Panic Gripping Russian Soldiers

By Robin Bates | Published: September 12, 2022
Attributed to Francesco Fontebasso, Roman Soldier and Woman Fleeing Man Armed with a Shovel (18th century)

Tuesday

What a turnabout we are seeing in the Russo-Ukrainian War. For the longest time, it appeared that the two sides had settled into a prolonged war of attrition, only for the Ukrainians to mount an impressive counteroffensive and recapture, in a week, land that Russian had taken two months to subdue. Military analyst Lawrence Freedman cited a passage from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises  to describe the turn of affair of affairs:

“How did you go bankrupt?”

“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

Freedman explains,

As with bankruptcy so with military defeat. What appears to be a long, painful grind can quickly turn into a rout. A supposedly resilient and well-equipped army can break and look for means of escape. This is not unusual in war. We saw it happen with the Afghan Army in the summer of 2021.

For the past few days we have been witnessing a remarkable Ukrainian offensive in Kharkiv. We have the spectacle of a bedraggled army in retreat— remnants of a smashed-up convoy, abandoned vehicles, positions left in a hurry, with scattered kit and uneaten food, miserable prisoners, and local people cheering on the Ukrainian forces as they drive through their villages. The speed of advance has been impressive, as tens of square kilometres turn into hundreds and then thousands, and from a handful of villages and towns liberated to dozens. Even as I have been writing this post paragraphs keep on getting overtaken by events.

Stories are emerging of Russian soldiers throwing away their guns and running, and perhaps you’ve seen this video of a panicked Russian tank, shedding soldiers clinging to its turret as it careens down the road before finally running into a tree. A running joke is that Russia has now become the leading supplier of armaments to Ukraine because of all the equipment that fleeing troops have left behind. Another joke—this one directed at spin from the Russian Minister of Defense—imagines him reporting that the Russian troops have retreated victoriously while the Ukrainian army is running after them in panic. Although one must be careful not to read too much into these reports, Ukrainian advances in the north have been impressive.

Which is why I’ve been thinking about the scene in Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage where the protagonist is himself seized with panic, throwing down his rifle, and fleeing in blind fear. The seeds are sown on his way to his first battle. I imagine the Russian soldiers looking out at a forest as he does:

Absurd ideas took hold upon him. He thought that he did not relish the landscape. It threatened him. A coldness swept over his back, and it is true that his trousers felt to him that they were no fit for his legs at all.

A house standing placidly in distant fields had to him an ominous look. The shadows of the woods were formidable. He was certain that in this vista there lurked fierce-eyed hosts. The swift thought came to him that the generals did not know what they were about. It was all a trap. Suddenly those close forests would bristle with rifle barrels. Ironlike brigades would appear in the rear. They were all going to be sacrificed. The generals were stupids. The enemy would presently swallow the whole command. He glared about him, expecting to see the stealthy approach of his death.

He thought that he must break from the ranks and harangue his comrades. They must not all be killed like pigs; and he was sure it would come to pass unless they were informed of these dangers. The generals were idiots to send them marching into a regular pen. There was but one pair of eyes in the corps. He would step forth and make a speech. Shrill and passionate words came to his lips.

Although he withstands the first round of fire from the enemy, the second proves too much, draining him and those around him of all resolve:

A man near him who up to this time had been working feverishly at his rifle suddenly stopped and ran with howls. A lad whose face had borne an expression of exalted courage, the majesty of he who dares give his life, was, at an instant, smitten abject. He blanched like one who has come to the edge of a cliff at midnight and is suddenly made aware. There was a revelation. He, too, threw down his gun and fled. There was no shame in his face. He ran like a rabbit.

Others began to scamper away through the smoke. The youth turned his head, shaken from his trance by this movement as if the regiment was leaving him behind. He saw the few fleeting forms.

He yelled then with fright and swung about. For a moment, in the great clamor, he was like a proverbial chicken. He lost the direction of safety. Destruction threatened him from all points.

Directly he began to speed toward the rear in great leaps. His rifle and cap were gone. His unbuttoned coat bulged in the wind. The flap of his cartridge box bobbed wildly, and his canteen, by its slender cord, swung out behind. On his face was all the horror of those things which he imagined.

And:

He ran like a blind man. Two or three times he fell down. Once he knocked his shoulder so heavily against a tree that he went headlong.

Since he had turned his back upon the fight his fears had been wondrously magnified. Death about to thrust him between the shoulder blades was far more dreadful than death about to smite him between the eyes. When he thought of it later, he conceived the impression that it is better to view the appalling than to be merely within hearing. The noises of the battle were like stones; he believed himself liable to be crushed.

As he ran on he mingled with others. He dimly saw men on his right and on his left, and he heard footsteps behind him. He thought that all the regiment was fleeing, pursued by those ominous crashes.

In his flight the sound of these following footsteps gave him his one meager relief. He felt vaguely that death must make a first choice of the men who were nearest; the initial morsels for the dragons would be then those who were following him. So he displayed the zeal of an insane sprinter in his purpose to keep them in the rear. There was a race.

Fear can be contagious, especially amongst troops that (like the Russians) are badly trained, badly equipped, and badly led. While there’s probably still a lot of fighting ahead, the last few days appear to have been a turning point.

The latest word is that Russia is having trouble getting troops to volunteer for the war—and to reenlist—leaving Putin with few options. After all, if he mobilizes the country as a whole, he will face increasing resistance. Russia’s war in Afghanistan brought down the Soviet Union and this war could well bring down Russia’s current dictator.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments closed

Butler’s Nightmare Climate Change Vision

By Robin Bates | Published: September 11, 2022
Octavia Butler

Monday

With all the ills that beset us, the most worrisome remains climate change, which is currently wreaking havoc in Pakistan, with its catastrophic flooding, and California, with its record temperatures and uncontrollable wild fires. Extreme climate events have also led to international incidents, such as the Syrian civil war (begin in 2011) and the northward migrations of Central Americans.

Science fiction author Octavia Butler predicted such incidents in her 1993 novel Parable of the Sower, set in 2024. Two weeks ago I posted on the narrator’s spiritual vision in the novel. Now that I’ve finished reading it, I can talk more about Butler’s vision of the havoc climate change will wreak upon social relations.

In some ways, Sower reads like a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, like Walter Miller’s Canticles for Liebowitz and Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker, dystopian visions of people living in a world that has experienced nuclear holocaust. Novels that have followed Butler’s have been Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake trilogy and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. All of these novels feature a society that has descended to the state of nature described by political philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his 1651 work Leviathan:

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

In Sower, urban communities retreat behind walls to protect themselves from marauders, nihilists, and young people high on “pyromania,” a drug whose effects are enhanced by watching fires. As a result, there are non-stop cases of arson, along with wholesale slaughter. Lauren Oya Olamina, an African American teenager living in the outskirts of Los Angeles, is the only one in her family to escape when homicidal pyromaniacs assault her compound. She therefore sets out for Washington or even Canada, where climate change hasn’t wiped out the water supply. No one knows who is trustworthy—people may appear to be friends, only to murder you in your sleep for your shoes and bottled water—but she manages to assemble a community, which fend off attacks as they journey northward.

Complicating Lauren’s challenges is the fact that, because her mother abused drugs during her pregnancy, Lauren is hyper-empathetic, which means that she feels the pain of those around her. This means that, when she uses violence against those attacking her, she feels her own blows. I suspect she is a stand-in for the super-sensitive author, who acutely feels people’s assaults on the environment and on each other.

What sets Butler’s novel apart from other post-apocalyptic fiction—and makes it more interesting—is how she looks to the next generation for hope. Lauren, the narrator, is developing a philosophy/religion called Earth Seed, which she hopes will help people survive and once again flourish. She sets about building a community around these principles.

A least one member of her traveling group, her future husband, is skeptical. Older, he can’t understand why Lauren has hope. Here’s an interchange between the two that gives you a sense of their challenges:

“There’s been so much dying. There’s so much more to come.”

“Not for us, I hope.”

He said nothing for a while. Then he stopped and put his hand on my shoulder to stop me. At first he only stood looking at me, almost studying my face. “You’re so young,” he said. “It seems almost criminal that you should be so young in these terrible times. I wish you could have known this country when it was still salvageable.”

It might survive,” I said, “changed, but still itself.”

“No.” He drew me to his side and put one arm around me. “Human beings will survive of course. Some other countries will survive. Maybe they’ll absorb what’s left of us. Or maybe we’ll just break up into a lot of little states quarreling and fighting with each other over whatever crumbs are left. That’s almost happened now with states shutting themselves off from one another, treating state lines as national borders. As bright as you are, I don’t think you understand—I don’t think you can understand what we’ve lost. Perhaps that’s a blessing.”

And further:

He sighed. “You know, as bad as things are, we haven’t even hit bottom yet. Starvation, disease, drug damage, and mob rule have only begun. Federal, state, and local governments still exist—in name at least—and sometimes they manage to do something more than collect taxes and send in the military. And the money is still good. That amazes me. However much more you need of it to buy anything these days, it is still accepted. That may be a hopeful sign—or perhaps it’s only more evidence of what I said: We haven’t hit bottom yet.”

Counter to this is Lauren’s vision, which she expresses through poetry. Here’s one instance:

Create no images of God.
Accept the images
that God has provided.
They are everywhere,
in everything.
God is Change—
Seed to tree,
tree to forest;
Rain to river,
river to sea;
Grubs to bees,
bees to swarm.
From one, many;
from many, one;
Forever uniting, growing, dissolving—
forever Changing.
The universe
is God’s self-portrait.

And elsewhere:

Embrace diversity.
Unite—
Or be divided,
robbed,
ruled,
killed
By those who see you as prey.
Embrace diversity
Or be destroyed.

And finally:

Kindness eases change.

I have not yet read the 1998 sequel, Parable of the Talents, but you can see how prescient Butler was by the Wikipedia description. Not only does she predict the ravages of climate change, but she foresees a MAGA dictator, bolstered by white Christian nationalists, seizing control of America:

The novel is set against the backdrop of a dystopian United States that has come under the grip of a Christian fundamentalist denomination called “Christian America” led by President Andrew Steele Jarret. Seeking to restore American power and prestige, and using the slogan “Make America Great Again,” Jarret embarks on a crusade to cleanse America of non-Christian faiths. Slavery has resurfaced with advanced “shock collars” being used to control slaves. Virtual reality headsets known as “Dreamasks” are also popular since they enable wearers to escape their harsh reality.

According to the Wikipedia article, Butler had planned to write further books in the series but felt overwhelmed by the amount of research involved. I suspect the emotional toll that her vision took upon her also played a role. She reminds me in this way of Lucille Clifton—they must have known each other—since Clifton also sometimes felt her extreme empathy to be a burden. Clifton’s “water sign woman” could describe Lauren (only Lauren has to be on the move):

the woman who feels everything
sits in her new house
waiting for someone to come
who knows how to carry water
without spilling, who knows
why the desert is sprinkled
with salt, why tomorrow
is such a long and ominous word. 

they say to the feel things woman
that little she dreams is possible,
that there is only so much
joy to go around, only so much
water. there are no questions
for this, no arguments. she has 

to forget to remember the edge
of the sea, they say, to forget
how to swim to the edge, she has
to forget how to feel.

Like Lauren, however, Clifton pushes back against the naysayers. She too says that, if one is patient and looks at the beauty of the world, “water will come again”:

the woman
who feels everything sits in her
new house retaining the secret
the desert knew when it walked
up from the ocean, the desert,
 
so beautiful in her eyes;
water will come again
if you can wait for it.
she feels what the desert feels.
she waits.

Lauren might disagree only with the waiting part. Although she too believes patience is necessary, she also counsels action. Or as she puts it,

Belief
Initiates and guides action–
Or it does nothing.

And elsewhere:

A victim of God may,
Through learning adaption,
Become a partner of God,
A victim of God may,
Through forethought and planning,
Become a shaper of God.

Better that than being a victim, whether of climate change or the other ills besetting society. Completing this last poem, Lauren lays out the alternative:

Or a victim of God may,
Through shortsightedness and fear,
Remain God’s victim,
God’s plaything, God’s prey.

The choice between visionary planning and reactionary withdrawal, in other words, is up to us.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Clifton’s Spiritual Meditations on 9-11

By Robin Bates | Published: September 10, 2022
Firemen run to the Twin Towers on 9-11

Spiritual Sunday – 9-11 Anniversary

Twice in the past I’ve shared the series of poems that Lucille Clifton wrote in response to the September 11 attack on New York and Washington. In her poems, Clifton draws on her religious roots to process the trauma. While raised Christian, however, Clifton shows her expanded vision of spirituality, so in her poems she embraces Judaism and Islam as well as Christianity.

At the time she wrote the poems, Lucille was a colleague of mine at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and we have posted all of them on plaques around St. John’s Pond, which sits in the middle of our campus. As one walks around the pond, one can read the sequence in its entirety.

The first poem turns on its head what it means to believe that God has blessed America. Worried about people who claim that America has a special relationship with God—and who might use the attack by Sunni Egyptians as an excuse to embark on a revenge holy war against all of Islam—Clifton shifts the conversation. Americans can learn something precious from what has just happened.

What they can learn is that, as a wealthy and safe country, we are mistaken if we think we are “exempt” from the suffering experienced “in otherwheres/israel ireland palestine.” Note that, for her “otherwheres,” Clifton names three peoples who have historically experienced more than their share of  persecution: Jews, Irish Catholics, and Palestinian Muslims. God may have blessed America with prosperity, but with the attacks, we received a different kind of blessing, one that is in line with Jesus reaching out to the wretched of the earth. God has blessed us with the knowledge of what these “otherwheres” regularly experience:

1 Tuesday 9/11/01

thunder and lightning and our world
is another place no day
will ever be the same no blood
untouched

they know this storm in otherwheres
israel ireland palestine
but God has blessed America
we sing

and God has blessed America
to learn that no one is exempt
the world is one all fear
is one all life all death
all one

In Wednesday’s poem, Clifton reminds us that Muslims no less than Christians are God’s children. God has multiple names and many tongues. This is not the time to focus on divisiveness, she says, either anger against Muslims or anger against those targeting Muslims. This is a time to pray together under one flag, “warmed by the single love/ of the many tongued God.”

2 Wednesday 9/12/01

this is not the time
i think
to note the terrorist
inside
who threw the brick
into the mosque
this is not the time
to note
the ones who cursed
Gods other name
the ones who threatened
they would fill the streets
with arab children’s blood
and this is not the time
i think
to ask who is allowed to be
american America
all of us gathered under one flag
praying together safely
warmed by the single love
of the many tongued God

Thursday’s poem uses a passage from Genesis (28:12) to honor the firemen who gave their lives. There we read that, while dreaming, Jacob “saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.” Jacob’s dream captures those moments when the divine and earthly touch:

3 Thursday 9/13/01

the firemen
ascend
like jacob’s ladder
into the mouth of
history

Friday’s poem refers to the historical suffering of oppressed groups and passes along to all Americans an insight Clifton has struggled to learn as an African American woman: victims are not to blame for their suffering. While, following the attacks, various rightwing preachers like Jerry Falwell said that they were in retribution for America’s toleration of homosexuality, Clifton reassures Americans that we have done nothing “to deserve such villainy.”

4 Friday 9/14/01

some of us know
we have never felt safe

all of us americans
weeping

as some of us have wept
before

is it treason to remember

what have we done
to deserve such villainy

nothing we reassure ourselves
nothing

Saturday’s poem invokes Jesus and asks whether there is a higher purpose at work in our suffering. Following her embrace of persecuted minorities—perhaps in reaction to what she was hearing at the time from reactionary pastors like Falwell—Clifton notes that Jesus was a Jew and suffered as Jews have suffered throughout history. But perhaps there will be similar miracles of love in store for those who are suffering now, she observes, even as she acknowledges that the intention of “the gods” is difficult to understand:

5 Saturday 9/15/01

i know a man who perished for his faith.
others called him infidel, chased him down
and beat him like a dog. after he died
the world was filled with miracles.
people forgot he was a jew and loved him.
who can know what is intended? who can understand
the gods?

Sunday’s poem is dedicated to Lucille’s new granddaughter, born five days before the attacks. As she looks over the St. Mary’s River that flows by our campus, Lucille is struck by the calm, which is in marked contrast with the attacks. While she is well aware of humanity’s history of injustice and the many reasons to hate—she is “cursed with long memory”—she chooses to love instead.

Her granddaughter, she notes, is born innocent into a violent world. While Bailey will become aware of the bad, however, she will also become cognizant of the good. Buoyed by new life, Lucille talks about how she loves all of the world, despite “the hatred and fear and tragedy.” Ultimately, love trumps all.

6 Sunday Morning 9/16/01
for bailey

the st. marys river flows
as if nothing has happened

i watch it with my coffee
afraid and sad as are we all

so many ones to hate and i
cursed with long memory

cursed with the desire to understand
have never been good at hating

now this new granddaughter
born into a violent world

as if nothing has happened

and i am consumed with love
for all of it

the everydayness of bravery
of hate of fear of tragedy

of death and birth and hope
true as this river

and especially with love
bailey fredrica clifton goin

for you

It so happened that Rosh Hashanah fell upon September 17 in 2001, prodding Lucille to find symbolic significance in the Jewish new year and the supposed anniversary of Adam and Eve. While human evil emerged from the Garden of Eden, so did human love. Lucille writes that “what is not lost” from that original connection with God “is paradise.” In the sweet and delicious image of “apples and honey,” we see that Lucille believes that not all has been lost:

7 Monday Sundown 9/17/01

Rosh Hashanah

i bear witness to no thing
more human than hate

i bear witness to no thing
more human than love

apples and honey
apples and honey

what is not lost
is paradise

And so we continue on, finding something to salvage in even the grimmest of times.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments closed

Poems about Charles I and II

By Robin Bates | Published: September 8, 2022
The United Kingdom’s next monarch, Charles III

Friday

“The king is dead. Long live the king.” I remember first encountering that apparent paradox when reading Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper as a child. Combined, the two declarations emphasize both ending and continuity. Tom in this passage is the pauper who has been mistaken for the king:

“The King is dead!”

The great assemblage bent their heads upon their breasts with one accord; remained so, in profound silence, a few moments; then all sank upon their knees in a body, stretched out their hands toward Tom, and a mighty shout burst forth that seemed to shake the building—

“Long live the King!”

The paradox doesn’t work when the monarch is a queen, however. Nor, for all the coverage that Queen Elizabeth II’s death is getting, is there as much at stake as there was in days of old. When British monarchs wielded real power, transitions often raised extravagant hopes and overblown fears.

In recent years I’ve found myself thinking more about Queen Elizabeth than I normally would, largely because she interested my late mother, the two having been born less than a year apart. (Both died at 96.) We watched The Crown together, along with other programs featuring British royalty. My mother admired Elizabeth’s class and her propriety, qualities that she possessed as well.

So now we are set to have the first Charles since the 17th century. To celebrate the ascension of Charles III, I share two noteworthy poems about the previous two. Charles I was beheaded following the Puritan revolution, an event that is mentioned in Andrew Marvell’s “An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland.”

Marvell is somewhat ambivalent about Charles’s execution since he sees Cromwell as the better man. The poem praises Cromwell’s successful campaign against the Irish (Marvell doesn’t mention its brutality). Charles, he suggests, could not have been so successful. Perhaps tradition has been broken but “Nature”—which is to say, natural talent, natural law—must win out.

Come to think of it, this is the way some Trump fanatics defend their leader’s violation of precedent, law, and democracy itself. When force is changing history, the old rules seem expendable–or empty, as Marvell puts it:

Nature that hateth emptiness
Allows of penetration less,
And therefore must make room
Where greater spirits come.

As the greater of the two men, Cromwell successfully lured Charles to Carisbrooke Castle, where he captured him and bore him off to “the tragic scaffold.” The execution was necessary, Marvell suggests: “This was that memorable hour/Which first assur’d the forced [Parliamentary] pow’r.” But he goes on to add that Charles at least died with class:

That thence the royal actor borne
The tragic scaffold might adorn,
While round the armed bands
Did clap their bloody hands.
He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe’s edge did try;
Nor call’d the gods with vulgar spite
To vindicate his helpless right,
But bowed his comely head
Down as upon a bed.

Having given Charles some credit, however, Marvell then returns to praising Cromwell again. He, not Charles, is what Britain needs at this moment:

And yet in that the state
Foresaw its happy fate.
And now the Irish are asham’d
To see themselves in one year tam’d;
So much one man can do
That does both act and know.
They can affirm his praises best,
And have, though overcome, confest
How good he is, how just,
And fit for highest trust;
Nor yet grown stiffer with command,
But still in the republic’s hand;
How fit he is to sway…

The second Charles comes off even worse, at least in the verse of John Wilmot, who had a love/hate affair with the king while serving essentially as court jester. One poem he wrote about Charles–“A Satyr on Charles II”–got him banished from court for a while. You just have to glance at the first stanza to figure out why. Wilmot contrasts Charles with the “French fool” Louis XIV, with one being too warlike and the other too easygoing:

In th’ isle of Britain, long since famous grown
For breeding the best cunts in Christendom,
There reigns, and oh! long may he reign and thrive,
The easiest King and best-bred man alive.
Him no ambition moves to get renown
Like the French fool, that wanders up and down
Starving his people, hazarding his crown.
Peace is his aim, his gentleness is such,
And love he loves, for he loves fucking much.

The poem concludes by referring to Louis XIV as a hector (a bully) and Charles as a cully (an easy mark):

All monarchs I hate, and the thrones they sit on,
    From the hector of France to the cully of Britain.

I prefer Wilmot’s other poem about Charles, however, because of its pithiness. Wilmot posted it on Charles’s bedroom door:

Here lies our sovereign lord the king,
Whose word no man relies on;
He never says a foolish thing,
Nor ever does a wise one.

In hindsight, the relaxed Charles II may have been a better king than Wilmot gives him credit for. His decision to go easy following his restoration to the monarchy may have been what the country needed following its civil war. Charles I, on the other hand, appears to have been rather inept. Marvell wasn’t wrong to associate him with “emptiness.”

Given how the monarchy has evolved, Charles III won’t have the opportunity to do great good or great harm. As a result, he is unlikely to trigger any memorable poems, either of praise or of condemnation.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Actors of Color in New Tolkien Drama

By Robin Bates | Published: September 7, 2022
Nomvete and Córdova as dwarf and elf in Ring of Power

Thursday

Given the objection of some Tolkien fans to dwarfs and elves of color in Amazon’s Ring of Power—a prequel to Lord of the Rings based on other material Tolkien wrote—I am reposting a past post on Tolkien’s politics. As you will see, I don’t deny that Tolkien had blind spots, which also show up in his groundbreaking scholarship on Beowulf. That an author has some of the prejudices of his place and time should surprise no one. At the same time, I also believe that great literature transcends both author and time.

 And because of this, film adaptations have a lot of leeway in how they handle the source material. We see this all the time in Jane Austen films—Anne Elliot in the latest Persuasion is much more socially assertive than Austen’s original but the strength of character is similar—and one could say the same about Tolkien’s drama. Is anything lost by making Middle Earth multicultural? If anything, Tolkien’s drama is already moving in a multicultural direction by the contrasts it draws between dwarf and elf culture. The need of the dwarfs and elves to unify in the face of a common enemy cries out for casting decisions that upend racial tribalism.

It sounds like those accusing Ring of Power of wokeness are people who dream Hitler’s dream of white purity and his fears of white replacement. If they are looking Tolkien to bolster fascist leanings, however, they should think twice. After all, in Lord of the Rings Tolkien based Sauron and his Nazgul on German fascists. For that matter, by the end of the trilogy hobbits must move beyond their xenophobia, which has trapped them in a limited world, and open themselves to a globalist perspective.

Reprinted from October 10, 2019

My son Toby Wilson-Bates just alerted me to a Dorothy Kim article about how J.R.R. Tolkien, even as he brought general attention to Beowulf, also circumscribed how people interpreted it. The Oxford don could only see it as a white, male hero story and, more disturbingly, he shut out scholars of other races who might have interpreted it differently.

While I find the article overly opaque and convoluted, it does alert us to Tolkien’s prejudices. It also provides me an opportunity to reflect on how literary works are more complex than the writers who authored them or the scholars who study them. This is certainly true of Beowulf and somewhat true (because it’s a lesser work) of Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien’s landmark essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” elevated the epic from an interesting historical document to the masterpiece that launched Britain’s literary greatness. Since then, however, Kim says that critics have read it “through the white gaze and a preserve of white English heritage.” Tolkien, she argues in an elliptical and not altogether convincing manner, regarded Grendel as a black man. I’m less skeptical that his concern was “solidifying white Englishness and English identity.” While he “abhorred fascism and antisemitism,” he “upheld the English empire’s white supremacy.”

Kim then contrasts Tolkien’s vision with Toni Morrison’s. While the white author focuses on Beowulf, the black author focuses on Grendel and his mother, regarding them as “raced and marginal figures.” In Morrison’s view, Grendel represents the dispossessed, one who yearns “for nurture and community.” I haven’t read Morrison’s essay but, by Kim’s account, it sounds like she regards him as a Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of Richard Wright’s Native Son.

That Tolkien has racial prejudices I am willing to grant, to which I would add gender and class prejudices. In Lord of the Rings, the good guys are Nordic-looking Rangers of the North (Aragorn), elves that resemble British yeomen out of the Robin Hood stories, and the very white Riders of Rohan while the bad guys (the Orcs) are Slavic-looking proles who threaten to overwhelm the comfortably middle-class Shire. Women, meanwhile, are in scarce supply.

I also grant that his interpretation of Beowulf is lacking, especially as it omits any discussion of Grendel’s Mother. (In other words, he overlooks women once again.) This is why diversity in academic scholarship is vital: women and people of color spot things overlooked by scholars with Tolkien’s demographics.

But Beowulf is greater than either his or Morrison’s interpretations of it, and I believe that Lord of the Rings transcends Tolkien’s racism, classism, and sexism as well. Beowulf is one of the great literary works about violence—it ranks up there with the Iliad—while Lord of the Rings changed the course of fantasy fiction.

As I see it, Beowulf captures how violence hollows us out and distorts our souls. Tolkien may or may not have regarded Grendel as black, but the monster’s resentful rage maps easily on to our white supremacists, who themselves feel dispossessed.

Grendel’s Mother, meanwhile, I regard as the vengeful rage that wants others to experience the hurt she feels. To apply one instance of Tolkien’s own countrymen yielding to her rage, Britain firebombed Dresden, an open city for refugees of no strategic importance, in revenge for the bombing of London.

The Beowulf poet could create this timeless monster because he had seen up-close his culture’s endless blood feuds. If he imagined this monster as a woman and a mother, it’s because no rage seemed fiercer to warriors than that of a mother who has lost her son. Think of it as Mother Bear rage.

In other words, I don’t see Beowulf’s monsters as limited to any demographic but rather as archetypes of our most destructive impulses. In his society, the monstrosity could consume disaffected warriors (Grendel resentment), grieving warriors (mother vengeance) and paranoid rulers (dragon rage). Every age and country has its own version of these three monsters.

To touch briefly on Lord of the Rings, it suffers from some of the author’s blind spots. Fantasist Terry Pratchett’s Snuff, for instance, exposes Tolkien’s one-dimensional depiction of goblins by giving them personalities, even as British gentry hunt them down or ruthlessly exploit them. But Rings also shows, through compelling storytelling, the seductive lure of power. Having witnessed Europe’s 20th century madness from the front row, Tolkien created a drama that can be used to expose Britain’s Brexit arrogance and anti-immigrant reaction as much as it reveals Hitler’s or Stalin’s ambitions.

To reiterate my basic point: while we should call out literary works for their shortcomings, we should not overlook their greatness in the process.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Childhood Books Recollected in Tranquility

By Robin Bates | Published: September 6, 2022
Renoir, Child Reading

Wednesday

Sorting through my parents’ children’s books—and the books I read as a child—is proving to be more emotionally fraught than I anticipated. The past weighs heavily so that each choice—whether to keep, to move on, or to throw—tears at me. Given that there are hundreds of such books, you can imagine my mental state.

Our collection includes books that meant something to my paternal grandparents and my great aunt Rose but probably not to my father. And books that he loved as a child but that seem no more than interesting historical artifacts to me. And books that I loved to death as a child that will mean nothing to my children when, in 10-30 years, they will have to deal with them if Julia and I don’t dispose of them first.

And then, of course, there are the books that were meaningful to them, which I’m being careful to keep.

All of this culling is occurring after my three brothers, my niece, and my nephew went through the collection. Nephew Fletcher took the Doctor Doolittle books and he and his sister split the Oz books (all 30 of them). Brothers David, Sam and Jonathan picked at books here and there, including the Tintin and Asterix books (in French). But it feels like they did no more than pick up a few pebbles from the shore.

I’ve mentioned before that, by having so many books, my parents essentially buried them so that I—and perhaps they—forgot they existed. Some obviously have not been handled since the day they were put on the shelves.

I have Proustian moments with some of what I’m seeing for the first time in decades. For instance, a colorful book on children from around the world stands out to me because I was given it when I woke up from a tonsillectomy at age 7. My throat was horrifically sore but this brightly colored book helped compensate.  I’ve come across some beloved books, illustrated although not authored by Maurice Sendak, that I’d forgotten about, such as “What Can You Do with a Shoe?” (Wrong answers only follow.) I’ve also discovered some Winnie the Pooh books that are so worn that they are held together with rubber bands. My father had them as a child and read them to me.

So here’s a question: Do I hold on to them for sentiment’s sake, even though I have exact modern replicas in much better condition? And if I do, should I make sure to revisit them periodically rather than allow them to be buried? Or is enough to recall, somewhere in the back of my mind, that they lie somewhere in the collection, perhaps to be rediscovered in the future as I am rediscovering them now? I really don’t know.

The same question applies to my grandfather’s complete collection of Robert Louis Stevenson. These old leather bound books would fall apart if I opened them up to read them, and since I own modern editions of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Treasure Island, and A Child’s Garden of Verses—and since I can find all the rest on line or in the library—should I hold on to them? Or do I just display them as one does an antique china vase that one doesn’t use. Or, for that matter, an elegant clock that no longer works. (We have several of these.) Please tell me what you think.

Returning to our collection of children’s books that I began reporting on last week, memories are flooding back about the following:

–Rudyard Kipling was very important to us as children, especially the Just So Stories, The Jungle Books, and Captains Courageous. Returning to a story like “How the Elephant Got His Trunk” years later, I was astounded at the violence. Everyone flogs the little elephant for his “insatiable curiosity” but boy does he make them pay once he gets his trunk.

–Selma Lagerlof’s Wonderful Adventures of Nils, about a boy who shrinks in size and then flies all over Sweden on the back of a goose, introduced me to sadness and death, which I hadn’t encountered before in children’s literature. Still, I was enthralled by the adventures, which function as a Swedish geography lesson.

–Hugh Lofting’s Dr. Doolittle books were special to us, in part because my nature-loving father was so in love with them. He read all six or so of them to us.

–George MacDonald was big in my life (as he was in C. S. Lewis’s), especially The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie. I was intrigued by At the Back of the North Wind but ultimately felt it to be suffocating, given the North Wind is a figure of death.

–And speaking of Lewis, I can’t leave out the Narnia books. Along with sThe Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, they towered over all other books of my childhood.

–All the Pooh books were also very big when I was younger, and I may owe my name in part to Christopher Robin. (“Robins,” with an “s,” is also a family name.) Many of the poems in When We Were Very Young and Now I Am Six I had memorized.

–E. Nesbit’s The Treasure Seekers, The Would-Be-Goods, and The New Treasure Seekers taught me the importance of point of view since the narrator—who tries unsuccessfully to hide his identity and pass himself off as a neutral reporter—is the older brother (as was I).  That the five children in the family are all book lovers, especially of The Jungle Books, helped me identify with them. My youngest brother Sam, on the other hand, was more drawn to Nesbit’s fantasy novels, like The Five Children and It, The Book of Dragons, and The Phoenix in the Carpet.

—We own all of Mary Norton’s Borrower books, along with Bedknob and Broomstick (although I didn’t encounter the latter until later in life). I found them fun although not compelling.

–On the other hand, I was riveted by The Scarlet Pimpernel, which was just the kind of dashing adventure and love story that would appeal to a bookish kid like me. I remember the joy I felt when I discovered there were sequels.

–If we don’t own all 26 of the Lucy Fitch Perkins’s twin books, we certainly own most of them, almost all in first editions. Perkins’s books about twins of different nationalities and historical periods were immensely popular, and I especially liked the ones with adventures (like The Twins of the War of 1812).

–Jane Porter’s The Scottish Chiefs (upon which the movie Braveheart is based) strikes some as overly long, but I recall receiving this novel about William Wallace’s rebellion against the British as a Christmas present staying up all night reading it. The N.C. Wyeth pictures contributed.

–Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons and its many sequels is a series about kids who have sailing adventures. I found the series somewhat tame (except one where they have to escape modern-day pirates) but my two youngest brothers loved them.

–I couldn’t get enough of Margery Sharp’s Miss Bianca books when I encountered them in 8th grade. We have all of them.

–We also have all of my mother’s Little Pepper Books. I enjoyed the first but wasn’t drawn to read the sequels, as she did.

–My father used to read us Booth Tarkington’s Penrod books, about a misbehaving boy who is partly modeled on Tom Sawyer. I wasn’t that kind of boy—I followed all the rules—but I was intrigued by his misadventures.

–Speaking of Tom Sawyer, we have not only that book and Huckleberry Finn but two further sequels, Tom Sawyer Aloft and Tom Sawyer Detective. All of which I loved.

–We enjoyed Jules Verne’s adventures. My brother Jonathan was drawn to his science fiction, like 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, but I preferred Around the World in 80 Days.

–We have all of E.B. White’s children’s books although the only one I remember reading was Charlotte’s Web. That one, however, haunted my imagination, especially Garth Williams’s image of the father going after Wilbur with an axe.

–I conclude with one of my very favorites, T.H. White’s Mistress Masham’s Repose. Lilliputian citizens, kidnapped by the 18th century captain who rescues Gulliver from sea, escaped and have been living ever since on an estate. Maria discovers them and then, together, they thwart her wicked guardians.

I can’t overstate the pleasure that these books brought me, and I have confined myself to noting the better ones. I haven’t even touched on others books we own, like ones from the Hardy Boy, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, Bobbsey Twins, and other series. And these are only the children’s books, not all the novels, plays, and poetry and essay collections. And then there are all the cartoon books and the mysteries and the art books and the literary theory and the travel books and the history books and the biographies and the nature books and the books on feminism and civil rights and…

We can’t keep them all—or rather, we technically could but then we’re back to my original problem, which is that too many books–or too many things–means that you can’t fully appreciate them.

So what would you do? Or what have you done? I’m hungry for answers.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments closed

Serena and Venus Transformed Tennis

By Robin Bates | Published: September 5, 2022
Serena Williams bows out

Tuesday

Last week, as we watched the greatest woman tennis player of all time play what is probably her last professional match, we could only marvel at how she and her sister transformed the sport. Fox Sports commentator Nick Wright spoke for many of us when he opined that Serena Williams is “the most dominant in her field of any athlete I have ever seen.” Wright added that Serena belongs on the Mount Rushmore of greatest athletes ever, up there with Muhammad Ali, Usain Bolt, and only one or two others. In every way, she has been extraordinary.

Speaking for myself, I was always amazed at how Serena could win clutch points when the whole match hung in the balance. She seemed absolutely fearless at such moments.

The late poet Tony Hoagland wrote a poem that captured how she and Venus changed the sport in a poem appropriately titled “The Change.” The speaker in the poem is a man with unconscious racial biases who finds himself enthralled by a Williams match in spite of himself. While he is watching Venus play, he could just as easily be describing Serena.

Expecting deference from Black women, he’s struck by how Venus was

hitting the ball like she was driving the Emancipation Proclamation
down Abraham Lincoln’s throat,
like she wasn’t asking anyone’s permission

The poem makes some factual errors: the match the speaker appears to have seen was Venus defeating Belgian Justine Henin, who indeed was a “tough little European blonde,” in 2001. (Technically, 2001 is still the 20th century, so “the 20th century almost gone” is accurate.) Furthermore, the match was held on the green grass of Wimbledon, not the red clay of the French Open. (The only time Venus reached the French Open finals, she lost to Serena.) In 2001, George Bush would have been “the new president [who] proves he’s a dummy.”

The speaker also garbles the name by mixing up Venus with Aphrodite while joining it with a caricatured Black name: in the poem she becomes “Vondella Aphrodite.” (“Say her name correctly,” I imagine Black Lives Matter protesters saying.) And I have no idea what it means that the speaker gets the Williamses’ hometown wrong. Maybe he has confused Compton, California (their actual home) with Compton, Alabama, or maybe he has projected a primal civil rights drama onto the match. At any rate, even though he finds himself rooting for the white women—”because she was one of my kind, my tribe, with her pale eyes and thin lips”—he can’t help being riveted by Venus’s power and her “to-hell-with-everybody stare.” Incidentally, Venus won the match 6-1, 3-6, 6-0. Or as the speaker puts it,

that black girl wore down her opponent
then kicked her ass good
then thumped her once more for good measure

Unfortunately for the Williams sisters, simply winning in those early years didn’t change hearts and minds. Many Americans rooted against them, especially Serena, because of their unapologetic dominance. Furthermore, Black athletes have never won White hearts simply by being good. If anything, stereotypes are sometimes reinforced, not changed, by their success.

Given how white the tennis world was in 2001, however, it’s remarkable how much the Williams sisters have transformed it. Players of color, like Naomi Osaka, Coco Gauff, and Francis Tiafoe (the latter two having reached the U.S. Open quarterfinals this year) now travel the road that Serena and Venus blazed. In that way, the speaker in the poem is absolutely correct: the sport can’t be “put it back where it belonged” because we ourselves have been changed.

The Change

By Tony Hoagland

The season turned like the page of a glossy fashion magazine.
In the park the daffodils came up
and in the parking lot, the new car models were on parade.

Sometimes I think that nothing really changes –

The young girls show the latest crop of tummies,
and the new president proves that he’s a dummy.

but remember the tennis match we watched that year?
Right before our eyes

some tough little European blonde
pitted against that big black girl from Alabama,
cornrowed hair and Zulu bangles on her arms,
some outrageous name like Vondella Aphrodite –

We were just walking past the lounge
and got sucked in by the screen above the bar,
and pretty soon
we started to care about who won,

putting ourselves into each whacked return
as the volleys went back and forth and back
like some contest between
the old world and the new,

and you loved her complicated hair
and her to-hell-with-everybody stare,
and I,
I couldn’t help wanting
the white girl to come out on top,
because she was one of my kind, my tribe,
with her pale eyes and thin lips

and because the black girl was so big
and so black,
so unintimidated,

hitting the ball like she was driving the Emancipation Proclamation
down Abraham Lincoln’s throat,
like she wasn’t asking anyone’s permission.

There are moments when history
passes you so close
you can smell its breath,
you can reach your hand out
and touch it on its flank,

and I don’t watch all that much Masterpiece Theatre,
but I could feel the end of an era there

in front of those bleachers full of people
in their Sunday tennis-watching clothes

as that black girl wore down her opponent
then kicked her ass good
then thumped her once more for good measure

and stood up on the red clay court
holding her racket over her head like a guitar.

And the little pink judge
had to climb up on a box
to put the ribbon on her neck,
still managing to smile into the camera flash,
even though everything was changing

and in fact, everything had already changed –

Poof, remember? It was the twentieth century almost gone,
we were there,

and when we went to put it back where it belonged,
it was past us
and we were changed.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments closed

Think of Work Sweat as “Odorous Oil”

By Robin Bates | Published: September 4, 2022
Bumpei Usui, The Furniture Factory

Monday – Labor Day

Today America celebrates the nobility of work while giving its workers a day off from same work. Nor is it only Americans who regard work as practically something holy. I share today a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning which shows the Victorians having the same view of it.

Many trace this back to the Protestant work ethic, which as Weber argued has its roots in fear-driven Calvinism. Believing that whether we are headed for heaven or hell has already been predetermined by an all-knowing god, Calvinists/Presbyterians obsessively scrutinized their own lives to find evidence that would prove that they were amongst the elect rather than the damned. If their lives turned out prosperous, they hoped this meant that God favored them, so they did everything they could to make money.

(To be sure, this is an example of flawed logic. In addition to the flawed assumption that you can tilt the playing field by anything you do, why should material prosperity be a sign of God’s election rather than other things in life? Nevertheless, the belief was psychologically satisfying in that doing good and doing well could be seen as one and the same. Such belief is foundational to prosperity theology, the power of positive thinking, and other variants that have taken hold in various American Protestant denominations.)

Puritan self-scrutiny, at least when it came to Great Britain’s shores in the 17th century, led to intense journaling, which in turn (so argues Ian Watt in The Rise of the Novel) led to the novel, a form of literature that can focus intensively on small details in the lives of ordinary people. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and Journal of the Plague Year are great examples of this, as are the novels of Samuel Richardson. Crusoe’s intense efforts to develop his desert island are driven by guilt over having disobeyed his father and a fear of damnation, and his material achievements so caught people’s imaginations that for 200 years Robinson Crusoe was Europe’s most popular novel.

I offer this as backdrop for Barrett Browning’s “Work.” Her image of tending vines and the heat of the day, furthermore, must be a reference to Adam and Eve before the fall in Milton’s Paradise Lost. In those blissful hours before all hell broke loose (literally in Milton’s imagery), the couple clip a few vines here or there and then, when they get tired, retire to rest. In the following passage, Eve has just mentioned to Adam that they could prune more efficiently if they split up—after all, the vegetation seems to be growing faster than they can it back—to which Adam replies that “irksome toil” is not “the end of human life.” Rather work, in moderation, provides us the same kind of delight as eating, having meaningful conversations, and looking into each other’s eyes:

Yet not so strictly hath our Lord imposed
Labor, as to debar us when we need
Refreshment, whether food, or talk between,
Food of the mind, or this sweet intercourse
Of looks and smiles; for smiles from reason flow,
To brute denied, and are of love the food;
Love, not the lowest end of human life.
For not to irksome toil, but to delight,
He made us, and delight to reason joined.

Essentially, Eve has attempted to introduce the Puritan work ethic into Eden, only to be told to relax. And if she’s really worried about the vines getting out of control, Adam points out, there will soon be kids to help them out:

These paths and bowers doubt not but our joint hands
Will keep from wilderness with ease, as wide
As we need walk, till younger hands ere long
Assist us…

 After the fall, of course, it’s a different matter as God puts the hammer down:

Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife,
And eaten of the tree, concerning which
I charged thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat thereof: 
Cursed is the ground for thy sake; thou in sorrow
Shalt eat thereof, all the days of thy life;
Thorns also and thistles it shall bring thee forth
Unbid; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread…

Oh, and God adds that Adam, Eve, and their descendants will have to keep working this way until they die:

Till thou return unto the ground; for thou
Out of the ground wast taken, know thy birth,
For dust thou art, and shalt to dust return.

Back to Barrett Browning’s poem. There will be no leaving one’s vine-tending, she tells us, “till Death’s mild curfew shall from work assoil.”

Note the use of the word “mild,” however. What seems like a curse to Adam becomes almost a blessing. “Sweat of thy face,” for instance, becomes “odorous oil,” which itself sounds like an allusion to the 23rd psalm: “Thou anointest my head with [odorous] oil.” Tears of misery, meanwhile, become “pure crystallines,” which those who are inspired by our example will “wear for amulets.”

In other words, Barrett Browning is telling us to work hard, patiently and cheerfully, because, by doing so, we will inspire others to do the same. “My cup runneth over,” the 23rd psalm goes on to say, while Barrett Browning writes,

The least flower, with a brimming cup, may stand.
And share its dew-drop with another near.

So work sweat has morphed first into odorous oil and now morning dew. Here’s her poem:

Work
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

What are we set on earth for? Say, to toil —
Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines,
For all the heat o’ the day, till it declines,
And Death’s mild curfew shall from work assoil.
God did anoint thee with his odorous oil,
To wrestle, not to reign; and He assigns
All thy tears over, like pure crystallines.
For younger fellow-workers of the soil
To wear for amulets. So others shall
Take patience, labor, to their heart and hand,
From thy hand, and thy heart, and thy brave cheer,
And God’s grace fructify through thee to all.
The least flower, with a brimming cup, may stand.
And share its dew-drop with another near.

It sounds like Barrett Browning is describing a process of socialization. By undertaking burdensome work with “brave cheer,” we convince others to take on that same work with the same cheer and so on through generations. And perhaps it’s true that work feels less arduous if we see it as the reason God set us on earth.

Only, according to Milton, God didn’t originally intend “odorous oil” for us but something gentler. We brought on the tears ourselves. Barrett Browning just seems to be making the best of it.

Labor Day intends to do the same. By celebrating the labor we do—and by giving us temporary relief from this labor in order to do the celebrating—it makes things a little easier. We get a brief glimpse of life before the fall every year at this time as we sit back and relax with family and friends.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Pots Turned on the Wheel of Life

By Robin Bates | Published: September 3, 2022
Jost Amman, The Potter (1574)

Spiritual Sunday

As Julia and I are in the process of transforming my parents’ house into our house, we’re looking for ways to highlight our pottery collection. Silver we can do without—two of my brothers are taking that—but fine pottery is a passion of mine. My mother owns a number of wonderful pieces by local potters, as do we, and we’re clearing space so that guests and visitors can enjoy the collection as well.

All of which makes me interested in one of today’s Old Testament readings. In 18:1-11, Jeremiah imagines God as a potter. Longfellow, meanwhile, may have this passage partly in mind in his poem “Song of the Potter.”

First, here’s Jeremiah describing God as an angry potter. Envisioning Israel as a vessel in process, Jeremiah says that God can mess up humanity the way He messes up a pot. “I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you,” Jeremiah’s God tells humanity:

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.

Then the word of the Lord came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it

And:

Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the Lord: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.

Presumably Israel will become a better pot if it listens to God.

Longfellow also imagines God as a potter, and at one point he seems to allude to today’s passage: “A touch can make, a touch can mar.” In the end, however, he is making another point: the rotating pot is like the great wheel of fortune or the cycle of life. Longfellow may also have in mind Ecclesiastes 3, the passage that begins, “To everything there is a season.” (“Turn, turn, turn,” I hear Pete Seeger singing.)

In this drama, the pot cannot demand an explanation from the potter since the ways of that potter—whether it is God or fate—are beyond our understanding. So just accept that it is of clay that we are made and it is to clay that we shall return.

Song of the Potter
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Turn, turn, my wheel! Turn round and round,
Without a pause, without a sound:
So spins the flying world away!
This clay, well mixed with marl and sand,
Follows the motion of my hand;
For some must follow, and some command,
Though all are made of clay!

Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must change
To something new, to something strange;
Nothing that is can pause or stay;
The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
To-morrow be to-day.

Turn, turn, my wheel! All life is brief;
What now is bud will soon be leaf,
What now is leaf will soon decay;
The wind blows east, the wind blows west;
The blue eggs in the robin’s nest
Will soon have wings and beak and breast,
And flutter and fly away.

Turn, turn, my wheel! This earthen jar
A touch can make, a touch can mar;
And shall it to the Potter say,
What makest thou? Thou hast no hand?
As men who think to understand
A world by their Creator planned,
Who wiser is than they.

Turn, turn, my wheel! ‘Tis nature’s plan
The child should grow into the man,
The man grow wrinkled, old, and gray;
In youth the heart exults and sings,
The pulses leap, the feet have wings;
In age the cricket chirps, and brings
The harvest home of day.

Turn, turn, my wheel! The human race,
Of every tongue, of every place,
Caucasian, Coptic, or Malay,
All that inhabit this great earth,
Whatever be their rank or worth,
Are kindred and allied by birth,
And made of the same clay.

Turn, turn, my wheel! What is begun
At daybreak must at dark be done,
To-morrow will be another day;
To-morrow the hot furnace flame
Will search the heart and try the frame,
And stamp with honor or with shame
These vessels made of clay.

Stop, stop, my wheel! Too soon, too soon
The noon will be the afternoon,
Too soon to-day be yesterday;
Behind us in our path we cast
The broken potsherds of the past,
And all are ground to dust at last,
And trodden into clay.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments closed