[1743] To the Moon

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,—
And ever-changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

   -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Every time I look through the Minstrels archive, I'm always saddened to see
how poorly represented Shelley is on the site (yes, Martin, I know you don't
much care for him, but still). All right, so he tends to get a little
carried away; yes, he doesn't have quite the ear that Keats does, or Byron;
fine, his images tend to pile one upon the other until they become
suffocating, almost annoying (What was it Shakespeare said: "give me excess
of it, that surfeiting / The appetite may sicken and so die."); true, he
could have used a good editor. All of that does not detract from the fact
that Shelley is, IMHO, one of the most visionary and passionate of poets to
grace the English language, one of its most strident and lyrical voices; a
young man capable, at his best, of such burning purity of image that few
poets before or since could match him.  Certainly a poet who deserves to be
better represented on the site than he currently is.

This poem is the first step towards achieving that representation. It's a
brilliant little gem of a poem, a glorious example of just how stunning
Shelley could be when he didn't overdo it. The double image of the moon
roaming disconsolate through the night sky and Youth searching restlessly
for spiritual beauty is both crystal clear and oddly compelling. To read
this poem aloud is to experience the sadness and the despair of the speaker
- no mean feat for a poem that is all of six lines long. This is a
quintessentially romantic poem: it combines a sense of haunting lyricism
with one of the most spectacularly visual closing lines in all of poetry:
'Ever changing like a joyless eye / That finds no object worth its
constancy'. (The failure of the last line to rhyme only heightens the
overall impact of the stanza in my view - it sharpens the ending, makes it,
somehow, more fragile).

It's always seemed to me that Shelley, with his restless, tormented, uneven
poems, with his visions of political and lyrical grandeur combined with
periods of dark depression, is truly a poet of a 'different birth'. The
least we can do is make sure he has all his best poems with him, to keep him
company.

Aseem

[Martin adds]

While it is true that I dislike the majority of Shelley's work, I have never
denied his essential genius, and I have ever urged readers who *are* fans of
his poetry to fill up the lacuna. I heartily agree that he deserves to be
better represented in the archives, but my primary criterion for selecting a
poem has always been my enjoyment of said poem; therefore, I leave the
Shelley poems to people like Aseem, who has done a far better job of writing
about him than I could have. (I believe that I speak for Thomas too in this
regard.)

martin

[this poem is archived, accessible and awaiting your comments at]
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1742.html
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From: Annam <cr_annam@>


--- Abraham Thomas <ssiyer@> wrote:
> I just love having a warm, fragrant cup of tea when
> I am tired - just the
> smell of the brew makes me feel better. 

I agree, and would like to offer this one, which I
find more satisfying.

Twinings Orange Pekoe
Judith Moffett

The gas ring's hoarse exhaling wheeze,
Voice of blue flamelets, licks the kettle's
Copper underbelly, which crouches
Closer, concentrates, by degrees

Begins spellbound to match that pressure
And dragon tone. Breath crowds the slim
Tranced throat that cannot close or scream;
It spouts a rushing whooo  of pleasure.

The brown potbellied pot, top doffed,
Reveals its scalded insides tender
Nursery blue, from which a cloud
Exudes, and from its spout, a slender

Curl. It sweats and loves the tch
A lid makes popping off a tin,
The fragrance rich as leafmold, rich
As pipe tobacco, coffee, cocoa;

Loves the spoon's dry scroop, the skin-
Tight leafheap scattered in its breast
(A tannic prickle); the swift boiling
Flashflood, spoonswirl, settling flight; loves best

The steeping in the dark: blind alchemy:
Tap water, and an acid that cures leather
Stains cups and eats through glazes, pregnantly
Stewing together.

To arch forth in a stream as brown and bright
And smoky as an eye, strain marbling up
Through milk and sugar in a stoneware cup,
White white on white.

From: "Benno Kunze" <emigrant83@>

The line "(For fightin' mustn't interfere with Tea)." is worth a comment, I 
thought.
In a French comic book the protagonists
(Asterix and Obelix, gauls from now northern France)
visit the British Isles. Since the inhabitants of the British Isles
have not yet discovered tea, they're having hot water with milk
at five o'clock and they follow through with that custom
throughout the story even stopping to fight the invading Romans
in the afternoon just to have their five o'clock water.
(In the end of the book, the tea leaves are introduced
to the British Celts by the gaulic druid and so the tradition lives on)