My throat grows hoarse for how I have long raged.
My heart is heavy; it seldom is assuaged.
Attention falters when plays are too long staged,
And knuckles bleed that rap upon the doors
Forever closed, and I can do no more
Than I have done. I may have thought before
That I might move some hearts and minds to me,
To fight against the Stupid God to free
Those from it who would gladly from it flee,
But striving that I do seems all in vain.
That those who want to flee it have is plain;
The rest seem with it happy to remain.
They dance and sing, an orgy of delight
They carry on amid the spreading night.
Consider the kindling. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
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Though she will never read these lines I write,
I yet would have near me day and night;
Though years have passed, I still thrill at the sight
Of her. How could I not? But more I thrill
That she remains yet with me, good and ill,
And more the latter, has not had her fill
And passed on by, as many might well do.
For all that I have given cause to rue
Accepting life with me, she carries through,
Abiding my unthinking in seeming ease.
No wonder, then, that I hope her to please
With word and deed. That tempest is a breeze
I face with her. It is an easy life
I lead in leading it beside my wife.
Do I queue up James Taylor? Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
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I see her as she stands upon the stage,
Doing as she’s done since tender age,
And see for her a future to assuage
The fears I feel for her in every day.
She knows them little, goes outside to play,
Goes to school, goes to church to pray,
And thinks but little of what can go wrong,
Running, laughing, lifting voice in song.
My own prayer is that it will be long
Ere her young heart, to its hurt, will be touched.
I know we live in a harsh world, and such
A place can wreak great harm on all, and much
Of my concern is that she may yet smile.
O! May she be a little girl a while!
Not mine, but you get the idea. Photo by Jill Wellington on Pexels.com
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A while back, I worked with a tutoring client to draft a response to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, “My mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun,” and I wrote a post about how I went about helping the client that provided my own example of that kind of work. (Find it here.) In that post, I note similarities between the client’s assignment and the often-taught Marlowe-Raleigh-Donne sequence (“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd,” and “The Bait”), and in recent days, I had occasion to revisit my post on the Shakespearean subject. I was reminded of the events then discussed, and it occurred to me that it might be a useful exercise to put myself in the position of Donne to the already-existing Raleigh, the rebuttal to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me prov’d, I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
My rebuttal thereto reads
You never writ, nor no man ever loved, If love is never love that, finding change, Stays as it is when it first ever moved Or strives not living patterns to arrange In hopes of bringing its love to the mark That looks on tempests and is not shaken. No, use will change the shape of every bark That plies the waves, whatever standard’s taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, oh no, but is its flow’r And fruit that ripens not all in one go, But in its season and appointed hour If tended well, made better, and let grow. No thing that is made better stays the same, And stasis gives the lie to goodness’s claim.
Following the pattern, to make this work, I’ll need to continue to use the Shakespearean sonnet structure of fourteen lines of iambic pentameter rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet, with a (somewhat shaded) turn into the couplet. Too, to stand in place of Donne in response to Raleigh, I will need to put myself in position to flirt with the narrator of the rebuttal–something, to follow the Shakespearean example, like making a pass at Beatrice after she has rebuffed Benedick. Further, the dominant metaphor will need to shift fairly substantially; Marlowe and Raleigh work in the pastoral, while Donne pivots to angling, so I would need to move from the nautical and agrarian to something else, entirely.
Farming and boating are both active, engaged ways to make a living. A deviation from that would be something like my once-intended line of work: professing the humanities. Fortunately, I know enough about doing that (or convinced at least a few people that I did) that I can discuss it convincingly. Too, the narrator being addressed has to be considered; what does such a narrator de/value? The rebuttal is a rebuke of hubris, the conceit on Shakespeare’s part that he is able to universalize in such a way as he purports to do; so much must be avoided in the new poem (to the extent possible, knowing as I do that there is arrogance in any act of writing, something of the “I have important things to say and you need to read them“). I fancy, as well, that the rebutting narrator values growth and change, which does raise the possibility of leaving things behind (which Shakespeare’s narrator really cannot consider with love as a set constant).
With such in mind, I come up with the following:
In no minds’ marriage would I interfere, Nor yet presume to speak of such with you, Who, though in but a moment, has made clear What thoughts are held on how to carry through A life of love. Instead, I turn a page I’ve read before and read again the words I have long known, and in my later age I hear in them what I’d not in youth heard. So may love be, itself a constant thing That is itself and e’er itself remains, While those who fall to Time’s long sickle’s swing Will alter in what they will from it gain. The book is open; read whoever will, And in the reading by love be well filled.
I hope the reading pleases.
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I do so love a chilly clear morning The moon off full staring silently down At crisping grass waving gently silvered In the quiet before the world wakes
That’s no battle station… Photo by Ben Mack on Pexels.com
It never lasts Arien running her appointed course as Tilion dallies yet again And the books demand my attention as they ever do Where a steaming mug awaits
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Sitting in the corner Thinking up a song The bard awaits a summons Hopes it won’t be long Before the tune is called for And played to the delight Of souls in joy assembled Long into the night
Usually this kind of thing, right? Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
The scribe is at his desk He waits with pen in hand Eager now to answer The written word’s demand To leave behind a record That will for long remain And echo in the eye Longer than the bard’s refrain
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Even after all the years of doing it After all of them I’ve seen before Again and again and again I still quail to see an empty page before me Waiting for me to fill it with the work of my pen Leave traces of myself behind in ropy trails I hope to see outlast me
I know the hesitation well. Photo by Lum3n on Pexels.com
I lift the pen Put my fingers to the keys Trying to open the inner taps And they sometimes flow freely But just as often I have to work the pump for a while Before anything will flow And even then It’s often silty Not the best tasting drink
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Oh, I would like to write a book At which someone would take a look And read the words I put inside; Though they’d be covered, I’d not hide The way I feel about this place, The things that I must daily face To find my way and make my name. Oh, I’d not mind if I found fame; I’d be okay to be liked well The more so did it help to sell Another book that I might write And release for the delight Of those who liked the first I wrote. But if I will on that tide float, I first must flood with words the page; The script must come before the stage.
The fortunate day has come again When many take thought for such luck as they have And worry more than most days at how much of it they lack
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow… Photo by Drew Rae on Pexels.com
What must it be like to have such luxury To be able to wonder only on certain days Whether fortune will find in favor And not to expect each day That the turning wheel will roll over Knowing that for it to move forward it must Throw some down Seeing that there is always a set that Sticks to the wheel-well Building up a curtain that will In time Make all advancement cease?
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Elliott RWI 