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Author: Linda Sue Grimes

  • Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief”

    Image: Gerard Manley Hopkins – Inspirational Jesuits

    Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief”

    The third in the group of sonnets widely known as “the terrible sonnets,” this one,“No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,” presents a speaker experiencing grief so intense that it feels beyond limit or measure.

    In the octave, suffering overwhelms his body and spirit and leads to urgent appeals for divine comfort. In the sestet, the speaker turns inward, describing his mind as dangerous terrain. The sonnet ends with a grim acknowledgment of mortality and the daily release offered by sleep.

    Introduction and Text of “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief”

    Father Hopkins’ “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief” is a sonnet that records extreme mental and spiritual suffering. Written in the traditional Petrarchan form, it moves from an octave of mounting anguish to a sestet of reflection and hard-earned recognition. 

    The speaker struggles to express grief that feels limitless and that is unrelieved by faith or prayer. Dense sound patterns and abrupt phrasing mirror the pressure of despair. Rather than offering comfort, the poem confronts pain directly, showing how the mind and soul endure when consolation seems absent.

    No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief

    No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
    More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
    Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
    Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
    My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief-
    Woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old ánvil wínce and síng —
    Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked “No ling-
    Ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief.”
    O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
    Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
    May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
    Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
    Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
    Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

    Reading

    Commentary on “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief”

    The sonnet moves from outward cries of anguish to inward examination of mind. The octave presents grief as limitless, cumulative, and shared with the world at large. In the sestet, suffering becomes psychological, depicted as dangerous inner terrain. The poem ends without relief, settling instead on a sober recognition of death and the temporary rest found in sleep.

    Octave: “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief”

    No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
    More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
    Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
    Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
    My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief-
    Woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old ánvil wínce and síng —
    Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked “No ling-
    Ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief.”

    The octave opens with a blunt assertion, denying that suffering reaches a final point. Grief, in this view, has no bottom and no boundary. The phrase “pitched past pitch of grief” reinforces this idea by suggesting that pain has gone beyond any scale by which it might be measured. Grief is not merely intense; it has surpassed all known limits.

    In the second line, the speaker explains how pain increases rather than diminishes.  Each new pang learns from the last. Suffering becomes more violent because it has practiced its activity and method. The verb “wring” suggests twisting pressure, as if grief grips and contorts the speaker from within. Pain is physical as well as mental, as the grip tightens.

    The speaker then turns to directly address urgency and confusion. The repetition of “where” emphasizes abandonment rather than disbelief. The speaker still believes in comfort but cannot find it. 

    The following line continues the appeal. The speaker invokes maternal mercy and protection, yet relief does not come. These lines reveal a faith under strain, not a faith rejected, but one tested by silence.

    Next, the speaker describes the sheer force of personal grief. The cries are compared to herds, large and uncontrollable. Individual anguish gathers into a single overwhelming mass. By calling it “world-sorrow,” the speaker enlarges private suffering into something shared by humanity across time. The grief feels ancient, collective, and unavoidable.

    This sorrow plays out “on an age-old anvil,” an image suggesting repeated blows over centuries. The anvil implies endurance and also punishment. On it, the cries “wince and sing.” Pain produces sound, and suffering is shaped into expression. The poem itself becomes the product of this hammering, forged under pressure.

    The octave ends with the sudden emotional recoil. The intensity momentarily subsides, only to be replaced by fury that demands an end: “No lingering!” The speaker feels forced to compress suffering into brevity, not because it is resolved, but because it is unbearable. The octave closes without comfort, suspended between eruption and exhaustion.

    Sestet: “O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall”

    O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
    Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
    May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
    Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
    Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
    Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

    The sestet turns inward, shifting attention from external cries to internal experience. The mind is described as a vast landscape, filled not with beauty but with danger. These “mountains” are steep and unstable, ending in sudden drops. Mental suffering is portrayed as perilous terrain.

    The cliffs are terrifying because they are steep and impossible to measure. Those who have not faced such depths cannot understand them.  The two half lines “Hold them cheap / May who ne’er hung there” conspire to dismisses the judgments of outsiders. Only those who have been suspended over these mental precipices know their true danger.

    The speaker then acknowledges human limitation.  Endurance is described as “small,” easily overwhelmed. Prolonged suffering exceeds what a person can reasonably bear. This admission removes any suggestion of weakness or failure. The problem is not the sufferer but the scale of the suffering.

    At this point, the speaker addresses the self (sou) directly; he recognizes personal vulnerability and degradation. The command to “creep” suggests retreat rather than triumph. Survival, not victory, becomes the goal.

    The comfort that follows is limited and unstable. Any relief comes amid turbulence. There is no calm resolution, only brief shelter within chaos. Comfort exists, but it is fragile and temporary.

    The sonnet ends with a stark conclusion.  Life moves inevitably toward death. Each day rehearses that ending through sleep, which brings both rest and unconsciousness. Sleep offers a small mercy, a pause from suffering, but it also mirrors death itself.

    The sestet does not undo the despair of the octave. Instead, it reframes it. The speaker accepts the limits of endurance and the reality of mortality. The sonnet closes with clarity rather than consolation, acknowledging that while suffering may not be cured, it can, at least, be named and endured one day at a time.

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  • Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day”

    Image: Gerard Manley Hopkins – National Portrait Gallery, London

    Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day”

    The speaker Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day” is confronting spiritual desolation, interior darkness, and the sense of abandonment by God. 

    Awakening into psychological night, the speaker measures time not in hours but in years of suffering. His cries feel unheard, like letters sent to one who lives far away. In the sestet, suffering turns inward as his soul becomes both the source and the punishment of torment.

    Introduction and Text of “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day”

    This sonnet is the second installment belonging to the group of six poems often called the “terrible sonnets.”  They focus on intense inward struggle in highly compressed language, and they reveal a profound sense of spiritual trial. The speaker is describing an internal condition of darkness that persists even after waking. 

    The poem follows the traditional Petrarchan structure, but the poet displayed the poem on the page separating the octave into two quatrains and the sestet into two tercets. The octave presents the condition of suffering, followed by the sestet which deepens and internalizes that suffering. The language remains quite visceral, yet sacramental and judicial, suggesting punishment and endurance.

    I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day

    I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
    What hours, O what black hours we have spent
    This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
    And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.

    With witness I speak this. But where I say
    Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
    Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
    To dearest him that lives alas! away.

    I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
    Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
    Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

    Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
    The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
    As I am mine, their sweating selves, but worse.

    Reading

    Commentary on “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day”

    In the octave, the speaker presents spiritual suffering as prolonged night and unanswered prayer, while the sestet reveals suffering as internalized judgment.

    Octave: “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.”

    I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
    What hours, O what black hours we have spent
    This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
    And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.

    With witness I speak this. But where I say
    Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
    Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
    To dearest him that lives alas! away.

    The octave opens abruptly: “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.” The speaker awakens, yet awakening does not bring light. The word fell suggests something savage, cruel, or deadly, as though darkness itself were an attacking force. 

    Day has failed to arrive, not externally but internally. The speaker’s consciousness remains trapped in night. This darkness is not merely the absence of light but a palpable weight that can be felt.

    The second line intensifies this experience. The repetition emphasizes exhaustion. These hours are not ordinary; they are “black hours,” heavy with dread.   The speaker addresses his own heart directly, asking it to remember what it has seen and where it has wandered, suggesting a night filled with disturbing thoughts, memories, or spiritual visions that cannot be escaped even in sleep.

    The line “And more must, in yet longer light’s delay” extends the suffering into the future. Relief is postponed; light is delayed. The speaker anticipates further endurance without comfort. The octave has thus established a defining theme: suffering continues; the speaker is conscious of the fact that it is also unavoidable.

    In the second quatrain, the speaker asserts his testimony.  He is not exaggerating or indulging emotion; instead, he is claiming authority as one who has endured. Yet immediately, time expands. When he says “hours,” he means “years,” and beyond that, “life.” What began as a single night becomes a metaphor for an entire existence marked by anguish. The darkness is not episodic but continually defining.

    The lament itself takes the form of “cries countless.” These cries are compared to missives sent to a loved one far away.   The metaphor is striking. The speaker believes his cries are addressed to God, “dearest him,” yet they receive no reply. Like letters that never reach their destination, these prayers feel wasted, unheard, and perhaps unopened. God is known to be living, yet distant.

    The emotional force of the octave lies in this tension: the speaker continues to cry out, continues to bear witness, even while believing those cries go unanswered.  The speaker is not revealing disbelief but instead he is demonstrating faith that yet suffers. 

    The speaker holds no compunction to deny God’s existence, a suffering humanity often is wont to do; instead, he suffers under God’s silence. The speaker therefore is expressing despair not as rebellion but as endurance under abandonment. The night continues, the cries continue, and the speaker remains awake within it.

    Sestet: “I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree”

    I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
    Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
    Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

    Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
    The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
    As I am mine, their sweating selves, but worse.

    The sestet takes a decisive inward turn. Where the octave emphasized time and unanswered cries, the sestet focuses on the body and self as the site of punishment.  The speaker does not merely feel bitterness; he is bitterness. Gall, a bitter substance associated with suffering and poison, suggests spiritual nausea. Heartburn implies a burning from within, a pain generated internally rather than inflicted from without.

    The speaker attributes this condition to “God’s most deep decree.” This suffering is not accidental or random. It is permitted, even ordained. The bitterness is something the speaker must taste, yet the shocking revelation follows: “my taste was me.” The self (soul) becomes both the instrument and the substance of suffering. There is no external punishment necessary; identity itself is the affliction.

    The line “Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse” intensifies the embodiment of despair.  The curse is not simply symbolic; it saturates the physical body. Bones, flesh, and blood—the fundamental elements of life—are all implicated. Suffering is total, leaving no refuge within the soul. The speaker’s claims suggest a complete inhabitation or incarnation of pain, as though despair has become structural.

    The metaphor of fermentation is created in the line “Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours.” Yeast is normally a source of growth and life, but here it produces sourness. The spirit works upon itself destructively. The self generates its own decay. This image reinforces the idea that suffering is self-contained, inescapable, but continuous.

    In the final lines, the speaker broadens his vision.  He recognizes his condition as a foretaste of damnation. The lost are punished not by external flames but by being trapped within themselves. Their scourge is to be “their sweating selves.” The speaker identifies with this fate, acknowledging that he already experiences something like it, though he believes theirs will be worse.

    The sestet ends without consolation. There is no resolution, no light breaking through. Instead, the poem concludes with recognition and endurance. The speaker understands the nature of suffering more clearly, but understanding does not remove it. The sonnet closes in grim clarity rather than hope.

  • Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life”

    Gerard Manley Hopkins – National Portrait Gallery, London

    Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life”

    The speaker in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ sonnet “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life” explores the sense of spiritual, national, and personal estrangement during years in Ireland.  Written with the same intensity that characterizes Hopkins’ work, the poem dramatizes exile as both an external condition and an inward trial. 

    In the octave, the speaker is focusing on separation from family and his country England, and in the sestet, he turns inward to the silence imposed by his vocation, leaving him isolated yet faithful.

    Introduction and Text of “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life”

    Father Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was a Jesuit priest as well as a poet, wrote many of his most profound poems during periods of emotional strain and vocational doubt.  He wrote “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life” in 1889 during his final years in Ireland; he created a speaker in the poem who is reflecting an acute sense of displacement—geographical, familial, and spiritual. 

    Although Father Hopkins remained consistently obedient to his religious calling, he often felt alienated from England, misunderstood by authority, and silenced as a poet. This sonnet, however, reveals not rebellion but suffering endured with disciplined faith, unveiling exile as a severe trial for spiritual testing.

    As the first of the six “terrible sonnets,” “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life” remains distinctive because its sense of despair is aimed less at abstract spiritual terror and more at everyday human loss—failed relationships, missed vocations, and social estrangement. 

    However, like the others, it offers little comfort and speaks in a raw, urgent voice.  It is unusual in how little it turns to nature or directly to Christ. Instead, it keeps its focus on the speaker’s painful isolation from family, community, and any sense of being useful as a priest.

    To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life

    To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life
    Among strangers. Father and mother dear,
    Brothers and sisters are in Christ not near
    And he my peace my parting, sword and strife.
    England, whose honour O all my heart woos, wife
    To my creating thought, would neither hear
    Me, were I pleading, plead nor do I: I wear-
    y of idle a being but by where wars are rife.

    I am in Ireland now; now I am at a thírd
    Remove. Not but in all removes I can
    Kind love both give and get. Only what word
    Wisest my heart breeds dark heaven’s baffling ban
    Bars or hell’s spell thwarts. This to hoard unheard,
    Heard unheeded, leaves me a lonely began.

    Reading

    Commentary on “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life”

    Father Hopkins’ sonnet is a meditation on exile and silence. The octave emphasizes outward separation—from family, country, and recognition—while the sestet deepens the conflict by revealing an inward blockage: the poet’s inability to speak or be heard. 

    Octave: “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life”

    To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life
    Among strangers. Father and mother dear,
    Brothers and sisters are in Christ not near
    And he my peace my parting, sword and strife.
    England, whose honour O all my heart woos, wife
    To my creating thought, would neither hear
    Me, were I pleading, plead nor do I: I wear-
    y of idle a being but by where wars are rife.

    The speaker open the octave with a stark declaration: “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life.” The phrasing is deliberate and emphatic, with “lot” and “life” placed side by side to suggest that estrangement is not incidental but foundational. The speaker does not merely feel like a stranger; seeming a stranger has become the defining pattern of his existence. The verb “lies” suggests fate or destiny, implying that this condition is imposed rather than chosen.

    The repetition of “stranger” in the second line—“Among strangers”—reinforces the sense of isolation. The speaker is not simply alone; he is surrounded by others from whom he feels fundamentally divided. This alienation is then specified in personal terms: separation from “Father and mother dear” and from “Brothers and sisters.” 

    These lines resonate deeply, as Hopkins had consciously embraced a religious vocation at the cost of ordinary familial intimacy. Yet the phrase “are in Christ not near” reveals a crucial nuance. The separation is not merely geographical or emotional but mediated through faith. His family exists “in Christ,” but spiritual unity does not erase physical absence.

    Line four intensifies the tension through paradox: “And he my peace my parting, sword and strife.” The “he” here refers unmistakably to Christ, echoing Christ’s own words in the Gospel that he came not to bring peace but a sword. 

    Christ is simultaneously the speaker’s source of peace and the cause of painful division.  This line crystallizes the poem’s central conflict: obedience to God has fractured his earthly attachments.

    England emerges next as a figure of longing and betrayal. The speaker personifies the nation as a beloved woman: “England, whose honour O all my heart woos, wife / To my creating thought.” England is not merely homeland; it is the imaginative and cultural source of his poetry. 

    The speaker’s “creating thought” is bound to England’s landscape, language, and traditions. Yet this beloved “wife” refuses to listen. England “would neither hear / Me, were I pleading.” The rejection is imagined even before the plea is made.

    Significantly, the speaker then states, “plead nor do I.” Either Pride, humility, or exhaustion restrains him from petitioning for recognition or return. The enjambment underscores weariness: “I wear- / y of idle a being but by where wars are rife.” The broken word “weary” visually enacts fatigue. 

    The speaker feels useless, idle, unless he is placed where conflict exists. The “wars” here may be literal—cultural and political unrest in Ireland—or spiritual, referring to inner trials. Either way, the octave closes with a man who sees struggle as the only justification for his continued existence.

    Throughout the octave, the speaker’s syntax becomes knotted and his clauses have become compressed. This density mirrors his emotional burden. There is no lyric ease, no pastoral consolation. Instead, the octave establishes exile as a lived reality—accepted but not softened.

    Sestet: “I am in Ireland now; now I am at a thírd”

    I am in Ireland now; now I am at a thírd
    Remove. Not but in all removes I can
    Kind love both give and get. Only what word
    Wisest my heart breeds dark heaven’s baffling ban
    Bars or hell’s spell thwarts. This to hoard unheard,
    Heard unheeded, leaves me a lonely began.

    The sestet shifts from the general condition of estrangement to a precise location: “I am in Ireland now.” The repetition of “now” emphasizes immediacy and finality. Ireland is not a temporary assignment but a present, enduring state. 

    The speaker then deepens the sense of displacement by calling this “a thírd / Remove.” The word “remove” suggests not travel but distance layered upon distance—England removed from family, and Ireland removed yet again from England.

    (Note the acute accent mark over the “i” in third:  Hopkins often placed accent marks to indicate a stress that might be passed over in a quick reading.  He wanted to assure that his sprung rhythm received its full impact.)

    The speaker then immediately qualifies this isolation: “Not but in all removes I can / Kind love both give and get.” Despite exile, he affirms the possibility of charity. This assertion is a theologically critical.

    Love is not extinguished by displacement; grace operates even in separation. The line resists self-pity and aligns the speaker’s world view with Jesuit discipline, which demands adaptability and service wherever one is sent.

    However, the speaker’s deepest anguish follows:  “Only what word / Wisest my heart breeds dark heaven’s baffling ban / Bars or hell’s spell thwarts.” Here the speaker turns inward, focusing not on where he is but on what he cannot do. His “wisest” words—his poetry—are blocked. 

    Heaven itself seems to be imposing a “ban,” a prohibition that frustrates expression. The phrase “dark heaven” is especially striking. Heaven, normally associated with clarity and illumination, becomes obscure and baffling.  The alternative force is equally terrifying: “hell’s spell.” Whether divine silence or demonic interference, the result is the same—his words are thwarted. 

    This line reveals one of the most painful aspects of the poet’s late life: the sense that his poetic gift, given by God, is simultaneously withheld by God. Silence becomes both command and punishment.

    The final couplet intensifies the tragedy: “This to hoard unheard, / Heard unheeded, leaves me a lonely began.” The speaker is forced to “hoard” his words, storing them without release. Even when heard, they are “unheeded.” 

    The repetition emphasizes futility. The phrase “a lonely began” is deliberately and strangely ungrammatical. “Began” suggests something unfinished, a life or vocation that never reached fulfillment.  The speaker is not calling himself a failure, but he is implying that he feel incomplete.

    Yet even here, the speaker sees despair as part of his discipline. He is not accusing God; he is only lamenting his lot.  The speaker conclude his revelation with witness not rebellion.  The speaker is recording his condition faithfully; he trusts that meaning may lie well beyond his own understanding. Although the loneliness is real, he can bear it through obedience.

    In the sestet, then, exile becomes interiorized. The outer fact of Ireland gives way to the inner trial of silence.  The speaker’s greatest suffering is not being far from England but being cut off from utterance. 

    For this speaker, this wound is the deepest. Yet the very existence of the poem contradicts the ban it describes. In writing this sonnet, the poet speaks from within silence, transforming isolation into testimony.

    Taken together, the octave and sestet reveal a soul suspended between fidelity and desolation. “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life” is not a cry for rescue but a record of endurance. 

    The speaker/poet accepts exile as part of his vocation, even when it costs him voice, recognition, and comfort. The sonnet stands as one of his most austere achievements—a poem that does not resolve suffering but sanctifies it through truthful speech.

  • Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “The Habit of Perfection”

    Image: Gerard Manley Hopkins – Inspirational Jesuits

    Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “The Habit of Perfection”

    Father Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “The Habit of Perfection” dramatizes the importance of silencing and stilling each of the five senses in order to advance in the spiritual realm.

    Introduction with Text of “The Habit of Perfection”

    The title “The Habit of Perfection” of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem features a pun on the term “habit.” As a monk, the poet had accepted the garb of the monastic, sometimes called a habit. Of course, the ordinary meaning of common routine also functions fully.

    About the importance of silence, Paramahansa Yogananda has averred, “What joy awaits discovery in the silence behind the portals of your mind no human tongue can tell” (Spiritual Diary).

    Jesuit Priest Gerard Manley Hopkins concurs with the Indian guru’s claim. Father Hopkins’ poem dramatizes the bliss of silence in seven rimed quatrains, each with the rime scheme, ABAB, featuring his famous sprung rhythm and inscape techniques.  The devotee/speaker commands each of his senses to cease their normal functioning, in order that his soul may meditate in holy silence and commune with the Divine.

    The Habit of Perfection

    Elected Silence, sing to me
    And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
    Pipe me to pastures still and be
    The music that I care to hear.

    Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
    It is the shut, the curfew sent
    From there where all surrenders come
    Which only makes you eloquent.

    Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark
    And find the uncreated light:
    This ruck and reel which you remark
    Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

    Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
    Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
    The can must be so sweet, the crust
    So fresh that come in fasts divine!

    Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
    Upon the stir and keep of pride,
    What relish shall the censers send
    Along the sanctuary side!

    O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
    That want the yield of plushy sward,
    But you shall walk the golden street
    And you unhouse and house the Lord.

    And, Poverty, be thou the bride
    And now the marriage feast begun,
    And lily-coloured clothes provide
    Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.

    Reading

    Commentary on “The Habit of Perfection”

    Father Hopkins’ poem “The Habit of Perfection” dramatizes the importance of silencing and stilling each of the five senses in order to advance spiritually to experience union with the Divine Reality.

    First Quatrain: Devotee of the Spiritual Path

    Elected Silence, sing to me
    And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
    Pipe me to pastures still and be
    The music that I care to hear.

    The speaker reveals himself to be a devotee on the spiritual path, as he converses with “Elected Silence.” The devotee chooses silence as the place where inner awareness starts, remembering the biblical injunction, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10 King James Version).

    The speaker metaphorically likens his Elected Silence to music, capable of singing to him and beating upon his eardrum.  This silence “pipe[s him] to pastures” in the mind which he wants to still. He, therefore, asks silence to be “the music that [he cares] to hear.”

    Second Quatrain:  Commanding the Senses

    Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
    It is the shut, the curfew sent
    From there where all surrenders come
    Which only makes you eloquent.

    As an adjunct to the auditory sense, speaking or moving the lips must cease as well as catching sounds with the ear; thus, the speaker bids his lips to remain “lovely-dumb.”  He tells his lips to form no sounds, stressing that the eloquent speech of the devotee is in his surrender to the Divine. The devotee must remain silent in order to hear the voice of Divinity.

    Third Quatrain:   Calming the Sense of Sight

    Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark
    And find the uncreated light:
    This ruck and reel which you remark
    Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

    The speaker then bids his eyes remain closed. He commands them to seek “double dark” beyond which they can encounter the “uncreated light.” In their seeking, the eyes may experience flashes of unearthly light that “[c]oils, keeps, and teases simple sight.”  But the devotee’s goal is to become so calm that the physical eyes cease to catch mere glimpses, while the single spiritual eye becomes operational.

    Fourth Quatrain:   Calming the Sense of Taste

    Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
    Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
    The can must be so sweet, the crust
    So fresh that come in fasts divine!

    The speaker/devotee orders his sense of taste to cease its intrusion upon the soul. He specifically commands his taste buds not to crave wine.  The sense of taste must be subdued by fasting, wherein the urge for food and drink become swallowed up in the bliss of Divine communion.

    Fifth Quatrain:   Calming the Sense of Smell

    Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
    Upon the stir and keep of pride,
    What relish shall the censers send
    Along the sanctuary side!

    The sense of smell accompanies the act of breathing, and in meditation, breathing slows until it stops in deepest awareness of the Divine Essence.  The speaker commands his nose by asserting the premise that it functions through a sense of pride, which is damaging to the humbleness necessary for Divine awareness.

    Sixth Quatrain:  Calming the Sense of Touch

    O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
    That want the yield of plushy sward,
    But you shall walk the golden street
    And you unhouse and house the Lord.

    The speaker then promises his greedy hands and feet, which desire softness and comfort, that they will be rewarded to walk the golden street, if they cooperate in sacrificing their worldly comforts for heavenly ones.

    Seventh Quatrain:  Union of Soul and Divine

    And, Poverty, be thou the bride
    And now the marriage feast begun,
    And lily-coloured clothes provide
    Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.

    In the final quatrain, the speaker alludes to the Christ’s command not to become overly conscious about one’s clothes: 

    And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  (Matthew 6:28-29 KJV)

    The speaker avers that taking Poverty as his bride, he will enjoy all the comforts of heaven. As a monastic, the speaker has taken a vow of poverty or simplicity because he is seeking treasures not afforded by the material world. 

    As he silences and calms all the senses, his true marriage feast begins, his marriage or union with the Divine Over-Soul, in Whom all worthwhile treasures are acquired and all worthy goals are achieved.

  • Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty”

    Gerard Manley Hopkins – National Portrait Gallery, London

    Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty”

    Gerard Manley  Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty” is an eleven-line curtal sonnet, dedicated to honoring and praising God for the special beauty of His creation.  Father Hopkins coined the term “curtal” to label his eleven-line sonnets.

    Introduction and Text of “Pied Beauty”

    The speaker in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem/hymn “Pied Beauty” offers a tribute to the Creator for all things natural and human inspired, with special emphasis on things that are multi-colored, dotted, striped, or patterned in ingenious ways.  The poem employs Father Hopkins’ famed sprung rhythm and unique rime scheme: ABCABCDBCDC.  

    The poem is an eleven-line sonnet called a curtal, a term which Father Hopkins coined to describe the form he employed in certain of his poems, including “Pied Beauty.”  While the speaker emphasizes beauty by contrasting things that are widely touted as unpleasant yet possess a certain aura of unique loveliness, he ultimately is affirming that God has made all of creation to reflect various styles of beauty.

    Thus, the speaker begins by giving all “glory” to God for all these created things, and he concludes by insisting that God be praised for giving humankind these many patterned objects of beauty.   

    God and beauty are being weighed in special terms as the speaker creates in his hymn a drama of oppositional tension that results in the creation of balance and harmony.    Through appreciation and praise of God for His gifts, humankind learns that balance and harmony in order to complete life’s goals and purposes. 

    Pied Beauty

    Glory be to God for dappled things –
       For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
          For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
    Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
       Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
          And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. 

    All things counter, original, spare, strange;
       Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
          With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
    He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                    Praise him.

    Recitation of “Pied Beauty”

    Commentary on “Pied Beauty”

    Father Hopkins’ poem remarkably enlists several synonyms for the important title term “pied.”  Those synonyms are dappled, couple-colour, brinded (archaic form of brindled), stipple, and freckled.   All of those terms refer to multi-color or dotted patterns that so often appear in nature, that this observant human heart finds divinely inspired.

    The poem is, therefore, a hymn honoring the Supreme Creator of all that exists.  The piece offers gratitude that the Heavenly Father-Creator has fashioned His world to provide delight for His children.

    First Movement:  A Pattern of Gratitude

    Glory be to God for dappled things –

    The speaker begins by glorifying Creator-God for having effected His world to include objects that are multi-spotted and multi-colored.  While the speaker undoubtedly offers God all glory to everything in creation, he also glorifies his Creator for not only things but also events.  The act of creation remains of particular interest.

    The speaker appears to be concentrating on a certain style and pattern that the Almighty has chosen to bestow on certain of His creatures and things.  And this devout speaker remains most appreciative of those patterns.  Thus, the glory, the honor, and the achievement of God have infused this speaker’s heart and mind to express gratitude.

    Second Movement:  Examples of All Things Dappled

    For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
          For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
    Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
       Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
          And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

    The speaker then offers examples of those “dappled” things for which he is offering glory to God. He appreciates the sky that ofttimes appears as multi-colored as a spotted bovine.  The speaker is thankful also for the patterns that are dotted over the bodies of “trout that swim.”  These stippling patterns resemble small mole-like roses as they decorate the skin of those fish.

    This observant, devout speaker also adores the beauty of fallen chestnuts that resemble freshly set-ablaze fire coals on a grate or in a stove.   He also uses the “finches’ wings” to exemplify his appreciation for things “dappled.”  The wings of finches are often layered strips.  The speaker then widens his example to include even the “[l]andscape” or the farmers’ fields that the farmer has “plotted and pieced” in order to plough and “fold” or allow to lie “fallow.”  

    He finds those patterns to be offering the glory that all “dappled” things offer; thus, he honors them by mentioning them as an example. In fact, every commercial endeavor deserves a nod along with the instruments, their tools, which he refers to as “gear,” “tackle,” and “trim.”

    Third Movement:  The Spice of Variety

     All things counter, original, spare, strange;

    In the second stanza, beginning with the third movement, the speaker shifts from simple  spotted, multi-colored things to everything remaining that runs against expectation, or that is original and unique, or things that seem simple, and things that appear odd.

    Because creation seems to offer an infinite number of styles, patterns, and ways of being, the speaker now wishes to praise God and glorify the Divine Maker by recognizing the Creator’s penchant for variety. 

    If the old adage “variety is the spice of life” possesses any truth, then certainly the Heavenly Father-God is responsible for the creation of those spices.  This speaker thus widens his scope for gratitude.

    Fourth Movement:  Things That Change

     Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
          With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; 

    The speaker then offers further elucidation for the other components that make up his glossary of things that deserve attention and appreciation because of their having been offered to humankind by the Ultimate Reality, the Supreme Creator of the cosmos.

    So the speaker reports that all things, beings, creatures that possess the quality of fickleness or changeability belong to his list of things that honor and give glory to God.  Even “freckled” things, of which no one can define the origin, belong to this category.

    Those “fickle” and “freckled” things all have several qualities in common; thus, they may exist and behave with speed or move measuredly.   They may possess the opposite flavors of sweetness or sourness.  Some may also reflect light blazingly while others remain muted and subdued.

    Regardless of the unique qualities, they are all part of the Blessèd Creator’s offerings to His children for their pleasure or for their edification or to light whatever pathway they are destined to follow.

    Fifth Movement:  That Which Does not Change

    He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                    Praise him.

    The speaker then concludes with a command—”Praise him.”  In the beginning, he made it clear that he was offering all glory to God for the things He has given through creation. Now he offers his stern command, but before that command, he offers the reason that such praise is due Him. 

    The Father of all this beauty continues, and although He Himself is “past change” or without the necessity to change Himself, He continues to offer through creation a beauty that is many faceted, multi-colored, multi-stippled, and brindled. And all things remain on a spectrum that humankind cannot duplicate but is surely obligated to honor, appreciate, and glorify in the name of Father God.

  • Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “God’s Grandeur”

    Image: Gerard Manley Hopkins

    Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “God’s Grandeur”

    Despite the “smudge” and “smear” from some human activity, the speaker is offering assurance that the Creator’s blessings and restoration of Planet Earth remain in effect through the “grandeur” of that Creative Force-God.  Instead of instilling fear of earthly events, he encourages worship.

    Introduction with Text of  “God’s Grandeur”

    Father Gerard Manley Hopkins’ motivation to imitate Spirit (God) prompts him to craft his poems in forms, as Spirit creates entities in forms—from rocks to animals to plants to the human body. 

    Father Hopkins often employs the sonnet form. “God’s Grandeur” is a sonnet—fourteen lines, more similar to the Petrarchan than the Elizabethan. The first eight lines (octave) present an issue; then, the remaining six lines (sestet) address that issue.  

    Father Hopkins’ rime scheme is typically ABBAABBA CDCDCD, which also resembles the Petrarchan rime scheme in the octave. He employs iambic pentameter but varies from spondee to trochee.  Father Hopkins’ called his unique form “sprung rhythm.”

    God’s Grandeur

    The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
        It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
        It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
    Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
    Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
        And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
        And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
    Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. 

    And for all this, nature is never spent;
        There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
    And though the last lights off the black West went
        Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
    Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
        World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

    Reading:  

    Commentary on “God’s Grandeur”

    Decrying the “smudge” and “smear” from human activity, the speaker asserts that despite humankind’s penchant for defiling nature, the Creator continues to bless and restore the world—a message that flies in the face of climate alarmists.

    However, in today’s smudged, postmodern world, one pays a price for criticizing climate alarmists who have replaced faith in the Creator with constant agitation for political ascendency.

    The Octave:  Pantheistic View of God

    The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
        It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
        It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
    Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
    Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
        And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
        And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
    Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. 

    The speaker in this Petrarchan sonnet sees God everywhere: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”  His soul is convinced, but his senses tell him that people do not behave as if this were true: “Why do men then not reck his rod?” 

    Not only do men, i.e. humankind, not heed the Divine, they also seem content to exist in darkness from where they spread gloom on the environment.   The speaker contends that whole generations of humanity have trampled the earth, defiling nature as they apply their systems of “trade.”

    The speaker is dramatizing Father Hopkins’ sense that human beings have become more interested in materialistic gain and possessions than in celebrating the glory of a loving, merciful, Heavenly Father. 

    The Sestet:  God’s Gifts Cannot Be Exhausted

    And for all this, nature is never spent;
        There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
    And though the last lights off the black West went
        Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
    Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
        World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

    The octave has presented the issue: humankind is oblivious to God’s gifts and thus defiles them.  The sestet addresses the issue: despite indifference to the Creator, humankind cannot exhaust the gifts that the Creator bestows, because nature continues to renew itself through the agency of the Divine.  

    Thus, a “dearest freshness” continues to assert itself, despite the dirty ways of humankind.  Humankind may disregard God’s grandeur, but everything renews despite human activity.

    The speaker’s faith leaves him no room for doubt, because that faith has infused in him the intuition that the “Holy Ghost” is always watching over humankind, the children of Spirit-God, somewhat like a mother bird watches over her little flock.

    The Holy Ghost (Divine Mother) will ever mother humanity—Her little birds. Father Hopkins’ mystical insight brings him to the faith that throbs in his soul—in his “inscape,” his unique term for his inner landscape. 

    The Mystical Poet and God’s Creation

    And “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (KJV, John 1:1).  This line speaks gently but firmly to the inner ear of mystically inclined poets.  

    As originally determined, a poet is a word craftsman, and when the poet of genuine faith builds with words, he is imitating God, taking his discourse out of dogma and into true spirituality.  The form of “God’s Grandeur” closely resembles Father Hopkins’ other poems. 

    In “The Windhover,” the rime scheme is the same as that of “God’s Grandeur.” The same is true for “The Lantern out of Doors,” “Hurrahing in Harvest,” and “As Kingfishers Catch Fire.”

    Father Hopkins sonnets celebrate Spirit and continue the search for a deeper relationship with the Mastercraftsman (God). Occasionally, as he structures his sonnets, they produce an order that further marks a style uniquely his own.

    Readers do not encounter any structure resembling “Stirred for a birds, the achieve of, the mastery of the thing” in a Thomas Hardy or A. E. Housman poem—or that of any other poet—the uniqueness of Father Hopkins is so firmly established. 

    Also, a typical line of Father Hopkins is “Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east,” which contains the example of his meter and content.

    Divine Melancholy 

    The melancholy experienced by Father Gerard Manley Hopkins is of divine origin. The ameliorist in Thomas Hardy produces in his poems a different sort of melancholy.    Father Hopkins has faith; Hardy has hope.  One may deem Hardy spiritually adrift on the sea of humankind’s woe, even when he sings, 

    I talk as if the things were born
    With sense to work its mind;
    Yet it is but one mask of many worn
    By the Great Face behind.

    Referring to the veiled nature of God, Hardy seems to bemoan it rather than celebrate it, as Father Hopkins does.   Housman is preoccupied with endings. He says, “And since to look at things in bloom / Fifty springs are little room” and “sharp the link of life will snap.” 

    Of course, all poets are concerned with endings, but each poet in his work will treat those concerns in distinctive ways, according to their levels of understanding and faith.   Hardy, Housman, and many other poets remain earthbound looking for answers to ultimate questions among the various outlets for human intellectual expression.  And their search is a vital one for humankind.

    However, Father Hopkins’ “God’s Grandeur” along with the rest of his canon affords the reader the experience of hearing beautiful singing loud and sweet a poet’s song of the love for the Divine.  

    Father Hopkins’ faith set him free to pursue and express Divine Love, instead of endless searching for that something-else that the faithless heart craves as it laments the trammels of Earth.

  • Langston Hughes’ “Goodbye, Christ”

    Image:  Langston Hughes– Appearing before Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations – March 24, 1953

    Note on Term Usage:  Before the late 1980s in the United States, the terms “Negro,” “colored,” and “black” were accepted widely in American English parlance.   While the term “Negro” had started to lose it popularity in the 1960s, it wasn’t until 1988 that the Reverend Jesse Jackson began insisting that Americans adopt the phrase “African American.”  The earlier more accurate terms were the custom at the time that Langston Hughes was writing.

    Langston Hughes’ “Goodbye, Christ”

    Langston Hughes wrote “Goodbye, Christ” in 1931. It was published in a statist publication called “The Negro Worker” in 1932, but Hughes later withdrew it from publication.

    Introduction with Text of “Goodbye, Christ”

    Nine years after the publication of Langston Hughes’ “Goodbye, Christ,” on January 1, 1941, the poet was scheduled to deliver a talk about Negro folk songs at the Pasadena Hotel. Members of Aimee Semple McPherson’s Temple of the Four Square Gospel picketed the hotel with a sound truck playing “God Bless America.”   

    Likely those members of the McPherson temple became aware of the poem because McPherson is mentioned in it. The protestors passed out copies of Hughes’ poem, “Goodbye, Christ,” even though they had not secured permission to copy and distribute it. 

    A few weeks later, The Saturday Evening Post, heretofore no friend to black writers, also mentioned in the poem, also printed the poem without permission. The poem had received little attention until these two events.  

    But Hughes had been criticized for his “revolutionary” writings and apparent sympathy for the Soviet form of government. On March 24, 1953, Hughes was called to testify before the Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

    Goodbye, Christ

    Listen, Christ,
    You did alright in your day, I reckon-
    But that day’s gone now.
    They ghosted you up a swell story, too,
    Called it Bible-
    But it’s dead now,
    The popes and the preachers’ve
    Made too much money from it.
    They’ve sold you to too many
    Kings, generals, robbers, and killers-
    Even to the Tzar and the Cossacks,
    Even to Rockefeller’s Church,
    Even to THE SATURDAY EVENING POST.
    You ain’t no good no more.
    They’ve pawned you
    Till you’ve done wore out.
    Goodbye,
    Christ Jesus Lord God Jehova,
    Beat it on away from here now.
    Make way for a new guy with no religion at all-
    A real guy named
    Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME-
    I said, ME!
    Go ahead on now,
    You’re getting in the way of things, Lord.
    And please take Saint Gandhi with you when you go,
    And Saint Pope Pius,
    And Saint Aimee McPherson,
    And big black Saint Becton
    Of the Consecrated Dime.
    And step on the gas, Christ!
    Move!
    Don’t be so slow about movin?
    The world is mine from now on-
    And nobody’s gonna sell ME
    To a king, or a general,
    Or a millionaire.

    Commentary on “Goodbye, Christ”

    Langston Hughes’ poem “Goodbye, Christ” is a dramatic monologue. The speaker is addressing Christ, telling him to leave because He is no longer wanted. The speaker is employing irony and sarcasm to express his distrust and disapproval of the many people, including the clergy, who have used religion only for financial gain.

    Serving God or Mammon 

    In the first verse paragraph (versagraph), the speaker explains to Christ that things are different now from the way they were back in Christ’s day; the speaker figures that back then Christ’s presence might have been appreciated, but now “[t]he popes and the preachers’ve / Made too much money from [your story].”  

    And that complaint is addressed in the poem that certain individuals and organizations have used the name of Christ to make money: “They’ve pawned you / Till you’ve done wore out.”  

    The speaker makes it clear that it is not only Christianity that has been desecrated, for he also includes Hinduism when he tells Christ “please take Saint Gandhi with you when you go.”  It is not only white people like McPherson, but also “big black Saint Becton,” a charlatan preacher Hughes mentions in his autobiography, The Big Sea. 

    Hughes is, in no way, repudiating Jesus Christ and true religion. He is, however, excoriating those whom he considers charlatans, who have profited only financially without highlighting the true meaning of Christ’s (or other religions’) teachings. 

    Langston Hughes on “Goodbye, Christ” 

    In editor Faith Berry’s Good Morning Revolution: Uncollected Writing of Langston Hughes, Berry brings together a large collection of writings for which Hughes did not seek wide publication.  Some of his early politically statist-leaning poems, which had appeared in obscure publications, managed to circulate, and Hughes was labeled a Communist, which he always denied in his speeches. 

    About “Goodbye, Christ,” Hughes has explained that he had withdrawn the poem from publication, but it had appeared without his permission and knowledge.  Hughes also insisted that he had never been a member of the Communist Party.  He went so far as to say he wished Christ would return to save humanity, which was in dire need of saving, as it could not save itself. 

    Earlier in his immaturity, Hughes had believed that the communist form of government would be more favorable to black people, but he became aware that his VIP treatment in Russia was a ruse, calculated to make people of color think that communism was friendlier to them than capitalism while ultimately hoodwinking them just as the Democratic Party did later on in the century.  (Also see Carol Swain’s “The Inconvenient Truth about the Democratic Party”)

    In his senate committee testimony on March 24, 1953, Hughes makes his political inclinations clear that he had never read any book on the theory of socialism and communism.  Also, he had not delved into the stances of the Republican and Democrat parties in the United States.

    Hughes claimed that his interest in politics was prompted solely by his emotion.  Only through his own emotions had he glanced at what politics might have to offer him in figuring out personal issues with society.  So in “Goodbye, Christ,” the following versagraph likely defines the poet’s attitude at its emotional depths:

    Goodbye,
    Christ Jesus Lord God Jehova,
    Beat it on away from here now.
    Make way for a new guy with no religion at all—
    -A real guy named
    Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME—
    I said, ME!

    Hughes spent a year in Russia and came back to America writing glowing reports of the wonderful equalities enjoyed by all Russians, which many critics wrongly interpreted to indicate that Hughes became a communist.   On January 1, 1941, Hughes wrote the following clear-eyed explanation that should once and for all put to rest the notion that his poem was meant to serve blasphemous purposes:

    “Goodbye, Christ” does not represent my personal viewpoint.  It was long ago withdrawn from circulation and has been reprinted recently without my knowledge or consent.  I would not now use such a technique of approach since I feel that a mere poem is quite unable to compete in the power to shock with the current horrors of war and oppression abroad in the greater part of the world.

    I have never been a member of the Communist party.  Furthermore, I have come to believe that no system of ethics, religion, morals, or government is of permanent value which does not first start with and change the human heart.  Mortal frailty, greed, and error know no boundary lines.  

    The explosives of war do not care whose hand fashions them.  Certainly, both Marxists and Christians can be cruel.  Would that Christ came back to save us all. We do not know how to save ourselves. (my emphasis added) —from  Good Morning Revolution: Uncollected Writing of Langston Hughes, page 149.

    The Importance of Understanding the Irony in “Goodbye, Christ”

    While it may be difficult for devout Christians, who love Christ and his teachings, to read such seemingly blasphemous writing, it is important to distinguish between the literal and the figurative:  Hughes’ “Goodbye, Christ” must be read through the lens of irony and sarcasm, and realized as a statement against the financial usurpation of religion, and not a repudiation of Christ and the great spiritual masters of all religions.

    It should be remembered that Hughes’ seemingly blasphemous poem simply creates a character who was speaking ironically, even sarcastically, in order to call out the actual despicable blasphemers who desecrate true religion with duplicity and chicanery.

    Image:  Ink Drawing of Langston Hughes– Ink Portrait – Fabrizio Cassett

  • Langston Hughes’ “Harlem”

    Image: Langston Hughes - Carl Van Vechten Eakins Press Foundation photo by Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Inspired-by-poet-Hughes-Influential-writer-was-2875941.php
    Image: Langston Hughes – Eakins Press Foundation – photo by Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964)

    Langston Hughes’ “Harlem”

    Langston Hughes’ “Harlem” examines the potential effects of having to postpone dreams or goals.  The result of such delay may present itself in numerous ways, and the speaker explores them in this poem through colorful imagery in five dramatic similes and one explosive metaphor.

    Introduction with Text of “Harlem”

    The title of Langston Hughes’ “Harlem” may be considered somewhat ironic.  The Harlem Renaissance became a colorful, vibrant period of flourishing in literary, musical, visual, and other forms of art.    Several civil rights activists, including the excellent poet/activist James Weldon Johnson, were active contributors to this flourishing movement.

    The irony, however, rests in that fact that many dreams, especially of black American artists, were being realized as never before, yet, the poem engages in speculation about the events that may transpire if dreams are postponed, remaining unrealized.

    Still, on the other hand, systemic racism in America was not eliminated until enactment of the Civil Right Act of 1964.  Thus Hughes’ speaker was quite timely in speculation that much of the black population was still being subjected to unfavorable conditions, including having to postpone certain dreams of equality of opportunity.

    Because this poem’s speaker makes no mention of anything referring to race or ethnicity, the poem’s “dream” could be any desired goal held by any member of any race or ethnic group. 

    The message of this poem can be applied to any “dream” or “goal” that would have to be postponed, especially if postponed by coercion or unfair competition. The poem’s universal message is what makes it a great poem.

    This poem appears in Langston Hughes’ 1951 collection, Montage of a Dream Deferred.  The theme of the poem explores the mental and emotional states that the human mind might undergo if forced to postpose or abandon one’s heartfelt dreams and life goals.   The poem primarily employs similes but concludes with one explosive metaphor to convey its impact.

    The speaker opens the poem questioning what happens when a dream has to be postponed.  He moves on to make four further inquiries; he then provides a suggestion and finally concludes with a shocking, explosive question.   The inquiries that employ the use of similes turn out to be rhetorical questions; answers to these questions are actually featured within the questions themselves.  

    This strategy leaves no doubt about the answers to those questions.  They are yes/no questions, and the obvious answer is yes in all cases.  As “yes or no” questions, they require no further elaboration.  The speaker’s point of view on the issue is quite clear:  he holds the notion that a dream postponed indefinitely can result in all sorts of damage, including death. 

    The similes— “like a raisin in the sun,” “like a sore,” “like rotten meat,” “like a syrupy sweet,” “like a heavy load”—form the questioning pattern, with the final simile, however,  expressed as a suggestion.  Then the metaphor in the conclusion bursts forth with, “or does it explode?“—the most volatile question of all—therefore it receives added italic emphasis.

    No one wants to postpone a dream, that is, a goal, regardless of whether it is to buy a new phone or start that new career.  But what happens to that dream if it does have to be put off for any reason?  Maybe it just languishes in the back of the mind or maybe it causes the individual to behave in a destructive manner. 

    In roughly 50 words, the speaker has explored a human phenomenon that most, if not all human beings, have experienced in their time on earth.  The degree of intensity to which each dream deferred has been subjected is the main theme of the poem.  With colorful imagery presented through rhetorical questions, the speaker has created a memorable drama, focusing on a universal human condition.

    Harlem

    What happens to a dream deferred?

    Does it dry up
    like a raisin in the sun?
    Or fester like a sore—
    And then run?
    Does it stink like rotten meat?
    Or crust and sugar over—
    like a syrupy sweet?

    Maybe it just sags
    like a heavy load.

    Or does it explode?

    Commentary on “Harlem”

    Langston Hughes’ poem features several perfect rimes in “sun-run,” “meat-sweet,” “load-explode.” The poem employs images: “raisin in the sun,” “fester like a sore,” “stink like rotten meat.”   Even the metaphor that contains no noun suggests the subliminal vision of an exploding bomb which includes all the five senses for which the imagery is employed.

    First Movement:  The Delaying

    What happens to a dream deferred?

    Most mature, well-adjusted, thinking human beings entertain dreams and goals that they strive to achieve. This poem full of questions begins with a question seeking to know what events might occur after a dream has been postponed: what might such a delay cause the dreamer to do?

    Although it surely must be assumed that the “dream” referred to in this poem is one vital to human nature and dignity, such as the desire for individual freedom, personal security, and individual achievement, in reality, it does not matter what the dream is, because each person reacts differently to different circumstances.

    Some human minds and hearts are more patient than others. What may set off a volatile reaction from one person may be well tolerated by another.  Still, dreams and goals are so important to the life of the dreamer that they occupy the dreamer’s attention in the consciousness much of the time during the day and possibly even in sleep.

    It is, therefore, little wonder that if the dreamer hits a roadblock that stalls his/her continuing on the path to fulfillment of a goal, s/he may become disturbed.  The speaker in the poem is exploring a range of possible outcomes that may be experienced by differing personalities.

    Second Movement: The Drying Up

    Does it dry up
    like a raisin in the sun?

    After a dream or goal is allowed to “dry up like a raisin in the sun,” that dream or goal will lose its value. A raisin is a sweet, nutritious food but left out in the sun, it will harden and lose its flavor as well as its nutritional value.  The life’s goal of a human being performs a vital role in making that person a successful, contributing member to the culture and society of the human race.

    However, if an individual is put off over and over again, admonished that s/he simply has to wait for society’s laws and attitudes to change before s/he can start a business, or become a doctor, lawyer, teacher, or artist, that individual is likely to wither away or “dry up,” particularly emotionally and mentally.

    The speaker wishes to place into the consciousness of society that the notion of delaying the dreams of individuals will become an impediment to progress. Talent and ingenuity require nurturing. not being postponed.

    Desire to flourish must be encouraged, not kept in the dark of indifference. The drying up of human talent and energy is a waste of human capital; thus the slogan “a mind is a terrible thing to waste” offers a useful claim as well as a clever advertisement for colleges.

    The waste of that mind not only affects the individual, but it also affects the entire community and eventually the whole of society.  If a country continues to denigrate its native talent, that country is bound to fail.

    Third Movement:  The Festering

    Or fester like a sore—
    And then run?

    The speaker then considers another issue that might arise from a delayed dream; instead of drying up, maybe it will run like a sore that has festered and become all pus infused. We all want our sores to dry up; we do not want them to fester and continue to run.

    Restless dissatisfaction might occur if a dream festers and runs. The innocent dreamer might transform into a criminal, perpetrating criminal offenses against whom or what s/he believes to be standing in the way of his/her dreams.  Again, the whole of society is lessened by such behavior.

    Fourth Movement:  The Stinking

    Does it stink like rotten meat?

    Rotten meat gives off a definite, unpleasant odor. A dream allowed to lie untended in the mind might decay and give off the stench of unfulfilled desires. The unpleasant odor comes from the dead dream, just as the stink spreads from rotten animal flesh.

    The “rotten meat” simile is particularly powerful. The stench of decayed flesh remains nearly unbearable to the human nostrils. The speaker has grown particularly suspicious that deferred dreams can ever produce anything resembling a pleasant outcome.

    Fifth Movement:  The Crusting Over

    Or crust and sugar over—
    like a syrupy sweet?

    The dried accumulation that forms on syrup or honey bottles left unused for quite some time presents as an unpleasant crust. It is the lack of use has caused that unpleasant accumulation.

    The contents of the bottle will become unusable if left long enough, and so it becomes with dreams. Elderly folks often complain that they failed to pursue certain dreams when they were young, and now those dreams have become a bitter memory, a crusty accumulation at the top their bottle of life.  The crusted over dreams may present themselves as emotions of hatred, doubt, anger, and despair.

    Sixth Movement:  The Sagging

    Maybe it just sags
    like a heavy load.

    This stanza does not pose a question; it offers a suggestion that perhaps the postponed dream just bends because of the “heavy load” of deferral. The dreamer has become lazy and lethargic, even clumsy, as s/he trudges along under the heavy load that has become a mighty burden.

    The dream continues to weigh heavily on the mind of the dreamer who keeps on wondering what s/he might have accomplished, if given the opportunity. Thus from carrying the burden of doubt, the dreamer may become depressed even lacking the ability to be at all productive.

    Seventh Movement: The Exploding

    Or does it explode?

    All of the possibilities heretofore mentioned in the similes and in the sagging heavy load suggestion of suffering a dream deferred are deficient, shoddy, even possibly life-threatening. While negative in their description, all of the earlier questions imply a certain level of tolerance.

    The deferral of those dreams referred to in the similes have affected mostly the dreamer. But the question metaphorically expressed in the final line becomes literally and definitely explosively life-threatening, not only to the dreamer but to his/her surroundings.

    The speaker asks, “does it explode?” Bombs explode—as well as anything in a container in which pressure has built up to the point that the container is no longer capable of expanding to accommodate that pressure.  If the dreamers no longer harbor a shred of hope for their dreams, they may become such a container under pressure.  They may figuratively become a human bomb by employing a destructive device that can maim and kill others in the person’s vicinity.

    Miserable dreamers full of despair, grief, and hopelessness may engage in any number of dangerous, life-threatening acts, as they try to hold responsible those they consider to blame for their inability to realize their dreams and life goals.

    Image:  Portrait of  Langston Hughes – Winold Reiss – National Portrait Gallery


    Video: Langston Hughes: Leading Voice of the Harlem Renaissance | Biography

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  • Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”

    Image:  Langston Hughes.  Library of Congress. Photographer Gordon Parks 

    Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”

    Langston Hughes’ speaker in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” displays his message in five versagraphic movements, thematically exploring his soul experience with a “cosmic voice,” which includes and unites all of humanity.

    Note on Term Usage: Before the late 1980s in the United States, the terms “Negro,” “colored,” and “black” were accepted widely in American English parlance.   While the term “Negro” had started to lose it popularity in the 1960s, it wasn’t until 1988 that the Reverend Jesse Jackson began insisting that Americans adopt the phrase “African American.”  The earlier more accurate terms were the custom at the time that Langston Hughes was writing.

    Introduction and Text of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”

    Langston Hughes’ speaker in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” displays his message with a “cosmic voice,” which includes and unites all of humanity.  The poem plays out in five versagraphic movements, focusing on the theme of soul exploration.

    The Cosmic Voice in Poetry

    Writers, especially poets, often employ the “cosmic voice” in order to provide a deep and wide view of historical events and vast swaths of space.  A device called the omniscient speaker is often used in fiction; that voice is similar to the cosmic voice but much more limited.

    Time and space may stretch or contract as needed as the cosmic seer narrates what he experiences.  The “cosmic voice” may come to a poet through a vivid imagination; however, it transcends the imagination as a truth teller.   Only a few poets have been blessed with such a voice; examples are Emily Dickinson, Rabindranath Tagore, Paramahansa Yogananda, and to a limited degree Walt Whitman.

    The cosmic voice imparts truth through deep intuition.  The soul of the speaker employing the cosmic voice is, even if only temporarily as is the case with Langston Hughes, becomes aware of its vast and profound knowledge.  The cosmic voice speaks from a place far beyond ordinary sense awareness.  

    Individuals who comprehend the cosmic voice are bequeathed a consciousness far beyond their own sense awareness and thus comprehend the unity of all created things.  Those individuals are heralded into the realm of the Cosmic Creator and often remain transformed beings for having experienced that Sacred Locus.

    Langston Hughes and the Cosmic Voice

    The voice employed in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” is not a whining, complaining one so often heard in the protest voices of activists; instead Hughes is employing the cosmic voice—the voice of the soul that knows itself to be a divine entity.  That voice speaks with inherent authority; it reports its intuitions so that others might hear and regain their own experiences through its guidance.

    Langston Hughes’ speaker in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” imparts his discourse in five versagraphic movements.  His theme explores with the cosmic voice that unites all of humanity.  

    The vital lines that serve as a refrain—”I’ve known rivers” and “My soul has grown deep like the rivers”—work like a chant, instilling in the listener the truth that the speaker wishes to impart.  That Langston Hughes was able to employ a cosmic voice in a poem at age seventeen is quite remarkable.  

    Although some of his later work, even as much of it remained important and very entertaining, descended into the banal and at times even slipshod, no one can deny his marvelous accomplishment with this early poem in which he speaks as a master craftsman.

    The Negro Speaks of Rivers 

    I’ve known rivers:
    I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow
    of human blood in human veins.

    My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

    I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
    I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
    I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
    I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
         went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
         bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

    I’ve known rivers:
    Ancient, dusky rivers.

    My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

    Reading:   Langston Hughes reads his poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”

    Commentary on “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”

    Langston Hughes’ speaker in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” stands as high testimony to the poet’s ability to craft genuine, heartfelt poetry.  To have composed such a profound piece of art at such an early age bespeaks a literary marvel.

    First Movement:  The River as a Symbol

    I’ve known rivers:
    I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow
    of human blood in human veins.

    The poem opens with the speaker remarking rather nonchalantly that he has experienced the natural phenomenon known as “rivers.”  He has no doubt observed rivers flowing in their channels, and he has become aware that rivers flow through the earth as blood flows through the veins of human beings.  

    Both flowing rivers and flowing blood must be ancient, but the speaker intuits that the flow of the rivers surely predates that of the appearance of the human being upon the planet. The river image becomes a symbol linking all of humanity from the pre-historic era to the present day.   

    As the “river” has served to carry the physical encasements (bodies) and mental bodies over the rough terrain of land and rocks, the symbolic river carries the soul on its Divine journey.   Readers and listeners will easily intuit the significance of the speaker’s focus as it ranges far beyond the boundaries of the physical, material universe.

    Second Movement:  Intuitive Awareness

    My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

    This line indicates that the speaker has become aware that through his own soul he can intuit historical events, places, and people, who have existed from the beginning to time.  The line becomes a refrain and will be encountered again in the poem because of its great importance.  

    It becomes quite obvious that the speaker would not have been able to know literally the rivers of antiquity that he claims to “know.”  However, through his soul, or mystical awareness, he can.  Thus, he again employs the cosmic, thus mystical, voice to fashion his assertion.

    Third Movement: Historical Unity

    I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
    I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
    I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
    I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
         went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
         bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

    The speaker claims that he “bathed in the Euphrates” at the dawning of Western civilization.  From the Euphrates to the Mississippi Rivers, the speaker offers a huge expansion of time and place.  

    In biblical times to present time, he lays claim to knowledge, again impossible except for soul consciousness. Awareness through the soul is unlimited, unlike the limitations of body and mind.  The speaker could not have experienced the Euphrates when “dawns were young.”  

    But the cosmic voice of the speaker can place itself at any point along the time line of civilization or cosmic creation. In claiming to have built his “hut near the Congo,” the speaker continues his cosmic, mystically inspired journey.  He “looked upon the Nile”  and “raised the pyramids” only as a cosmic-voiced speaker.

    People of all times and climes have been influenced by the river experience.  The speaker can thus unite all races, nationalities, creeds, and religions in his gathering of historic experiences within which all those peoples have lived.   And he accomplishes this feat through employment of the symbolic force of the “river.” 

    Emphasizing the American experience, the speaker claims to have “heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln / went / down to New Orleans . . . .”   The allusion to President Abraham Lincoln reminds the reader of the process of slave emancipation.

    As with all the rivers mentioned, the Mississippi River, an American river, stands as a symbol of the blood of the human race—not naturally segregated into color and national categories. The American Mississippi River, as the earlier mention of rivers has done, symbolizes the human blood of the human race—the only race that scientifically exists.

    Fourth Movement:  A Soul Chant

    I’ve known rivers:
    Ancient, dusky rivers.

    Because of the importance of the “river” as a symbol, the speaker repeats the line, “I’ve known rivers.”  Like the line, “My soul has grown deep like the rivers,” this one also  serves as a refrain.   If the speaker had chanted the line many more times, the poem’s delightful charm would have even been enhanced—that line is that crucial!

    The soul, the river, the depth of the soul and the river—all force history to yield a mighty blessing on those who have “known rivers,”  and whose souls have grown deep like those rivers. 

    Thus the speaker offers a brief description of how those river appear:  they are extremely old, and they are mystically dark, a measure that alludes to the dark-skinned race with graceful precision, even as it holds all races as having experienced the nature of the mystic river.

    Fifth Movement: Life Force and the Symbol of the River

    My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

    The speaker’s soul has grown profoundly deep like the rivers and along with the rivers.  Civilizations have grown up and grown deep along rivers all over Planet Earth. The soul that possesses the body is the life force informing and maintaining that body. 

    Likewise, rivers streaming through the earth give life force to civilizations and also assist in maintaining those civilization with the products and supplies that river travel has allowed over the centuries.

    The speaker is taking his own identity from the energetic force of the soul and the river force of the earth.  The children of the Divine Creative Reality (God) all spring forth from a common ancestry, a symbolic set of original parents.   It has always been rivers that link all of those ancestors as the blood in their veins links them into one family—the Human Race.

    The cosmic voice of a young poet—who happened possess the darker hue of skin along the color spectrum—has rendered a statement that could enlighten and reconnect all peoples if only they could listen with their own cosmic awareness.  

    At the soul level, all human beings remain eternally linked as children of the Great Divine River King (God). That River God flows in the blood of His offspring. And that same River God flows in the rivers of the planet on which they find themselves too often segregated by ignorance of their own common being as sparks of the Divine.

    Instead of identifying with the perishable body and changeable mind that too often rule, the simple act of identifying with their own cosmic nature would allow individuals to experience the cosmic voice of their own soul. The simple poet named Langston Hughes has offered a useful template for viewing the world through a cosmic lens in his nearly perfect poem.

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  • Rabindranath Tagore’s “The Last Bargain”

    Image: Rabindranath Tagore - Britannica

    Image:  Rabindranath Tagore  – Britannica

    Rabindranath Tagore’s “The Last Bargain”

    Rabindranath Tagore’s “The Last Bargain” focuses on what seems to be an quandary:  how is it that a child’s offering of “nothing” to a seeker becomes the “last bargain” as well as the best bargain?

    Introduction and Text of “The Last Bargain”

    The human mind/hear/soul engages in the spiritual search in order to gain freedom and bliss.  Much sorrow and pain afflict those who focus solely on the material level of existence.  

    As the speaker in Rabindranath Tagore’s “The Last Bargain” searches for a job, he is, in fact, demonstrating the difference between focusing on the material level of being and focusing on the spiritual level.

    The Last Bargain

    “Come and hire me,” I cried, while in the morning I was walking on the stone-paved road.
    Sword in hand, the King came in his chariot.
    He held my hand and said, “I will hire you with my power.”
    But his power counted for nought, and he went away in his chariot.

    In the heat of the midday the houses stood with shut doors.
    I wandered along the crooked lane.
    An old man came out with his bag of gold.
    He pondered and said, “I will hire you with my money.”
    He weighed his coins one by one, but I turned away.

    It was evening. The garden hedge was all aflower.
    The fair maid came out and said, “I will hire you with a smile.”
    Her smile paled and melted into tears, and she went back alone into the dark.

    The sun glistened on the sand, and the sea waves broke waywardly.
    A child sat playing with shells.
    He raised his head and seemed to know me, and said, “I hire you with nothing.”
    From thenceforward that bargain struck in child’s play made me a free man.

    Commentary on “The Last Bargain”

    Rabindranath Tagore’s “The Last Bargain” presents an enigma:  how can it be that a child offering nothing can be the bargain that makes a “free man” of the seeker?

    First Movement:   Seeking Employment

    “Come and hire me,” I cried, while in the morning I was walking on the stone-paved road.
    Sword in hand, the King came in his chariot.
    He held my hand and said, “I will hire you with my power.”
    But his power counted for nought, and he went away in his chariot.

    The opening movement taking place in the morning finds the speaker apparently seeking employment; thus he announces, “Come and hire me.”  A king then comes on the scene, offering the individual employment through his “power.”

    However, the job seeker determines that the king’s power held very little value.  The king then moves away in his “chariot.”  Then the speaker continues to search.  Now, the reader is likely to suspect that this speaker is not seeking a job on the material, planet Earth, physical sense.

    Second Movement:  Continuing the Search

    In the heat of the midday the houses stood with shut doors.
    I wandered along the crooked lane.
    An old man came out with his bag of gold.
    He pondered and said, “I will hire you with my money.”
    He weighed his coins one by one, but I turned away.

    The speaker keeps up his search, and the time now is “midday.”  He takes notice that the doors to all of the houses are closed.  All of a sudden, an old man comes on the scene; he is carrying a “bag of gold.” The old man then inform the seeker that he will offer him a job “with [his] money.”

    The old man counts out his coins piece by piece, which demonstrates his attachment to money—a physical level necessity and reality.  However, that display of physical attachment annoys this spiritual seeker, who then turns away in disgust.

    The speaker remains unimpressed by the power of a king, and he is not favorable to an old man’s “gold.”  The reader can now be assured that the speaker is not seeking an earthly job and thus not seeking worldly goods; instead, he is searching for the spiritual love that comes only from God.  Worldly wealth and power hold no importance for him.

    Third Movement:    Experiencing a Change

    It was evening. The garden hedge was all aflower.
    The fair maid came out and said, “I will hire you with a smile.”
    Her smile paled and melted into tears, and she went back alone into the dark.

    However, the seeker continues on well into evening, when he sees, a “garden hedge [ ] all aflower.”  Then he encounters a “fair maid” who says, “I will hire you with a smile.”  But he inevitably experiences the transformation that comes to the aged human being as the smile “paled and melted into tears.”  Thus rejected, the maiden “went back alone into the dark.”

    Fourth Movement:   The Best Bargain

    The sun glistened on the sand, and the sea waves broke waywardly.
    A child sat playing with shells.
    He raised his head and seemed to know me, and said, “I hire you with nothing.”
    From thenceforward that bargain struck in child’s play made me a free man.

    In the final movement, the speaker, as he is walking along the ocean’s shore, watching the turbulent waves, and meeting a child who is playing on the shore, is afforded his final bargain: the child affirms, “I hire you with nothing.”  This final bargain thus results in a situation that ultimately becomes the best bargain.

    The best bargain is the one that liberates the seeker from searching for satisfaction from earthly things.  He, then instead, may focus his attention on his own soul, where the real “job” of seeking freedom, liberation, and bliss exist.

    It is the quiet Spirit—the seeming nothingness contrasting with materiality, the space transcending time and matter—that turns out to be the genuine, true employer.  Working for the Celestial, Divine Employer (God) affords the laborer the true freedom, soul realization, and bliss—none of which can achieved by earthly power, gold, and physical affection.