Tennyson's Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

 This my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought
 with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

One of my favourites by Tennyson, though not his best. When I praised it in a tutorial, John Bayley, my tutor, thought it a not particularly good poem, and he was right, but the last line, for me, was very powerful, and still is as I grow old.

 Bayley recently described Tennyson as a "Victorian pop star". Perhaps he was, and Kipling, too.

The Battle of Maldon

On Richard Collins's excellent blog today is a translation of the Battle of Maldon, which occured 1020 years go. Please read it. It is a fine example of Old English poetry.

I fell in love with this poem when I was 20. 10 years ago, I finally got myself sufficiently organised to get to Maldon, in Essex, on a cold bright December morning.

It was quite hard to find the site of the battlefield (next to the town rubbish tip), but I eventually met an oldish man, purple-faced from the cold, walking his dog, who pointed out the way.

Without prompting, he remarked, "That Byrhtnoth was a silly bugger, letting the Danes cross the causeway like that. Should have waited for reinforcements. Bloody fair play!"

Below are two photographs I took at the time, the first showing the road to the submerged causeway.

Brunhilde von Kartoffel zu Kohl: 1900-1937

Brunhilde von Kartoffel zu Kohl was an influential, though now little known, poetess of the Weimar Republic in Germany, and a strong influence on such unsurpassed geniuses as Brecht and Weill.

Her premature suicide deprived the world of a great and very individual talent which would surely have come to full flower in the 1960s.

Here she paints a tragic picture of German womanhood of the 1930s, crushed by male brutality and insensitivity.

Romanze in fünf Stufen

Als wir uns trafen, war ich die Treppe herunter
Und Sie nannten mich die Treppe hinunter Mädchen.
Ich übersprang in den Park,
Und für dich Ich war das Überspringen Mädchen
Später regnete es, und mein Haar war nass
Und Sie nannte mir die nassen Haare Mädchen.
Und dann haben wir zu Mittag gegessen, und Sie nannten mich die brattwurst Mädchen.
Auf der Straße trat ich in einigen Pferdemist
Und Sie nannten mich den Pferdemist Mädchen.

Romance in Five Stages

When we met, I was coming down the stairs
And you called me the downstairs girl.
I skipped in the park,
And for you I was the skipping girl.
Later it rained, and my hair was wet
And you called me the wet hair girl.
And then we had lunch and you called me the brattwurst girl.
In the street I stepped in some horse dung
And you called me the horse dung girl.

(My translation)

WHAT'S LOST

in the translation is poetry - and readers, too, I guess.

The Soldiers of Westerplatte by Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński

Pieśń o żołnierzach z Westerplatte

Kiedy się wypełniły dni
i przyszło zginąć latem,
prosto do nieba czwórkami szli
żołnierze z Westerplatte.


( A lato było piękne tego roku ).


I tak śpiewali: Ach, to nic,
że tak bolały rany,
bo jakże słodko teraz iść
na te niebiańskie polany.


( A na ziemi tego roku było tyle wrzosu na bukiety ).


W Gdańsku staliśmy tak jak mur,
gwiżdżąc na szwabską armatę,
teraz wznosimy się wśród chmur,
żołnierze z Westerplatte.


I ci, co dobry mają wzrok
i słuch, słyszeli pono,
jak dudni w chmurach równy krok
Morskiego Batalionu.


I śpiew słyszano taki: - By
słoneczny czas wyzyskać,
będziemy grzać się w ciepłe dni
na rajskich wrzosowiskach.


Lecz gdy wiatr zimny będzie dął,
i smutek krążył światem,
w środek Warszawy spłyniemy w dół,
żołnierze z Westerplatte.


The first battle of the Second World War took place at Westerplatte, near Gdańsk, September the first, 1939.

My translation, inadequate as always:



A Song About the Soldiers at Westerplatte


When their days had been fulfilled
And it was time to die with the summer
Straight to heaven, four by four,
Went the soldiers of Westerplatte


And the summer was beautiful that year.


And so they sang – Ah it’s nothing
That the wounds hurt so
For how sweet now to walk
In heavenly glades.


And on the ground that year, there was so much heather for bouquets.


At Gdańsk we stood just like a wall
Whistled at the Swabian cannon
Now we rise amongst the clouds
Soldiers of Westerplatte


And those who have good eyesight
And hearing are said to hear
How in Heaven, rumbles the steady tread
Of the coastal battalion.


But when the cold wind blows
And sorrow wraps the world
In the centre of Warsaw we will pour down,
The soldiers of Westerplatte.

Professor Dupa Cloaca - Getting a Grip on the Classics

Sonnet on Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth, as he wrote it:

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!



And now, brought up to date, and made relevant::

Sonnet on Westminster River-Related Pedestrian and Vehicular Facility, as rewritten by Professor Dupa Cloaca, Professor of Newspeak at, and Founder of, Cloaca College, Camford.

Now much more relevant.

Top of world-class locations, quality plus
Only the spiritually-challenged would
Ignore a sight so emotionally good
And first rate. It looks so fabulous,
Wearing the pretty morning, noise-free, nude
-The urban built environment’s pristine
In the unpolluted atmosphere, so fine,
That agro-touristic features can be viewed.

Sun never lit natural amenities so well.
I never felt so cool, so chilled, I tell
You. The waterway flows constraint-free, and how!
Dwellings seem to be sleeping, as of now.
And from the lack of movement in its chest,
Seems like the place has cardiac arrest.

EPITAPH ON THE SPARTANS AT THERMOPYLAE

Everyone knows it, or of it, but it will bear repetition.

Magnificent - not the word -'noble' is better-  in its appropriately laconic, lapidary simplicity, here it is. I think poetry can reach no higher.

Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

My translation, humbly submitted as accurate and prodosically correct, but without pretension to being poetry:

Go tell the Lacedaimonians, passer-by
Obedient to their orders, here we lie.

Your comments, expert or not, are most welcome.


Translation by others, all inaccurate:

o tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie. William Lisle Bowles

Stranger, tell the Spartans that we behaved
as they would wish us to, and are buried here. William Golding

Stranger! To Sparta say, her faithful band
Here lie in death, remembering her command. Francis Hodgson

Stranger, report this word, we pray, to the Spartans, that lying
Here in this spot we remain, faithfully keeping their laws. George Campbell Macaulay

Stranger, bear this message to the Spartans,
that we lie here obedient to their laws. William Roger Paton

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
that here obedient to their laws we lie. Steven Pressfield

Go, stranger, and to Lacedaemon tell
That here, obeying her behests, we fell. George Rawlinson

Go, way-farer, bear news to Sparta's town
that here, their bidding done, we laid us down. Cyril E. Robinson

Go tell the Spartans, you who read:
We took their orders, and lie here dead. Aubrey de Sélincourt

Friend, tell Lacedaemon
Here we lie
Obedient to our orders. William Shepherd

Oh Stranger, tell the Spartans
That we lie here obedient to their word. From the 1962 film The 300 Spartans

Stranger, go tell the Spartans
That we lie here
True, even to the death
To our Spartan way of life. J. Rufus Fears

Go tell the Spartans, passerby:
That here, by Spartan law, we lie.