Another sequel for the shepherd:

By Cecil Day Lewis

Come, live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of peace and plenty, bed and board,
That chance employment may afford.

I'll handle dainties on the docks
And thou shalt read of summer frocks:
At evening by the sour canals
We'll hope to hear some madrigals.

Care on thy maiden brow shall put
A wreath of wrinkles, and thy foot
Be shod with pain: not silken dress
But toil shall tire thy loveliness.

Hunger shall make thy modest zone
And cheat fond death of all but bone --
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

Saffron wrote:Hey,
Blake's The Clod and the Pebble puts me in mind of two quotes by other poets.

John Milton:
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

Hilda Doolittle:
Sing
and your hell is heaven,
your heaven less hell.


What do you think, are they a reference to The Clod and the Pebble?

I just saw this from you. Blake could have been thinking of the earlier Milton, I guess, and he revered Milton totally. I'm interested in Hilda Doolittle's heaven becoming less hell!

I can't keep from mentioning what could be the champion companion poems, in length and execution. They're John Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Pensero," which take the opposing emotions of mirth and melancholy and spin them out into an amazing tapestry. Too long to post here in entirety, and a little antique-sounding, being written in 1630. But here are samples, still too long, and thanks for your patience! (I get into this stuff.)

from "L'Allegro"

HENCE, loathed Melancholy,
Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born
In Stygian Cave forlorn.
'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy,
Find out some uncouth cell,
Where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-Raven sings;
There, under Ebon shades, and low-brow'd Rocks,
As ragged as thy Locks,
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But com, thou Goddess fair and free,
In Heav'n ycleap'd Euphrosyne,
And by men, heart-easing Mirth;
Whom lovely Venus at a birth
With two sister Graces more
To Ivy-crowned Bacchus bore
***************************
Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,
Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,
Nods, and Becks, and Wreathed Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrincled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Com, and trip it as you go
On the light fantastick toe,
And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crue,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free;
***************************
Some times with secure delight
The up-land Hamlets will invite,
When the merry Bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the Chequer'd shade;
And young and old com forth to play
On a Sunshine Holyday,
Till the live-long day-light fail,
Then to the Spicy Nut-brown Ale,
With stories told of many a feat,
How Faery Mab the junkets eat,
She was pincht, and pull'd she sed,
And by Friars Lanthorn led
Tells how the drudging Goblin swet,
To earn his Cream-bowle duly set,
When in one night, ere glimps of morn,
His shadowy Flale hath thresh'd the Corn,
That ten day-labourers could not end,
Then lies him down the Lubbar Fend,
And stretch'd out all the Chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength;
And Crop-full out of dores he flings,
Ere the first Cock his Mattin rings.
****************************
These delights, if thou canst give,
Mirth with thee, I mean to live.

from "Il Pensero"

HENCE, vain deluding joyes,
The brood of Folly without father bred,
How little you bested,
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toyes;
Dwell in some idle brain,
And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that people the Sun Beams,
Or likest hovering dreams
The fickle Pensioners of Morpheus train.
But, hail, thou Goddess, sage and holy,
Hail divinest Melancholy,
Whose Saintly visage is too bright
To hit the Sense of human sight;
And therefore to our weaker view,
Ore laid with black staid Wisdoms hue.
*******************************
Or if the Ayr will not permit,
Som still removed place will fit,
Where glowing Embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,
Far from all resort of mirth,
Save the Cricket on the hearth,
Or the Belmans drowsie charm,
To bless the dores from nightly harm.
Or let my Lamp at midnight hour,
Be seen in some high lonely Towr,
Where I may oft out-watch the Bear,
With thrice great Hermes, or unsphear
The spirit of Plato to unfold
What Worlds, or what vast Regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook:
And of those Daemons that are found
In fire, air, flood, or under ground,
Whose power hath a true consent
With Planet, or with Element.
*********************************
And may at last my weary age
Find out the peacefull hermitage,
The Hairy Gown and Mossy Cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every Star that Heav'n doth shew,
And every Herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To something like Prophetic strain.
These pleasures, Melancholy, give,
And I with thee will choose to live.

I am always a little astonished when life lines up and dots connect. Let's see if I can get the order of events straight. First, for reasons I can't seem to remember just now, the poem Pipistrelle by Mark Doty, came up -- Oh, yes, now I remember -- I posted it (at the moment invisible) on this very thread as a pair with a poem, Blessings, that Mark Doty references in his poem. I was "corrected" by DWill in a post I can not see today, either. DWill mistakenly thought I was referring to Doty's reference in the poem to a poet named Charles. I was not. Next, from a dear friend, I received as a birthday gift, Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. I know very little about Rilke, so I go searching the internet for information. I come to Poets.org and see he has written a poem entitled, "Archaic Torso of Apollo." Now, I'm back to Mark Doty. Flash of memory, I heard Doty read a poem of his titled, A Green Crab's Shell, which he explained at the time, was inspired bythe first line of Rilke's poem. I am now full circle.

Here is the pair --

Archaic Torso of Apollo
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.


and now, Mark Doty --
A Green Crab's Shell

Not, exactly, green:
closer to bronze
preserved in kind brine,

something retrieved
from a Greco-Roman wreck,
patinated and oddly

muscular. We cannot
know what his fantastic
legs were like--

though evidence
suggests eight
complexly folded

scuttling works
of armament, crowned
by the foreclaws'

gesture of menace
and power. A gull's
gobbled the center,

leaving this chamber
--size of a demitasse--
open to reveal

a shocking, Giotto blue.
Though it smells
of seaweed and ruin,

this little traveling case
comes with such lavish lining!
Imagine breathing

surrounded by
the brilliant rinse
of summer's firmament.

What color is
the underside of skin?
Not so bad, to die,

if we could be opened
into this--
if the smallest chambers

of ourselves,
similarly,
revealed some sky.


I love the last 3 lines or stanzas! To be brilliant sky blue (I know a man that I am sure is clear brilliant sky blue on the inside) in the deepest secret inside places. It reminds me of Li-Young Lee's line from Blossoms.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat

It just occurs to me why I like these lines. The lines get at the mystery (not quite the right word -- closer to sacredness) of what is hidden inside and most private from all except those to whom we choose to reveal. It is about how we take from the outside world and make it into something that is ourselves. To be allowed the privilege of viewing the interior spaces of another human being is one of life's greatest pleasures.

--I know I am stretching a bit, but I've already taken up too much space to continue making my case.

To be allowed the privilege of viewing the interior spaces of another human being is one of life's greatest pleasures.

Yes.

Saffron, we may not miss the Post's "Poet's Choice" columns after all, with little essays like this one.

It just occurs to me why I like these lines. The lines get at the mystery (not quite the right word -- closer to sacredness) of what is hidden inside and most private from all except those to whom we choose to reveal. It is about how we take from the outside world and make it into something that is ourselves. To be allowed the privilege of viewing the interior spaces of another human being is one of life's greatest pleasures.

--I know I am stretching a bit, but I've already taken up too much space to continue making my case.

Very interesting analysis saffron, indeed the privilege of viewing the interior space of another human being is a great pleasure and I think one of life's great discoveries. I was a bit disappointed that you didn't write a little more.