September 18, 2005
Poetic Scenes
In my reading these last weeks I ran across two similar scenes, one from Milton, the other Wordsworth. Milton's is from "Il Penseroso," a companion poem to "L'Allegro" that details the pleasures and powers of the pensive mind; "L'Allegro" deals with the earthly, sensual joys and delights of Mirth—worthy, but inferior to the more elevated thoughts and feelings offered by Melancholy. This particular passage appears in the second half of the poem and comes after the speaker importunes Melancholy to "bid the soul of Orpheus sing / Such notes as, warbled to the string, / Drew Iron tears down Pluto's cheek" or to call up Chaucer's ghost:
Thus night oft see me in thy pale career,
Till civil-suited Morn appear,
Not trickt and frounc't as she was wont
With the Attic Boy to hunt,
But kerchieft in a comely Cloud,
While rocking Winds are Piping loud,
Or usher'd with a shower still,
When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling Leaves,
With minute-drops from off the Eaves. (121–130)
That final image of rain dripping from the eaves after a rainstorm strikes me as particularly vivid and lovely. As similar scene occurs in Book One of Wordsworth's "The Prelude," a very long poem describing the growth of the poet's mind, consciousness, poetic power, love of nature, love of man, and other sundry things. In the first book, Wordsworth details a number of childhood memories that he feels informed his love of nature and beauty and helped create his moral sense. In this early passage, the poet has just "escaped / From the vast city, where [he] long had pined / A discontented sojourner." He looks around the landscape and settles on a destination, a distant cottage, for his wanderings. After making this decision, he rests until nightfall under a tree in a sort of trance:
Thus long I mused,
Nor e'er lost sight of what I mused upon,
Save when, amid the stately grove of oaks,
Now here, now there, an acorn, from its cup
Dislodged, through sere leaves rustled, or at once
To the bare earth dropped with a startling sound. (80–85)
Although the context, meaning, and even technique of these two passages diverge wildly, they are linked now in my mind as similar images. Nature marks time in random, isolated intervals; whether dripping eaves or dropping acorns, the process is the same and can startle us. While I find Wordsworth's passage more charged with meaning and, ultimately, deeper (an unfair comparison to Milton as "The Prelude" is Wordsworth's masterpiece whereas "Il Penseroso" is an early piece written when Milton was around 24 years old), both images are in themselves delightful and memorable. Enjoy.