I am sympathetic and appreciative of the man, less frequently of the work. A long standing but by now somewhat dated question is whether he was his own best parodist. The competition is fierce!! Still he could throw off a great line or two (and in his quieter moments, when not outshouting Lear on the heath, whole stanzas). But I've been "working" on a Whitman cento. Haven't got beyond these first two lines
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking
We two boys together clinging
…
His greatest poem is in the making. I invite collaborators.
(And speaking of centos, I've just realized I've unconsciously been carrying one along my whole life: "Say not the struggle naught availeth / Life is real! Life is earnest!" Something I must have picked up in the nursery.)
1 comment:
Pardon my pedantry, Tim, but your closing example isn't actually from a cento. It's just single lines from two different poems spliced together into a single quotation:
(From the Latin word for "patchwork," the cento (or collage poem) is a poetic form made up of lines from poems by other poets. Though poets often borrow lines from other writers and mix them in with their own, a true cento is composed entirely of lines from other sources.Feb 20, 2014
Cento: Poetic Form | Academy of American Poets - Poets.org
https://poets.org/text/cento-poetic-form)
Here are the two sources:
Say not the Struggle nought Availeth
BY ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43959/say-not-the-struggle-nought-availeth
A Psalm of Life
BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44644/a-psalm-of-life
Cheers, Steve
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