Well, this Bank Holiday Monday is drawing to a close. I’ve spent a lot of it working, actually, but also occasionally listening to the wonderful celebration of Dylan Thomas Day on BBC Radio 3. Among other things, this actually made me feel a bit nostalgic for Wales (where I lived until last year)…
This is the Reverend Eli Jenkins’ Prayer from Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas which is also sometimes known as The Sunset Poem. It’s a different choir, though. This is the Dunvant Male Voice Choir and they’re filmed on the breezy clifftops overlooking the beautiful Rhossili Bay on the Gower Peninsula.
Dylan Thomas and a Male Voice Choir; what could be more Welsh than that?
Every morning when I wake,
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please do keep Thy lovely eye
On all poor creatures born to die
And every evening at sun-down I ask a blessing on the town, For whether we last the night or no I’m sure is always touch-and-go.
We are not wholly bad or good Who live our lives under Milk Wood, And Thou, I know, wilt be the first To see our best side, not our worst.
O let us see another day! Bless us all this night, I pray, And to the sun we all will bow And say, good-bye – but just for now!
In honour of the poet Dylan Thomas, BBC Radio 3 has designated this forthcoming Bank Holiday Monday (5th May) Dylan Thomas Day and will broadcasting a number of programmes about him and his work on that day and in fact also on the Sunday preceding it. This is because Dylan Thomas was born in 1914 so this year marks the centenary of his birth, although his actual birthday is 27th October.
Anyway, I thought I’d use this event as an excuse to post a poem by Dylan Thomas. I’ve loved this particular one since I first heard it when I was a student many years ago. I say “heard it” rather than “read it” because it was through buying a tape of the man himself reading his poems that got me hooked. Fern Hill reflects about the passage of time, the loss of childhood happiness and the inevitability of death but its mood is defiant rather than gloomy. It’s full of vibrant imagery, but it’s also written with a wonderful feeling for the natural rhythms and cadences of the English language. You can listen to Dylan Thomas reading this exactly as you would if it were music.
I remember once getting very drunk at a conference, standing on a table in a pub and reciting this loudly to a largely foreign (German) audience. To my astonishment they gave me a standing ovation, but my rendition wasn’t a patch on the original. My voice has nothing like that resonance!
Fern Hill
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Families, when a child is born Want it to be intelligent. I, through intelligence, Having wrecked my whole life, Only hope the baby will prove Ignorant and stupid. Then he will crown a tranquil life By becoming a Cabinet Minister.
by Su Shi (1037-1101); he is generally viewed as the greatest poet of the Sung dynasty in China and was also known as Su Dong-po or Si Tung-p’0.
The exact date of Shakespeare’s birth is not known but, by tradition, it is celebrated on 23rd April, St George’s Day. Today therefore marks the 450th anniversary of his birth.
This sonnet is clearly closely related to the one preceding it, No. 29, and is thought to have been written to the Earl of Southampton. I picked it for today not just because it’s beautiful, but also because it provides an example of how deeply embedded in our language certain phrases from Shakespeare have become; the standard English translation of Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu is entitled The Remembrance of Things Past, though I have never felt it was a very apt rendering. English oneupmanship, perhaps?
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
Frederick Delius is by no means my favourite composer, but when I heard yesterday of the death of the fine English baritone John Shirley-Quirk, I immediately decided to post this piece as a tribute. It’s a sumptuous setting, by Delius, of Ernest Dowson‘s sensual and languid poem Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae which is named after a phrase from Horace but is actually, obviously, about the poet’s obsession with a lost love. I probably shouldn’t mention that the lost love in question was an eleven year old girl and he was 24. Dowson pursued her unsuccessfully for eight years. When eventually, at the age of 19, she married someone else he drank himself to death at the age of 32. Oscar Wilde said of Dowson:
Poor wounded wonderful fellow that he was, a tragic reproduction of all tragic poetry, like a symbol, or a scene. I hope bay leaves will be laid on his tomb and rue and myrtle too for he knew what love was.
Anyway, the music and words are beautifully woven together and also beautifully sung. RIP John Shirley-Quirk.
Here’s the text of the poem
Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine; And I was desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat, Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay; Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet; But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, When I awoke and found the dawn was grey: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind, Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng, Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind, But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, all the time, because the dance was long: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
I cried for madder music and for stronger wine, But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire, Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine; And I am desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
Away! the moor is dark beneath the moon, Rapid clouds have drank the last pale beam of even: Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon, And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.
Pause not! The time is past! Every voice cries, Away! Tempt not with one last tear thy friend’s ungentle mood: Thy lover’s eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay: Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.
Away, away! to thy sad and silent home; Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth; Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come, And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.
The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head: The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet: But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead, Ere midnight’s frown and morning’s smile, ere thou and peace may meet.
The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose, For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the deep: Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean knows; Whatever moves, or toils, or grieves, hath its appointed sleep.
Thou in the grave shalt rest—yet till the phantoms flee Which that house and heath and garden made dear to thee erewhile, Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile.
by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822); posted to mark the 200th anniversary of the poem’s composition.
I marvel how Nature could ever find space For so many strange contrasts in one human face: There’s thought and no thought, and there’s paleness and bloom And bustle and sluggishness, pleasure and gloom.
There’s weakness, and strength both redundant and vain; Such strength as, if ever affliction and pain Could pierce through a temper that’s soft to disease, Would be rational peace–a philosopher’s ease.
There’s indifference, alike when he fails or succeeds, And attention full ten times as much as there needs; Pride where there’s no envy, there’s so much of joy; And mildness, and spirit both forward and coy.
There’s freedom, and sometimes a diffident stare Of shame scarcely seeming to know that she’s there, There’s virtue, the title it surely may claim, Yet wants heaven knows what to be worthy the name.
This picture from nature may seem to depart, Yet the Man would at once run away with your heart; And I for five centuries right gladly would be Such an odd such a kind happy creature as he.
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In the Dark 