This was another poem that had sort of half heartedly wandered around in my memory for awhile. I think the first time I heard it was in a recording done by Richard Burton. I liked the language (I love the word ‘hydroptic’).
I took this on because the language was 400 years old. I knew it would take a lot more work to find this poem than simply memorizing its words. I can’t say that I was successful in interpreting every word, every line, but I was left with a different sense of the poem than the one with which I began.
I ‘saved’ this poem to learn in winter…or nearly winter. It helped me get the feel for it. I learn my poems mostly while walking in the woods. Now the leaves are down, the weather has turned cold, the landscape is barren and colorless. I felt the poem’s opening lines…
‘TIS the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
The world’s whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed’s-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d;
The rest of the poem is an ode to grief, emptiness, nothingness. Sources suggested different reasons for his grief. If this is a description of some actual state of mind, I hope he found his way out of it. He really seems to be drowning in grief and trying to drown the reader as well.
This poem will most likely not one I keep close to my heart. I’m not sorry I got to know it, but it felt more like an exercise…once I began, I felt like I ‘should’ finish it. I enjoyed speaking the language out loud. The poem, in the end, did not speak to me. I loved the melody of the words but not their meaning. Why would I recite this to anyone?
I’m excited to start a new poem…it will feel like spring after a long winter.
