your ‘mann’ and try to make your heart purer. This is the lesson which but it gives to, tenders to. Love without any tumult and convulsion he thinks of. But nothing is bereft of smudges. In search of beauty, love and truth, we just keep wandering, craving for.

Poet Yeats has written the poem under the influence of the Indian friends or he himself  has with his thoughts and ideas enjoying the warmth of relationship with in a commemorative way. The influence and mixing with the Orientalists, Sanskritists, Theosophists can also be not denied. Yeats is definitely a link between the Western and the Indian thought and tradition and he has the capacity to synthesize it. This is the reason for which he could not be with Tagore for so long. Even Rudyard Kipling too could not parallel him.

Is Yeats thinking about love in an Indian way or style? Is he feeling about friendship? Or, something different lies it stated in? Is Yeats like Goethe feeling the love of Shakuntala? There is also something of Mira and Radha in it? An Indian to his love or Yeats to his love in an Indian way? Can one not love the heart and the soul?

Let us what does Yeats discuss it here in this poem? By the term the Indian to his love, what does he mean to say? How does the Indian take it love? The island keeps dreaming under the dawn with the great boughs dropping tranquillity. The peahens dance they on a smooth lawn and a parrot too sways upon a tree raging at his own image in the enamelled sea. The parrot of the heart, what to say it about? How to say it when the peahen dances in the inner heart?

Here they will moor their lonely ship and thereafter will keep wandering ever with woven hands, murmuring softly lip to lip, along the grass, along the sands, murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands. Here the poet talks of lust, craze and craving; aspiration, yearning and love, peace and solace. Keeping the ship at bay, they will go for wandering, dreaming, gliding, taking flights and sharing the things of the heart.

How alone are they of mortals hidden under quiet boughs apart! But there is something to learn and feel it within. Their love grows like an Indian star, a meteor of the burning heart. But when the tide comes, it gleams. It may take wings. Why our selves lying apart from? The tides of emotion and passion rise and fall.

Heavy the boughs, when the things come to last, the burnished dove which will sigh  and moan a hundred days. How will be the things when we die, return to nought? Our shades and shadows will rove it when the eve hushes it the feathered ways with vapoury foot sole by the water’s drowsy blaze.

Where will the spirit travel to? The world is vast. Where will the soul keep wandering? Where will the self go? After seeing the scenery and picture, the self reverts to. Say you, what is lovely and beautiful? What does it fare throughout? Outwards appearance and inward appearance are two different aspects to be discerned within. Things of beauty and heart too are similar. The doves of love want to sit together and share with, but what is it love, where is love? How the residues of meaning, the remnants of thought and idea?

 

 

 

 

 

May 16, 2021

Wandering Singers: Naidu

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

Where the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet,
Through echoing forest and echoing street,
With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam,
All men are our kindred, the world is our home.
Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed,
The laughter and beauty of women long dead;
The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings,
And happy and simple and sorrowful things.
What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow?
Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go.
No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait:
The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.

 

Who are these singers? The Bauls, the Vaishnavites or the Krishnites? Are they the bards or the singing fakirs? The Bhartriharis, the ragged singers of India, the nirgunias too may be the ones discussed here. Some takers of Ram-naama too may be the people here.


The poem also reminds us of the kirtan-doers, Hare Rama, Hare Krishna singers. But not the professional ones as the folk singers; those who are detached will not attach to the amorous and will not keep wandering. By the folk singers she means to hint towards the bards and the minstrels whose deep devotion, dedication and bhakti flash upon the mind's plane. 

We are the wandering singers, wandering singers, wherever we go, we go on singing, camping and passing through. Under the bivouac of trees we can live and pass by our time. Under the canopy of the skies, we can live and pass our days. By the roadside leading out of the town or on the outskirts of, we can sojourn. Our destinations are unknown. Wherever we like or the spirit leads to, we go to, wherever the wind carries our voice to, we go to, singing and passing through. With lutes into the hands, we keep roaming and singing with our vagabond, vagrant bands. We have nothing to attend to, nothing to fear it. The whole world is our family. All the people are our relatives, kith and kin, kindred people. What it is ours, what it yours, we are not in it. We move from cities to cities, towns to towns. We have nothing to be attached to, nothing to be fascinated with, infatuated with. What is it to do with laughters, joys and sorrows? Laughters are long dead, lost in them. What is it to attract in the name of beauty? We are but detached people, we are the vagrant singers, singers of India. The kings and the common men are alike to us in love and affection. Instead we sing of the battles lost and fought long ago, about the glories of kings and queens, their good and bad days, the crowns and palaces commemorating grandeur and fall  both, beauty and laughter. We draw the things from our old stock.


Wherever the wind calls, our wandering feet move in to, go to, we are the wandering singers, the wandering singers of India. Our houses lie they forgotten, our identities quite obscure and unknown.There is nothing as that to do with nostalgia and homesickness. Where we live there lies our home, where we stop it that is the place of our sojourn. We do not have any permanent address. We are the bairagis, homeless people, the  saintly beings, the wandering singers. Bhakti, kirtana is our job. To sing of old things is our stock.

Wandering Singers is a poem about the folk singers of India, the gypsy bands, the nomadic groups, wandering bards and minstrels moving from town to town whose echoes can be heard even in the suburban forests while passing through the ways. Saints too first and foremost are the singers, the singers of devotional hearts. Bairagis, renouncers are the experts of this field singing with home-made instruments. The Ramayana singers, the Mahabharata singers, recreating from and singing in vernaculars the scenes and references, where, where are they? The mind goes to Fiji, Mauritius, Java, Sumatra, Bali and Kampuchea. The portions of the Ramlila and the Krishnalila flash over the eyes. The pictures of Kabirdas, Mirabai, Surdas, Kabirdas, Tukaram, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Jayadeva hover before kaleidoscopically.

The poem is a peep into the heart of the devotional singers of India, the mystic singers, the bairagis and the fakirs of India. They have nothing to wait for and get. They are the wandering singers, the folk singers. To spread the message of love and affection is their joy cutting across the lines. This is their philosophy of life and the world. This is how they have understood the world. What is to get from or lie in the hope of? To be a singer of life is the main thing; to be a traveller on the path of life. The devotional heart, loveful heart, we fail to feel it.

May 9, 2021

The Village Song: Sarojini Naidu

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

HONEY, child, honey, child, whither are you going?
Would you cast your jewels all to the breezes blowing?
Would you leave the mother who on golden grain has fed you?
Would you grieve the lover who is riding forth to wed you?

Mother mine, to the wild forest I am going,
Where upon the champa boughs the champa buds are blowing;
To the köil-haunted river-isles where lotus lilies glisten,
The voices of the fairy folk are calling me: O listen!

Honey, child, honey, child, the world is full of pleasure,
Of bridal-songs and cradle-songs and sandal-scented leisure.
Your bridal robes are in the loom, silver and saffron glowing,
Your bridal cakes are on the hearth: O whither are you going?

The bridal-songs and cradle-songs have cadences of sorrow,
The laughter of the sun to-day, the wind of death to-morrow.
Far sweeter sound the forest-notes where forest-streams are falling;
O mother mine, I cannot stay, the fairy-folk are calling.

Sarojini is a singer of heart and the songs she has are the songs of her heart. Just through the village song, she tells of the daughter reared from the cradle to go away in a bridal palanquin. This is but our life. The call of the champa blooms is irresistible and one cannot resist.  Here things grow to take their own recourse. So are our children. Daughters are never our own. What can they too do? But man-made restrictions are so cruel and mindless. Our life too hangs on in between the cradle song and the bridal song. But above all, the  farewell song is the last to be bidden.

 It is really a village song, the song of the Indian villages and the Indian people, how their life and feeling! But under the cover of the village song, she tells of daughters, their journey of life from the cradle to the palanquin. How does the love of the champak blooms call them? How do the cuckoos? How do the streams and forests charm them? What to say about the song of life? What about time? How do the things change it here? How do the people? How this life of desire and expectation? One day she used to toddle as a toddler. but the same girl child develops into a young maiden to be bidden bye.

The Village Song is not only the song of agrarian and rural society in which dwell they, their set of norms and nomenclature, but apart from how do they think, take to life and think about? It is actually the song of India, the love song of India; it is all about the life of a village girl, an Indian girl, how their life and conditions and what it to befall  her? The same small girl who grows in the fair country under the rural background one day goes to another’s house without feeling about  the pros and cons of life. Happiness or sorrow, it all depends on her fate, the resources of the land and the country and the family. Our life is fraught with difficulty, none can contradict it. The village girl unaware of her fate knows it not all though she can sense it a bit.

The Village Song is a song of love in which one can read the life of an Indian girl, her life from that of a growing child unto the old age, the structure of a society lies it drawn. It is for us to analyze from the gender bias point of view, how had it been social taboos, how still the psychological fears marauding the self of a woman! How the course of life? How our nomenclature and protocol? How the situations and conditions? How had it been the condition of a woman in the world?

The poem is not a village song, but a cradle song, a bridal song and here we can hear the saddest tunes of the shehnoi in which a girl as a bride is departing for her newly searched home, that is the groom’s  house just like an unknown stranger.

When as a child, she swings and the mother gets pleasure in seeing her, taking it to not that she will go away one day. But when she grows up, the champak blooms start tempting her and the cuckoos taking her to the forest bordering the river Yamuna from where she will waterful earthen pitchers. But mark it that in the Yamuna lives it Kaliya nag. The forests are not free from snakes and wild beasts. The  lonely tracts too may be fearful.

While reading this poem, the purdah system, ghumta, gender inequality, drawing of the Lakshamanrekha, house as the periphery of thinking, patriarchal hegemony, gender discrimination, child bearing   deaths, social taboos, societal restrictions, etc. flash over the mind’s plane.

In the first stanza of the poem the mother of the girl asks her about her going, where she is going is and keeps asking about. Will she forsake her jewels to the breezes? Will she leave the mother who has fed her, reared her with so much so care, love, affection and sympathy and bonding? Will she make her love aggrieved that is coming to with his Indian wedding dreams? Every daughter to her mother is but flower-like, so honeyed and sweet.

The daughter in her response to the mother says it that she is going to the forest here upon the champa boughs have flowered beautifully with the champa buds, at once catching our dream, joy and imagination. The koels cooing from the isles and the lotuses and lilies in bloom give an additional beauty to the domain, decorate the dreams of ours. The fairy folks continue to call her. If this be the picture, panorama and landscape of the madhuvana, how to resist it? How to resist the temptation of the sweet scent coming, fragrance so maddening and the things in bloom and buds? Give an ear to and listen!

Again, the mother reminds her of the wedding clothes being made on the loom which she will as a bride wear it one day. Bridal cakes are being baked on the hearth and these will arrive when the wedding day comes it. The world is full of pleasure. The cradle song with the lullabies and swings, bridal songs with bands, dances and songs and sandal-applied imagery, all are but the beautiful, lyrical and fanciful side of life which a mother has to witness it all.  

But behind all these there is an internal rhyme scheme of the sad tune, the unheard sad note of life which she knows it not. Bridal songs, love songs, cradle songs, lullabies outwardly these appear to be so lovely and charming, but are not. Those who sing lullabies know it how to care and caress the babies to sleep, letting it not to be disturbed even by the wind, taking time to repose them. Only a Yasoda can say it. Those who sing it bridal songs know it well how heart-trending the departing time of the brides! Even the musical bands and their tunes weep and wail it inconsolably. A bride in tears, have you seen her? See and say it after. First see her and then say to. Many of us would have experienced the brides while going on the bullock carts and crossing the dry river beds and teardrops lining the cheeks as a trickle of water streaming over. But who to wipe them? Man a traveller of the paths, unknown paths of life and the world! Whose daughter she is, who will give solace to and comfort her thereon? It is really a melting time.

But the daughter takes to not the words of caution. She insists on going there to attend their call, the mild breeze blowing, the river babbling by, the forest tract full of dreamy and scented blooms, the scenery so beautiful and charming and lovely to the core.

The Village Song is but a song of the Indian Mira and the Indian Radha, a life song never tuned like this, as such, she has presented here. It is a song of Radha and Yamuna and the gopis and Krishna fluting. The song of love is as such but we read it not the saddest notes of music and song, what it pains us?

What had it been in the heart of Radha, what had it been in the heart of Mira, could we feel it, feel it? To be classical is not to leave the contact with life. One who can feel it ‘mann’ (inner mind, inner heart) can actually know it all.

It is actually a song of the Indian champas and the Indian maid as growing daughter so affectionate and dear unable to resist the call of the madhuvana, the sweet, honeyed woodland, taking permission from her mother to let her go but she instructing her otherwise as per her motherly personal experience of human society and living.







 

May 1, 2021

Sailing To Byzantium: WB Yeats

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?
  ----Alfred Lord Tennyson in Morte d’ Arthur

Before we read the poem, there grows a desire to know, where does the poet want to go, where this Byzantium is, why does he wish to be away from here? Has he aged? What is it in Byzantium? Is it the Brindavan he is dreaming about? Is it not the spiritual quest taking him there? Perhaps the remnants of Hindu thought and mysticism have not left him behind. Did he write Meru or Byzantium first? When did he study the Upanishads? These are but the questions which appear to be relevant while determining the idea behind the writing of the poem and the accomplishment of it. Had he been to India, it would have been great, but he did not nor did the Indians then. A myth-maker, an occultist, a symbolist of the first order, Yeats is first an Irish poet then an English poet and poetry comes to him as symbolical versions of poesy so full of depth and sobriety, myth and myth-making. Written at the age of 60 or 61, the poem was done in 1926 but it appeared in The Tower in 1928. Even in a BBC talk, he referred to the shaping of his thoughts culminating in the writing of the poem, Sailing to Byzantium and it is not a poem of going to Byzantium, but to think of a new order, to dream and repose in the golden past where he with an artistic bent of mind can think of toning up with undying spirits and poetic vigour. Is it classicism or the imagery of the golden times he wants to revert back to? Why does he want to escape to just like the Keats of Ode to a Nightingale? Where does he like the Wordsworth of Strange Fits of Passion and Lost Love and A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal? Where from the Ireland of political upheavals and repercussions, turmoil and tribulation, strife and struggle to? The position is one of The Ship of Death and Shadows written by D.H.Lawrence.

Sailing To Byzantium, as a poem of rejuvenation, resurrection and transmigration with so much vigour and embellishment muted in, transports us into an old world pervaded by immortality, art and spirit. But what is it immortal? Classicism too has an end of its own. Such a thing it is in The Scholar Gypsy of Matthew Arnold.

Starting with that is no country for the old men, the poet talks of the younger generation in the thoughts and broodings of their own so deep in sensuality and pleasure as if were in one another’s arms, birds in the trees while the dying generations have nothing to say to as the lack lustre itself is picturesque of all that taking place or happening as the things of dust, clay and mortality return back to baser stuffs in due course of time which is again but a natural process.  The young have just the sensuality to talk to and repose in rather than intellectuality, good thought and idea drawing their flavour from classicism and classical times. What is it that sustains us is intellect. What it is born, begotten and living will but cease to exist one day when their time will be over. The present generations lost in the thoughts and ideas of their own have not time to think about the other men so after marking their sensuality, so much engrossed in lust, infatuation with and gratification for, the poet wants to sail and drift to Byzantium where the things age it not and the times too seemingly to be beyond the clutch of mortality and degeneration.

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick and the mortal dress is not his own so embroidered with mythology which the soul is wearing on for so long. So, what can the soul do except taking the name of the Lord and clapping the hands in His Praise or Glory? It has its own monuments of magnificence. So, where to repose in, where to gather strength, calm and composure from this tumult, clamour perturbing the soul and spirit?

Where the sages standing by the side of the Holy Fire of God? Where do they lie in watching the ceremony? Why do they consume his heart away sick with the desire of man?

Out of sight out of mind, the thing is, once gone from here; never will he be back to. But the Grecian goldsmiths make the things which appear to be everlasting and perennial, never appear to be corroding as such is their artistic beauty, craftsmanship, goldsmithery and casting.

Sailing To Byzantium

I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

 II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium. 

III

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

 IV

 Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come. 

Sailing to Byzantium as a poem is so much symbolical, artistic, mythical and spiritual at the same time we read and go through it as it corroborates the personal and individual thoughts and ideas, images and views of the poet laced with a strong symbolist approach adding depth, meaning and poetic verve to the poem and he wishing to be away from Ireland, from his bodily presence, somewhat shaken in body and strength to an artistic kingdom where death maligns it not, where the golden and classical things hold their sway over and get it not marooned for moral, spiritual and psychic restoration just like as the Hindus think of Vrindavan and the golden bird that was India in the past and so his Byzantium, the Byzantine emperors and the mosaic palaces of it and the immortal artisans, craftsmen, builders building and decorating it. The poem has a mythic base of it, historical, personal and legendary enough to sway the readers to a make-believe story to escape from the harsh realities of life and the world and here lies the distinction between the world of art and dreams and the gap in between the two when contrasted with the realities grounding in elsewhere.

Sailing to Byzantium from Yeats’ The Tower and The Ship of Death from Lawrence’s Last Poems tell a comparative tale to be taken into contrast as the idea is almost the same a shift from the present scenario, a drift from to sail away from here, but Tennyson explains it best by saying it that change is the law of Nature and the things change it here and if they not, as Arthur says it, things will not appear to be congenial. Let us take into consideration the pensive mood of Lawrence here in this poem entitled The Ship of Death where he coaxes to build the ship and to be ready for the journey to undertake. The same escapism it is there in Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale.

I

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.

 The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.

 And it is time to go, to bid farewell
to one’s own self, and find an exit
from the fallen self.

 II

 Have you built your ship of death, O have you?
O build your ship of death, for you will need it.

 The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall
thick, almost thundrous, on the hardened earth.

 And death is on the air like a smell of ashes!
Ah! can’t you smell it?

And in the bruised body, the frightened soul
finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold
that blows upon it through the orifices.
     ---- D.H.Lawrence in The Ship of Death

 Where Byzantium? Where the emperors with palaces and mansions, where the golden birds chirping? Where the scholars holding parleys? Where Brindavan? Where Krishna flirting? Where the Vedic, Upanishadic sages chanting? Where Eliot chanting the santih mantras?

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick and the mortal dress needs to be changed. This can happen only if the soul can sing the song of the Lord, singing and rejoicing in His Glory. Nothing can happen without His Mercy and Grace. Here the impact of the Bhagavadgita and Adi Shankaracharya can be felt in, the immortality of the soul as discussed in the former while eternal birth and eternal death, the cycle of it in Bhajagovindam of the latter. The imagery is beautiful in the sense it is picturesque of an old man with a torn coat lying on a stick.

The holy fires of God and the sages standing and praying to, keeping them as the witness of and invoking the Celestial Spirit and the Celestial Fire he says it all. The Mystical Flames of the Mystical Fire can ordain and purge it all what it ails human flesh and spirit if sought from. But how to lift to higher domains and realms? How to be Shelleyian in spiritual illumination? If they turn into the singing masters of his soul, what it to worry?

 What does the poet mean to say it here? Why does he say to, ‘That is no country for the old men.’? The poet W.B.Yeats, though sick of ageing, times in flux with the order of things, thinks of replacement, regaining of lost vigour and strength after shifting the scenery to Byzantium and its old classical times full of myth and art symbols so golden and undying in spirit.  The young in the arms holding one another’s arms, flanking each other are submerged into the thoughts of their own. Birds in the trees, fish into the waters, all those have their heyday for some time. What it is bodily, physical and material will not last it here. None can escape the dying generations.

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song, 

Whatever else see we, be that the salmon, the mackerel or anything else is but subject to meet its end. The things which beget and the animals which are born are but destined to meet their ends. The mackerel is a greenish blue sea fish while the salmon too is a ray-finned fish.

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music of bonding, affection, lust, infatuation, sympathy, relationship story, we all neglect the monuments of unageing intellect.  Lost in attachment, we forget it the reality waiting for to take us by surprise. What we must discard we fail to do it and so the younger generations lost in affection and attachment, amorous thoughts and ideas keeping their minds engaged. But mankind knows it the pathway end.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

 What is an aged man? To the poet, Yeats, the aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick. The old man not with the stick, but a tattered coat lying on a stick, basking in the sun as he says in An Acre of Grass, strike us beautifully. Every tatter too is in mortal dress and the soul cannot do but sing the songs of his as there is way for redemption. Human life is also as such that the coat gets changed from time to time, life to life. The covering is as such, nothing permanent here, everything but short-lived and transitory. An aged man, a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, etc. are but images.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence; 

That is why he has made up his mind to sail for Byzantium and has dawned at:

 And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium. 

But where the pilgrims? Where the Chaurcerian pilgrims? What about the pilgrim’s progress? Is Byzantium really golden and classical? Does pain not maroon it the self? Is it free from human worries, cares and anxieties? Can it really give eternal pleasure?, is the thing of deliberation.

Here the poet speaks about the sages standing in God’s holy fire, the gold mosaic of a wall and the singing-masters of his soul. He invokes them to be his guide, the singing-masters of his soul. The perne, we mean the whirl in a gyre, the vortex, the Holy Fire, etc. are add to the phraseology of the poem which are no doubt Christian, theological and so on.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,        
And be the singing-masters of my soul. 

Here the poet speaks about the heart sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal as it knows it not what it is, how the pathway end. So, he invokes the holy sages to give him strength to be into the artifice of eternity. A man is as long as desire is and when bodily weak, desire too starts leaving him and even if he desires, he will not be able to fulfil them.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity. 

The artifice of eternity here stands for something as everlasting, ever beautiful, perennial, immortal and indelible. Byzantium has been used as a myth, a motif and a symbol and the poet seeks to transport us into a make-believe artistic world fostered by classicism and golden times. Art for art’s sake or didactic purpose is the thing under our discussion. If this be, why does he ask to strike at the root of desire? Why is the heart sick of desire? If romanticism is a flight of imagination, fancy, dream, colour and their representation and classicism has always stood for intellectuality, restraint, discipline, didacticism and moral ethics. But here in it the dreams of Byzantium symbolize the journey end leading to artistic perfection.

Once out of physical form, never will one be back in that attire is the accepted truth which but we cannot deny it. But the Grecian goldsmiths make such a thing that it astonishes in giving perennial beauty and art form, a source of everlasting pleasure always after hammering gold and enamelling them. 

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

These are as such which will keep emperors awake and let them not sleep as for the wonder and splendour to be seen in craftsmanship bejewelling and decorating. The beauty of the golden bird is as such so beautifully crafted and made that it would never corrode easily. 

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come. 

Sailing to Byzantium is a journey of the soul; a spiritual development of the self engrossed in materialistic pursuits going on a pilgrimage to Byzantium. It is an attempt to escape to re-invigorate and re-make oneself spiritually, morally and aesthetically; it is an explanation of immortality at the expanse of morality and to understand what it lasts for here. The historical background gives a befitting mythical pattern to the poem which tells of transmigration from here to the old ancient city of Byzantium. But what glory is extant therein? None knows it. The golden bird of the golden times singing the golden notes, a source of lasting youth and gaiety, artistic image and imagery, as cast and moulded and framed by the artists take us away from the world of mortality and transience for a make-believe shift for a solace to be thought about temporarily, a Keatsian escape taken with the nightingale’s song and he hearing the sweet notes just like as Wordsworth and Shelley heard the skylarks. But here the design is one of craftsmanship and molten gold cast and embroidered and the palace so full of perennial imagery and decoration, mechanical and artificial seemingly looking natural with the extensive miniature work golden and ornamental. Yeats has aged, but his heart has not, is the thing of deliberation, as an artist never gets old.

 

 

 

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