An adaptation for the late Barbara Lea—
Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best,
But úncúmberèd: meadow-dówn is nót distréssed
For a ráinbow fóoting it nor shé for her bónes rísen.
— After Gerard Manley Hopkins, Society of Jesus
* "And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it."
From Nabokov's The Gift —
Click for more about the Pushkin verse.
See also Trevanian + meadow and Congregated Light.
Margaret Soltan on a summer's-day poem by D.A. Powell—
first, a congregated light, the brilliance of a meadowland in bloom
and then the image must fail, as we must fail, as we
graceless creatures that we are, unmake and befoul our beds
don’t tell me deluge. don’t tell me heat, too damned much heat
"Specifically, your trope is the trope of every life:
the organizing of the disparate parts of a personality
into a self (a congregated light), blazing youth
(a meadowland in bloom), and then the failure
of that image, the failure of that self to sustain itself."
Alternate title for Soltan's commentary, suggested by yesterday's Portrait:
Smart Jewish Girl Fwows Up.
Midrash on Soltan—
Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me?
"…meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing…."
Dead Poets Society
Man’s spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best,
But úncúmberèd: meadow-dówn is nót distréssed
For a ráinbow fóoting it nor hé for his bónes rísen.
Gerard Manley Hopkins,
Society of Jesus
In accordance with this sentiment,
this midnight in the garden of good and evil
is the occasion for a change of site music
to “Skylark,” by Hoagy Carmichael
(lyrics by Johnny Mercer).
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