Hermann Hesse

I now viewed the bright days,
The sunshine and the woods,
The brown rocks and the distant snow-covered mountains
With heightened feelings of happiness and joy,
And with a new conception.

During the dark hours I felt my sick heart expand and beat more furiously,
And I no longer made any distinction between pleasure and pain,
But one was similar to another;
Both hurt and both were precious.
Whether I felt pain or joy,
My discovered strength stood peacefully outside looking on
And knew that light and dark were closely related
And that sorrow and peace were rhythm,
Part and spirit of the same great music.

-Hermann Hesse

Brevard

My parents came down to visit and on Sunday we went to Brevard to see the parkway and various waterfalls along the way. As we walked along trails and streams Dad recited this poem, which fit my mood perfectly.


O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists that roll and rise!
Thy woods this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart, -- Lord, I do fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me, -- let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

Edna St. Vincent Millay


Though I believe in limiting exclamation points, she hit the feeling.
When you're so surrounded by beauty that any change, anything more beautiful will be too overwhelming. When you're so blissful that you feel as if your chest will bust open if it swells any more. Hiking along those trails made me so happy it was almost painful.

North Carolina, I cannot get thee close enough.

The Darkling Thrush

The Darkling Thrush
by: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seem'd to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seem'd fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carollings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessèd Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

Poems of the Past and Present. Thomas Hardy. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1902.


***


I love his pessimism, cynicism, and imagery.

My favorite, "The tangled bine-stems scored the sky/Like strings of broken lyres," immediately gives me a mental picture of sharp, harsh, and deadly shapes cutting across the landscape.

I also like the rhythm and sound of these powerful lines: "The ancient pulse of germ and birth/Was shrunken hard and dry."

Finally, the poem ends well, with the bird. Though small and gaunt, he flings his soul upon the growing gloom. Hardy sees no hope or reason for which the bird would sing, yet the bird had chosen to "fling his soul" in the face of his cruel surroundings.