Miners
While on Wilfred Owen, I thought I must post 'Miners': one of my favourites. One of his earlier poems, this poem is best known for it's drastic -- in fact, sudden -- imagery shift from that of miners to one indicative of a war. In fact, the tale goes that Owen meant to write on a mining accident but, in the process, also ended up sketching vivid pictures of war.
Vivid phrases like "Bones without number" never fail to affect me, no matter how recently I have read the poem. One of my favourites, along with Dulce Et Decorum Est.
Miners
Wilfred Owen
There was a whispering in my hearth,
A sigh of the coal.
Grown wistful of a former earth
It might recall.
I listened for a tale of leaves
And smothered ferns,
Frond-forests; and the low, sly lives
Before the fawns.
My fire might show steam-phantoms simmer
From Time's old cauldron,
Before the birds made nests in summer,
Or men had children.
But the coals were murmuring of their mine,
And moans down there
Of boys that slept wry sleep, and men
Writhing for air.
And I saw white bones in the cinder-shard,
Bones without number.
For many hearts with coal are charred,
And few remember.
I thought of all that worked dark pits
Of war, and died
Digging the rock where Death reputes
Peace lies indeed.
Comforted years will sit soft-chaired
In rooms of amber;
The years will stretch their hands, well-cheered
By our lifes' ember.
With which we groaned,
Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids,
While songs are crooned.
But they will not dream of us poor lads
Left in the ground.
posted by Dileepan @ 2:20 PM
7 Comments:
that was so beautiful and SO sad. i hope we never have a savage ugly thing like the world wars happen again.
question: How can something thats sad be beautiful?
That's the power of melancholy. More to the point, life is sad. life is beautiful. Ergo.
Nope. Don't buy that. Life is beautiful. Yup. Life is sad. Yup. Life is not beautiful because it is sad.
From Webster:
Melancholy: Depression of spirits; a gloomy state continuing a considerable time; deep dejection; gloominess
Now how can that be beautiful?
My sneaking suspicion is that this whole thing about melancholy and beauty has something to do with the human tendency to enjoy self-pity.
My sneaking suspicion is that this whole thing about melancholy and beauty has something to do with the human tendency to enjoy self-pity.
That was something I almost wrote... and can't pretend to disagree with now.
On the same note, why poetry?
How can something thats sad be beautiful?
Lemme try - Precisely because there is something melancholic almost in everything that a poet sees and it is this pattern of melancholy that (s)he tries to bring out as rhyme.
Of course, the simple true need for bringing out beauty in melancholy - is only to act as an analgesic. Poetry strives to bring about harmony - that tries to appeal and relate to the senses, words, ideas, people, with the rest of the universe. It is this bringing out the harmony that probably functions as a subconscious lullaby to troubled selves. It is the same harmony that we perceive as beauty. It is also true that this harmony is perhaps addictive and poetry is often - wallowing in a masochistic make-believe arena. However, what is wrong with that? If people can drown in beauty outside of melancholy quite as uselessly, so can they in melancholic beauty.
I personally believe, there can never be poetry without pain. You may call it self-pity but that's just one word in a spectrum of fillers. Yes, what soothes - is at the end of the day - self-fulfilment/aggrandizement. Sentient beings are moved by nothing other than what they feel themselves. Isn't all art quite useless in their own ways? In a materialistic sense, yes. Poetry doesn't purport to do much - it definitely cannot change the world you live in. It only exists to convey things better than when otherwise done. What is the need to convey things - is outside the realm of poetry - that is a whole different topic altogether.
To read an Emily Dickinson and to feel the harmony - transcending time - is what I would call the fulfilment of the purpose of poetry.
Well, being pedantic I went up and looked at the definition of beautiful. Woodworm, guess you have a point, everybody defines their own concept of beauty....and so I really say that something sad can't be beautiful.......although I usually stay away from beauty of that sort :D
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