Sometimes I like to compare and analyze poems for fun
In The End- Rumi
In the end, the mountains of imagination were nothing
but a house.
And this grand life of mine was nothing but an excuse.
You've been hearing my story so patiently for a lifetime
Now hear this: it was nothing but a fairy tale.
(House)
A house is a shell, a container/costume. Warm and hospitable, nonetheless void.
(Mountain)
A mountain is something built up over time, something large and immoveable.
The mountains of imagination are simply the collection of memories, thoughts, and things which make up the persona or the individual, which are only transient. The self houses the stories we manage to tell ourselves and others to continue this human narrative. What purpose or measure of meaning can we assign to life if it is self referential? This must build castles made of sand, or mountains of imagination.
The Guest House- Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
(House)
A costume; vessel. It conveys a character we put on. Emphasizes the variability and transience of humanness
(Visitor/ Guest)
The passing states of being. Usually we are not self-aware. This is a paradox; we are only aware of our selfhood most of the time characterized by emotions, but our true nature (the self-the atman etc) is without bound to these fluctuations in mood and ego. Thus, the brief moments we manage to glimpse the totality, are unexpected.
There is a perceived consistency of self, but in reality it is not so. Whether it be biologically, emotionally, spiritually. We can only convince ourselves we live in ourselves because the notion that we are never home would undermine society at the individual level. nonresistance. To shut out or deny the faults, the struggles, the ups and downs is to deny the nature of the self. Fighting keeps you in duality. By allowing all to pass through in equanimity, love even, only then can you truly welcome all that is and experience totality. Become nobody. Get to know the ugly parts of the self and the world. There are many things to learn from them; darkness is a great teacher. With open arms/hearts you can start to see it all as a passing show; a play.
A Late Walk- Robert Frost
When I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.
And when I come to the garden ground,
The whir of sober birds
Up from the tangle of withered weeds
Is sadder than any words.
A tree beside the wall stands bare,
But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down.
I end not far from my going forth
By picking the faded blue
Of the last remaining aster flower
The further one goes, the path gets harder to tread. Many are cut down and stay down. Grass is a plentiful plant and uniform in appearance (represents the masses). You could argue they have lost their heads (their sense of direction; their crowns, their integrity). They stay down weighed by morning dew which is a water that comes every day (many are distracted by the simple pleasures and pitfalls). Gardens usually imply a paradise or arcadia; birds; typically freedom and love. We know from the first stanza that the pathway there was trying and now that the speaker has reached his destination he is saddened to see that it is not the promised land. The garden has been overrun with weeds . Whoever tended the garden could cut down the masses but not assail the invaders. A tree in a garden>> tree of life or tree of knowledge in garden of Eden? Walls can represent boundaries, trials. Leaves; details, remnants. The life has been stripped from the garden and the remains are so scant they are weakened (brown leaf). "The blue" often represents the heavens and liberation. This last faded flower highlights the finality and scarcity of this paradise. Personally, I've always associated this poem with love. It's against all odds, not always beautiful, yet all the while the speaker silently considers another to the extent he brings the last of the beauty to that other.
Acquainted With the Night- Robert Frost
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
The first stanza is reminiscent of phases like the moon. (Whole (“one”), back and forth, absence). One could infer the speaker has experienced a vast array of life experiences or time as he has gone where few others have dared to go.
“I have looked down the saddest city lane” could be referring to a crescent moon like a sliver and the man on the moon in the second line. Furthermore, the moon is associated with the 3rd eye and in this case the speaker averts his gaze. The moon also is used in conjunction with deceit, truth, and love. Perhaps the speaker is avoiding one or multiple? Frost makes use of a waning anaphora much like the waning of the moon (beginning with 3 “I haves”, then 2, then 1, a stanza without any, and cycling back in the last stanza with 1 “I have”.
“When a far interrupted cry came over houses from another street” relates to the break of dawn, yet the speaker is undisturbed by the turning over. It does not alert him the night is over or that anything has ended or there is anything to return to. Night and day are not ends, simply turns or passes. “And further still at an unearthly height, one luminary clock against the sky” indicates the sun which is farther from the earth than the moon and is responsible for our concept of time. Lastly, I assert the last stanza speaks to the realization of non-dualism. There is no good or evil, dark or light. I think this poem could also connect with the embrace of the shadow self as the phases of the moon are nothing but shadows cast upon it from the sun, often synonymous with the ego, and the Earth.
The Folly of Being Comforted- W.B. Yeats
One that is ever kind said yesterday:
‘Your well-belovèd’s hair has threads of grey,
And little shadows come about her eyes;
Time can but make it easier to be wise
Though now it seems impossible, and so
All that you need is patience.’
Heart cries, ‘No,
I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain.
Time can but make her beauty over again:
Because of that great nobleness of hers
The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,
Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways
When all the wild summer was in her gaze.’
O heart! O heart! if she’d but turn her head,
You’d know the folly of being comforted.
Beauty is all a matter of perspective and time; it's lustful enemy. Time taunts the protagonist but with this resistance comes wisdom and the ability to see beauty. Instead of battling time, if one is patient, one can see real beauty is unrestricted by time. The way out is through. Suffering leads to beauty. To be distracted by the pleasures and salient beauty is to not see the beauty of time, pain, suffering. It is foolish to indulge in beauties bound by time. The moment the gaze of beauty shifts (like the turn of a head, the phasing out of beauty) you realize it was an illusion and you must then find beauty in it all. Seek discomfort to see the beauty in it. AABBCC Rhyme Scheme interrupted by the word patience- funny*
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven- WB Yeats
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
“Heavens’ embroidered cloths”-> stars, galaxies, etc
“Golden and silver light”-> sun and moon
“The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,”-> day, twilight, night; good and evil
The speaker wants to give another the world, but "the world" can be contextualized by sharing oneself with another. (hopes, dreams). The heavens, full of stars-associated with dreams- are far vaster than the Earth (material-cloth). Feet are important because upon sharing one's life and dreams with another they can walk with you or walk over you and devastate you. Unlike a coat which would conceal or protect the wearer (the beloved recipient), cloth underfoot makes the speaker vulnerable.
A Minor Bird- Robert Frost
I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;
Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.
The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.
And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.
I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;-> Frost commonly uses house imagery in the context of emptiness or loneliness. (see ghost house, death of a hired man, and roses pogonias) In this poem he wants the bird to leave him alone. He also uses houses to describe hosts of powers whether that be gods or ghosts
Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.->”Clapped my hands” is an interesting choice of words, he could have shouted or shooed the bird but he clapped/applauded at the birdsong. Doors are midway points, entry points. after this stanza he changes his tune to feeling guilt rather than anger. he had crossed a border in perspective.
The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.-> “key” here is not only used in musical terms but also relating back to the 2nd stanza, the door got him to open the door, the bird's song is like a key
And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.-> This stanza sums up the poem well. once irritated by beauty, the music of the bird changed the tune within the speaker. The bird set him free
“Minor” could be viewed in terms of small or in terms of a minor scale which seems more likely given the commentary on “key”. In this case, minor has a sad effect which may speak to the speaker's condition. The speaker suffers from a negative emotion at least somewhat triggered by the bird yet it eventually leads to a change of heart, a change of tune. The poem is written in couplets like wings*
Bluebird- Charles Bukowski
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out-> this bird is trapped and not only that, but he is abused. caged in the speaker's ribs.
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out-> repetition of “out– but” foreshadows a turn of luck
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?-> up/down contradiction could reflect a similar silly resistance or contradiction within the self against love or against a force of seemingly net positivity.
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?-> the speaker is more of a threat to the bird than the bird to him
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
ut he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die-> funny that the speaker says "I know that you're there" to the bird as if the entire poem isn't about the relationship between the bird getting the speaker's attention . It's a sick pact that exists there. well describes a tortured artist. "i haven't quite let him die"
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do-> birds don't cry, they sing
You?
In comparison with "A Minor Bird":
Both speakers suffer a sadness and the bird is a paradoxically unrelenting, tortuous force that forces the speaker to acknowledge it, and when it does, a peace comes to the speakers. Birds symbolically are related to both peace and freedom, and these poems are no exception. The only inhibitor is the self as characterized by the speakers and the house/containers.
After Apple Picking- Robert Frost
“My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.”->climbing the rungs of dualism (a sword perhaps? stairway to heaven?) A relaxed looking back on life and choices. A journey has come to an end, or will soon.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. -> A death approaches, but this death has an alluring quality. One that conveys an eternity (apples)
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break. ->Observer syndrome? Relevance to water and illusion. The speaker no longer is part of the illusion, the idea of self, barrier, is destroyed.
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.->Speaker accepted death leading up to this revelation or acquiescence. Macrocosm/microcosm? Universality. *see Donne's Hymn to God, My God, In My Sickness
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in. ->The speaker feels the burden of life as characterized by the workload of harvesting apples. Life is in constant motion, and his connection to the heavens- the ladder in the trees- is influenced by life. His feet, that which ground him reliably to Earth and the divine, are in constant tension. But his final rest is to come soon.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall. ->The speaker has finally renounced desire, expectation, infatuation etc.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth. ->It does not matter what one does in life, how great one's life looks on paper, it all goes to the same end. Envy is futile.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep. -> we know that beyond, there is no speaker. -there ceases to be a "mine" There is no woodchuck because there is no other.
To a Cat- Jorge Luis Borges
Mirrors are not more silent
nor the creeping dawn more secretive;
in the moonlight, you are that panther
we catch sight of from afar.
By the inexplicable workings of a divine law,
we look for you in vain;
More remote, even, than the Ganges or the setting sun,
yours is the solitude, yours the secret.
Your haunch allows the lingering
caress of my hand. You have accepted,
since that long forgotten past,
the love of the distrustful hand.
You belong to another time. You are lord
of a place bounded like a dream.
Mirrors, the moon, water, and cats are often used in conjunction under the umbrella of mysticism, death, the subconscious, and love. In this poem Borges makes passive use of the sun i.e. creeping dawn, setting, sun, as well as holding the panther in the moonlight opposed to the much more common archetype of the lion of/in the sun. I support this both by the use of a powerful cat in a holy light and the title “lord” given to the animal in 13. This panther thereby could symbolize the strength, vigor, and even pride found in the darkness. Haunch, in addition to the hind of an animal, refers to the part of an archway that descends from the crown. As mentioned in "Acquainted with the Night '' analysis, the third eye is associated with the moon ie "the nectar of the moon" by Hindu tradition which comes from the pineal gland. In this way the moon and the haunch of this cat are connected to the third eye which reinforces the mystic quality of these themes. Cats are also said to be the messengers which are able to travel between worlds. Naturally, in this context, man could not go to the other side of life, or the other side of the mirror. Cats happen to have nocturnal vision which too would allow them to traverse parts unknown to man.
Further speculation here, but “you belong to another time” - careful not to say another “world”- which could be in reference to a lunar calendar as opposed to our solar calendar. Borges emphasizes the secret, silent, solitary, perhaps monastic nature of this cat which reminds me of the phrase “silence is golden ''-which of course, is more characteristic of the sun. In my mind, this tangent continues to suggest that hard duality like that of a mirror is not the true nature of things. A sunset alludes to death; the end of a day turns into night. Additionally, the sun sets in the west which is the direction of water according to Kabbalist and Pagan tradition. Furthermore, the Ganges is the mother of all rivers; the holy river which ceremonially cleanses visitors and carries the dead to moksha or liberation. See also "hymn to God, My God, In my Sickness"* In this context, the nebulous panther can be found only in the moonlight, a mere mirror of the original light of the sun. Water represents death whether it be illusory like one’s reflection in water, or in terms of nonresistance like water in water. See "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov, "The Book of Thoth" by Aleister Crowley, and various poems by Borges himself-> (The Moon, History of the Night, and Cosmogonia). I suggest the “we” from line six, is in reference to the speaker and his reflection if the cat and the reflection are not one in the same. It is helpful to note that in the original Spanish version, the rhyme scheme was ABBA like a mirror.