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Morton Marcus: And good evening, this is Morton Marcus and this is The Poetry Show, and is a show that I call "Beginnings and Ends," and it will feature the works of four poets, great English poets who were born or died from 1692- actually, I'm

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sorry, from 1678 to the present time, and we will explore some of the greatest poems in the English language by these poets. What I will do is instead of starting off chronologically as far as the years are concerned, I will start off as far as the

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day is concerned. And so our first poet is a poet who you all know, but who we don't read very much of anymore, and that is Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose name is always mentioned with John Keats. What I'm going to do today is to read several poems

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by Shelley, one- one of his most famous poems, and another poem, which I happen to love very much, which is not read very often at all. And I will read the commentary to it, as we go along by the wonderful critic, by the name of Harold Bloom, who

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wrote a book called ‘’The Visionary Company‘’, a reading of English romantic poetry, and it was, through his criticism, actually, that I was spurred on to this poem. And the poem is called ‘’Mont Blanc‘’ and it is a poem about

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maybe the- one of the tallest mountains in Europe. Mont Blanc, near the French border with Italy, is the highest mountain in the Alps. When he conceived the poem, Shelley was standing on a bridge over the Arve river in the valley of Chamonix, in

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what is now Southeastern France. And what this poem, which is in five medium-sized sections, is about- this is what Mr. Bloom says ‘’the poem subject is the relation between individual mind and the universe, and also the problem of what rules the

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universe and to what moral end, unifying this double subject is the imaginative postulate of a universal mind or hidden power in nature. The Ravine masks and metaphorically represents the universal mind, the Arve river, the everlasting universe of

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things, and the feeble brook the human mind that borrows inspiration from the external world. Even as the brook‘s force depends upon the rivers, the Arve gives splendor to the Ravine and reflects the Ravine‘s colors just as impressions reach

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the individual mind through the senses, but the mind gives its personal coloring to these impressions. The Arve seems to take on something of the meaning of Alth, the sacred river when the passages‘ final lines echo Kubla Khan by Coleridge‘’.

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Another thing about Mont Blanc is, this is one of the meditation, nature meditation poems, which was first done by William Wordsworth in his poem ‘’Tintern Abbey‘’, or "Lines Composed Near Tintern Abbey‘’ in which the poet looks at nature

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and then reflects on it, but nature must physically be there, and then the poet relates to it. A very interesting poem then, this is the description of the first section of ‘’Mont Blanc‘’ and I will read it now, by Percy Shelley who was born August 4,

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1792. MONT BLANC One The everlasting universe of things flows through the mind,

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and rolls its rapid waves, now dark - now glittering - now reflecting gloom - now lending splendor, where from secret springs, a source of human thought its tribute brings of waters - with a sound but half its own, such as a feeble brook

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will often assume, in the wild woods, among the mountains lone, were waterfalls around it leap for ever, where woods and winds contend, and a vast river over its rocks ceaselessly bursts, and raves.

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The next section of the poem directly addresses the Ravine and its lurking power. As Shelley gazes upon the Ravine, he muses upon his reaction to it's vivid force. Here the legion of thoughts is the state of the poet's mind, distracted

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as he composes the poem, but still at rest in the refuge of poetry's cave. In the cave, the poet's mind gazes out at the phenomenon and seeks a shade of the Ravines reality and the ghostly world of imagination. These phantoms and images have

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emanated from the poet's own breast when he recalls them he admits defeat in his metaphoric quest. But suddenly, when he ceases to search, the natural scene gives him a symbol, ‘’thou art there!‘’ he says. The Ravine itself is an emblem of a mind

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more comprehensive than a poet's, a power akin to the light that sweeps through the world, in his- the hymn of intellectual beauty. Section Two

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Thus thou, Ravine of Arve river - dark deep Ravine - thou many-colored, many-voiced vale, over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful- awful scene, where power in likeness of the Arve comes down from the

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ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne, bursting through these dark mountains like the flame of lightning through the tempest; - though dust lie, thy giant brood of pines around the clinging, children of elder time, in whose devotion the chainless winds

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still come and ever came to drink their odors, and their mighty swinging to hear - an old and solemn harmony; thine earthly rainbow stretched across the sweep of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil robes some uncultured image; the strange

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sleep which when the voices of the desert fail wraps all in its own deep eternity; by cavern‘s echoing to the Arve‘s commotion, a loud, lone sound no other sound can tame; thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion, thou art the path of

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that unresting sound - Dizzy Ravine! And when I gaze on thee I seem as in a trance sublime and strange to muse on my own separate fantasy, my own, my human mind, which passively now renders and receives fast influencing, holding an

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unremitting interchange with a clear universe of things around; one legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings now float above the darkness, and now rest where that door now on no unbidden guests, in the still cave of the witch Posey, seeking

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among the shadows that pass by ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, some phantom, some faint image; till the breast from which they fled recalled them, thou art there! ‘’Mont Blanc‘s‘’ third section establishes the moral

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indifference of the secret power enshrined in the mountain, yet suggests how the power can be tapped for revolutionary moral ends. Nature is not concerned with man's specific good. To reconcile oneself with nature, one needs to recognize its

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potential malevolence. The power of good or evil is in our own will, for we can choose how to utilize natural power. Part Three of MONT BLANC by Shelly Some say that gleams of a remoter world visit the soul in

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sleep, that death is slumber, and that it shapes the busy thoughts outnumber of those who wake and live. - I look on high; has some unknown omnipotence unfurled the veil of life and death? Or do I lie in dream, and does the mighty a world of sleep

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spread All around and inaccessibly its circles? From the very spirit fails, driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep that vanishes among the viewless gales! Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, Mont Blanc appears - still snowy, and

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serene; its subject mountains there on earthly forms pile around the ice and rock; broad veils between of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread, and wind among the accumulated steeps; a desert people by the

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storms alone, save when the eagle brings some hunter‘s bone, and the wolf tracks her there - how hideously its shapes are heaped around! Rude, bare, and high, ghastly, and scarred, and riven. - Is this the scene with the old earthquake-daemon taught

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her young ruin? Were these- were these they have toys? Or did a sea of fire envelop once this silent snow? None can reply all seems eternal now, The wilderness has a mysterious tongue, which teaches awful doubt, of faith so mild, so

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solemn, so serene, that man may be, but for such faith, with nature reconciled, thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal large codes of fraud and woe; not understood by all, but which the wise, and great, and good interpret, I'll make felt, or

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deeply feel. The fourth section of the poem develops the vision of the natural scene, emphasizing the remote serenity and the power that dwells apart behind the mountain. As this section deals

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with a dual capacity of the power for creation and destruction, it is not surprising that memories of Kubla Khan are again invoked. Part Four of Shelley's MONT BLANC

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The fields, the lakes , the forests, and the streams, ocean, and all the living things that dwell within the daedal earth; lightning, and rain, earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane, the torpor of the year when feeble dreams visit the hidden

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buds, or dreamless sleep holds every future leaf and flower; the bound with which from that the tested trance they leap; the works in ways of man, their death and birth, and that of him and all that his may be; all things that move and breathe

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with toil and sound are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell. Power dwells apart in its tranquility, remote serene, and inaccessible: and this the naked countenance of earth, on which I gaze, even these primeval mountains teach the adverting

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mind. A glaciers creep like snakes that watch their prey, from the far fountains, slow rolling on; there, many a precipice Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power have piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle, a city of death,

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distinct with many a tower and wall impregnable, becoming ice. Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin is there, that from the boundaries of the sky rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing its destined path, or in the mangled soil branchless

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on the shattered; the rocks drew down from yon remotest waste, have overthrown the limits of the dead and living world, never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil; their food and their

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retreat for ever gone, so much of life and joy is lost. The race of man flies foreign dread; his work and dwelling vanish, like smoke before the tempest‘s stream, and their place is not known. Below, vast caves shine in the rushing torrens‘ restless

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gleam, which from those secret chasms and tumults welling meet in the vale, and one majestic river, the breath, and blood of distant lands, for ever roads it's allowed waters to the ocean-waves, breathe that swift vapors to the circling air.

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In his fifth and final section, ‘’Mont Blanc‘’ reinforced it's Blake-like point that there is no natural religion. We are told again that the ultimate power of things finds its emblem in the mountain, and we are now given the understanding of this

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emblems‘ importance to us, which is in the human minds‘ imaginings. Our imaginings can draw upon the secret strength of things and but for our imaginings, a phenomenon of nature would be meaningless to us. This pattern of natural

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inspiration as a reciprocal process or dialogue between phenomenon and the poet's imaginings becomes clearer in Shelley's most powerful, shorter poem, the fierce and apocalyptic ‘’Ode to the West Wind‘’ which we will read next.

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So here is the fifth and final section of Percy Shelley's MONT BLANC Mont Blanc yet gleams on high: - the power is there, the still and solemn power of many sights, and many sounds, and much of

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life and death. In a calm darkness of the moonless nights, in the lone glare of day, the snows descend upon that mountain; none behold them there, nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, or the star-beams dart through them.

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Winds contend silently there, and heap the snow with the breath, rapid and strong, but silently! It's home the voices lightning in those solitudes keeps innocently, and like vapor broods over the snow. The secret strength of things which governs

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thought, and to the infinite dome of Heaven is as a law, inhabits thee! And what were thou, and earth and stars, and sea, if to the human mind‘s imaginings silence and solitude were vacancy?

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One of the great poems of the English language is Shelley's ‘’Ode to the West Wind‘’ which is really a series of sonnets. In fact, it is a series of four sonnets, and just the sound of it alone, much less than that Blanc first poem that you've

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just heard, the- the sounds are just so perfect, everything sounds so perfect with this poem. What it's about is- it's about the years turning, it's about the coming of death or autumn, but it is also about rebirth out of the cycle of the

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year. And this rebirth is not just natural, but it is the cycle of- of the revolutionary rebirth, of the change in human intellectual and moral life as well as in the natural world. Some of the images, especially when we get into part three, are

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absolutely astonishing. Anyway, let me just read this without commentary. I just did the Bloom thing because I thought that ‘’Mont Blanc‘’ might be difficult to hear on the first hearing. Here is the great ‘’Ode to the West Wind‘’ by Percy

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Shelley, one of the four poets, who was born on August 4, 1792, in this program "Beginnings and Ends," which will feature four poets, two of whom were born and two of whom died within the first 17 days of August. So, here is Shelley once more, and

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this is his great poem: ODE TO THE WEST WIND and I would hope that you will listen to this because it is a wonderful poem. O, wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn‘s being, thou from

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whose unseen presence the leaves dead are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, who chariotest to their dark wintery bed the winged seeds, where they

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lie cold and low, each like a corpse within its grave, until thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow her clarion o‘ed the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet blood- buds like flocks to feed in air) with living hues and odors plane and

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hill: wild spirit which art moving everywhere; destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear! Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky‘s commotion, loose clouds like Earth's decaying leaves our shed, shook from the

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tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, angels of rain and lightning: there are spread on the blue surface of thine aëry surge, like the bright hair uplifted from the head of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge of the horizon to the

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zenith height, the locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge of the dying year, to which this closing night will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, vaulted with all congregated might of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere black rain, and fire,

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and hail will burst: oh hear! –And the apostrophe here or the address is the wind, Shelly is talking to the West Wind. And here's part three:

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Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams the blue Mediterranean, where he lay, lull‘d by the coil of his crystalline streams, beside a pumice isle in Baiae‘s bay, and saw in sleep old palaces and towers quivering within the

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wave‘s intenser day, all overgrown with azure moss and flowers so sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou for whose path the Atlantic's level powers cleave themselves into chasms, while far below the sea-blooms and the oozy woods

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which were the sapless foliage of the ocean, know thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, and tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear! Four:

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If I were a dead leaf thou mightest hear- mightest bear; if I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; a wave to pant beneath thy high power and share the impulse of thy strength, only less free than thou, O uncontrollable! If I were as in my boyhood, and

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could be the comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, as then, when to outstripped thy skiey speed scare seemed a vision; I would never have striven as thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the

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thorns of life! I bleed! A weight of hour has chained and bowed one like thee: timeless, and swift, and proud. The fifth and final Ssection: Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: what if my leaves are

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falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, sweet though in sadness. Be though, Spirit fierce, my spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, like withered

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leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth the trumpet of a prophecy! O wind, if Winter comes, can

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Spring be far behind? One of the great poems of the English language ‘’Ode to the West Wind‘’ by Percy Shelley who was born on August 4, 1792, and died less than 30 years later in 1822. The second poet we will

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talk about is one of the deaths at this time, and that is William Blake, who died on August 12, 1827. And William Blake, as you know, is one of the great visionary poets of the English language, not only in his poems but in his paintings

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as well, actually in his engravings. And of all the books he wrote, there's one that appears in a book called ‘’The Pickering Manuscript‘’ which never got play for a long time and it's called ‘’The Mental Traveler‘’ and it is written

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almost like a ballad in AB- AB, CB rhyme or alternate rhyme scheme. And it is the story really of life on earth, and it is a grim picture of the endless around, the endless cycle of existence, which we've actually been hearing about with Shelley

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in ‘’Ode to the West Wind‘’, but in this round of existence that you cannot break out of. The only thing that can save you in the Bakean world is the act of the imagination, is a way to break through the natural limitations of the body and of

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mortal life through some great act of poetic power. It's almost like reimagining the world. And this is a very curious poem called ‘’The Mental Traveller‘’, and what it does is, it traces the life cycle of a baby boy and the lifecycle of an old woman

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and it shows how they move in opposite, yet circular directions to each other, and it is a fascinating poem, very easy to follow, but astonishing and terrifying in its vision. It is one of the poems that- I really think maybe the greatest poem

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that Blake ever wrote. And here it is, it is called ‘’The Mental Traveller‘’ of some of the images seem a little confused, just keep the general idea with you, and just see this amazing vision of life that Blake projects here in this poem that

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remained forever in ‘’The Pickering Manuscript and Notebook‘’, which was found and sold to several people after his death. In fact, Pickering was the first person to own the manuscript after Blake died. So here's William Blake's ‘’The

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Mental Traveller‘’, he is our second poet. This poem will run probably around five minutes. I traveled through a land of men, a land of men and women THE MENTAL TRAVELLER

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too; and heard and saw such dreadful things as cold earth-wanders never knew. For there the Babe is born in joy that was begotton in dire woe; just as we reap enjoy the fruit which we in bitter tears did sow. And if the Babe is born a

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boy he's given to a Woman Old, who nails him down upon a rock, catches his shrieks in cups of gold. She binds iron thorns [Four lines misssing] around his head, she pierces both his hands and feet, she

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cuts his heart out at his side, to make it feel both cold and heat. Her fingers number every nerve, just as a miser counts his gold; she lives upon his shrieks and cries, and she grows young as he grows old. Till he becomes a bleeding Youth, and

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she becomes a Virgin bright; then he rends up his manacles, and binds her down for his delight. He plants himself and all her nerves, just as a husbandman his mould; and she becomes his dwelling-place and garden fruitful seventyfold. And

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thro‘ the region wide: They cry ‘The Babe! the Babe is born!’ aged Shadow, soon he fades, wandering around an earthly cot, full filled all gems and gold which he by industry has got. And these are the gems of the human soul, the rubies and

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pearls of a love-sick eye, the countless gold of the aching heart, the martyrs groan and the lovers sigh. They are his meat, they are his drink; he feeds the beggar on the poor and the wayfaring traveller: for ever open his door. His grief is

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their eternal joy; they make the rooms and walls to ring; till from the fire on the hearth a little Female Babe does spring. She is all of solid fire and gems and gold, that none his hand dares stretch to touch her baby form, or wrap her in his

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swaddling-band. But she comes to the man she loves, if young or old, or rich or poor; they soon drive out the Aged Host, to become a begger at another‘s door. He wanders weeping far away, until some other take him in; oft blind and age-bent, sore

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distrest, until he can a Maiden win. And to allay his freezing age, the poor man takes her in his arms; the cottage fades before he's sight, the garden and it's lovely charms. The guests are scattered through the land, for the eye altering

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alters all; the sensors roll themselves in fear, and the flat earth becomes a ball; the stars, sun, moon all shrink away, a desert vast without a bound, and nothing left to eat or drink, and a dark desert all-around. The honey of her infant lips,

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the bread and wine of her sweet smile, the wild game of her roving eye, does him to infancy beguile; for as he eats and drinks he grows younger and younger every day; and on the desert wild they both wander in terror and dismay. Like the wild

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stag she flees away, her fear plants many a thicket wild; while he pursues her night and day, by various arts of love beguiled; by various arts of love and hate, till the wide desert planted o‘er with a labyrinth of wayward love, where

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roams the lion, wolf, and bore. Till he becomes a wayward Babe and she a weeping Woman Old. Then many a lover wanders here; the sun and stars are nearer rolled; the trees bring forth sweet ecstasy-

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And flee away on every side. For who dare touch the Frowning Form. His arm is withered to its root; lions, boars, wolves, all howling flee, and every tree does shed its fruit. And none can touch that Frowning Form, except it be a Woman Old; she

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nails him down upon the rock, all is done as I have told. Welcome again to The Poetry Show, this is Morton Marcus and I would like to tell you about Saturday's Child which has a program here on KUSP, on Saturdays at 9 am. Two hours of

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literature, poetry, music, languages, and mythology for people of all ages. Every week Joanne King and our talented crew, fill the KUSP airwaves with programming that keeps the child in all of us in mind. Wonderful show it's been going

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on for years and just tune in at 9 am this Saturday, it is one of the most popular programs on KS- KUSP, and I hope that you will listen in to Joanne, she has wonderful stories, a wonderful spirit, and listen in. Today on The Poetry Show we are actually

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doing a show that I call "Beginnings and Ends," and we are going to be reading the poems from five poems- five poets and those poets are poem- poets who either were born or died in the first 17 days of August. And so far we've heard

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some well known and not so well known poems by Percy Shelley, who was born on August 4, 1792, and then William Blake, who died on August 12, 1827. And now we're going to hear Alfred Lord Tennyson, who was born on August 6, 1809, a very interesting poem

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by him and then a short poem. And what is interesting about this poem of his, and I really am not a Tennyson fan, is that this reflects on Ulysses, who has been living since his return from the Odyssey. And it is really a meditation on

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mortality, and on the great heroics that man can do and what happens afterward. It's something I'm sure we thought in relation to a lot of young Olympic gold medalists whose life seems to have reached its peak by the age of 20 or 21.

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Well, here's Ulysses now back in the bosom of his home in Ithaca. He and Penelope happy again, his son Telemachus practically grown to manhood, but he is very unhappy, and in this dramatic monologue called ‘’Ulysses‘’ we have this very interesting

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examination of this problem, ULYSSES by Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Ulysses is speaking: It little profits that an idle king, by this still hearth, among these barren crags, matched with an aged wife, I

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mete and dole unequal laws onto a savage race, that hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot arrest from travel: I will drink life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those that loved me,

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and alone, onshore, and when thro‘ scuddling drifts the rainy Hyades vext the dim sea: I am become a name; for always roaming with a hungry heart much have I seen and known; cities of men and manners, climates, councils, governments, myself

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not least, but honored of them all; and drunk delight of battle with my peers, far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; yet all experience is an arch wherethro‘ gleams of that untravelled world whose margin

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fades for ever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As tho‘ to breathe were life! Life piled on life were all too little, and of one to me little remains: but every hour

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is saved from that eternal silence, something more, a bringer of new things; and vile it were for some three suns to store and hoard myself, and this gray spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost

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bounds of human thought. This is my son, mine own Telemachus, to whom I leave the scepter and the isle, - well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill this labour, by slow prudence to make mild a rugged people, and thro‘ soft degrees subdue them to the

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useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred it in the sphere of common duties, decent not to fail in offices of tenderness, and pay meet adoration to my household gods, when I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the

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port; the vessels, puffs or- the vessel puffs her sail: there gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me - that ever with a frolic welcome took the thunder in the sunshine, and opposed

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free hearts, free foreheads - you- you and I are old old; old age hath yet his honor and his toil; death closes all: but something ere the end, some work of noble note, may yet be done, not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to

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twinkle from the rocks: the long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, ‘t is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds to

00:40:49.080 - 00:41:09.510

sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: it may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, and see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho‘ much has taken, much abides; and

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tho‘ we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

00:41:33.990 - 00:41:55.950

And to go from the sublime to the ridiculous, as you know, in 1833, Tennyson was made the Poet Laureate, and here is his famous poem on the Crimean War, which is ‘’The Charge of the Light Brigade‘’ written in 1854. The unfortunate charge of the 600

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who just were told, "Ride forward" and they rode forward into certain death, and of course, this is a very nationalistic poem and deals with England, the Empire, and it is a poem you would expect the Poet Laureate to write

00:42:11.250 - 00:42:25.980

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley of Death rode the six hundred. “Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!‘’ he said. Into the valley of

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Death rode the six hundred. "Forward, the Light Brigade!” Was there a man dismayed? Not though the soldier knew someone had blundered. Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die. Into the valley of Death rode

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the six hundred. Cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front of them volleyed in thundered; stormed at with shot and shell, boldly they rode and well, into the jaws of Death, into the mouth of hell rode the six

00:43:02.100 - 00:43:17.100

hundred. Flashed all their sabers bare, flashed as they turned in air sabering the gunners there, charging an army, while all the world wondered. Plunged in the battery-smoke, right through the line they broke; Cossack and Russian

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reeled from the saber stroke shattered and sundered. Then they rode back, but not not the six hundred. Cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them, cannon behind them volleyed and thundered; stormed at with shot and shell, while

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horse and hero fell. They had fought so well came through the jaws of Death, back from the mouth of hell, all that was left of them, left of six hundred. When can their glory fade? O the wild charge they made! All the world wondered. Honour the

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charge they made! Honour the Light Brigade, noble six hundred! The next poet is- we've had Shelley who was born on August 4, 1792, we've had William Blake who died on August 12, 1827, and

00:44:30.910 - 00:44:52.360

we've had Alfred Lord Tennyson, who was born on August 6, 1809, and Poet Laureate in 1833, and now the great Andrew Marvell, who died on August 16, 1678, and wrote one of the great love poems in the English language, if not the greatest, he's the

00:44:52.360 - 00:45:07.810

author of many fine poems such as ‘’The Garden‘’, ‘’A Dialogue between the Soul and the Body‘’. We will read one poem by him and it is his famous poem ‘’To His Coy Mistress‘’, and very simply, it is an argument from a lover to a woman to go to bed with

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him. And his argument is based on the fact that you don't have time to say no to me because death is approaching, time is going, we must gather our rosebuds while we may, and if we had time, I would just you know woo you for hundreds of years,

00:45:28.000 - 00:45:45.550

but we don't have that time. ‘’At my back, I always hear times winged chariot hurrying near‘’ some of the most amazing images in this poem all wonderfully exaggerated, what to call metaphysical images, wild exaggerated comparisons fill

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this. And it's to his coy mistress, obviously a woman who said she will not go to bed with him, and it is just filled with his wit and good humor, and this wonderful imagery and argument, all of which are the heart of metaphysical poetry. The great

00:46:02.080 - 00:46:19.030

Andrew Marvell, who died on August 16, 1678, assistant to John Milton during the Puritan Revolt, did not write a lot of poetry, because, like Milton, much of his time is taken up with political causes.

00:46:21.300 - 00:46:42.880

TO HIS COY MISTRESS Had we but world enough and time, this coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way to walk, and pass our long love's day. Thou by the Indian Ganges‘ sign

00:46:42.880 - 00:47:04.480

shouldst rubies find; I by the tide of Humber would complain. I would love you ten years before the flood, and you should, if you please, refuse till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow vaster than empires and more

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slow; a hundred years should go to praise thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; two hundred to adore each breast, but thirty thousand to the rest; an age at least to every part, and the last age should show your heart. For, lady you deserve this

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state, nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I always hear time‘s winged chariot hurrying near; and yonder all before us lie deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found; nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound my

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echoing song; then worms shall try that long-preserved virginity, and your quaint honour turn to dust, and into ashes all my lust; the grave‘s a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace. Now therefore, while the

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youthful hue sits on thy skin like morning dew, and while thy willing soul transpires at every pore with instant fires, now let us sport us while we may, and now like amorous birds of prey, rather at once our time devour than languish in his

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slow-chapped power. Let us roll all our strength and all our sweetness up into one ball, and tear our pleasures with rough strife through the iron gates of life: thus, though we cannot make our sun stand still, yet we will make him run.

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One of the greatest love poems of the English language. Andrew Marvell, dead August 16, 1678, one of our five poets, who either were born or died in the first three weeks of August, ‘’To His Coy Mistress‘’. And finally, we come to one of the

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great English poets of this century, certainly, and that is the current Poet Laureate of England, and maybe- well, there have been great Poet Laureates of the past, I mean, not just Tennyson, but Spenser, etc, Edmund Spencer. But the one who

00:49:47.200 - 00:50:09.070

has been chosen several years ago and who still reigns, Ted Hughes certainly must be one of the great English poets to ever hold the office. He was born August 17, 1930, which will make him 59 years old right now, within several days he will turn

00:50:09.100 - 00:50:25.570

60, His poems are amazing, his new and selected poems are out, they are just beautiful, beautiful pieces, such as this poem about writing a poem, one of the first poems he published in a book that was called ‘’The Hawk in the Rain‘’ which,

00:50:25.570 - 00:50:44.860

believe it or not, was first published in the United States. He is, as many of you know, out there, the husband of Sylvia Plath, and many people wonder about the relationship. He and Sylvia were estranged when she committed suicide. A very big

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man, a very hawked faced man, and a very powerful controlling man. His next wife also committed suicide and he since then retired into the country and worked on a farm alone. I'll read some of those poems if we have time. But here is one of

00:51:04.480 - 00:51:19.660

the first poems and this is a poem about writing poetry, and facing first the empty page, and the real magic of poetry, and it's called ‘’The Thought Fox‘’, and it's by our fifth and final poet, either born or died, in this case, born on the first

00:51:19.660 - 00:51:37.010

three weeks of August, Ted Hughes, born August 17, 1930. THE THOUGHT FOX I imagine this midnight‘s moment's forest; something else is alive beside the clock‘s loneliness and this blank page

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where my fingers move. Through the window I see no star: something more near, though deeper within darkness is entering the loneliness: cold, delicately as the dark snow a fox’s nose touches twig, leaf; two eyes serve a movement, that

00:51:58.880 - 00:52:18.860

now and again, and now, and now sets neat prints into the snow between trees, and warily a lame shadow lags by stump and in hollow of a body that is bold to come across clearings, an eye, a widening deepening greenness, brilliantly, concentratedly

00:52:19.670 - 00:52:48.700

coming about its own business till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox, it enters the dark hole of the head. The window is starless still; a clock ticks, the page is printed. Here is another poem- what- what is interesting about Ted Hughe's

00:52:48.700 - 00:53:12.820

poems are that he really tries to deal with man and animals. That moment when man and animal come together, and I'll read a poem soon about that. But this is certainly one of the major poems of the major concerns of Ted Hughes, to get inside the

00:53:12.820 - 00:53:27.070

thinking process of the minds of animals or to find the animal inside the human. And this is done by close observation, no sentimental- no sentimentalizing, and also by mythologizing and let's say one of his famous books called

00:53:27.100 - 00:53:44.530

‘’Crow‘’. Here is a poem, it's called ‘’Relic‘’, also from these early years, this poem was actually written in 1959 RELIC I found this jawbone at the sea‘s edge: there crabs,

00:53:44.530 - 00:54:02.890

dogfish, broken by the breakers or tossed to flap for half an hour and turn to a crust, continue the beginning. The deeps are cold: in that darkness camaraderie does not hold. Nothing touches but, clutching, devours. And the jaws, before

00:54:02.890 - 00:54:27.010

they are satisfied or they're stretched purpose slacken, and go down jaws: go gnawn bare. Jaws eat and are finished and the jawbone comes to the beach: this is the sea‘s achievement with shells, vertebrae, claws, carapaces, skulls. Time and the

00:54:27.010 - 00:54:47.710

sea eat its tail, thrives, cast these indigestible, the spars of purposes that failed far from the surface. None grow rich in the sea. This curve jawbone did not laugh but gripped, gripped, and is now a Cenotaph.

00:54:54.340 - 00:55:10.460

And here is his poem ‘’Pike‘’ on the fish THE PIKE Pike, three inches long, perfect pike in all parts, green tigering the gold. Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged

00:55:10.460 - 00:55:29.750

grin. They dance on the surface among the flies. Or move, stunned by their own grandeur, over a bed of emerald, silhouette of submarine delicacy and horror. A hundred feet long in their world. In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads -

00:55:29.870 - 00:55:53.480

gloom of their stillness: logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards. Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds. The jaws‘ hooked clamp and fangs not to be changed at this date; a life subdued to its instrument; the gills kneading quietly, and the

00:55:53.480 - 00:56:17.030

pectorals. Three we kept behind glass, jungled in weed: three inches, four, and four and a half: fed fry to them - suddenly they were two. Finally one. With a sag belly and the grin it was born with. And indeed they spare nobody. Two, six pounds each,

00:56:17.090 - 00:56:37.670

over two feet long, high and dry and dead in the willow-herb. One jammed past its gill down the other‘s gullet: the outside eye stared: as a vice locks - the same iron in this eye though its film shrank in death. A pond I fished, fifty years across,

00:56:37.850 - 00:56:55.940

whose lilies and muscular tench had outlasted every visible stone of the monastery that planted them - stilled legendary depth: it was as deep as England. It held Pike to immense to stir, so immense and old that past nightfall I dared not cast

00:56:56.030 - 00:57:14.540

but silently cast and fished with the hair frozen on my head for what might move, for what I might move. The still splashes on the dark pond, owls hushing the floating woods frail on my ear against the dream darkness beneath night's darkness had

00:57:14.540 - 00:57:49.280

freed, that rose slowly towards me, watching And that will be our show for tonight, this is Morton Marcus and I am now looking around, and I will just tell you that you should stay tuned for Larry Blood, and that Stapleton- KUSP

00:57:49.280 - 00:58:03.230

thanks Stapleton grocery for providing a grant to help make this program possible. Stablecoins grocery specializes in organic produce and unadulterated comestibles in the farmer‘s exchange building in Santa Cruz. This is Morton

00:58:03.230 - 00:58:20.000

Marcus, tonight, "Beginnings and Ends," five English poets, great poets, all the way back from the 17th century to the present, who either were born or died in the first three weeks of August. I will see you in two weeks. Joe Stroud will be here next week,

00:58:20.240 - 00:58:35.660

stay tuned for Larry Blood, and this is KUSP, community-sponsored Radio 88.9 FM on your dial, we serve the Monterey Bay, Salinas Valley, West Santa Clara Valley, and the Big Sur coast.