884 replies to this topic

[VonKalmbach]

Hi Barb.

Just want to say thanks for all the glimpses of REH’s poetry you’re posting in this thread.

Reincarnation is a whole fascinating topic too, and REH’s own preoccupation with it, and his examination of it with some of its implications in his work, is one of the reasons I’m attracted to his literature.

Thank you very kindly for posting these, and for your observations and insights.
 

[deuce]

Hi Barb.

Just want to say thanks for all the glimpses of REH’s poetry you’re posting in this thread.

Reincarnation is a whole fascinating topic too, and REH’s own preoccupation with it, and his examination of it with some of its implications in his work, is one of the reasons I’m attracted to his literature.

Thank you very kindly for posting these, and for your observations and insights.
 

 

 

Two other cool threads regarding REH's thoughts on reincarnation:

 

http://www.conan.com...l=reincarnation

 

http://www.conan.com...l=reincarnation

[VonKalmbach]

Thanks Deuce!

[BarB]

The Word of the Week featured poem, “To an Earth-Bound Soul” is REH’s tribute to Françoise Villon. As stated in the Word of the Week thread on this Forum, Villon was a great innovator In terms of poetic themes. REH wrote poems using these themes also.

 

Carpe Diem (Latin; seize the day,) to enjoy the pleasures of the moment without concern for the future)

 

REH’s poem, “Age” fits this category with the usual REH twist to it.

 

Age sat on his high throne

And scoffed to see me ride,

But I was on the beaches

And racing with the tide.

Age sat on his golden throne

And named me as a fool,

But I was splashing maidens

Nude in a forest pool.

Age sat in his corner

And mocked my furious zest,

But I was breaking sun spears

On my hairy chest.

Age stole from his neighbor

Great stores of gems and gold.

Age called me from my games

To fight for his treasure hold.

Age cowered in his castle

And preached great deeds and high,

But I was laughing, laughing,

As I went forth to die.

 

"Ubi sunt" (Latin; where are... [they]— is a phrase taken from the Latin Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?, meaning "Where are those who were before us?".

 

This theme emphasizes the transitory nature of youth, life, and beauty, found especially in medieval Latin poems. REH’s “Drake Sings of Yesterday” gives us these things in the life of Sir Francis Drake.

 

On Devon downs I met the ghost of Drake;

His sigh was a sea-wind that whispered past:

“Dost know barnacles crust the rotting strake,

And salt weed shrines the fallen mizzen-mast?

The sword of glory long has turned to rust. . .

Aye, shattered now the prows that long of yore

Beat up the sunset through the blinding gust

That lashed us off the gold-fat Carib coast.

 

“The glory and the glamor and the glee,

The raiding and the roving and the rage

Have faded like the spume upon the sea,

And History sands down another page.

 

“Where are the bawcocks and the bullies bold,

The swaggerers, the rufflers, all of they

Who strutted on the deck and filled the hold

With silk and spice and yellow Spanish gold:

The loot of Ind, of Panama and Cathay?

 

“Frown hard upon their deeds if so ye will,

And name them crimson-handed, black of heart—

They braved unknown worlds and seas, had their fill

Of death and danger where the sunsets spill

Unreckoned perils, and they took their part

Of cannonade and cutlass, wind and rack.

They paved the way for ye who were to come;

Aye, ye who followed rode a beaten track. . .

Oh, winds, winds, winds, winds, winds;

Oh, winds that set our rigging all a-hum!

Oh, tides, tides, tides, tides, tides;

Oh, tides that gripped our sterns on unmapped seas!

Oh, galleons, galleons, galleons,

Oh, galleons that loomed against the dawn!

Oh, battle-thunder, battle-thunder,

Oh, battle-thunder off the wide, white leas!

Oh, hissing cutlass, hissing cutlass,

Oh, hissing cutlass backed by English brawn!

Oh, plunder, plunder, plunder,

Oh, plunder from a thousand cargoes drawn!

…

“Ah, such dreams grip and cut me like a knife!

Let others rest in sweet slumbering death—

I cannot sleep; I need the sting of life,

The pounding of my veins, the fire, the strife,

The slashing spray, the sea-wind’s blasting breath;

The joy, the pain, the peril, sun and snow,

The tavern, and the ale at Plymouth Hoe!

 

“I cannot rest in Nombre Dios Bay.

Up through the seething fathoms I arise.

When night reefs sails to drink the dying day

And stars are longboat lanterns in the skies,

Then sea to sea I live it all again—

My youth and manhood. . . Devon and the Main!”

 

I met the ghost of Drake one Devon night;

He sang of sail and sword and reaving stench—

And in his eyes there burned the sea-thrown light

Of life-loving life not even Death can quench.

 

"Memento mori" (Latin; 'remember that you will die') is an artistic or symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death. It’s also a pretty common theme in REH’s poetry. I chose “The Bride of Cuchulain” for this theme but there are many other poems that would fit nicely.

 

Love, we have laughed at living,

Love, we have laughed at death;

At ecstasy and giving, and all vain things of breath.

 

We know, for we rent the curtain

To gaze behind the lure,

That naught but death is certain, that naught but death is pure.

 

From our thrones of ivory, flattered

By the cringing tribes of earth,

We have watched the idols shattered to the flute of our empty mirth.

 

Dazzled by fleeting glory,

The scarlet courtiers come;

Challenging ages hoary, pulses the regal drum.

 

But the breeze of the night is dreary

And the moon is bent and old

And your head on my breast is weary and my soul is thin and cold.

 

Come to the upland meadows,

Come to the ocean grey;

We and the world are shadows swiftly drifting away.

 

There, where the grey sea crashes

Along the ancient shore,

There where the spent spray lashes the sands forevermore,

 

I will weave the pale sea flowers

To twine on your pallid brow

That you may forget lost hours and Time be only Now.

 

Then all earth’s joys and sorrows

Shall be as ocean’s spray

And all the sad tomorrows fade in one dim Today.

 

Danse macabre (French; dance of death) REH wrote a few poems with this theme. But his “Dance Macabre” offers his own version of the dance of death.

 

I saw the grass on the hillside bend

Beneath no mortal shoon;

A demon ran where the sward began

And capered in the moon.

 

Black as Nubia was his skin,

Naked as night he stood,

And he danced to a hidden violin

Deep in the still black wood.

 

On the swarded hill he leaped and sprang,

Where the brooding nightwinds pass,

As if he would tread the stars down

And trample them in the grass.

 

He trod a measure dark and strange,

It was old when Time began,

In darksome glory he stepped the story

That vaunted the fall of Man.

 

REH also gives us a more personal dance with death is his “The Adventurer’s Mistress”:

 

Ah, beldame Death! Her love is grim

And she leads to trails that are long and dim.

She is aloof from loves and hates—

She bears my taunts and she waits! She waits!

And a single instant off my guard,

A foot-a-slip on the pallid sward,

A saddle-girth loosed, a rended sail,

A hand that misses a wave-lashed rail,

A reef that lifts ’neath the plunging strakes,

A horse that falls or a sword that breaks—

And the music stops and the whirl is o’er

And my feet are still for I dance no more.

But I’ll not grudge the game, I trow,

As I feel her kiss on my fading brow.

For I hold her dance is the only joy

That thrills the years and fails to cloy.

Aye, I hold her measure above all treasure

And I’ll only laugh as she bends to destroy.

 

LEFT FOOT,

RIGHT FOOT, WE WHIRL AND PRANCE

AND SPIN AWAY ON OUR WORLD LONG DANCE!

 

How much REH was influenced by Villon’s themes is probably a good topic for some future article. In the introduction to The Grim Land and Other Others, Tevis Clyde Smith wrote: "Though by no means the best poem in the book, “To An Earthbound Soul” brings back so many memories of Bob, and is about François Villon, like Bob so fascinating a character that I cannot help comment on it.  We talked often of this father of modern French literature.” 

 

I’ve chosen one of REH’s poems for each of the categories but there are many others and I’m also sure that many of you have favorites that would fit just as well or even better.

BB

[VonKalmbach]

Thanks Barb! Your posts alway make for a fascinating and informative read.