Tuesday
It was perfect October walking weather in Sewanee yesterday so here’s a John Cowper Powys poem for how to take full advantage of such hikes. Piece of advice #1: Focus on your surroundings and do not let your mind drift to “thoughts unmeet.”
In fact, if you’re a poet, it’s your job to “give speech to stones and wood.”
If you don’t, Powys tells us, the silent trees above your head and the silent pathway at your feet will shame you:
“Alas!” they seem to say “have we
In speechless patience travailed long
Only at last to bring forth thee,
A creature void of speech or song?”
So don’t let mind fill with trivial notions. Stay present:
Wood and Stone
THE silent trees above my head
The silent pathway at my feet
Shame me when here I dare to tread
Accompanied by thoughts unmeet.
“Alas!” they seem to say ” have we
In speechless patience travailed long
Only at last to bring forth thee,
A creature void of speech or song ?
“Only in thee can Nature know
Herself, find utterance and a tongue
To tell her rapture and her woe,
And yet of her thou hast not sung.
Thy mind with trivial notions rife
Beholds the pomp of night and day,
The winds and clouds and seas at strife,
Uncaring, and hath naught to say.”
O Man, with destiny so great,
With years so few to make it good,
Such fooling in the eyes of fate
May well give speech to stones and wood!
I looked up Powys and discovered that he is a descendant of 18th century Romantic poet William Cowper. Perhaps Powys is inspired by how his ancestor gave speech to stones and wood in his poem The Task:
For I have loved the rural walk through lanes
Of grassy swarth, close cropped by nibbling sheep,
And skirted thick with intertexture firm
Of thorny boughs: have loved the rural walk
O’er hills, through valleys, and by river’s brink,
E’er since a truant boy I passed my bounds
To enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames.
This incidentally is only one of several walks that Cowper describes in his poem. Cowper was Jane Austen’s favorite poet, a clear forerunner of William Wordsworth, and someone well worth reading.