[1173] Splendour in the Grass

Guest poem sent in by KassieB <KassieB@>:

What though the radiance
which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass,
of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

 	-- William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth's 'Splendour in the Grass' is the poem we hear in the 1961
movie by the same name.  Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty starred and Wood was
nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Deanie, Beatty's girlfriend.

The poem is from Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early
Childhood, which begins with the majestic:

  There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
  The earth, and every common sight,
            To me did seem
        Apparelled in celestial light,
  The glory and the freshness of a dream.

The entire ode is well worth reading.

My first introduction to Splendour in the Grass was on a day when I was home
from school, sick with the flu. I passed the day watching movies on the
television. Though I was only about eleven or twelve years old, the poem
really resonated. And who can forget Natalie Wood struggling to read it in
her English class, then hearing her recite it again, this time much wiser,
at the end of the movie?

Kassie

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From: "Anustup Datta" <anustupd@>

The poem more or less summarises Wordsworth's poetic philosophy. He once
described poetry as "emotion recollected in tranquility" - his best poetry
has the poet-philosopher lying on his couch "in vacant or in pensive mood",
remembering a flash of beauty in Nature or Man. As his "inward eye"
diminished in power with age, his poetry too lost its power. Unlike other
poets - such as a Browning, for instance - his power of observation did not
mature with age, nor take on deeper and subtler overtones mellowed by
experience and understanding. Ultimately, the fount of stored memory and
captured emotion ran dry without anything to replenish it with. As a famous
critic observed, Wordsworth "lived on capital" - profligately.

I have always thought that Wordsworth at his best was the greatest poetic
Impressionist - his eye captures the fleeting moment in the same dazzling
interplay of light as Claude Monet's watercolours. And you know what Cezanne
said about Monet - "Only an eye, but my God what an eye!" Like Monet,
Wordsworth remained the truest to the absolute fidelity of emotional
impression.

Wordsworth himself realizes what he has lost through the passage of time,
and his reaffirmation of faith here sounds hollow and forced, as though he
were trying to convince himself that all is not gone. But try as he might, a
touch of nostalgia about the glory that was, of the splendours of the past,
creeps in. The grass remains splendid, but the keen-eyed young man who had
felt it earlier is no more.

Regards
Tups

From: "Michael Comars" <mecomars@>