INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITYSUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2017

1688 – 1744

ALEXANDER POPE

▸ He is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations after Shakespeare.

▸ Pope's most famous poem is The Rape of the Lock. A mock-epic, it satirizes a high-society quarrel between Arabella Fermor (the "Belinda" of the poem) and Lord Petre, who had snipped a lock of hair from her head without her permission.

Though Pope is considered an Enlightenment writer in that he seeks to explain our place in the universe through reason and without recourse to the scriptures, much of his work mounts a critique of the Enlightenment in that it chastises the blasphemous pretensions of modern science to probe into realms only God can know and exhorts contemporaries to return to traditional humanistic studies (ethics, history, poetry).

“THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER” - ALEXANDER POPE

Father of all! in every age,     In every clime adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage,     Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!

Thou Great First Cause, least understood:     Who all my sense confined To know but this—that thou art good,     And that myself am blind:

Yet gave me, in this dark estate,     To see the good from ill; And binding Nature fast in fate,     Left free the human will.

What conscience dictates to be done,     Or warns me not to do, This, teach me more than Hell to shun,     That, more than Heaven pursue.

What blessings thy free bounty gives,     Let me not cast away; For God is paid when man receives,     To enjoy is to obey.

Teach me to feel another’s woe,     To hide the fault I see; That mercy I to others show,     That mercy show to me.

Mean though I am, not wholly so     Since quickened by thy breath; Oh lead me wheresoe’er I go,     Through this day’s life or death.

This day, be bread and peace my lot:     All else beneath the sun, Thou know’st if best bestowed or not,     And let thy will be done.

To thee, whose temple is all space,     Whose altar, earth, sea, skies! One chorus let all being raise!     All Nature’s incense rise!

Yet not to earth’s contracted span,     Thy goodness let me bound, Or think thee Lord alone of man,     When thousand worlds are round:

Let not this weak, unknowing hand     Presume thy bolts to throw, And deal damnation round the land,     On each I judge thy foe.

If I am right, thy grace impart,     Still in the right to stay; If I am wrong, oh teach my heart     To find a better way.

Save me alike from foolish pride,     Or impious discontent, At aught thy wisdom has denied,     Or aught thy goodness lent.

“THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL” - ALEXANDER POPE

IVITAL spark of heav’nly flame,Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame!

Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying,Oh, the pain, the bliss of dying!

Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,And let me languish into life!

 II

Hark! they whisper; Angels say,Sister Spirit, come away.

What is this absorbs me quite,Steals my senses, shuts my sight,

Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?Tell me, my Soul! can this be Death?

 III

The world recedes; it disappears;Heav’n opens on my eyes; my ears

With sounds seraphic ring:Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!

O Grave! where is thy Victory?O Death! where is thy Sting?

 

1770 – 1850

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

▸ William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).

▸ Wordsworth’s most famous work, The Prelude (1850), is considered by many to be the crowning achievement of English romanticism. The poem, revised numerous times, chronicles the spiritual life of the poet and marks the birth of a new genre of poetry.

THEMES OF THE ROMANTIC POETS

▸ Feelings, emotions, and imagination take priority over logic and facts

▸ Belief in children's innocence and wisdom; youth as a golden age; adulthood as corruption and betrayal

▸ Nature as beauty and truth, especially the sense of nature as the sublime (god-like awesomeness mixing ecstatic pleasure mixed with pain, beauty mixed with terror)

▸ Heroic individualism; the individual separate from the masses

▸ Nostalgia for the past

▸ Desire or will as personal motivation

“MY HEART LEAPS UP WHEN I BEHOLD” - WORDSWORTH

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, SEPTEMBER 3, 1802

Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Photo taken on Westminster Bridge near above plaque that includes text of poem.

IT IS IRONIC THAT PERHAPS THE MOST FAMOUS POEM ABOUT LONDON IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE SHOULD HAVE BEEN COMPOSED BY A POET WHO ELSEWHERE CLAIMED TO BE APPALLED AND ALIENATED BY THE METROPOLIS, AND WHO SOUGHT A REAL AS WELL AS POETIC REFUGE IN THE DISTANT LAKE DISTRICT. YET IN THIS SONNET LONDON, TO THE POET’S ELOQUENT SURPRISE, BECOMES AS BEAUTIFUL AS A NATURAL LANDSCAPE. IT IS TRANSFORMED BY THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE MORNING AND IS APPARENTLY UNPEOPLED. THE REFERENCE TO ‘THE SMOKELESS AIR’ SHOULD ALERT US TO THE FACT THAT, FROM EARLY IN THE MORNING WHEN HOUSEHOLDS LIT THEIR FIRES, THE CAPITAL WOULD NORMALLY BE SHROUDED IN SMOKE. TO SEE IT ‘SMOKELESS’ WOULD BE AN EXTRAORDINARY THING. EQUALLY, THE STREETS WOULD USUALLY BE FULL NOT JUST OF PEOPLE, BUT ALSO OF HORSES AND WAGONS, AND WOULD ECHO WITH THE CRIES OF EVERY KIND OF VENDOR. THE CITY’S SILENCE IN THE POEM IS AS MAGICAL AS ITS GLITTER.

John Mullan

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY {READING FROM WORDSWORTH’S PREFACE}

“ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY” - WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (SELECTED SNIPPETS)

I There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore;— Turn wheresoe’er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

V Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting

And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,

And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

I VITAL spark of heav’nly flame,

Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame! Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying,

Oh, the pain, the bliss of dying! Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,

And let me languish into life!  

II Hark! they whisper; Angels say,

Sister Spirit, come away. What is this absorbs me quite,

Steals my senses, shuts my sight, Drowns my spirits, draws my breath? Tell me, my Soul! can this be Death?

  III

The world recedes; it disappears; Heav’n opens on my eyes; my ears

With sounds seraphic ring: Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!

O Grave! where is thy Victory? O Death! where is thy Sting?

 

V Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting

And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,

And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

Pope Wordsworth