Poems about Gratefulness

In honor of my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, I present contrasting poems on the theme of gratefulness. Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday for years. As much as I love Christmas, Thanksgiving seems to be one of the last relatively non-commercial holidays left. The weather is usually perfect in Southern California in November. The food is spectacular if done right. (And my family has always done it right. We make the stuffing from scratch, and keep the turkey moist.) Most of all, the holiday is about gratefulness. It is one thing to give gifts and say thanks. It is another to be grateful for the things that money cannot buy. For another year of life, love, and friendship. For the blessings that we have that we tend to take for granted. The first poem is by George Herbert. Gratefulnesse  Thou that hast giv’n so much to me, Give one thing more, a gratefull heart. See how thy beggar works on thee                                              By art. He makes thy gifts occasion more, And sayes, If he in this be crost, All thou hast giv’n him heretofore                                              Is lost. But thou didst reckon, when at first Thy word our hearts and hands did crave, What it would come to at the worst                                              To save. Perpetuall knockings at thy doore, Tears sullying thy transparent rooms, Gift upon gift, much would have more,                                              And comes. This notwithstanding, thou wentst on, And didst allow us all our noise: Nay, thou hast made a sigh and grone                                              Thy joyes. Not that thou hast not still above Much better tunes, then grones can make; But that these countrey-aires thy love                                              Did take. Wherefore I crie, and crie again; And in no quiet canst thou be, Till I a thankfull heart obtain                                              Of thee: Not thankfull, when it pleaseth me; As if thy blessings had spare dayes: But such a heart, whose pulse may be                                              Thy praise. While Herbert often uses unusual poetic patterns for visual effect, his  form here is simple. Three lines of iambic tetrameter, followed by a two syllable final line in each stanza. The rhyme scheme is ABAB. Herbert’s idea, however, is truly profound. Our very asking for gratefulness is in itself a form of ungratefulness. Not content to simply BE grateful, we have to ask for it. We soon forget our blessings. And yet, it is in this very weakness that are redeemed. We were not loved because we would love back, but loved in the midst of our selfish unloveableness. I think Herbert also understands that gratefulness isn’t so much a specific action or state of mind as a state of being. It must be an innate part of us, not something we add to ourselves. Emily Dickinson, my first poetic love, also grasped this truth. I couldn’t choose between two particular poems, so I decided to use both.   POEM 655 (circa 1862)  Without this— there is nought— All other Riches be As is the Twitter of a Bird— Heard opposite the Sea— I could not care— to gain A lesser than the Whole— For did not this include themself— As Seams— include the Ball? I wished a way might be My Heart to subdivide— 'Twould magnify— the Gratitude— And not reduce— the Gold— POEM 989 (circa 1865) Gratitude— is not the mention Of a Tenderness, But it's still appreciation Out of Plumb of Speech. When the Sea return no Answer By the Line and Lead Prove it there's no Sea, or rather A remoter Bed? Dickinson uses the sea as a metaphor in both of these poems, but in a different way. In the first, the passing reference gives way to a second image: that of the ball as the essential (gratitude) encompassed by everything else, rather than the other way around. I think Dickinson is particularly effective in this poem by leaving the key word, gratitude, until the next-to-the-last line. Thus, we glimpse the casing: everything else, before we glimpse the center of the point, gratitude. This short poem also uses a simple, classic form. Three feet per line, with a roughly ABCB form. The second poem also uses a four line stanza, but uses tetrameter in the first and third lines, with a feminine ending, and trimeter in the second and fourth. Like Herbert, she uses an ABAB rhyme in this poem. Like Herbert, she notes that gratitude is not just words. In fact, words and gratitude do not even run parallel; and gratitude, to her, is the most real and deep when it makes no express answer. One of the things I love about poetry is that it speaks beyond the explicit. The meaning is to be felt and understood first, rather than understood first, and then felt. A good writer could have written these ideas out in plain and clear prose, but it would have lost the true impact. Gratefulness itself, like a poem, cannot be separated into pieces. It must be an integral part of us - a state of being, not just an accessory to our usual outfit, an attitude we assume when it suits us.

Two Autumn Poems

With such beautiful fall weather here in Bakersfield, I could not resist finding a pair of contrasting poems on the subject. First is an ode by Keats, with an unusual eleven line stanza rhymed ababcdedcce (first stanza) or  ababcdecdde (second and third stanzas). Keats' delicate, lyrical touch lightens the heavier effect of iambic pentameter and long stanzas.

Ode To Autumn by John Keats

           

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,---

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Dunbar uses the ballad stanza form (four lines with alternating lines of four, then three feet)  with two variations. First, he uses the rhyme scheme abab rather than abcb. Second, he uses the feminine ending on the even numbered lines. (That is, he ends the line on an unstressed syllable.) The bouncing rhythm, optimism, and the use of dialect add to the fast pace. Perhaps Dunbar felt like my kids around a leaf pile.

Merry Autumn by Paul Laurence Dunbar

It's all a farce,—these tales they tell

About the breezes sighing,

And moans astir o'er field and dell,

Because the year is dying.

           

Such principles are most absurd,—

I care not who first taught 'em;

There's nothing known to beast or bird

To make a solemn autumn.

In solemn times, when grief holds sway

With countenance distressing,

You'll note the more of black and gray

Will then be used in dressing.

Now purple tints are all around;

The sky is blue and mellow;

And e'en the grasses turn the ground

From modest green to yellow.

The seed burs all with laughter crack

On featherweed and jimson;

And leaves that should be dressed in black

Are all decked out in crimson.

A butterfly goes winging by;

A singing bird comes after;

And Nature, all from earth to sky,

Is bubbling o'er with laughter.

The ripples wimple on the rills,

Like sparkling little lasses;

The sunlight runs along the hills,

And laughs among the grasses.

The earth is just so full of fun

It really can't contain it;

And streams of mirth so freely run

The heavens seem to rain it.

Don't talk to me of solemn days

In autumn's time of splendor,

Because the sun shows fewer rays,

And these grow slant and slender.

Why, it's the climax of the year,—

The highest time of living!—

Till naturally its bursting cheer

Just melts into thanksgiving.

Does anyone else have a favorite Autumn poem to contribute?

My Poetry Reading Project, and notes on A Boy’s Will, by Robert Frost

Date originally posted on Facebook: October 6, 2010
Source of Book: I own this

This is the post that started my poetry reading project. It was originally inspired by reading the excellent anthology edited by Robert Pinsky, Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud, which reminded me again of my love for poetry. 

I have decided to embark on a tour of my poetry collection, also supplementing with a few books borrowed from the local library.

Those who have been to my house have seen our library, which contains somewhat more than 2000 books, primarily collected at library sales, thrift stores, and used book stores. I have picked up several complete anthologies by favorite poets, and a good number of collections by individual authors as well. While I have browsed from time to time, I never systematically read through any particular work.

To that end, I will be reading through my collection a bit at a time; not reading one author straight through, but finishing a book (as it was originally published) before moving on to the next poet.

I decided to start with Robert Frost. I have been fond of Frost since grade school, and am inclined to consider him my favorite poet. I find more and more depth to his poems the older I get and the more I read them.

Poetry is in the popular mind the language of love and springtime. Frost is the voice of Autumn and Winter and Solitude and Loss.

Despite being known as a “New England Poet”, Frost was actually born in San Francisco. (Similarly, Creedence Clearwater Revival has the reputation as a Southern band – it also originated in San Francisco) His father died when he was 11 – the first of a string of losses which continued throughout his life. Only 2 of his 6 children outlived him.

I own the complete Frost: Poems, Plays, Letters and Essays. I was given this lovely hardback edition by a young lady, whose good taste obviously won me over.

A Boy’s Will was Frost’s first published collection, appearing in 1912. It consists of 30 short poems (the longest is 72 lines). There is a general feeling of cold about the poems: bracing cold, invigorating cold, and sharp cold. Even the poems that allow the warmth of the sun to touch the lines have a nostalgic, melancholy feel; a looking back on pleasure, love, and springtime. And yet, there is sweetness. Perhaps sorrow never felt so sweet as in Frost’s hands.

From a formal point of view, Frost is a traditionalist. Most of his work has a regular meter, and a significant majority follow a rhyme scheme of some sort. A few could even be considered sonnets, if not quite as rigid as those of earlier poets. He also wrote many works in Blank Verse. (He was irritated to hear it confused with Free Verse)

Frost was particularly fond of the 5 line stanza. He rhymed it in a few different ways, typically using a quadrameter or pentameter, though not always iambic.

A great example is the short poem In Neglect

            They leave us so to the way we took,
                        As two in whom they were proved mistaken,
            That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,
            With mischievous, vagrant, seraphic look,
                        And try if we cannot feel forsaken.

This is one of the many that demands to be read multiple times. The layers peel back.

There are so many more awaiting me in the future. I will comment on each poet and collection as I read them. I welcome suggestions for additions to my list.