Meru: WB Yeats

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

Civilisation is hooped together, brought
Under a rule, under the semblance of peace
By manifold illusion; but man’s life is thought,
And he, despite his terror, cannot cease
Ravening through century after century,
Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come
Into the desolation of reality:
Egypt and Greece, good-bye, and good-bye, Rome! 

Hermits upon Mount Meru or Everest,
Caverned in night under the drifted snow,
Or where that snow and winter’s dreadful blast
Beat down upon their naked bodies, know
That day bring round the night, that before dawn
His glory and his monuments are gone. 

Oh, how to think of modern English poetry without William Butler Yeats, his myth and myth-making, his Irish mindset and Upanishadic leaning, thought and philosophy? How to deconstruct him without knowing his Indian thought and element? How the mythic framework and structure, the Oriental and the Occult mysteries culminating in him for a symbolical outburst, a mythical text, a poetic expression so individualistic in tradition? But it is the myth and mysticism of the Orient which draws him closer to Vedism, Upanishadim and Puranic elements and he searching for meaning under the wrap of his spiritual quest, thirst for knowledge. So from Byzantium to where, to Mount Meru, Kailash and Mansarovar just as a hermit, a gypsy reminding us of Tintern Abbey of Wordsworth to some extent? To read the poem is to be reminded of the whole Himalayan wisdom and knowledge. Where do the swans fly to? Where is Meru? What it is on Meru? What it in the peaked mountain? How the ascent of thought? How the steps leading to? Shall we be able to meet God?

Whatever be that, something has definitely impelled it to write Meru as the name of the Himalayan ranges, Annapurna, Dhaulagiri, Nanda Devi, Kailash, Makalu have always eluded the people from time to time and this the lore of our wisdom which the sages have inhabited with their meditation and sadhna.

The civilizations which we talk of are but an illusion, as these come and go away when the span is over. There were the heydays of the civilizations of Egypt, Greece and Rome. They came one by one and went away. But what is it existent now? What is it that we have got it from? They were all under one umbrella with a view to expanding and systematizing their lengths with their settlements. So were the spells, spans and developments connected with. But man’s life is a thought. Besides material prosperity, gain, what have we for spiritual progress? What about our mystical experiences, spiritual quest?

I do not know what had it been going on in the mind of Yeats when he had been Meru? How the manuscript of it? Certainly he would have been engrossed in the wisdom of the ancient Hindu sages, the Himalayan spaces would have engaged him. Hindu philosophy looms large over him and he cannot help without. But had he tantra, how much would he have scaled about? We think it within.

Meru, is it not the story of his spiritual ascent and progression? Maybe it the climbing history too would have attracted him then. Civilization is but an illusion. Many a civilization flourished and had its heyday, but where have they led to finally? Hunger cannot always feed upon. The quenching of bodily hunger is it not all. But it is transcendent meditation which ultimately leads to.

But Meru will last long, as the abode of physical, spiritual, metaphysical and religious centres, as is in fabled too in Hindu, Jain, Buddhist texts. We live a life of our own, but the hermits in the Himalayan ranges lying bare-bodied, shivering with cold or beating down the colder climes are lost in the thoughts of their own to add to the human saga of spiritual quest and meditative fulfillment rejecting publicity and propaganda, never after name and fame.

What are they for? What is it burning their inward? Where the fire leading unto? A communion with the Mystical Spirit and the Mythical Embodiment? A spiritual thirst, quest for knowledge taking them to there where no human can dwell.

Meru is the myth of mystical vision and spiritual quest which the poet describing it here in this poem; Meru is the story of his spiritual progression, a journey of the self. How to summit the peak of transcendental height?

The hermits know it the story of creation, how the night of darkness, how the dawn breaking at daybreak? The home of Brahma, Indra and other Hindu deities, Meru is just like Emersonian Brahma. Meru is a poem of some mythical space and the ice needs to be cut.

Yeats wrote Meru, why did he not choose Kailash? Meru lies in yatra-tantra, showing as the vault of the universe, Brahma giving lesson to, Indra and so many deities. This syndrome is just a meditational posture dwelling far with the eyes closed and the mind travelling as a lonely traveller, as the self journeys. It has been rightly said where the sun cannot go there goes the poet and his poetic imagination. The story of the Naga sadhus is beyond description, the tales of their hard penance and rigorous sadhna subjecting the body to what it cannot endure, unimaginable indeed.

What does it remain it here at the end of? How the realization of life? What are the hermits for, bearing untold sufferings and seasoning the body? What are they lost in? Where are they lost and unnoticed on Meru lost in meditation? They know it well that it remains it not here. Everything is but temporary and short-lived. Every dawn is set to flash new when the night is over. All that has been done or speaks of his glory will be gone forever.

Where to locate them, those hermits of Everest and Meru, lying hidden from the public eyes without any name or fame leading an ascetic life, but of course the great saints and sages of ancient wisdom? Even under the snow they can do their tapasya, sadhna without taking food or anything, lying hungry for, thirsty for. What is in them, say you? What is that they are up for? What hunger burns in them? What thirst is in? Why are they thereon? What for? The wide world knows it not nor do the materialistic people.

Something of the coat, the overcoat lies it in Meru which is but mythically embroidered, the coat, the overcoat of Yeats, but when it gets old, it will need to be changed.

In the poem, Meru of Yeats, I also see the images of the climbers, mountain trekkers and adventurers risking their life to summit the challenging peaks. How to tell the tale of Meru? How to hear the tale of Meru? What it in reality, what it in myth? The myth of life, the myth of the world?

In Meru, see I the ancient wisdom of the sages and saints of India lost in their sadhna unawares, ascending the peaks, caverned under snow during the night, bearing it all for.

 

The Indian Upon God: WB Yeats

 BY: Bijay Kant Dubey

I passed along the water’s edge below the humid trees,
My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my knees,
My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moorfowl pace
All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase
Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak:
Who holds the world between His bill and made us strong or weak
Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky.
The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams from His eye.
I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk:
Who made the world and ruleth it, He hangeth on a stalk,
For I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide
Is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide.
A little way within the gloom a roebuck raised his eyes
Brimful of starlight, and he said: The Stamper of the Skies,
He is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could He
Conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me?
I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say:
Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay,
He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night
His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

Who is the Indian described here? What is he discussing? Is it about Indian faith and belief system? Or, Indian culture, philosophy and religion?  What the matter is? Or, Yeats himself under the influence of Swami Purohit or Mohini Chatterjee is reflecting upon? When was the poem composed? But apart from all that it is quite clear that he has been under occultism, Eastern philosophy, theosophical society, myth and mythology since the start. Whatever be that, The Indian Upon God as a poem shows the poet’s grappling with mythologies and poetry as he interweaves them into his poetry as art motifs. His sense of Indology, India and Indian culture, Vedic and Upanishadic vision, spiritual studies, transcendental approach and pantheistic realm is so strong and rarer that we feel awestruck with that in coming to terms with such a lore draped in verse. Taking the cue from the Genesis of the Bible, he goes on elucidating in his style. But to understand Yeats is no easy task.

The Indian Upon God as a poem is all about how do the Indians perceive God and hold it to be and their concept of the Over Soul and realization of the self. To perceive God is to see it in all. Where is God not, in what is it not? God is everywhere, in each and every object that see we, find we. Taking a pantheistic stand, the poet tries to discern it by alluding to in his personal way of reflection. Nature so freckled and wild is the image of His. Just we should have the vision to see and feel it the whole pantheistic panorama. He is Matter and Mass, Mind and Spirit, Over Soul and the Over Spirit.

The poet passes along the water’s edge below the humid trees with his spirit rocked in evening light, rushes round his knees and he drifting far. In that mood of reflection and visionary glide, loiter and steps taken, sleep and sighs take over the spirit. While moving ahead, he sees a moorfowl pacing and dripping on a grassy slope. The flocks getting round or strayed far in circles cease to chase and the eldest of them is heard speaking: 

Who holds the world between His bill and made us strong or weak
Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky.
The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams from His eye.

Herein lies in the understanding and metaphysics of W.B.Yeats and his grappling with Indian thought and wisdom. The poet comes to feel where peace is, what does the soul want, where to go ultimately and what it is that lasts for. A communion with the soul in the midst of Nature is the essence. Some sort of peace is needed to carry on the discourse.  The Maker of the moorfowl is but an undying being and without thinking of the fowl and its image how could he have the wild bird? He lives beyond the sky. The rains drip from His dripping wing and the moonbeams from the eyes. How amazing is it that taking the bird he composes the metaphysical lines! The poet wants to say that the One who has made us has also made the moorfowl. 

The poet moves a little ahead and hears the lotus talk about how it has been in the image of His and how Divinity is almost like that:

Who made the world and ruleth it, He hangeth on a stalk,
For I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide
Is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide.

How mystical are the lines said through the depiction of the lotus and the stalk! How the lotus in scenic and panoramic in penetration! Who has made it the world and who rules it? He hangs onto a stalk. He is but a lotus, the Greater Lotus which but you know it not! He is the Lotus Divine! The Lotus of Wisdom and Knowledge! The Pearly Drops scattered over the petals! The lotus petals splashed with water drops, dew drops, growing in the midst of water are but the imagery and painting of His!

Again, he makes a room for himself and moves forward, but gets intercepted by a roebuck lying in the gloom with a unique starlit glitter in the eyes of it ready for its turn to say, break upon:

Brimful of starlight, and he said: The Stamper of the Skies,
He is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could He
Conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me?

The poet means too say that it is the same Creator who has made us has made the roebuck. The idea carries the kernels of thoughts as discussed by Blake and Hopkins. In the eyes of the roebuck, God is but a creature like them as because He could not have had He not thought in that context. The colour design, the marks, are but the things and ideas of His and without whose mercy it could not have been conceived. God as the Stamper of the Skies is an impressionist line expressing about the impressions made by Him. It is He who has fashioned the world as per His image and the world bears the stamps of His.

The poet passes a little further and marks a peacock saying:

Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay,
He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night
His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

If we take the peacock’s version, who is that who has made the green grass, worms and its feathers? He is a great peacock which dances all through the night. His languid tail is above us, lit with the myriad spots of light. God is the Peacock of peacocks. It is really splendid to see God through the peacock imagery. Side by side it is amazing to see the peacock so wonderfully painted and designed. Colours take us to a dreamy plane of thinking. How would it have been the brush and colours of God that He applied in making the peacock and its feathers! Really, the riot of colours is appalling, bluish, blackish, greenish and freckled and at the same time so fanciful, frenzied, imaginative and dreamy! The words ‘a monstrous peacock’ and ‘languid tail’ relate to something as awe or bizarre inculcated in.

We do not know if an Indian poet can write as such. William Butler Yeats is really a great poet so mythological and profound in his expression unparalleled in history, a paragon of poetic artistry and consummate craftsmanship. Had he visited India, it would have been great, but he could not! And we too failed to invite him!

Anashuya And Vijaya: W.B.Yeats

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

I do not know it nor can say to if anybody in English wrote such a poem of a mythical debate and discussion centring round human psyche and its chastity, feminine sensibility and its thinking, the notion of keeping of heart and soul dedicated and devoted with full loyalty banishing infidelity and toeing along the classical lines. The purity of heart, thought and idea how did it hold its sway over, how the human idea of the chastity of thought? These were but classical discussions which kept us engaged for as for purging the human soul. But psychology is something different, the layers of consciousness, if delved deep something other will come out and the things are not so as we think it to be. The crude things will remain crude, the core stuffs core. Anashuya’s devotion and dedication we admire and appreciate it, her satihood, the state of purity and chastity upholding feminine dignity and verve. But which is whose here?

We do not know the story as somebody can it that Yeats might have Anashuya on the model of Shakuntala and Vijaya on that of Dushyanta, but what to say it about, nothing sure of? Had Yeats been, we would have for an explanation as none can explain as the poet can himself and is the best critic of his poetry rather than anyone else doing the criticism. Anashuya is but a much debated character and whose character is it here we do not know.

W.B.Yeats is perhaps dreaming like Lawrence thinking about the daughters of Frieda in The  Virgin and the Gypsy. Or, maybe it that he is trying to write a mini Abhijnanshakuntalam  on a lyrico-dramatic format, trying his utmost best to take it further the side characters after assigning them roles and remodelling on that format.

It is the love of a rishi-kanya, a sati-sadhvi, how to feel it? How to feel the fragrance of the  flower blooming in the forest tract as Gray says it in Elegy? An adorer of love, a worshipper of heart and soul in reality as such has been delineated and portrayed herein. How do the  celestial ladies love? How do the royals and classicists? A classical and purist version of love and romance seen through the devotional framework of attachment and loyalty, serenity and calm is the thing of deliberation.. The flower of love, how to feel it, how to feel its fragrance? How the flora of classicism and the Vedic hermitage?

Pavitra prem, pavitra manna, sacred love, sacred inner heart, how to conceive it? How to dispel the images of others from the manna, the inner mind and heart? Niscchal prem, guileless love, how many of us take it to? Here we find Dushyanta forgetting Shakuntala, but such a thing has also happened in British history when Edward VIII abdicated his throne as for in relationship with an American divorcee.

How the Temple of Love? How the flight of imagination? How the ashramite maids in love in the midst of exotic flora and fauna? How the classical version of love story? How the royal story of love? Here the flamingos of love flying? Where the swans showing serenity? How to dispel it guile from the innocence of heart? Who is whose lover? Of the heart or the body? Why does the mind think in a suspicious way?

What it crosses over the heart of Anashuya and what does she take to, how the state of her mind and feeling, how to say it all that? How does Vijaya take to her love? The Cottage of Love and how the worshippers of it?

ANASHUYA AND VIJAYA

A little Indian temple in the Golden Age. Around it a garden; around that the forest. ANASHUYA, the young priestess, kneeling within the temple.

ANASHUYA

Send peace on all the lands and flickering corn.—
O, may tranquillity walk by his elbow
When wandering in the forest, if he love
No other.—Hear, and may the indolent flocks
Be plentiful.—And if he love another,
May panthers end him.—Hear, and load our king
With wisdom hour by hour.—May we two stand,
When we are dead, beyond the setting suns,
A little from the other shades apart,
With mingling hair, and play upon one lute.

VIJAYA [entering and throwing a lily at her]

Hail! hail, my Anashuya.

ANASHUYA

No: be still.
I, priestess of this temple, offer up
Prayers for the land.

VIJAYA

I will wait here, Amrita.

ANASHUYA

By mighty Brahma's ever rustling robe,
Who is Amrita? Sorrow of all sorrows!
Another fills your mind.

VIJAYA

My mother's name.

ANASHUYA [sings, coming out of the temple]

A sad, sad thought went by me slowly:
Sigh, O you little stars! O, sigh and shake your blue apparel!
The sad, sad thought has gone from me now wholly:
Sing, O you little stars! O, sing and raise your rapturous carol
To mighty Brahma, he who made you many as the sands,
And laid you on the gates of evening with his quiet hands.

[Sits down on the steps of the temple.]

 

Vijaya, I have brought my evening rice;
The sun has laid his chin on the gray wood,
Weary, with all his poppies gathered round him.

VIJAYA

The hour when Kama, full of sleepy laughter,
Rises, and showers abroad his fragrant arrows,
Piercing the twilight with their murmuring barbs.

ANASHUYA

See how the sacred old flamingoes come,
Painting with shadow all the marble steps:
Aged and wise, they seek their wonted perches
Within the temple, devious walking, made
To wander by their melancholy minds.
Yon tall one eyes my supper; swiftly chase him
Far, far away. I named him after you.
He is a famous fisher; hour by hour
He ruffles with his bill the minnowed streams.
Ah! there he snaps my rice. I told you so.
Now cuff him off. He's off! A kiss for you,
Because you saved my rice. Have you no thanks?

VIJAYA [sings]

Sing you of her, O first few stars,
Whom Brahma, touching with his finger, praises, for you hold
The van of wandering quiet; ere you be too calm and old,
Sing, turning in your cars,
Sing, till you raise your hands and sigh, and from your car heads peer,
With all your whirling hair, and drop many an azure tear.

ANASHUYA

What know the pilots of the stars of tears?

VIJAYA

Their faces are all worn, and in their eyes
Flashes the fire of sadness, for they see
The icicles that famish all the north,
Where men lie frozen in the glimmering snow;
And in the flaming forests cower the lion
And lioness, with all their whimpering cubs;
And, ever pacing on the verge of things,
The phantom, Beauty, in a mist of tears;
While we alone have round us woven woods,
And feel the softness of each other's hand,
Amrita, while——

ANASHUYA [going away from him]

Ah me, you love another,

[Bursting into tears.]

And may some dreadful ill befall her quick!

VIJAYA

I loved another; now I love no other.
Among the mouldering of ancient woods
You live, and on the village border she,
With her old father the blind wood-cutter;
I saw her standing in her door but now.

ANASHUYA

Vijaya, swear to love her never more,

VIJAYA

Ay, ay.

ANASHUYA

Swear by the parents of the gods,
Dread oath, who dwell on sacred Himalay,
On the far Golden Peak; enormous shapes,
Who still were old when the great sea was young
On their vast faces mystery and dreams;
Their hair along the mountains rolled and filled
From year to year by the unnumbered nests
Of aweless birds, and round their stirless feet
The joyous flocks of deer and antelope,
Who never hear the unforgiving hound.
Swear!

VIJAYA

By the parents of the gods, I swear.

ANASHUYA [sings]

I have forgiven, O new star!
Maybe you have not heard of us, you have come forth so newly,
You hunter of the fields afar!
Ah, you will know my loved one by his hunter's arrows truly,
Shoot on him shafts of quietness, that he may ever keep
An inner laughter, and may kiss his hands to me in sleep.

Farewell, Vijaya. Nay, no word, no word;
I, priestess of this temple, offer up
Prayers for the land.

[VIJAYA goes.]

O Brahma, guard in sleep
The merry lambs and the complacent kine,
The flies below the leaves, and the young mice
In the tree roots, and all the sacred flocks
Of red flamingo; and my love, Vijaya;
And may no restless fay with fidget finger
Trouble his sleeping: give him dreams of me.

What sort of king is it who cannot recognize even his wife? Is love for to be forgotten; a thing of forgetfulness? But against the backdrop of it, Anashuya cannot let Vijaya go and talk otherwise. Yeats’ poem is a study of celestial love. Here immortal hearts burning with the immortal flame of love are at dialogue with each other.  Two hearts in love are chatting dramatically.

I do not know who Anashuya? Who Vijaya? But Yeats knew it Anashuya. How did he come to know about them? An Anglo-Irish poet from across the saat samudras, how could he have? From which pundita did he hear the story? How did he hear the lore of ancient India? How could Yeats think of writing a poem on Anashuya, the talk of the Hindu household? Mostly the Hindu women talk about the name whatever be the denomination. The  feminine chastity, virginity is the crux of the matter as shown in the character of Anashuya is also a thing discussed from ancient times. But our self, can it be so purer and stainless? Is suspicion not present in the mind of man? Can jealousy be expelled really? Can one dispel the thoughts of the consciousness layers? The poem is dramatic and the dialogues are lively no doubt.  There is some internal action going on in the poem. Some sort of dialogue between the selves has been carried it forward.  Something of the personality split has been inculcated in.

Yeats wrote about Anashuya. The story of feminine chastity and purity would have charmed him on finding Gonne contradictory. Would have been in the know of Samson’s Delilah. Keats’ Lamia would have definitely stricken him. Even though we talk of celibacy and austerity, can we banish the carnal desires from our self? Even nuns cannot, fathers cannot, great rishis and munis cannot get victory over human charm, fascination, infatuation with and temptation. What did  it happen to Vishwamitra and Menaka?

Yeats would have definitely begun  Anashuya And Vijay in a dialogue format, but for some reason he failed to complete the poem centring round the chaste character of Anashuya and the other self at criss-crosses so lucidly. Anashuya is just an archetype, a motif, a symbol, a representation. There is something of the old classical times, but classicism cannot be golden all the times. What it is morality; didacticism has always a base rooted into the soil. Classicism though is based on a set of rules and regulations, a set of moral nomenclature and protocol, but everything is not in austerity, rigidity, and hardening of heart.  The ‘papa’ is but inherent in human ‘manna’ and man cannot banish it. Jealousy is but a part of our nature; it is in our heart. So, how to be pure? To be loyal, chaste, devoted and dedicated is good. To be noble, obedient, orderly and meek is the thing. But the Sati story can mislead it all in the absence of some strong reason.

Anashuya  is here just for character delineation and so is Vijaya, but the two like twins as contrasts in studies, as the two divided selves at dialogue with each other arguing and reasoning, submitting and contradicting one by one with their thesis and anti-thesis. To read Anashuya is to be reminded of Aurobondo’s Savitri. To read her is to be reminded of Menaka, Rambha, Urvasie and so on.

The Brahminical order always in search of purity, chastity and virginity, mystery, miracle and morality encourages such a characterization, but can it be possible all the times? Situations and circumstances too play a role n assigning a character. Those who talk of purity, are they pure and chaste from their within? Whatever be that, Anashuya is a link in Savitri, Sati and so on from the ancient point of view. But the case is different from Abhijnanshakuntalam point of view. How to keep if things are adverse, if situations force one?  We should try our utmost best to keep our hearts chaste.

People talk of devotional and divine Mira, lost in Krishnite love, but she faced stiff criticism for her royal lineage, for her yogan attire. It is said, the royals came to offer her a cup of poison and she took it. Sita had to pass the test of the fire ordeal.

But Anashuya is it here, one of Kalidasa and his Abhijnanshakuntalam? The poet draws and derives from. What it is not in Kalidasa’ Anashuya, that is in Yeats who intends on delineating her a bit. But Primyamvada’s part has been assigned to some other as the creation of Yeats.

Actually, he had wished to take two women with one lover, two hearts appearing to be one with one soul in them and they compromising them.

Anashuya And Vijaya is a poem based on the duality of the self, the duality of the heart. The other thing is this that Yeats gave his heart to one, adored her, but she in return gave to another.

Yeats wrote the poem before even when he had not met anyone as Indian allusions and anecdotes to be elaborated and referred to. It was his inward inclination which drew him close to Vedic, Upanishadic and Puranic vision; it was his inner yearning which drew solace from.

Is the discussion a self-to-self talk or a replication of the dialogue in between Anashuya and Priyamvada? The psychology of mind, the purity of feeling, the devotion of heart, what to say it about? How to keep ‘manna’ niscchal manna? How to keep the ‘manna’ free from ‘papa’? How to be chaste and pure from our within? What to say about Anashuya’s love for Vijaya and the romantic ‘manna’ diverting, digressing, transgressing and she checking the supposition and proposition it not with what it may be right or wrong, so whimsical and notion-flirted?

We do not know what does Yeats intend on saying in this poem? Which tale of Anashuya is it herein? The sense of purity, what is it in it? The sense of loyalty, what is it in it? Where does the love of heart take to? How the wings of imagination? Where does the manna go to?

 

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?

 

 

 

 

 

Partition: WH Auden

 By: Bijay Kant Dubey

Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,
Having never set eyes on this land he was called to partition
Between two peoples fanatically at odds,
With their different diets and incompatible gods.
'Time,' they had briefed him in London, 'is short. It's too late
For mutual reconciliation or rational debate:
The only solution now lies in separation.
The Viceroy thinks, as you will see from his letter,
That the less you are seen in his company the better,
So we've arranged to provide you with other accommodation.
We can give you four judges, two Moslem and two Hindu,
To consult with, but the final decision must rest with you.'

Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day
Patrolling the gardens to keep assassins away,
He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate
Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date
And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,
But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect
Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot,
And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,
But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,
A continent for better or worse divided.

The next day he sailed for England, where he quickly forgot
The case, as a good lawyer must. Return he would not,
Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot.

I do not know who can write such a poem as he has, if there is a poem like this? Is there a historian who has in this way? How was India partitioned? Who divided it and for what? How could it be? Can land be divided or it is settled? Who is here to answer? All are but silent about with the lips held tight and answerless. All these lie inherent in unmindful of what the politicians, constitution-makers, historians, nationalists, freedom fighters and so on say it or put it otherwise. Had they at least the land department fellows they could have at least resolved the issues lying pending and unsettled? But the politicians cannot be believed, in no way at all. The selfish men and liars can never be. Who the guilty men of the Partition and how would India be in a haste? Whose vested interests were what? Who wanted what? The intentions are clear and if not, we may sense. How is this transition for power, the transfer of power? Can things be shipped so easily? It takes time. Can the things be partitioned as it was? With the Bench of the Five in which we can feel the echo of the Panch-parameshwara, wherein God is, can settle the things is our old perception, but can judgement be made in its negation, from the Indian perspective? Who really a fanatic, who really a patriot, who is who of, God knows, time will say it. Those whom we think of fanatics may not be and those whom we nationalists may not be. Who is what, it is very difficult to say it, it is very difficult to judge. Without consulting the peoples, the lands were partitioned at the behest of communal and divisive forces, politicians with vested political interests. Auden though he had not been during the Partition time catches the true spirit and frenzy, the fever and fret of the moments hanging so heavy upon with ill-will, brutality and irresponsible handling of the sensitive situation. Could the leaders not feel it then? Could the administrators not? Could the politicians not? How the chroniclers of history as Auden fails them through his sense of law and justice? Here he is no doubt John Galsworthian in his disposition of law and justice.

Had Sir Cyril Radcliffe been to India, he could have taken time, doing it not in haste, but he was called, reined in to demarcate the boundaries. The answer is not, he had not been before. If this could be the thing, how would he in a huff the vehemently opposed parties, the things of those peoples who are fanatically at odds with their different diets and incompatible gods?

Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,
Having never set eyes on this land he was called to partition

Between two peoples fanatically at odds,
With their different diets and incompatible gods.

With the time briefed in London, schedules given, it was too late for a rational debate or conciliation and he thought of drawing the line as the contesting parties could not come to the table and the Partition appeared to be indispensable which but needed to be dealt with tougher iron hands, giving a deadly blow to the frenzied communal forces, given the vast mass of varying customs, sects, creeds, religions so differing from each other but aligning in the end    to a synthesis. The British too lacked that spirit and sense of dedication as they could not take it to be own failing to understand it properly and India too had been so ismic. The problem is none administered it well keeping the spirit of it and taking time to modernize.

The separation is the last solution. But the real story we do not know it. The problem lay it in illiteracy, black art, superstition, fatalism, inaction, backwardness, caste system, poverty, maladministration, mismanagement, backwardness, underdevelopment, ignorance, medievalism, conservatism, narrow nationalism, regionalism, parochial thinking, religious bigotry, fanaticism, ritualism and so on.

'Time,' they had briefed him in London, 'is short. It's too late
For mutual reconciliation or rational debate:
The only solution now lies in separation.

But the Viceroy had the company and band of own. So keeping it in view he maintained distance from and avoiding him tried his utmost to dispense with which but needed rough works done before. As for to reach at, he was offered the Hindu and Muslim judges, but we wonder that the judges too could not be of any use in bailing out of the political crisis. He too was at wit’s end as for how to begin and where to end, how the lot of his to dispense with.

The Viceroy thinks, as you will see from his letter,
That the less you are seen in his company the better,
So we've arranged to provide you with other accommodation.
We can give you four judges, two Moslem and two Hindu,
To consult with, but the final decision must rest with you.'

Shut up in a lonely mansion with the police patrolling the house to drive the suspected assassins away, he got down to work, demarcate and oversee the Partition plan which was not at all timely and up-to-date as he had been just with the old maps:

Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day
Patrolling the gardens to keep assassins away,
He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate
Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date
And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,
But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect
Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot,
And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,
But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,
A continent for better or worse divided.

A barrister he sailed for after his hectic activity and wrangling but so fraught with mistakes and miscomprehension, with so much misconception and misdemeanour. He went to and forgot just as a good lawyer does it for his profession sake as he misapprehended his presence could his life in trouble as for the trouble brewing and taking a drastic change with bloodshed, murder, loot, seize which K.A.Abbas’ The Refugee explains it best.

The next day he sailed for England, where he quickly forgot
The case, as a good lawyer must. Return he would not,
Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot.

But without knowing the history unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission, critical context one may not do justice with the poem. Who is the man whose arrival is awaited? One needs to know it. And Radcliff is the person here partitioning.  As for the judges, Hindu and Muslim, we are not sure of which Auden knows it best. Or, if we go through the minutes of the Partition, we shall know it by the way, but what pains us most is this that they divided it in a haste and with so much brutality doing justice to  a serious life matter in a childish way. The British too had not been serious in any way and their purpose too was to use and extract economically from rather than doing any good to. Can the lands be settled in such a way? Are the lands divided or settled? May I know it?

What the historians could not W.H.Auden has in his one small poem, has said it all what it happened, what they did and what our leaders and politicians. Could lands have been divided and settled in such a way? Is this the method of demarcation, drawing the line? Could Partition be done in such a way? Was it pre-planned, well-conceived, well thought-about? The answer is clearly, no. The reasonable men do not do as such, those who are logical at least. And I know it that they will not prescribe it into the courses of study as it open our eyes and the hidden truths will come out, if asked out of curiosity and logic is given to unravel the formulae of the Partition.

When we read the poem, Partition, we could not make a way, as for if Auden would take up Indian Partition and what interest will he get  from. But understood it through his indications that he was going to deal and grapple with a more sensitive and psychological matter which needed a sense of historicity and judgement which but a leftist like Auden and a socialist like George Bernard Shaw could have. Neither the Indians nor the so-called Pakistanis could think of the drastic consequences, the horror and terror of the Partition. It was not a partition of a nation, but of a sub-continent.

The Partition was a lapse on the part of judgement and the then time high court judges inducted in as the members too could opine in such a way is strange to think of toeing the religious lines as for the division of Mother India which is but a fallibility of human judgement as man is not above all those vested petty considerations, is the truth never to be put aside. What the people have got from is true from the prediction of Auden, better or worse the people of India and Pakistan can say it well. The times too had been awkward as such were the fellow people.  Nehru and Jinnah too could not feel about the   complications in their lust for sitting on chair. How can man be so cruel, we feel it on seeing the politicians, colonists and the colonized; the fundamentalists, fanatics and conservatives!

It was really a blunder to partition the sub-continent, a sin which Gods will never pardon it. Had there been no philanthropists and charitable people? Were there only the fundamentalists and communal forces involved in loot, plunder, murder, capture, violence and bloodshed? The fangs of the communal, divisive forces needed to be broken the moments it grew or appeared to be lethal and venomous. The census reports too were not up-to-date. The Governor-General too saw it tearlessly standing in the no-man’s land which could have been averted somehow, but in the absence of some wise judgement the mistake was committed in which the all as the parties were involved in practically more or less. Whose agendum was the Partition? How the resolutions taken? Was it done just to slaughter the innocent lives, to wipe out the common families mercilessly, to uproot them from their nativity? But something twitched him when he found the Partition taking a bad turn and people losing lives, getting displaced and dislocated and driven out of their homes and for that reason he refused to take the fee for his plan, burnt the papers and left in a huff. He really felt guilty of conscience, but what could he have if the times were so heavy upon and the situations so adverse? How strange is it that the judges too could not counsel him in the right way upholding judicature and jurisprudence, the Divine Justice, invoking the Goddess of Law from the human lapses, errors and trials of judgement?

W. B. Yeats, ‘The Symbolism of Poetry’

W. B. Yeats, ‘The Symbolism of Poetry’, in “The Symbolism of Poetry” by William Butler Yeats,
 first published in The Dome (April 1900); reprinted in Ideas of Good and Evil (1903).

[Source: Available at Richard Nordquist, About Education website - online; accessed 09.08.2016]

I
“Symbolism, as seen in the writers of our day, would have no value if it were not seen also, under one disguise or another, in every great imaginative writer,” writes Mr. Arthur Symons in The Symbolist Movement in Literature, a subtle book which I cannot praise as I would, because it has been dedicated to me; and he goes on to show how many profound writers have in the last few years sought for a philosophy of poetry in the doctrine of symbolism, and how even in countries where it is almost scandalous to seek for any philosophy of poetry, new writers are following them in their search.

We do not know what the writers of ancient times talked of among themselves, and one bull is all that remains of Shakespeare's talk, who was on the edge of modern times; and the journalist is convinced, it seems, that they talked of wine and women and politics, but never about their art, or never quite seriously about their art. He is certain that no one who had a philosophy of his art, or a theory of how he should write, has ever made a work of art, that people have no imagination who do not write without forethought and afterthought as he writes his own articles. He says this with enthusiasm, because he has heard it at so many comfortable dinner-tables, where some one had mentioned through carelessness, or foolish zeal, a book whose difficulty had offended indolence, or a man who had not forgotten that beauty is an accusation.

Those formulas and generalisations, in which a hidden sergeant has drilled the ideas of journalists and through them the ideas of all but all the modern world, have created in their turn a forgetfulness like that of soldiers in battle, so that journalists and their readers have forgotten, among many like events, that Wagner spent seven years arranging and explaining his ideas before he began his most characteristic music; that opera, and with it modern music, arose from certain talks at the house of one Giovanni Bardi of Florence; and that the Pléiade laid the foundations of modern French literature with a pamphlet.

Goethe has said, “a poet needs all philosophy, but he must keep it out of his work,” though that is not always necessary; and almost certainly no great art, outside England, where journalists are more powerful and ideas less plentiful than elsewhere, has arisen without a great criticism, for its herald or its interpreter and protector, and it may be for this reason that great art, now that vulgarity has armed itself and multiplied itself, is perhaps dead in England.

All writers, all artists of any kind, in so far as they have had any philosophical or critical power, perhaps just in so far as they have been deliberate artists at all, have had some philosophy, some criticism of their art; and it has often been this philosophy, or this criticism, that has evoked their most startling inspiration calling into outer life some portion of the divine life, or of the buried reality, which could alone extinguish in the emotions what their philosophy or their criticism would extinguish in the intellect. They have sought for no new thing, it may be, but only to understand and to copy the pure inspiration of early times, but because the divine life wars upon our outer life, and must needs change its weapons and its movements as we change ours, inspiration has come to them in beautiful startling shapes. The scientific movement brought with it a literature, which was always tending to lose itself in externalities of all kinds, in opinion, in declamation, in picturesque writing, in word-painting, or in what Mr. Symons has called an attempt “to build in brick and mortar inside the covers of a book“; and new writers have begun to dwell upon the element of evocation, of suggestion, upon what we call the symbolism in great writers.

II
In “Symbolism in Painting,” I tried to describe the element of symbolism that is in pictures and sculpture, and described a little the symbolism in poetry, but did not describe at all the continuous indefinable symbolism which is the substance of all style.

There are no lines with more melancholy beauty than these by Burns:

The white moon is setting behind the white wave,
And Time is setting with me, O!

and these lines are perfectly symbolical. Take from them the whiteness of the moon and of the wave, whose relation to the setting of Time is too subtle for the intellect, and you take from them their beauty. But, when all are together, moon and wave and whiteness and setting Time and the last melancholy cry, they evoke an emotion which cannot be evoked by any other arrangement of colours and sounds and forms. We may call this metaphorical writing, but it is better to call it symbolical writing, because metaphors are not profound enough to be moving, when they are not symbols, and when they are symbols they are the most perfect of all, because the most subtle, outside of pure sound, and through them one can the best find out what symbols are.

If one begins the reverie with any beautiful lines that one can remember, one finds they are like those by Burns. Begin with this line by Blake -

The gay fishes on the wave when the moon sucks up the dew;

or these lines by Nash - 

Brightness falls from the air,
Queens have died young and fair,
Dust hath closed Helen's eye;
or these lines by Shakespeare -
Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood;
Who once a day with his embossed froth
The turbulent surge shall cover;

or take some line that is quite simple, that gets its beauty from its place in a story, and see how it flickers with the light of the many symbols that have given the story its beauty, as a sword-blade may flicker with the light of burning towers.

All sounds, all colours, all forms, either because of their preordained energies or because of long association, evoke indefinable and yet precise emotions, or, as I prefer to think, call down among us certain disembodied powers, whose footsteps over our hearts we call emotions; and when sound, and colour, and form are in a musical relation, a beautiful relation to one another, they become, as it were, one sound, one colour, one form, and evoke an emotion that is made out of their distinct evocations and yet is one emotion.

The same relation exists between all portions of every work of art, whether it be an epic or a song, and the more perfect it is, and the more various and numerous the elements that have flowed into its perfection, the more powerful will be the emotion, the power, the god it calls among us. Because an emotion does not exist, or does not become perceptible and active among us, till it has found its expression, in colour or in sound or in form, or in all of these, and because no two modulations or arrangements of these evoke the same emotion, poets and painters and musicians, and in a less degree because their effects are momentary, day and night and cloud and shadow, are continually making and unmaking mankind.

It is indeed only those things which seem useless or very feeble that have any power, and all those things that seem useful or strong, armies, moving wheels, modes of architecture, modes of government, speculations of the reason, would have been a little different if some mind long ago had not given itself to some emotion, as a woman gives herself to her lover, and shaped sounds or colours or forms, or all of these, into a musical relation, that their emotion might live in other minds.

A little lyric evokes an emotion, and this emotion gathers others about it and melts into their being in the making of some great epic; and at last, needing an always less delicate body, or symbol, as it grows more powerful, it flows out, with all it has gathered, among the blind instincts of daily life, where it moves a power within powers, as one sees ring within ring in the stem of an old tree. This is maybe what Arthur O'Shaughnessy meant when he made his poets say they had built Nineveh with their sighing; and I am certainly never certain, when I hear of some war, or of some religious excitement or of some new manufacture, or of anything else that fills the ear of the world, that it has not all happened because of something that a boy piped in Thessaly. I remember once telling a seer to ask one among the gods who, as she believed, were standing about her in their symbolic bodies, what would come of a charming but seeming trivial labour of a friend, and the form answering, “the devastation of peoples and the overwhelming of cities.” I doubt indeed if the crude circumstance of the world, which seems to create all our emotions, does more than reflect, as in multiplying mirrors, the emotions that have come to solitary men in moments of poetical contemplation; or that love itself would be more than an animal hunger but for the poet and his shadow the priest, for unless we believe that outer things are the reality, we must believe that the gross is the shadow of the subtle, that things are wise before they become foolish, and secret before they cry out in the market-place. Solitary men in moments of contemplation receive, as I think, the creative impulse from the lowest of the Nine Hierarchies, and so make and unmake mankind, and even the world itself, for does not “the eye altering alter all”?

Our towns are copied fragments from our breast;
And all man's Babylons strive but to impart
The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart.

IIIThe purpose of rhythm, it has always seemed to me, is to prolong the moment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake, which is the one moment of creation, by hushing us with an alluring monotony, while it holds us waking by variety, to keep us in that state of perhaps real trance, in which the mind liberated from the pressure of the will is unfolded in symbols. If certain sensitive persons listen persistently to the ticking of a watch, or gaze persistently on the monotonous flashing of a light, they fall into the hypnotic trance; and rhythm is but the ticking of a watch made softer, that one must needs listen, and various, that one may not be swept beyond memory or grow weary of listening; while the patterns of the artist are but the monotonous flash woven to take the eyes in a subtler enchantment. I have heard in meditation voices that were forgotten the moment they had spoken; and I have been swept, when in more profound meditation, beyond all memory but of those things that came from beyond the threshold of waking life.

I was writing once at a very symbolical and abstract poem, when my pen fell on the ground; and as I stooped to pick it up, I remembered some phantastic adventure that yet did not seem phantastic, and then another like adventure, and when I asked myself when these things had happened, I found, that I was remembering my dreams for many nights. I tried to remember what I had done the day before, and then what I had done that morning; but all my waking life had perished from me, and it was only after a struggle that I came to remember it again, and as I did so that more powerful and startling life perished in its turn.

Had my pen not fallen on the ground and so made me turn from the images that I was weaving into verse, I would never have known that meditation had become trance, for I would have been like one who does not know that he is passing through a wood because his eyes are on the pathway. So I think that in the making and in the understanding of a work of art, and the more easily if it is full of patterns and symbols and music, we are lured to the threshold of sleep, and it may be far beyond it, without knowing that we have ever set our feet upon the steps of horn or of ivory.

IV
Besides emotional symbols, symbols that evoke emotions alone,--and in this sense all alluring or hateful things are symbols, although their relations with one another are too subtle to delight us fully, away from rhythm and pattern,--there are intellectual symbols, symbols that evoke ideas alone, or ideas mingled with emotions; and outside the very definite traditions of mysticism and the less definite criticism of certain modern poets, these alone are called symbols. Most things belong to one or another kind, according to the way we speak of them and the companions we give them, for symbols, associated with ideas that are more than fragments of the shadows thrown upon the intellect by the emotions they evoke, are the playthings of the allegorist or the pedant, and soon pass away.

If I say “white” or “purple” in an ordinary line of poetry, they evoke emotions so exclusively that I cannot say why they move me; but if I bring them into the same sentence with such obvious intellectual symbols as a cross or a crown of thorns, I think of purity and sovereignty. Furthermore, innumerable meanings, which are held to “white” or to “purple” by bonds of subtle suggestion, and alike in the emotions and in the intellect, move visibly through my mind, and move invisibly beyond the threshold of sleep, casting lights and shadows of an indefinable wisdom on what had seemed before, it may be, but sterility and noisy violence.

It is the intellect that decides where the reader shall ponder over the procession of the symbols, and if the symbols are merely emotional, he gazes from amid the accidents and destinies of the world; but if the symbols are intellectual too, he becomes himself a part of pure intellect, and he is himself mingled with the procession. If I watch a rushy pool in the moonlight, my emotion at its beauty is mixed with memories of the man that I have seen ploughing by its margin, or of the lovers I saw there a night ago; but if I look at the moon herself and remember any of her ancient names and meanings, I move among divine people, and things that have shaken off our mortality, the tower of ivory, the queen of waters, the shining stag among enchanted woods, the white hare sitting upon the hilltop, the fool of faery with his shining cup full of dreams, and it may be “make a friend of one of these images of wonder,” and “meet the Lord in the air.” So, too, if one is moved by Shakespeare, who is content with emotional symbols that he may come the nearer to our sympathy, one is mixed with the whole spectacle of the world; while if one is moved by Dante, or by the myth of Demeter, one is mixed into the shadow of God or of a goddess. So too one is furthest from symbols when one is busy doing this or that, but the soul moves among symbols and unfolds in symbols when trance, or madness, or deep meditation has withdrawn it from every impulse but its own. “I then saw,” wrote Gérard de Nerval of his madness, “vaguely drifting into form, plastic images of antiquity, which outlined themselves, became definite, and seemed to represent symbols of which I only seized the idea with difficulty.” In an earlier time he would have been of that multitude, whose souls austerity withdrew, even more perfectly than madness could withdraw his soul, from hope and memory, from desire and regret, that they might reveal those processions of symbols that men bow to before altars, and woo with incense and offerings. But being of our time, he has been like Maeterlinck, like Villiers de I'Isle-Adam in Axël, like all who are preoccupied with intellectual symbols in our time, a foreshadower of the new sacred book, of which all the arts, as somebody has said, are beginning to dream. How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call the progress of the world, and lay their hands upon men's heartstrings again, without becoming the garment of religion as in old times?

V
If people were to accept the theory that poetry moves us because of its symbolism, what change should one look for in the manner of our poetry? A return to the way of our fathers, a casting out of descriptions of nature for the sake of nature, of the moral law for the sake of the moral law, a casting out of all anecdotes and of that brooding over scientific opinion that so often extinguished the central flame in Tennyson, and of that vehemence that would make us do or not do certain things; or, in other words, we should come to understand that the beryl stone was enchanted by our fathers that it might unfold the pictures in its heart, and not to mirror our own excited faces, or the boughs waving outside the window.

With this change of substance, this return to imagination, this understanding that the laws of art, which are the hidden laws of the world, can alone bind the imagination, would come a change of style, and we would cast out of serious poetry those energetic rhythms, as of a man running, which are the invention of the will with its eyes always on something to be done or undone; and we would seek out those wavering, meditative, organic rhythms, which are the embodiment of the imagination, that neither desires nor hates, because it has done with time, and only wishes to gaze upon some reality, some beauty; nor would it be any longer possible for anybody to deny the importance of form, in all its kinds, for although you can expound an opinion, or describe a thing, when your words are not quite well chosen, you cannot give a body to something that moves beyond the senses, unless your words are as subtle, as complex, as full of mysterious life, as the body of a flower or of a woman.

The form of sincere poetry, unlike the form of the “popular poetry,” may indeed be sometimes obscure, or ungrammatical as in some of the best of the Songs of Innocence and Experience, but it must have the perfections that escape analysis, the subtleties that have a new meaning every day, and it must have all this whether it be but a little song made out of a moment of dreamy indolence, or some great epic made out of the dreams of one poet and of a hundred generations whose hands were never weary of the sword.