(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

I reread "Rewards and Fairies" yesterday, and affabletoaster posted "Sea Fever", so the combination of Kipling + sea inspires me to post this. I loved this poem when I was a child (and still do); was plainly a morbid little thing - but I think it's the magnificent play of sound (: )

Harp Song of the Dane Women

What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in---
But one chill bed for all to rest in,
That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you---
Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,
And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,
Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken---

Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters.
You steal away to the lapping waters,
And look at your ship in her winter-quarters.

You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,
The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables---
To pitch her sides and go over her cables.

Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow,
And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow,
Is all we have left through the months to follow.

Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker ?

-- Rudyard Kipling

Comments

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love this one!

[tree_and_leaf]

Definitely one of my favourite - up there with 'Eddi, Priest of St Wilfred'.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

'Eddi' was read at my father's funeral. I think he'd have been hard-pressed to choose a single favourite, though - I know I couldn't.

No underscore, actually ;)

[affabletoaster.livejournal.com]

I hadn't run into that one before, but wow, it's very powerful. For some reason, it reminds me very much of the Aeneid, which isn't entirely fair; Aeneas didn't choose to (repeatedly) forsake Woman, nor to wander around at sea for ages. But there's something about that irrational, fateful compulsion that really drives it home for me.

Of course, I've got a Latin exam tomorrow, and everything is reminding me of the Aeneid. ;)

Pius Aeneas would surely be most offended

[tree_and_leaf]

Odysseus, on the other hand, might have sympathised (Penelope certainly would have)

Good luck for the exam - and apologies for misreporting you ;)

Hmm, I guess I wasn't looking at it really from the Dane Woman's perspective...let me think.

[affabletoaster.livejournal.com]

I thought about Odysseus, but he was wandering about at sea trying to get home, rather than going away to sea for kicks. Mind, he dallied a fair bit on the way back, so though he was also a victim of fate, there's something very willful rather than wistful about him. Aeneas fato profugus, on the other hand, is all about the wistful. This poem seems to imply a fair bit of frustration on the part of the Dane Woman, but she also seems to be allowing for something beyond simply the choice of the sailor that drives him to the sea again and again. The sailor "sickens," for the sea, and the Dane Woman, like Dido, cannot or will not comprehend that he must go.

...Which reminds me of a more recent "poem" about the compulsion of the sea:

"Wave Over Wave" by Great Big Sea
Well I leave my wife lonely ten months of the year,
For she built me a home and raised my children there.
She never come out to bid farewell to me,
Or ken why a sailor must sail the salt sea.

(I wish I could speculate about this kind of thing on the exam! That would be fun! No worries!)

[Edited for ease of reading.]

[grondfic.livejournal.com]

That's a real toughie. Did you ever hear Pete Bellamy singing it to a tune of his own making?

[tree_and_leaf]

I did not, alas.

I love Kipling. So much more interesting than his reputation paints him.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

True - I was aware of him only by reputation for too long.