The Anguished Heart: Psalm 42 and the Journey of Desperation, Part 1

This particular psalm composed by David, the warrior-poet-King of the nation of Israel, who was appointed by God to be His earthly shepherd over His chosen people; who was anointed by the prophet Samuel and described in I Samuel 16:12 as “ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to” (we think of Michelangelo’s David), not the tallest and kingliest in appearance, for the Lord “seeth not as a man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart,” thus was David chosen, the least of his brethren who performed the lowliest of occupations, a shepherd, yet who killed a lion and a bear, and later Goliath; who, one night, as the army of Israel was away in battle, lingered at his castle and walked on his rooftop, spied Bathsheba bathing, commanded her to be brought to him, either raped or seduced her, arranged her husband Uriah’s murder because she was pregnant, then took her to wife; of whom it is said, served his generation well and whose heart was a heart after God’s; and from whose loins continued the lineage that culminated in Christ, the Son of David – this psalm is of unique importance and stands in the canon of great poetry.

            There is no word, it is said by James Kugel in his book The Idea of Biblical Poetry, Parallelism and Its History, for “poetry” in biblical Hebrew (pg. 69), “thus to speak of ‘poetry’ at all in the Bible will be in some measure to impose a concept foreign to the biblical world.” However, it is commonly stated that a high percent of the bible is composed in poetic form. There are elements of what makes poetry, i.e. parallelism, symbolism, metaphor, simile, specific themes, a certain narration, pattern of lines, anaphora, etc.

                                    As the hart panteth after the water brooks,

                        so panteth my soul after Thee, O God.

                                    My soul thirsteth for God, for the living

                        God: when shall I come and appear before God?

                                    My tears have been my meat day and

                        night, while they continually say unto me, “Where

                        is thy God?”

                                    When I remember these things, I pour out

                        my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude,

                        I went with them to the house of God, with the

                        voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that

                        kept holyday.

                                    Why art thou cast down, O my soul?

                        and why art thou disquieted within me? hope

                        thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him for

                        the help of His countenance.

                                    O my God, my soul is cast down within

                        me: therefore will I remember Thee from the land

                        of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar

Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of

                        Thy waterspouts: all Thy waves and Thy billows

                        are gone over me.

                                    Yet the Lord will command His lovingkindness

                        in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be

                        with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.

                                    I will say unto God my rock, “Why hast Thou

                        forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the

                        oppression of the enemy?”

                                    As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies

                        reproach me; while they say daily unto me, “Where

                        is thy God?”

                                    Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why

                        art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for

                        I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my

                        countenance, and my God.

            The poem is a prayer and the prayer illustrates the psalmist’s ultimate yearning to be in the presence of God. This is his answering the call of God, which is the same call upon each believer, to be close to Him. The commencing lines exemplify the most desperate yearning any man has ever uttered in poetry, and it is to the Highest Beloved. The sound of the lines going into the reader’s ear set him running like the hart and to speak them takes the breath away, tiring him. The believer/speaker/reader is left exhausted right at the beginning. The lines are filled with energy that demands energy from the reader/speaker. The hart is the heart and the hart is one of the most delicate creatures; so the believer is a delicate creature that is exhausted and as the hart has reached its broken end, longing for refreshment, so too the psalmist has reached his end at the beginning of the poem. The period at the end of the first verse lets us rest to catch our breath. We are in the middle of something. Much has occurred previous to the opening lines. It is like Hemingway’s prose that opens and puts the reader in the middle of the action. It is like Homer’s Iliad that opens with the Greeks already involved in their ten-year war against the Trojans. Indeed, it is The Odyssey, for David, like Odysseus, is not where he wants to be. We see Odysseus waking out of the sensual rapture of the goddess Calypso, with whom he has been on her island, and thinking of home, Ithaca, and more importantly, of Penelope, his beloved, and crying after her.

            Listen to the vowels coupling with the consonants and we hear the gallop of the hart in the forest over the soft wood and sharp stones. Hear the a’s and the t’s.

                                    As the hart panteth after the water brooks,

                        so panteth my soul after Thee, O God.

Does the psalmist scream this line? It is certain that he does not say it in a low tone or a whisper. David will settle for nothing less than to be in God’s presence, hence the following line,

                                    My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God, when

                        shall I come and appear before God?

“Now!” we seem to hear him demand. Is this not what God wants His children to desire, in fact, to demand, that they be in His presence always, to demand His presence, especially in the midst of wherever they are and whatever they are going through? To demand that He draw them closer to Him? Is not this our first calling in life? It has just occurred that “calling” in this instant is loaded. “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16).

            This question that David asks, to be in the presence of God, is the same that all poets have asked throughout the centuries. Indeed, it is each person’s if only innate desire to come into the presence of the Infinite. And it is this journey and the fulfillment thereof that Dante, who in Paradiso, confesses David as his true poetic guide, replacing Virgil who has been his guide throughout his journey, illustrated in La Divina Commedia. It is the demand that the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins declares in To R.B., “I want the one rapture of an inspiration.” And want is a desperate word. Kerouac expressed this desire and sought out this presence/fulfillment  through hijinks and drugs and travels back and forth across America, and Ginsberg in drugs and sex. John Berryman asks the same question in A Prayer After All,

                        Father, Father, I am overwhelmed.

                        Do you receive me back into Your sight?

This is mid-twentieth century David despairing. Also the questioning and protean Robert Lowell in Waking Early Sunday Morning, a poem of moral import that concludes on not the most positive note; but here is the question/demand,

                        When will we see Him face to face?

and he continues, turning his gaze earthward,

                        Each day He shines through darker glass.

                        In this small town where everything

                        is known, I see His vanishing

                        emblems, His white spire and flag-

                        pole sticking out above the fog, . . .

It is the fog of a man’s dying faith. And even earlier, like David demanding to be in the presence of God, Lowell opens his poem with the demand, “O to break loose, . . .” Though other writers might have substituted the biblical God for some other infinite presence, it was the exact question and yearning. It is also a wife asking/demanding of her husband why he has neglected her.

From Intention to Action: Heaney's "May"

In his collection Wintering Out, Seamus Heaney has a poem of five stanzas titled May. It is a poem of implied action that ends in definite action. The poem’s title refers to the month of May, the seasons that are associated with it, late spring going into early summer, and finally, the implied action of intention, as when someone says “I may do this or do that.” Let us read the poem.

                        When I looked down from the bridge

                        Trout were flipping the sky

                        Into smithereens, the stones

                        Of the wall warmed me.

                        Wading green stems, lugs of leaf

                        That untangle and bruise

                        (Their tiny gushers of juice)

                        My toecaps sparkle now

                        Over the soft fontanel

                        Of Ireland. I should wear

                        Hide shoes, the hair next my skin,

                        For walking this ground:

                        Wasn’t there a spa-well,

                        Its coping grassy, pendent?

                        And then the spring issuing

                        Right across the tarmac.

                        I’m out to find that village,

                        Its low sills fragrant

                        With ladysmock and celandine,

                        Marshlights in the summer dark.

            The poem begins with the author being physically passive, yet intellectually and imaginatively keen about his surroundings. He is pensive, contemplative, observing. The only action happening is that of fish splitting the reflection of the sky into smithereens, an elegant description, just enough of explosion included. Other particles of his environment are doing something, however subtle, such as the wall of the bridge that is giving off a certain warmth, probably with the warming weather of the season, or a specific warmth in terms of imaginative recollection, memory, personal attachment.

            Physical motion begins in the second stanza with the poet wading through the vegetation of green stumps and lugs of leaf (such a heavy sounding phrase that implies hard walking). The first real imagery of spring is given here as it untangles and grows and may bruise. He has a keen eye, noticing the tiny gushers of juice.

            He is walking, as he calls it, over the soft fontanel/Of Ireland. Fontanel is a word that means a space between the bones of the skull in an infant or fetus, where ossification is not complete and the sutures are not fully formed. At the end of this line, it is a charged word to keep, while simultaneously carrying on the soft sound of the line with the o’s and f’s. It also implied his mind at work, the lines of the poem being formed together while he is out there, and it also leads us to recognize and acknowledge the space between the end of one line and the beginning of the next.

            A proactive decision occurs in the second line of this same stanzas, I should wear. The should states that a decision has been made, and it was made somewhere in the space between the two previous lines, and more precisely, in the space that divides fontanel and Of in the next line that is the beginning of the first half of this line in which he states the proof of a decision made. But then, at the beginning of the next stanza, we have another moment of contemplation (hesitation?) like that in the first stanza. He questions the accuracy of his memory and its recollection of where he is, asking if there might have been a relic there once, or not - Wasn’t there a spa-well/Its coping grassy, pendent? And the completing two lines of the stanza change abruptly to action, horizontal, blooming action, And then the spring issuing/Right across the tarmac. Wow, directive at its best, spring blooming its active forces.

            In the last stanza, this directive we just came upon in the last two lines of the previous stanza continues. The poet continues the horizontal direction to go across the tarmac and the I should of stanza three is now I will, stated as I’m out to find that village. Definitive, willful, confident in his setting out to find that village with its grassy coping, its fragrant low sills full of spring blossoming in ladysmock and celandine and (this is a fantastic last line) Marshlights in the summer dark. Conclusive, nothing follows that line and image. That last line is one of contradiction, or tension, marshlight shining in a summer’s dark. Accurate.

            We could, in a line constructed of some of the words in the poem, summarize the seasonal action - spring untangles, issuing tiny gushers of juice. It is a poem about taking a walk, that is all, but how much this poet can turn that taken-for-granted action and consecrate it.

            The direction of the poem, a different idea from the directive will of the action implied, travels downward, and he mentions his toecaps, hide shoes, tarmac, low sills and marshlights. He is constantly looking down, hence the keen eye to see tiny gushers, and we look down with him, and the poem travels down from the bridge to marshlights, this journey echoed by the vowel sounds that can be heard in the words themselves. The last two lines of the fourth stanza and the first of the last one, however, give a successful and deliberate break in this journey, pointing out, going out, of one’s private area and aiming horizontally, across the field, before continuing and ending in the marshlights.

            There is a good line of colloquial speech in the third line of the third stanza, the hair next my skin. It is a poem of close observation, formulation of will, a decision, a poem after contemplation, after passivity.

A Flash Upon the Mind: Adlestrop

It was only a glimpse through a train’s window as it made an unscheduled stop. Edward Thomas never alighted from the train, but what we have received from him is a description of a place as if he had gotten out and walking around or standing in a field within the village’s perimeter. It is casually written, i.e., comes off as a one-off ditty quickly scribbled down on a piece of paper. Yet it is a poem of quality. Its directness of language and clear imagery, the scenery successfully captured and all held together in meter and rhyme.

                 

                  Yes, I remember Aldestrop –

                        The name, because one afternoon

                        Of heat the express-train drew up there

                        Unwontedly. It was late June.

                        The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

                        No one left and no one came

                        On the bare platform. What I saw

                        Was Adlestrop – only the name

                        And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

                        And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

                        No whit less still and lonely fair

                        Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

                        And for that minute a blackbird sang

                        Close by, and round him, mistier,

                        Farther and farther, all the birds

                        Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

He tells us at the beginning, and later on in the poem, that what he recalls is the name. The poem begins with the affirmative “Yes”, as if he were in the middle of a conversation, which in a way he is, a conversation with himself, his memory. He puts the reader into that conversation also. But we do not know it is only the name as he ends the line with the name of the place, leaving the reader to think that he will be describing the place as if he’d spent some time there. So after giving us the name of the place at the end of the first line, he begins the second by telling us it is only the name of the place he remembers. And to say it the other way, “Yes, I remember the name/Adlestrop” would give us a different meaning. We would be led to think he would be writing about the name, which alone might not seem interesting. It wouldn’t have worked here. It wouldn’t have captured or presented the reader with the place instead of the name. He would then be talking about a word instead of a place.

            Then he proceeds to inform us of how he got there, what time of day and about the weather. It was on a hot afternoon and he was travelling by train, going elsewhere but Adlestrop and in fact, the train was not even supposed to stop there. “[T]he express-train drew up there/Unwontedly.” Besides it being an unusual and unscheduled stop, it would appear to be an inconvenience on the poet who was on an express-train, obviously preferring to bypass Adlestrop. Why it stopped there unexpectedly we are never told. Instead we are told that it was in June.

            In the next stanza, Thomas presents us with clear imagery of the inaction of what is happening outside. The train’s steam has hissed and then an anonymous someone cleared his throat, and there weren’t any passengers boarding or leaving the train, which probably made the stop all the more unusual. Just a bare platform is what he observes. Someone clearing his throat is almost an insignificant thing, but Thomas’ immediate surroundings were so lacking of other significant action that he catches this. This is the only other person on the train it seems, besides Thomas and whoever else is operating the train. Certainly no one boarded, since he told us so directly.

            Along with seeing the bare platform, he then informs us that what he saw “Was Adlestrop – only the name” as it was on a sign. We thought at first he meant that he saw Adlestrop the village, but this is negated by “only the name”, thus he didn’t see the village. But then, beyond “the name”, which ends the second stanza and divides the poem, he then sees the flora that is around the train station. This division is significant, as after this the scenery of the poem changes. We go from the train and the train station, the name of the place of the place and the billboard, the interior of the train and the passenger clearing his throat to flora. But it is also important that it is the name he sees and which he remembered, as he mentioned at the beginning of the poem – he remembers the name and he has seen the name, for a name distinguishes what it names, as a name distinguishes a person or place, or a thing. His seeing the name assures him that Adlestrop is where the train has unexpectedly drew up and where he presently is, not mistaking it for the next stop and the next town. He is certain, which is important.

            The poem’s scenery stretches out and we move from the interior of the train and an empty platform to lush scenery of “willows, willow-herb, and grass/And meadowsweet and haycocks dry”.  This is what he will recall about Adlestrop, after the name and the bare platform of the train station where no one alighted or boarded the train. Then, after viewing the flora, his eyes gaze upward to the sky in which the cloudlets are lonely and fair. This attribution of a lonely feeling to the cloudlets is an extension of the poet’s state. Yet, it is not a despairing sense that overwhelms him. The cloudlets are also fair, i.e., gentle, light, there are no signs of a storm or rain or overcast impending. It is a fair day.

            But could the sense of felling lonely be an extension if the poet’s sudden sense of “Where am I?” with the train’s sudden and unexpected stop? He was expecting a different stop. He was disturbed out of a schedule and a route he expected to have been followed. He probably asked the following as the train was stopping – “Where are we? Why are we here? Why have we stopped?” These questions were unresolved since there weren’t any passengers boarding or leaving and so he probably asked after the train pulled off, “Why did we stop there?”

            In that minute, however, he catches the song of a blackbird (Thomas knew his birds and plants, he knew their names and thus was able to sight and name, hence also the name of Adlestrop was a vital fact) that sang close by. But these other birds are “mistier/Farther and farther . . .” He cannot see them, so he cannot name them. Then the poem opens farther out, as he also catches the sound of other birds, whether more blackbirds alone, or other kinds of birds we do not know, but they are the birds of the surrounding Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. And that is where the poem ends, not in Adlestrop, but in the names of the surrounding Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

            And so the poem begins in one specific place, more intimately, it begins with one name and then encompasses, at the end, the names that surround Adlestrop.

Waller's Fair Tyrant

Cavalier, as defined in the dictionary, is an attitude in which one shows a lack of concern, is offhand, disdainful, informal and uninterested; it also describes someone who was a supporter of Charles I. My intention for beginning thus is to demonstrate how the Cavalier Poets, specifically Edmund Waller, were not so offhanded about poetry as the term would imply.

            Let us first read Edmund Waller’s (and I cannot contain my admiration) elegant poem Of My Lady Isabella Playing on the Lute.

                        Such moving sounds from such a careless touch,

                        So unconcern’d her self, and we so much!

                        What Art is this, that with so little Pains

                        Transports us thus, and o’er the Spirits reigns?

                        The trembling Strings about her Fingers crowd

                        And tell their Joy for ev’ry Kiss aloud.

                        Small Force there needs to make them tremble so;

                        Touch’d by that Hand, who would not tremble too?

                        Here Love takes stand, and while she charms the Ear,

                        Empties his Quiver on the list’ning Deer:

                        Musick so softens and disarms the Mind

                        That not an Arrow does Resistance find.

                        Thus the fair Tyrant Celebrates the Prize,

                        And acts her self the Triumph of her Eyes.

                        So Nero once, with Harp in hand, survey’d

                        His Flaming Rome, and as it Burnt he Play’d.

            The tension in the poem is that between gentle possession by art on the level of the Ideal, and the tyrannical destruction by an extreme, i.e. maniacal; also it is between the poetic diction in the first twelve lines of this sonnet and the casual colloquialism of the closing couplet.

            The Lady Isabella is the conduit for art that seduces and elevates its audience, enclosing them inside of a certain rapture that o’er the Spirits reigns. She herself is the person who captures us with her ability to perform such gentle, moving sounds on her lute. We, her audience, are enraptured by the sounds heard from such careless finger-play. The viewer also makes Art, meaning, when its creation has been completed by the artist and the performer, the audience is the other entity that allows it to work, to continue to live. The first two lines of the poem imply professionalism on her part that is almost spontaneous, intimated by the unconcerned, careless touch of her fingers. She is unconcerned about the audience. That is the egotistical side of art, it cares about itself, and the artist is selfish like this also. We can go into a political discussion here, but will not, only to say that it is no wonder why many artists have fallen into the philosophical and political image of what the English author and judge J.F. Stephen said, explaining their actual motives behind slogans such as humanity: “Humanity is only I writ large, and love for Humanity generally means zeal for MY notions as to what men should be and how they should live.” And then Auden elucidates the human heart’s true desires, which is to be loved alone in September 1, 1939. But I have gone off my subject. Art, whether it is a poem, painting, or musical composition, when it succeeds, displays a certain shade of effortlessness on the artist’s behalf, despite the fact that there has been much effort, practice and frustration previously paid out in the creative process. To paraphrase Yeats, a poem must read as if it took no work at all.

            There is also another reading of the first two lines stemming from the interpretation that she is playing us like a lute. She plays with us, teasing us with her careless touch, and unconcerned about our response, our emotions, knowing that, or even thrilled with the fact that we will be distraught in the end as she leaves us to fantasize about what we hoped the fulfillment of her playing with us would be.

            Edmund calls this ability of hers Art, What Art is this, that with so little Pains/Transports us thus, and o’er our Spirit reigns? For her, it is of little effort and consequence to do what she does. Enamoured, we give ourselves over to her pleasing, as we are pleased in our own manner, feeling transported out of ourselves, the usual moment when we feel that art has accomplished what it set out to do. This art of hers is a craft, and she is crafty, with all that that word implies, her deceptiveness, duplicity; art/craft. Art is a craft and vice versa. And art of course alludes to artifice.

            Art, besides freeing us in this sense, also, because it holds our spirits, has conquered us. We are not free, but enclosed, without a will to release ourselves from its possession of our spirits and our minds. Thus we have ourselves disarmed ourselves willingly to its tyranny. Art over the spirit reigns tyrannically and art works like this in order to accomplish what it must. It is like the Holy Spirit Who must have His way, and the ego has to be erased. We give our consent and become a slave in order to be freed. We gave our consent to her, Isabella, when we entered the musical chamber and thus made it easier for her to perform what she did over us.

            We have another word in the fifth line, trembling, that implies our cowering before Lady Isabella. The strings tremble from her touch, a natural reaction by the instrument, and we too tremble out of elevation received from the musical performance. For us, the trembling is also a sensory one. But out of fear we would have trembled too if touched by her hand, feeling the force she would have employed. Touched by that Hand can be read as clasped or arrested by that hand.

            In the ninth line, Love takes stand, gives us the impression of an authoritative figure, dictatorial even. We are moving closer to the tyrannical nature. Love, that is supposed to be a freeing force, a liberating and life giving force, is now one that like art earlier in the poem, conquers and while its conduit charms us, playing us, makes us surrender our will, kills us by emptying his quiver into us. Her music has assisted in this killing, for that is what it is, by disarming us, but it disarmed us because we allowed it to. We were seduced and willingly so. Hence, no resistance was met by any of the arrows.

            The eleventh line contains the elegant (that is the most appropriate word for this poem) contradiction, fair Tyrant. An oxymoron in itself is this phrase. This is the summation of art, of Lady Isabella herself. Fair, as in all of the following connotations: beautiful, light, blonde (feminine with the e), pleasing, attractive, fair in complexion, also playing by the rules, legitimate. She is fair, appealing to our eyes, and other senses, and she is more so as she is playing on the lute a musical composition that arouses our senses, making us sensitive to the music itself. She then acts on her tyrannical character by killing us in the same manner that love has just done. This is the tyrant in her and again, the tyranny of art. She knows what she has accomplished and is then pleased with herself, celebrating the prize, And acts her self the Triumph of her eyes. We know there is no such thing as a fair tyrant. And the term is usually applied to a male, hardly ever a female. We are now being set up by the poet for the clever conclusion.

            This same phrase sets us up for the concluding couplet where the diction is more colloquial and and less poetic than the poem’s preceding twelve lines. And it is a complete surprise to the reader: So Nero once with Harp in hand surveyed/His Flaming Rome, and as it burnt he Play’d. This is why all the mention before of tyrant and tyranny. Waller brings it all together here. The fair Lady Isabella is now transformed into Nero, one of Rome’s most corrupt, immoral and murderous rulers. Waller has taken his lady into an extreme. She no longer is the fair tyrant, but now exposes that side we overlooked in our letting her seduce us and give in to her guile. Like Nero who surveyed Rome with harp in hand as it burned, so she celebrated the prize of our downfall. From the elevation of art in the first half of the poem we have travelled to the destructive nature, ending in destruction.

            Another way the couplet succeeds is by undercutting the whole poem itself, by transforming Lady Isabella into Nero, from the beautiful flirtatious woman throughout the poem to a madman, changing gender altogether, letting the tyranny win out in the end. He has built up the poem to make us expect one thing but then proves our foolishness and how wrong we were. Reading that couplet is reminiscent of T.S. Eliot’s surprise in the opening lines of The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock. Waller’s couplet is like a precursor to Eliot’s whose surprise was thus:

                        Let us go then, you and I

                        When the evening is spread out against the sky

                        Like a patient etherised upon a table;

The two poets undercut the Romantic beauty hinted at in preceding lines, Waller and the fair Lady Isabella and Eliot and the sunset sky. They both bring their poems earthward and stun the reader with these sudden unexpected turns. Waller does it by the transformation of Isabella into Nero and Eliot by changing our glance from the splendour of an evening sky to a patient anesthetized upon a table. What we thought might occur does not, and what we thought might never occur does. In the end, Edmund Waller proves to be less cavalier about his poems than we might suspect him to be. And one of the best lines in all of poetry is by Waller himself in another poem, On a Lady Passing Through a Crowd of People that reads The yielding marble of her snowy breast. We can leave with all that this inspires us to imagine.