Watching, Silently Weeping
Sunday June 1, 2008
Have you ever ventured out to the beach at night? Have you watched the waves, as you felt the sand squitch-squish between your bare toes?
In On the Beach at Night, Walt Whitman writes:
"On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.
"Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.
"From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps."
What do you think of the poem? Do you love it? Hate it?
In On the Beach at Night, Walt Whitman writes:
"On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.
"Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.
"From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps."
What do you think of the poem? Do you love it? Hate it?
Comments
Mmmm … I love Whitman, but this one lays on the pathos & pathetic fallacy with rather a full trowel … but dammit! - I wish I could create such images!!! I know this one won’t leave me till the day I die!
What is it about the sea that grabs all the poets? ‘Come unto these yellow sands … ‘; ‘This music crept by me upon the waters …’; ‘It keeps eternal whisperings …’; ‘The sea is calm tonight …’ The ee cummings one about ‘maggie & milly & molly & may’ - is that the right order? - sums it up best.
Hm. I should go try and write one of my own instaed of spiulling out all these half-remembered quotes!
Like the poem; what he is saying is open to personal interpritation. it evokes a sense of change, a hint of sadness ?loss. Mood can be looking ahead or reflecting on the past.