nature

Victoria Falls – Muriel Spark – comments

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The Victoria Falls

So hushed, so hot, the broad Zambesi lies
Above the Falls, and on her weedy isles
Swing antic monkeys swarm malignant flies,
And seeming-lazy lurk the crocodiles.
But somewhere down the river does the hush
Become a sibilance that hints a sigh,
A murmur, mounting as the currents rush
Faster, and while the murmur is a cry
The cry becomes a shout, the shout a thunder
Until the whole Zambesi water pour
Into the earth’s side, agitating under
Infinite spray mists, pounding the world’s floor.
            Wrapped in this liquid turmoil who can say
            Which is the mighty echo, which the spray?

Muriel Spark (1918 – 2006)
Written 1948

This poem created interest for me because many years ago I did spend time working in South Africa but never went to see these famous falls. In contrast Muriel  Spark went to Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) from Scotland at the age of 19 shortly before her marriage and this poem is from personal experience.

The hot docile river sets the scene in the first four lines where the seeming-lazy crocodiles lie. I was also interested in the term sibilance. And the way she used this word to capture the mood of the river.

But somewhere down the river does the hush
Become a sibilance that hints a sigh,
A murmur, mounting as the currents rush

And then personifies the sound from cry to shout to thunder.

Faster, and while the murmur is a cry
The cry becomes a shout, the shout a thunder

Thunder is the appropriate word it has a nature-generated impact and in the Bantu language the Falls are defined as Mosi-oa-Tunya, “Thundering Smoke/Smoke that Rises”.

And the whole flow of the poem like the river increases in momentum to the crescendo.

The rhyming couplet at the end of the sonnet integrates the inseparable echo and spray of the waterfall. The liquid turmoil are apt words to define the chaotic visual confusion. This visual confusion, notably between sky and water, can be seen in the paintings by Turner.

Sibilance is a literary device characterized by the repetition of hissing or hushing sounds, often involving the “s,” “z,” “sh,” and “zh” sounds. It’s used in poetry to create specific moods and effects, ranging from a soft, flowing sensation to a harsh, hissing quality. 

Whereas Onomatopoeia the naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it (such as buzz, hiss)

Dame Muriel Sarah Spark (née Camberg; 1 February 1918 – 13 April 2006)[1] was a Scottish novelist, short story writer, poet and essayist.

Wikipedia – Muriel Spark – Wikipedia

About the Falls …

Victoria Falls – Victoria Falls (Lozi: Mosi-oa-Tunya, “Thundering Smoke/Smoke that Rises”; Tonga: Shungu Namutitima, “Boiling Water”) is a waterfall on the Zambezi River, located on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe.[2] It is one of the world’s largest waterfalls, with a width of 1,708 m (5,604 ft).. The droplets of spray are profuse and carry oxygen to revitalise the river and surrounds. The region around it has a high degree of biodiversity in both plants and animals

Scottish missionary David Livingstone identified the falls in 1855, naming them Victoria Falls after Queen Victoria.

Landscape lines – Algernon Charles Swinbourne

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I have been looking at some of the landscape poetry of Algernon Charles Swinbourne (1837 – 1909). He was an outstanding English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. A complete rebel in Victorian England a fervent antitheist and pagan. A person who opposes any form of religion and someone who believes in the natural order of life.

The opening lines of Evening on the Broads

OVER two shadowless waters, adrift as a pinnace in peril,
     Hangs as in heavy suspense, charged with irresolute light,
Softly the soul of the sunset upholden awhile on the sterile
      Waves and wastes of the land, half repossessed by the night.
Inland glimmer the shallows asleep and afar in the breathless
      Twilight: yonder the depths darken afar and asleep.
Slowly the semblance of death out of heaven descends on the deathless
      Waters: hardly the light lives on the face of the deep —
Hardly, but here for awhile. All over the grey soft shallow
      Hover the colours and clouds of the twilight, void of a star.
As a bird unfledged is the broad-winged night, whose winglets are callow
      Yet, but soon with their plumes will she cover her brood from afar,
Cover the brood of her worlds that cumber the skies with their blossom
      Thick as the darkness of leaf-shadowed spring is encumbered with flowers.
World upon world is enwound in the bountiful girth of her bosom,
      Warm and lustrous with life lovely to look on as ours.
Still is the sunset adrift as a spirit in doubt that dissembles
      Still with itself, being sick of division and dimmed by dismay —
Nay, not so; but with love and delight beyond passion it trembles,
      Fearful and fain of the night, lovely with love of the day:
Fain and fearful of rest that is like unto death, and begotten
      Out of the womb of the tomb, born of the seed of the grave:
Lovely with shadows of loves that are only not wholly forgotten,
      Only not wholly suppressed by the dark as a wreck by the wave.
Still there linger the loves of the morning and noon, in a vision
      Blindly beheld, but in vain: ghosts that are tired, and would rest.
But the glories beloved of the night rise all too dense for division,
      Deep in the depth of her breast sheltered as doves in a nest.
Fainter the beams of the loves of the daylight season cnkindled
      Wane, and the memories of hours that were fair with the love of them fade:
Loftier, aloft of the lights of the sunset stricken and dwindled,
      Gather the signs of the love at the heart of the night new-made.
New-made night, new-born of the sunset, immeasurable, endless,
      Opens the secret of love hid from of old in her heart,
In the deep sweet heart full-charged with faultless love of the friendless
      Spirits of men that are eased when the wheels of the sun depart.
Still is the sunset afloat as a ship on the waters upholden
      Full-sailed, wide-winged, poised softly for ever asway —
Nay, not so, but at least for a little, awhile at the golden
      Limit of arching air fain for an hour to delay.
Here on the bar of the sand-bank, steep yet aslope to the gleaming
      Waste of the water without, waste of the water within,
Lights overhead and lights underneath seem doubtfully dreaming
       Whether the day be done, whether the night may begin.
Far and afar and farther again they falter and hover,
      Warm on the water and deep in the sky and pale on the cloud:
Colder again and slowly remoter, afraid to recover
      Breath, yet fain to revive, as it seems, from the skirt of the shroud.
Faintly the heartbeats shorten and pause of the light in the westward
      Heaven, as eastward quicken the paces of star upon star

The Broads are a network of mostly navigable rivers and lakes in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk.

 The pinnace is a light boat, propelled by oars or sails.

It is a long poem that goes into great lengths to personify the Broads at the sunset hour. He associates the dark night-dying day alluding the loss of light to dying. He gives his own personal insights on death. He likens the taking of light to that of a bird unfledged that covers her brood from afar. The taking away of the world as approachng darkness dissembles. This implies a certain care implicit in nature.

World upon world is enwound in the bountiful girth of her bosom,
      Warm and lustrous with life lovely to look on as ours.

Alluding to a transience in death akin to the transience from daylight to night.

semblance of death out of the heavens descends on the deathless waters. Out of the womb of the tomb born of the seed of the grave.

The night is new made and opens the secret of love as in the lines.

New-made night, new-born of the sunset, immeasurable, endless,
      Opens the secret of love hid from of old in her heart,

The spirits of people live on in his lines, together with the love of the day.

Lovely with shadows of loves that are only not wholly forgotten,

I find these lines quite spiritual with an appreciation of inherent love that exists in nature along with recognition of the death-birth-cycle of ceaseless life. In the last four lines of the poem, he does actually mention God.

and the sunset at last and the twilight are dead: 
                                    and the darkness is breathless
With fear of the wind's breath rising that seems and seems not to sleep:
But a sense of the sound of it alway, a spirit unsleeping and deathless,
              Ghost or God, evermore moves on the face of the deep.

On a personal note, I have always found the atheist view as a hollow empty pessimistic stance. To my mind belief in a benevolent God supportive of all people gives hope for the future and purpose to life.

Big Meadow – Kevin Hart

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I came across this poem when reading the Australian Book Review and had immediate rapport. Which is not always the case when reading poems within periodicals.

Big Meadow

Someone has left the day wide open here
But no one ever comes to mow the grass.
A man stands out of earshot, just a flash

Of red above the green and lemon stalks,
And then the sunlight spirits him away.
He's come, like us, to spend an afternoon

With daisies, butterflies, bull thistle spikes,
And lose his body in forgotten grass.
No talk when wading through this inland sea,

No need to name the milkweed, Queen Anne's lace,
No need to speak of lilies springing out
Like tigers from the track we roughly make

and unmake as we wander through the day,
No need to call the thorny locust out
Or tempt it with a fingertip. No need.

Words without eyelids come and look around
From in our heads and from those songs we love,
As afternoon grows sweet: air, cloud, and sky,

And then all settle down to flourish here,
Where grasses, trees and rocks step out of time
And leave us free to live inside the sun

That whispers, 'Come, rest in my golden breath,'
And half-imagine that we all can stretch
Ourselves like this throughout the years to come.

Some bumblebees dance round the bergamot.
My son is hidden in the thick long grass:
Not even the circling crow can see him now.

Kevin Hart (1954 -

When growing up as a child I spent much time walking and frequenting the local meadows. My father bought a corner section of a field to build a house. The rest of the field was used for cattle or growing wheat and even to this day remains the same. Taking our dog around the field for exercise was a regular activity. This is a poem that invokes that contentment of life feeling from within as I recall my childhood memories, including building a tree house in an adjoining oak and walking to the bottom of the field where there was a sloe tree.

The first line someone has left the day wide open invoked similar feeling when reading the opening words of Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. When Mrs Dalloway opens the French doors to a June summer morning in England and thought – what a morning – fresh, as if issued to children on a beach. And I have pleasant memories of being so alive on a June morning in Hampshire and being in harmony with the countryside.

The meadow is a wildflower meadow where no one comes to mow the grass. A man loses his body in forgotten grass implies the meadow has been in such a state for many years. The plants and flowers are named allowing readers familar with English countryside to picture the meadow in specific detail. But the man actually walking in the meadow is totally oblivious of such identities. He is absorbed in the beauty of being in the now as he walks through the grasses; being at one with nature. Words without eyelids come and look around suggest there is nothing hidden from sight in his attentive absorption. And to live inside the sun gives the impression of taking resident within the sun joining the gift of brightness and warmth apart from indicating a sunny day.

It is a nice romantic thought that these moments in our lives can last forever – we all can stretch / Ourselves like this throughout the years to come

The absorption is emphasised in the last two lines My son is hidden in the thick long grass: / Not even the circling crow can see him now. There is also a subtle suggestion of personal loss apart from my thought at being lost in nature. Perhaps readers should think about the circling crow and what this implies.

From Wikipedia …
Kevin John Hart  is an Anglo-Australian theologian, philosopher and poet. He is currently Jo Rae Wright University Distinguished Professor at Duke Divinity School. He was the Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies and Chair of the Religious Studies Department at the University of Virginia.

Watercolour of Grantchester Meadows – Sylvia Plath – comments

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Watercolour of Grantchester Meadows

There, spring lambs jam the sheepfold. In air
Stilled, silvered as water in a glass
Nothing is big or far.
The small shrew chitters from its wilderness
Of grassheads and is heard.
Each thumb-sized bird
Fits nimble-winged in thickets, and of good colour.

Cloudrack and owl-hollowed willows slanting over
The bland Granta double their white and green
World under the sheer water
And ride that flux at anchor, upside down.
The punter sinks his pole.
In Byron’s pool
Cattails part where the tame cygnets steer.

It is a country on a nursery plate.
Spotted cows revolve their jaws and crop
Red clover or gnaw beetroot
Bellied on a nimbus of sun-glazed buttercup.
Hedging meadows of benign
Arcadian green
The blood-berried hawthorn hides its spines with white.

Droll, vegetarian, the water rat
Saws down a reed and swims from his limber grove,
While the students stroll or sit,
Hands laced, in a moony indolence of love —
Black-gowned, but unaware
How in such mild air
The owl shall stoop from his turret, the rat cry out.

Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963)

King’s College Cambridge owns Grantchester Meadows, a riverside beauty spot south of Cambridge. This area would be familiar to SP when at Cambridge. There may have been a Watercolour at the University. Apparently, it was written when she was in America in 1959 after returning there with Ted Hughes after their marriage.

The Granta is a tributary of the Cam.

Byron’s Pool is a well-known beauty spot where Byron used to bathe.

It is an ekphrastic poem before that word had poetic coinage. According to the Poetry Foundation, “an ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art.”. You can appreciate the text without needing a sighting of the Watercolour. And it is an SP poem which is easy to understand.

Students would be familiar with punting on the Cam. It is a nursery plate image; a quintessential image associated with England by those overseas.

Nimbus – a luminous vapor, cloud, or atmosphere about a god or goddess when on earth. I do like that line – bellied on a nimbus of sun-glazed buttercup – it conjures up bright summer meadow flower sunshine relevant to my England heritage.

And we learn that water rats are vegetarians. I am always impressed by SP in how she uses her wide vocabulary in the choice of appropriate words. In the case of the water rat the verb saws = rapid two and throw motion, and the adjective limber = lithe. Implying skill in movement in the water.

Students and tourists often travel from Cambridge by punt to picnic in the meadows or take tea at The Orchard tea-rooms. But do the students really listen to the environment; especially when minds are locked in thought or otherwise engaged in romancing with a lover. And today locked in mobile use while walking.

Sylvia Plath on Wikipedia.

My heart leaps up … Wordsworth – comments

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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 grow old
  Or let me die!
The chid is father of the man
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)

When you see the word ‘behold’ you know it is vintage literature. But what a strong word; far greater than see or observe. You are instructed to hold in your mind and contemplate. You must be still and hold for awhile in deepest consideration. And perhaps this is very appropriate in today’s constant 24 by 7 business rush.

This is a clear statement that Wordworth’s religion was nature. And that if he could not appreciate nature then life is just not worth living.

I came across the line – the chid is father of the man when at school not knowing the context and not understanding the meaning. I could not see the child growing to become a man. And I definitely could not see a child as father to the man. It does enforce the natural progression of humanity and the importance of children.

William Wordsworth on Wikipedia

I was lucky to be in the right place for the following heart leap photo –

The rising of the moon at Glasshouse Rocks, Narooma NSW on 24 July 2021
caught between two rocks
out of the unknowing deep
her sorrowful face

This is my letter to the world – Emily Dickinson – Analysis

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This is my letter to the world
This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me —
The simple News that Nature told
With tender Majesty
Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see —
For love of Her — Sweet — countrymen
Judge tenderly — of Me
Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)

S1 … ‘The World’ never actually sent ED a letter. But, of course, ED created many letters in her lifetime especially in the form of poems. Her letter, and indeed all her letters including this poem, is her personal response to ‘The World’ based on being part of Nature. If you like it is her communicative response to the gift of Nature. It is the simple News that Nature told.

And Nature told her, or communicated, with tender Majesty. So, in a poetic way Nature did in fact send her a letter if you regard Nature and The World as being a letter from the creator. I do like that upper case letter on Majesty for it gives a sense of authority.

S2 … The message that ED sends to ‘The World and Nature’, or to the creator, is of course to Hands she cannot see. And indeed, every letter written by all poets suffers the same fate.

But ED would like you to know that she loved sweet ‘Nature and The World’. Please judge ED tenderly in all her letters! She asks the world to show respect. And to be tender like the creator when looking at her legacy, her work, her ‘letter’ to the world.

And in equal fashion my sentiments are the same in all my letters.

Emily Dickinson on Wikipedia.

Frost at Midnight – Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Analysis

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Frost at Midnight
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.
                      But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!
         Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the intersperséd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
         Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the night-thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834)

S1 – The scene is Coleridge’s cottage at Nether Stowey in Somerset. The infant is his son Hartley when aged 17 months. He finds time to himself as other members of the household are in bed. But instead of devoting time to composition he is caught in appreciating the stillness and the dying state of the fire and this becomes his centre of attention and detracts from other considerations. He shares these thoughts in conversation with the reader. The busyness of the village is asleep and is an inaudible background like a dream.

The film is a piece of soot fluttering on the bar of the grate. The only thing that is alive. Coleridge noted that ‘In all parts of the Kingdom these films are called strangers and are supposed to portent the arrival of some absent friend’

S2 – The fluttering sound of the film is the only life around him in the stillness. It becomes his companion and a toy for his thoughts.

S3 – The film now represents the absent friend of his birthplace. Coleridge was born at Ottery St Mary, Devonshire but went to school at the age of nine in London after the death of his father. So, he now recalls the times when a child. In particular, he liked the music of the church bells – the poor mans only music. The ‘stern preceptor’ was the teacher Rev. James Boyer at Christ’s Hospital, London where Coleridge went to school. And when at school in London he would think back to his childhood in the village. He fondly recalled family and play mates at times when he should have been concentrating on school work. His sister and himself were both clothed alike.

S4 – Coleridge now spends his thoughts on appreciating the beauty of his baby son. And he hopes he will have the chance to spend much time with nature; lamenting the fact that he had a city life. This was not entirely true as his first nine years were in the country. And this might have had a profound endearing effect on this dissertation on his love of nature and the hope that his son will come to similar appreciation. And he identifies a strong spiritual link – Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters. A nice way to put it that nature is the language of God. And the stanza ends with recognition of the connection of God in the development of the human soul – Great universal Teacher! he shall mould / Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.


S5 – If his son has this understanding of nature therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee. He then identifies aspects of each season. He gives particular emphasis to winter and I do like the image of  the night-thatch / Smokes in the sun-thaw. And like the opening there is that word – ministry again.

Very appropriate given the emphasis on the spiritual link with nature.

For a thorough guide to this poem see the following Site.  – in the Poetry Foundation – Poem Guide

Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Wikipedia.

Pelicans – Judith Wright – Analysis

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Seen at the NSW south coast

Pelicans
Funnel-web spider, snake and octopus,
pitcher-plant and vampire-bat and shark–
these are cold water on an easy faith.
Look at them, but don’t linger.
If we stare too long, something looks back at us;
something gazes through from underneath;
something crooks a very dreadful finger
down there in an unforgotten dark.
Turn away then, and look up at the sky.
There sails that old clever Noah’s Ark,
the well-turned, well-carved pelican
with his wise comic eye;
he turns and wheels down, kind as an ambulance-driver,
to join his fleet. Pelicans rock together,
solemn as clowns in white on a circus-river,
meaning: this world holds every sort of weather.
Judith Wright (1915 – 2000)

The first sentence of the first stanza covers some of those creatures, insects and plants that have known to be of some concern to human inhabitants. And in some cases humans have died due to their venomous nature. The intent is perhaps to promote fear in their name. It is worth noting that snake, octopus and pitcher-plant can be harmless but quite beautiful. But what I think JW is trying to emphasise is that nature can be a dangerous place if you look beyond the surface.

An easy faith would be a superficial faith believing in the positive side of all life; perhaps giving little consideration to the negative. The first stanza ends telling us up not to ponder on this darker side of nature. Don’t look too much on this because it is dangerous; and something will look back at us. The implications here are that we should not dwell on the negative aspects of nature, and indeed life; dwelling on the negative is dangerous in itself. And this proclamation flows into the first sentence of the second stanza.

Look up to the sky and consider the pelican. The pelican is used as a contrast to give a positive to nature. But JW would not have known how brutally murderous pelican siblings are to each other.

But apparently a 16th century Christian would consider a Pelican as a symbol of the redemptive sacrifice of Christ. Using this knowledge gives a more meaningful perspective on this poem. And it is nice to know that the Pelican is well tuned, well-carved and wise; clearly attributes that are associated with Christ.

And of course the Pelican is a water bird so presumably escaping God’s anger and the need to enter Noah’s Arch by the fact of flight. There is another side to the Pelican mentioned above so kindness is a bit of an oversight. But Christ is somewhat of an ambulance driver in the provision of healing to the world.

The poem ends with the closing proclamation that the world is inflicted with great variety of weather. Whether we know how to deal with such climatic conditions is another matter; and also whether we believe God is involved in anyway to help.

This poem is in Judith Wright’s Birds publication. Her daughter, Meredith Mckinney, commented on this collection … ‘Despite the joy reflected in the poems, however, they also acknowledge the experiences of cruelty, pain and death that are inseparable from the lives of birds as of humans’.

Judith Wright on Wikipedia