GR translation: social eye

[alice wellintown]

 Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.





On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 5:19 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> And then the horse his hoof he stamps and then Lamplighter or the
> lighting of the lamps.
> Preludes by Thomas S. Eliot
>
> And,
>
> MY tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky;
> It’s time to take the window to see Leerie going by;
> For every night at teatime and before you take your seat,
> With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.
>
> Now Tom would be a driver and Maria go to sea,          5
> And my papa’s a banker and as rich as he can be;
> But I, when I am stronger and can choose what I’m to do,
> O Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you!
>
> For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door,
> And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more;   10
> And O! before you hurry by with ladder and with light;
> O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him to-night!
>
> --Robert L Stevenson
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 5:15 PM, alice wellintown
> <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Let Prudence number o'er each sturdy son,
>> Who life and wisdom at one race begun,
>> Who feel by reason and who give by rule,
>> (Instinct's a brute, and sentiment a fool!)
>> Who make poor "will do" wait upon "I should"-
>> We own they're prudent, but who feels they're good?
>> Ye wise ones hence! ye hurt the social eye!
>> God's image rudely etch'd on base alloy!
>> -R Burns
>>
>> And, William Carlos Williams employs the phrase in one of his letters
>> when, much in the tradition of Eliot, who also uses the phrase, he
>> arguea that poetry is not social or political or personal, but...from
>> wiki
>>
>>  This leads to Eliot’s so-called "Impersonal Theory" of poetry. Since
>> the poet engages in a "continual surrender of himself" to the vast
>> order of tradition, artistic creation is a process of
>> depersonalization. The mature poet is viewed as a medium, through
>> which tradition is channeled and elaborated.
>>
>