Evidence of higher spiritual knowledge in Western poets

[Harmonious Emptiness]

Not to equate a flash of grand perception with knowledge passed on for thousands of years, but there are some interesting quotes from Western poets that reveal a deeper experience, perhaps the sort shared by Eastern mystics.

 

(please isolate or highlight the part(s) of the examples you have, thanks.)

 

 

 

Here's one:

 

 

- from Coleridge's "The Aeolian Harp":

 

O ! the one Life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every where--
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so fill'd ;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.

[soaring crane]

Walt Whitmann was brimming with the stuff

 

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

I wouldn't know what to bold or expand upon ...

 

Leaves of Grass

[Harmonious Emptiness]

Is it the words alone that move you?

 

No, I'm just saying there might be evidence that they were "on to something" beyond the words.

 

Or maybe just "on something." Who knows.

[Nungali]

" Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;

We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.
Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;
But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.
Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet in the end;
For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend.
Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;
But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides.
O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods!
O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods!
Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,
I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.
All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast
Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past:
Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates,
Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits:
Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with wings,
And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things,
White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine-curled,
Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world.
The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away;
In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey;
In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all men's tears;
With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years:
With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour;
And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that devour:
And its vapour and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to be;
And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its depth as the roots of the sea:
And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the air:
And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time is made bare.
Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea with rods?
Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than all ye Gods?
All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be past;
Ye are Gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at last.
In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of things,
Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you for kings."

 

- extract from 'Hymn to Proserpine' by Swinburne.

[soaring crane]

I suggest PM'ing Chang to request some TS Eliot entries :-)

[C T]

There's a hint of Milarepa in Terry Dawson's "A Redemption Tale" -

(he's not a well-known poet though)

 

Against wrongs done me
My spirit raged
Hatred-blinded, I cannot see
That lust for vengeance
Keeps my spirit caged.

Great misfortune I wish upon my foe.
In imaginings I see
Him downfallen; his life blood aflow,
His discomforts serve only
To unleash my glee

All-demanding becomes my ire,
Unstinting do I spend
To fuel the all-consuming fire,
That feeds the twisted demon, Wroth, that
Plain forbids an end.

Now unfurls a new design,
Unscripted lines are penned,
Up-ending all cruel schemes of mine -
Death stalks my halls; I fear
For my untimely end.

Spared from death, I behold
Life in different light,
New horizons promise gifts untold;
Sunshine pours like healing balm into
My long, hate-filled dark night.

My heart forgives all, of him
Who earned my enmity
And as by a whim
His dark, all-overshadowing cloud
Is gone and I am free!

Glad, unbound, my soul exalts,
My spirit learns to sing
Unencumbered by past faults,
Constrained no more by baleful hate
the crippled bird takes wing!

[GrandmasterP]

All the Metaphysical Poets.

R.S. Thomas.

Larkin at his best ( High Windows).

 

Good poetry touches on the numinous.

Edited October 20, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[soaring crane]

All the Metaphysical Poets.

R.S. Thomas.

Larkin at his best ( High Windows).

 

Good poetry touches on the numinous.

Willy Blake :-)

[C T]

This is a wonderful poem...

 

- Silence II

Silence is not a lack of words.
Silence is not a lack of music.
Silence is not a lack of curses.
Silence is not a lack of screams.
Silence is not a lack of colors
or voices or bodies or whistling wind.
Silence is not a lack of anything.

Silence is resting, nestling
in every leaf of every tree,
in every root and branch.
Silence is the flower sprouting
upon the branch.

Silence is the mother singing
to her newborn babe.
Silence is the mother crying
for her stillborn babe.
Silence is the life of all
these babes, whose breath
is a breath of God.

Silence is seeing and singing praises.
Silence is the roar of ocean waves.
Silence is the sandpiper dancing
on the shore.
Silence is the vastness of a whale.
Silence is a blade of grass.

Silence is sound
And silence is silence.
Silence is love, even
the love that hides in hate.

Silence is the pompous queen
and the harlot and the pimp
hugging his purse on a crowded street.

Silence is the healer dreaming
the plant, the drummer drumming
the dream. It is the lover’s
exhausted fall into sleep.
It is the call of morning birds.

Silence is God’s beat tapping all hearts.

Silence is the star kissing a flower.

Silence is a word, a hope, a candle
lighting the window of home.

Silence is everything –the renewing sleep
of Earth, the purifying dream of Water,
the purifying rage of Fire, the soaring
and spiraling flight of Air. It is all
things dissolved into no-thing – Silence
is with you always…..the Presence
of I AM

- Elaine Maria Upton

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Not to equate a flash of grand perception with knowledge passed on for thousands of years, but there are some interesting quotes from Western poets that reveal a deeper experience, perhaps the sort shared by Eastern mystics.

 

(please isolate or highlight the part(s) of the examples you have, thanks.)

 

 

 

Here's one:

 

 

- from Coleridge's "The Aeolian Harp":

 

O ! the one Life within us and abroad,

Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,

A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,

Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every where--

Methinks, it should have been impossible

Not to love all things in a world so fill'd ;

Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air

Is Music slumbering on her instrument. (Emphasis mine, ZYD)

 

Hating to burst this bubble of admiration, but this "grand perception" was based on "knowledge passed on for thousands of years", Coleridge and the whole early Nineteenth Century development of Romanticist poetics was strongly influenced by thousands of years of knowledge based on in the Platonic tradition, in most cases largely through the work of Thomas Taylor, whose indefatigable literary work in translation and his own writings was responsible for the Nineteenth Century revival of Platonism:

 

The texts that he used had been edited since the 16th century, but were interrupted by lacunae; Taylor's understanding of the Platonists informed his suggested emendations. His translations were influential on William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth. In American editions they were read by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, and G. R. S. Mead, secretary to Helena Blavatsky of the Theosophical Society. (Wikipedia on Thomas Taylor, Emphasis mine, ZYD )

 

Coleridge also read Taylor, but he could also read the Platonists in the original Greek.

 

The matter is of course too complex to go into here in any detail.

[PLB]

Don't think I am wooing.

Angel, and if I were! You wouldn't come. For my call

is always full of "Away!" Against such a powerful

current you can't advance. My call to you

is like a stiff, outstretched arm. And its hand, splayed

and raised for grasping, stays before you

always, as if to warn and ward off,

ungraspable one,--its palm out, wide open.

 

The last paragraph of the Seventh Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Edward Snow

[Jeff]

Clearing

 

 

Do not try to save

the whole world

or do anything grandiose.

Instead, create

a clearing

in the dense forest

of your life

and wait there

patiently,

until the song

that is your life

falls into your own cupped hands

and you recognize and greet it.

Only then will you know

how to give yourself

to this world

so worth of rescue.

 

 

by Martha Postlewaite

Edited October 20, 2014 by Jeff

[Wayfarer]

One of Britain's most loved Bards Taliesin (meaning Radiant Brow) wrote many poems including the following from the Black Book of Carmarthenshire.

 

BATTLE OF THE TREES

 

I was in many forms

before I was set free

I was a narrow blood-spotted sword

I believe, when I was formed

I was teardrops in the air

I was a star-woven star

I was the truth of a letter

I was the tale of origins

I was illuminated lanterns...

 

It is quite an epic. Taliesin is also part of the tale of Ceridwen and the Cauldron; a welsh tale of inner alchemy.

 

Lots of stuff in our own language, of these isles

[liminal_luke]

This Is It by James Broughton

 

This is It

 

and I am It

 

and You are It

 

and so is That

 

and He is It

 

and She is It

 

and It is It

 

and That is That

 

O it is This

 

and it is Thus

 

and it is Them

 

and it is Us

 

and it is Now

 

and Here It is

 

and Here We are

 

so This is It

[soaring crane]

It's really a springtime poem, but here's one of my absolute favorites ever, from one of my favorite human merely beings. And again, I wouldn't know what to bold or point out or explain. The spirit of the universe is alive and singing in every single line:

 

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

-- e.e. cummings

[Chang]

A Creed

I hold that when a person dies
His soul returns again to earth;
Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise
Another mother gives him birth.
With sturdier limbs and brighter brain
The old soul takes the road again.

Such is my own belief and trust;
This hand, this hand that holds the pen,
Has many a hundred times been dust
And turned, as dust, to dust again;
These eyes of mine have blinked and shown
In Thebes, in Troy, in Babylon.

All that I rightly think or do,
Or make, or spoil, or bless, or blast,
Is curse or blessing justly due
For sloth or effort in the past.
My life's a statement of the sum
Of vice indulged, or overcome.

I know that in my lives to be
My sorry heart will ache and burn,
And worship, unavailingly,
The woman whom I used to spurn,
And shake to see another have
The love I spurned, the love she gave.

And I shall know, in angry words,
In gibes, and mocks, and many a tear,
A carrion flock of homing-birds,
The gibes and scorns I uttered here.
The brave word that I failed to speak
Will brand me dastard on the cheek.

And as I wander on the roads
I shall be helped and healed and blessed;
Dear words shall cheer and be as goads
To urge to heights before unguessed.
My road shall be the road I made;
All that I gave shall be repaid.

 

So shall I fight, so shall I tread,
In this long war beneath the stars;
So shall a glory wreathe my head,
So shall I faint and show the scars,
Until this case, this clogging mould,

Be smithied all to kingly gold.

 

John Masefield.

[GrandmasterP]

THE EMPTY CHURCH

 

They laid this stone trap

for him, enticing him with candles,

as though he would come like some huge moth

out of the darkness to beat there.

Ah, he had burned himself

before in the human flame

and escaped, leaving the reason

torn. He will not come any more

to our lure. Why, then, do I kneel still

striking my prayers on a stone

heart? Is it in hope one

of them will ignite yet and throw

on its illumined walls the shadow

of someone greater than I can understand?

 

R.S. Thomas

Edited October 24, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[C T]

Practice

Meister Eckhart says,

Practice is better than precept;
but the practice and precept of eternal God is a counsel of perfection.
If I wanted a teacher of theology, I should go for one to Paris,
to its learned university.

However, if I came to ask about the perfect life,
why then he could not tell me.
Where then am I to turn?
To pure and abstract nature, nowhere else:
that can solve your anxious questions.

Why, good people, search among dead bones?
Why not seek the living part that is directly connected with creation and that gives eternal life?
The dead neither give nor take.

An angel seeking God as God would not anywhere for him except in a quiet, solitary creature.
The essence of perfection lies in bearing poverty, misery, scorn, adversity and every hardship that befalls, willingly, gladly, freely, eagerly, calm and unmoved and persisting until death

without a why.

Edited October 24, 2014 by C T