Western Wind

...

Oh western wind when wilt thou blow
That the little rain down might rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms
And I in bed again.

Your Eyes Have Their Silence

Your verse put me in mind of one of my favorite poems, so here it is:


Your Eyes Have Their Silence

Your eyes have their silence in giving words
back more beautifully than trees can rain
and give back in swaying the rain
that makes silence mutable and startles nesting birds.

And so it rains. And so I speak or not
as your eyes go from silence suddenly
at love to wonder (as those quiet birds suddenly
at rain) letting, finally, myself be taught

silence before your eyes conceding everything
spoken as experience, as love, as reason
enough not to speak of them and my reason
crawls into the silence of your eyes. Spring

always promises something, sometimes only more
beauty: and so it rains. And so I take
whatever promise there is in silence as you take
words as rain and give them back in silence before

there are ways to say that more beauty is nothing
for you before my hands can memorize
the beauty of your slender movements and nothing
is beautiful as words nesting in your eyes.

Gerald William Barrax

A thousand apologies...

but the devil made me do it.

...

Broken Wind
...

Oh broken wind that melts the snow
That fell instead of rain,
"Christ," said my love, "what did you eat?"
I'm alone in bed again.

darkmaas

dr_mabeuse said:

...

Oh western wind when wilt thou blow
That the little rain down might rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms
And I in bed again.

Click to expand...

,

I don't remember much poetry. I mean, memorize-remember. But I always seem to remember this one.

This was the first poem in some ancient paperback anthology I had once, and the text claimed that it was one of the oldest poems extent, dating from the middle ages. I don't know where that put it in regard to Beowulf and the sagas and stuff. It's obviously been modernized.

I just found the idea of this being medieval so charming and cool. I can just see this serf out working in the field and looking up at the sky and thinking this poem, then thinking about him and his fat medieval dumpling nestled into their straw bed with the rain falling on the thatched roof.

Angeline, I've got to say that your poem seemed like it was inside out with those rhymes on the outside and inversions or whatever. I should go back and see how that happened but I'm too tired now.


---dr.M.

Now I always thought this was one of the earlier Middle English poems - 1300s I would have guessed -, but it might be later, early 1500s.

It's the first poem in The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, which doesn't date it, but by putting it first implicitly assigns it to the period of the next few, which look much older, with phrases like: 'Adam lay ibounden', 'The aungels sungen the shepherds to', 'Alle tho wern in hevene bliss'.

The Oxford Book of English Verse has it at number 27, after Henryson and Dunbar, and dates it '16th Cent. (?)'.

Several Tudor composers wrote Western Wind Masses: John Taverner (1495?-1545), John Sheppard or Shepherd (1515?-1563?), and Christopher Tye. One website says: 'Based on a secular tune that may have been composed by Henry VIII, Taverner's popular Western Wind Mass is brilliant, wide-ranging and regarded as one of the high points of Tudor polyphony.'

I wonder whether it was an older poem, with a 1500s tune.

Now I always thought this was one of the earlier Middle English poems - 1300s I would have guessed -, but it might be later, early 1500s.

Rainbow, thanks for the history on Western Wind. When I first read it (and doc, I honestly thought you wrote it and was damn impressed, too ), I thought it sounded Shakespearean, and somewhat like the following song from Twelfth Night:

The Rain it Raineth Every Day

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came to man's estate,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came, alas! to wive,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came unto my beds,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
With toss-pots still had drunken heads,
For the rain it raineth every day.

A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that's all one, our play is done,
And we'll strive to please you every day.

It's actually a lovely piece. I've heard an instrumental version played on lute and the forerunner of harpsichord (can't remember the name now), and Richard Burton sings it (rather sweetly, too) to La Liz in Zefferelli's Taming of the Shrew.

So this all makes sense--Western Wind was probably writ a bit later as Rainbow says, in the courtly tradition. The Rain it Raineth is attributed to the Bard, but who knows--I'll bet it's older.

And doc, your comment on the Barrax poem I posted is sharp--I think he was trying for an odd, inverted sort of formatting because the poem is modeled on the following e.e. cummings (I have no proof of this, but when one looks at them together it's pretty clear what Barrax had been reading). In any case, I love them both.

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

by ee cummings

cummings

*L* <with delight> I haven't looked at any cummings in the longest time and am surprised at the depth in this poem. He's such a crafty son of a bitch. You notice how the poem pulls back and the field of view gets bigger and bigger up to the last stanza, and then he closes it down again. With parenthesis yet! (whispering to his lover)

What's with the western rain? This must have some English meaning. Spring? Autumn?

From the version I posted I get the feeling that's it's autumn, the peasant's work for the year is pretty much done, so he can shack up and sleep.

When you get right down to it, the thing that makes this poem seem so contemporary and so startling as a medieval poem is the "Christ!" I just don't expect to hear serfs taking the Lord's name in vain.

Inmy opinion, the poem would work just as well with "Damn!" or even "Fuck!" as the exclamation. It's the suddenly exclamation set against the little rain down-raining that always gets me.

Fascinating history, Rainbow Skin, but when you get down far enough so you can see the old German bones poking through the English, it starts to creep me out, like Chaucer. I don't mind seeing it in poetry so much, but when I think about real life humans walking around talking like that it just gives me the willies.

---dr.M.

Re: cummings

dr_mabeuse said:

What's with the western rain? This must have some English meaning. Spring? Autumn?

---dr.M.

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure most of the rain comes from the west all year 'round. I think it's merely a veiled suggestion of it coming from the sea (and if you live near the ocean you know the wind coming from that direction is terribly different from the one coming from the mainland).

EE Cummings

I'm with you on cummings. Most people think he's all about odd formatting and don't realize how powerfully he gets his message across--or that he wrote such beautiful love poems.

Yes, that 'Christ!' is so striking. It's probably why this stays so vividly in the mind.

Then there's the Cummings love poem beginning

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

Then he uses stanzas like this, of formal preciseness like Hopkins, and a joy to articulate.

Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer.

[That's enough fair use. - Ed.]