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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
AUTOCHTHON, by EDWIN MARKHAM Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: In a rude country some four thousand miles Last Line: O leader in a commonwealth of thought! Subject(s): Darwin, Charles (1809-1882); Judgments; Life; Tennyson, Alfred (1809-1892); Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron | |||
IN a rude country some four thousand miles From Charles' and Alfred's birthplace you were born, In the same year. But Charles and you were born On the same day, and Alfred six months later. Thus start you in a sense the race together. ... Charles goes to Edinburgh, afterwards His father picks him for the ministry, And sends him off to Cambridge where he spends His time on beetles and geology, Neglects theology. Alfred is here Fondling a Virgil and a Horace. But you these years you give to reading Æsop, The Bible, lives of Washington and Franklin, And Kirkham's grammar. In 1830 Alfred prints a book Containing "Mariana," certain other Delicate, wind-blown bells of airy music. And in this year you move from Indiana And settle near Decatur, Illinois, Hard by the river Sangamon where fever And ague burned and shook the poor Swamp saffron creatures of that desolate land. While Alfred walks the flowering lanes of England, And reads Theocritus to the song of larks You clear the forests, plow the stumpy land, Fight off the torments of mosquitoes, flies And study Kirkham's grammar. In 1831 Charles takes a trip Around the world, sees South America, And studies living things in Galapagos, Tahiti, Keeling Island and Tasmania. In 1831 you take a trip Upon a flat-boat down to New Orleans Through hardships scarcely less than Joliet And Marquette knew in 1673, Return on foot to Orfutt's store at Salem. By this time Jacques Rousseau was canonized; Jefferson dead but seven years or so; Brook Farm was budding, Garrison had started His Liberator, Fourier still alive; And Emerson was preening his slim wings For flights into broad spaces there was stir Enough to sweep the Shelleyan heads, in truth Shelley was scarcely passed a decade then. Old Goodwin still was writing, wars for freedom Swept through the Grecian Isles, America Had "isms" in abundance, but not one Took hold of you. In 1832 Alfred has drawn Out of old Mallory and Grecian myths The "Lady of Shalott" and fair "Œnone," And put them into verse. This is the year you fight the Black Hawk war, And issue an address to Sangamon's people. You are but twenty-three, yet this address Would not shame Charles or Alfred; it's restrained, And sanely balanced, without extra words, Or youth's conceits, or imitative figures, dreams Or "isms" of the day. No, here you hope That enterprise, morality, sobriety May be more general, and speak a word For popular education, so that all May have a "moderate education" as you say. You make a plea for railroads and canals, And ask the suffrages of the people, saying You have known disappointment far too much To be chagrined at failure, if you lose. They take you at your word and send another To represent them in the Legislature. Then you decide to learn the blacksmith's trade. But Fate comes by and plucks you by the sleeve, And changes history, doubtless. By '36 when Charles returns to England You have become a legislator; yes You tried again and won. You have become A lawyer too, by working through the levels Of laborer, store-keeper and surveyor, Wrapped up in problems of geometry, And Kirkham's grammar and Sir William Blackstone, And Coke on Littleton, and Joseph Chitty. Brook Farm will soon bloom forth, François Fourier Is still on earth, and Garrison is shaking Terrible lightning at Slavocracy. And certain libertarians, videlicet John Greenleaf Whittier and others, sing The trampling out of grapes of wrath; in truth The Hebrews taught the idealist how to sing Destruction in the name of God and curse Where strength was lacking for the sword but you Are not a Robert Emmet, or a Shelley, Have no false dreams of dying to bring in The day of Liberty. At twenty-three You're measuring the world and waiting for Dawn's mists to clear that you may measure it, And know the field's dimensions ere you put Your handle to the plow. In 1833 a man named Hallam, A friend of Alfred's died at twenty-two. Thereafter Alfred worked his hopes and fears Upon the dark impasto of this loss In delicate colors. And in 1850 When you were sunk in melancholia, As one of no use in the world, adjudged To be of no use by your time and place, Alfred brought forth his Dante dream of life, Received the laureate wreath and settled down With a fair wife amid entrancing richness Of sunny seas and silken sails and dreams Of Araby, And ivied halls, and meadows where the breeze Of temperate England blows the hurrying cloud. There, seated like an Oriental king In silk and linen clothed took the acclaim Of England and the world! ... This is the year You sit in a little office there in Springfield, Feet on the desk and brood. What are you thinking? You're forty-one; around you spears are whacking The wind-mills of the day, you watch and weigh. The sun-light of your mind quivers about The darkness every thinking soul must know, And lights up hidden things behind the door, And in dark corners. You have fathomed much, Weighed life and men. O what a spheréd brain, Strong nerved, fresh blooded, firm in plasmic fire, And ready for a task, if there be one! That is the question that makes brooding thought: For you know well men come into the world And find no task, and die, and are not known Great spheréd brains gone into dust again, Their light under a bushel all their days! In 1859, Charles publishes His "Origin of Species," and 't is said You see it, or at least hear what it is. Out of three travelers in a distant land One writes a book of what the three have seen. Perhaps you never read much, yet perhaps Some books were just a record of your mind. How had it helped you in your work to read The "Idylls of the King"? As much, perhaps, Had Alfred read the Northwest Ordinance Of 1787. ... But in this year Of '59 you're sunk in blackest thought About the country maybe, but, I think, About this riddle of our mortal life. You were a poet, Abraham, from your birth. That makes you think, and makes you deal at last With things material to the tune of laws Moving in higher spaces when you're called To act and show a poet moulding stuff Too tough for spirits practical to mould. Here are you with your feet upon the desk. You have been beaten in a cause which kept Some strings too loose to catch the vibrate waves Of a great Harp whose music you have sensed. You are a mathematician using symbols Like Justice, Truth, with keenness to perceive Disturbance of equations, a logician Who sees invariable laws, and beauty born Of finding out and following the laws. You are a Plato brooding there in Springfield. You are a poet with a voice for Truth, And never to be claimed by visionaries Who chant the theme of bread and bread alone. But here and now They want you not for Senator, it seems. You have been tossed to one side by the rush Of world events, left stranded and alone, And fitted for no use, it seems, in Springfield. A country lawyer with a solid logic, And gift of prudent phrase which has a way Of hardening under time to rock as hard As the enduring thought you seal it with. You've reached your fiftieth year, your occultation Should pass. If ever, we should see a light: In all your life you have not seen a city. But now our Springfield giant strides Broadway, Thrills William Cullen Bryant, sets a wonder Going about the East, that Kirkham's grammar Can give a man such speech at Cooper Union, Which even Alfred's, trained to Virgil's style, Cannot disdain for matching in the thought With faultless clearness. And still in 1860 all the Brahmins Have fear to give you power. You are a backwoodsman, a country lawyer Unlettered in the difficult art of states. A denizen of a squalid western town, Dowered with a knack of argument alone, Which wakes the country school-house, and may lift Its devotees to Congress by good fortune. But then at Cooper Union intuitive eyes Had measured your tall frame, and careful speech, Your strength and self-possession. Then they came With that dramatic sense which is American Into the hall with rails which you had split, And called you Honest Abe, and wearing badges With your face on them and the poor catch words Of Honest Abe, as if you were a referee Like Honest Kelly, when in truth no man Had ever been your intimate, ever slapped you With brisk familiarity, or called you Anything but Mr. Lincoln, never Abe, or Abraham, and never used The Hello Bill of salutation to you O great patrician, therefore fit to be Great democrat as well! In 1862 Charles publishes "How Orchid Flowers are Fertilized by Insects," And you give forth a proclamation saying "The Union must have peace, or I wipe out The blot of Negro slavery. You see, The symphony's the thing, and if you mar it, Contending over slavery, I remove The source of the disharmony. I admit The freedom of the press but for the Union. When you abuse the Union, you shall stop. And when you are in jail, no habeas corpus Shall bring relief I have suspended it." To-day they call you libertarian Well, so you were, but just as Beauty is, And Truth is, even if they curb and vanquish The lower heights of beauty and of truth. They take your speech and deeds and give you place In Hebrew temples with Ezekiel, Habakkuk and Isaiah you emerge From this association, master man! You are not of the faith that breeds the ethic Wranglers, who make economic goals The strain and test of life. You are not one, Spite of your lash and sword threat, who believe God will avenge the weak. That is the dream Which builds millenniums where disharmonies That make the larger harmony shall cease A dream not yours. And they shall lose you who Enthrone you as a prophet who cut through The circle of our human sphere of life To let in wrath and judgments, final tests On Life around the price of sparrows, weights Wherewith bread shall be weighed. ... There is a windless flame where cries and tears, Where hunger, strife, and war and human blood No shadow cast, and where the love of Truth, Which is not love of individual souls, Finds solace in a Judgment of our life. That is the Flame that took both Charles and You O leader in a Commonwealth of Thought! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE CHARGE OF THE BREAD BRIGADE by EZRA POUND TO ALFRED TENNYSON by WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR WAPENTAKE; TO ALFRED TENNYSON by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THE LAY OF THE LOVELORN; PARODY OF TENNYSON'S 'LOCKSLEY HALL' by THEODORE MARTIN TO A POET THAT DIED YOUNG by EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY FACADE: 27. WHEN SIR BEELZEBUB by EDITH SITWELL THE HIGHER PANTHEISM IN A NUTSHELL by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE |
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