Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes
Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas
I received an email communication this morning from my erstwhile physician inviting me to his country estate for a swim. The doctor’s email was meaningfully concluded by the inebriating words, “Full many a glorious day…” which apart from capturing the brilliance of the Sabbath morn instantly inspired me to visit what is predominantly the sustaining poetry of my prep school education. To the credit of our masters we didn’t linger upon the likes of Geoffrey Chaucer (1342 – 1400) and William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) but ventured into the less translational renditions of the English language advanced by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822) or William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850). It was however Dylan Thomas (1914 – 1953), with his buccaneering drunken history, who succeeded to invite our attention.
Sonnet 33:
William Shakespeare
Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all-triumphant splendour on my brow;
‘But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath mask’d him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth.
Not everybody loves Shakespeare. Nor Dylan Thomas for that matter. Below is a “Reply” I read annotated to Fern Hill in Poem Hunter.
James Charles
This sucks. It’s not ‘deep’ it’s just confusing and lacks meaning or point. I have severe insomnia and this actually put me to sleep for once. Thank you Dylan Thomas for sucking so much hairy monkey rock that you can cure people’s sleeping troubles.
It took me a moment to recover from that particular observation. Not only does the author attack Dylan Thomas; his ambience is completely au contraire in my opinion. Yet his succinct informal disposition is nonetheless intriguing because without question it illustrates that no matter who you might be, no matter the extent of your current public romance, it is guaranteed not everyone will concur.
A considerable amount of instruction is I believe wastefully spent in one’s youth advancing the proposition of what is right for you. What is wrong about the well-intentioned instruction is that it presumes there is in fact a right or wrong way to follow. I’m mean, really! Who says? So obvious is the apparent conviction that there is seldom an enquiry surrounding the merits or the etymology of the instruction. It would be purely strategic or tactical to do so; that is, to examine not so much the quality of the unseen future as the eminence of prevailing present. It is a posture worthy of a military man for example; or anyone else intent upon avoiding a potential pitfall. Otherwise I fear the commencement is predicted by the conclusion which, apart from being a confusing way to reason, threatens to commingle the pursuit with untold commotion and obfuscation.
This is not to say there will be no commotion or obfuscation. But there are preferred kinds of tumult or unintelligibility; namely, those that are not self-inflicted. Yet as unwitting as it may be, very often the disturbance is the product of incorrect interpretation only.
From my limited 75 years experience when once one adopts a proposed agenda – the path along which one intends to travel – any contradiction is frequently and mistakenly interpreted as interference. Considering the twists and turns, the eddies and swirls by which water descends crashingly from the mountaintop to the pacific lake far below, I hardly think the prediction of the proper or appropriate way to go is worthwhile. Instead it would to my thinking be more befitting to discuss the probability of conflict and contradiction along the way, to open the mind not to the soothing passage of a canal boat but rather the raucous likelihood of a turbulent path. The object of this manifestly practical approach is importantly not only to bypass conflict (by whatever means one pretends to do so); rather to confront the obstacle with the determined view not necessarily to stay the course nor to sidestep the hurdle but instead to acknowledge that one’s own evaluation and assessment is warranted and need not be persuaded or readjusted by others.
Once again I emphasize that unchangeable dedication is not the promotion. It is the willingness to accept and understand that alignment of personal satisfaction is essential within oneself and without others. Naturally this does not eliminate conflict; but it quells the anxiety about its bearing. So much of our civilization is modelled upon intransigence; having the correct this or that; being with the right people; doing the right thing. But we as often forget or overlook that there is no such thing as carved in stone; and, even if there were, it is an inheritance from cave men.