Poetry Thoughts 2018: John Greenleaf Whittier's "Proem" and "Songs of Labor"

Although sometimes his grammar is a bit archaic and forced, and he has a tendency to use antiquated language such as "thine" and "thou," I really enjoyed the section of The Oxford Book of American Verse devoted to the poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier. Here are a couple of his poems and my thoughts:

Proem

 I love the old melodious lays

     Which softly melt the ages through,
The songs of Spenser's golden days,
     Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase,
Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew.
Yet, vainly in my quiet hours
     To breathe their marvellous notes I try;
I feel them, as the leaves and flowers
     In silence feel the dewy showers,
And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky.
The rigor of a frozen clime,
     The harshness of an untaught ear,
The jarring words of one whose rhyme
     Beat often Labor's hurried time,
Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here.
Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace,
     No rounded art the lack supplies;
Unskilled the subtle lines to trace,
     Or softer shades of Nature's face,
I view her common forms with unanointed eyes.
     The secrets of the heart and mind;
     To drop the plummet-line below
Our common world of joy and woe,
     A more intense despair or brighter hope to find.
Yet here at least an earnest sense
     Of human right and weal is shown;
A hate of tyranny intense,
     And hearty in its vehemence,
As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own.
O Freedom! if to me belong
     Nor mighty Milton's gift divine,
Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song,
     Still with a love as deep and strong
As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine!


Amesbury, 11th mo., 1847.

The narrator (whom I consider Whittier himself, and not some made-up poetic character) loves the classic poems, but feels inadequate to read it with proper comprehension and appreciation, and even more inadequate in writing it (“Vainly, in my quiet hours / To breathe their marvelous notes I try;” viewing “common forms with unanointed eyes.”)

But, if Whittier doesn’t trust his judgement, how can he know for sure that these “masters” of the art he so admires are truly as good as he thinks? By deprecating his own taste and poetic discernment, he casts doubt on anything he has said about the “Spenser’s golden days” or “Sidney’s silvery phrase.” It would be like a tone-deaf person feeling intimidated by a great singer.

“Still, with a love as deep and strong / As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine.”

There is one thing, however in which Whittier feels equal to his mentors: his love of the art itself. Rereading it now, I still wonder who the other person is he addresses in that last line. Whose shrine? Is it an anthropomorphized Freedom, which he addresses at the beginning of the stanza (“O Freedom!”)? I suppose this could make sense—despite his inadequacies, poetry is egalitarian like the freedom of speech. However, I wonder if he couldn’t also be addressing Poetry itself (“Poesy” as some other poets address their craft)? It makes more sense for him to offer a poem to the shrine of Poetry than to the shrine of Freedom.

Songs of Labor

“Art’s perfect forms no moral need, / And beauty is its own excuse” explains that perfect art needs no moral. I would tend to agree: many of the best books I’ve read don’t have clear-cut morals or lessons to them), whereas if something is not beautiful it must be otherwise useful. In fact, the very usefulness of a thing makes it beautiful in its own way.

The penultimate stanza (beginning “The doom to which the guilty pair”) talks about how work—anything that is useful rather than beautiful—was originally the result of sin and shame. This refers to the Fall of humanity, how Adam and Eve rebelled against God and as part of their punishment were cursed: Adam to toil in the earth to cultivate food and livelihood to survive, and Eve to labor in childbirth. 

Before the Fall, this effort to survive and the pain of life did not exist. Certainly they didn’t cultivate food, because they lived in the Garden of Eden and easily (sometimes all-too-easily!) plucked fruit from trees without worrying about irrigation or blight, and although Eve hadn’t given birth yet it’s clear that it would have been a lot safer and easier if they had not rebelled against God.

But if work was originally a punishment for sin, it did not remain so forever. The last stanza explains that, just as with other things, Christ redeemed work and made it a blessing. Jesus, a carpenter’s son, who toiled with the poor, who served everyone although He was worthy of being worshipped by them instead, and who washed his own follower’s grimy feet, made labor a thing of beauty.