Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Louise Bogan's "A Tale" centers around the quest of a young man who sets out to find a different, perhaps more authentic, existence than the one he knows. The poem is pervaded by motifs of change and the search for constancy, challenging conventional notions of home, time, and permanence.

The first stanza introduces the youth who is weary of his familiar surroundings, "a land of change" characterized by mutable waters. He embarks on a journey to discover what different landscapes-ones "more indurate and strange"-might offer him. This departure suggests a critique of the familiar, an urge to break free from it in search of something less transient.

The second stanza dives into what the young man leaves behind: the "arrowed vane announcing weather" and "the tripping racket of a clock," both metaphors for the deterministic systems that mark time and predict the future. By cutting "what holds his days together," he breaks from cyclical patterns that are, though comforting, essentially limiting.

The third stanza articulates what he seeks: "a light that waits / Still as a lamp upon a shelf." Here, the lamp serves as a symbol for a stable, unchanging reality. He seeks a landscape with "hills like rocky gates" where "no sea leaps upon itself," metaphorical images for an existence where time stands still, and nothing is self-consuming. The youth appears to long for a life governed not by cycles of change but by unchangeable laws.

However, the final stanza returns a grim truth: "nothing dares / To be enduring." The only exception is a harsh, unforgiving landscape "south / Of hidden deserts," where "torn fire glares / On beauty with a rusted mouth." The "something dreadful and another" looking "quietly upon each other" introduce elements of fatalism and despair. The poem suggests that permanence, if it exists, is associated with destructive, rather than nurturing, forces.

"A Tale" is a poetic narrative that probes the dichotomy between change and permanence, between human-made constructs of time and nature's impartiality. It shows how the pursuit of something immutable often leads us to confront unsettling truths about the very nature of existence. The youth in the poem embodies the universal human quest for enduring meaning in a world marked by ceaseless change. Yet, the poem is cautionary; it warns that the search for something enduring might lead one into realms of destructive externalities.

Thus, the poem invites the reader to question their own assumptions about stability, time, and existential quests. It beckons us to look more closely at the comforts of the familiar and the seductive allure of the unknown, casting doubt on the human impulse to seek permanence in an impermanent world.

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!

Other Poems of Interest...