1 Victorian Era: Faith As Seen Through PoetrySession Five: Nature and God’s Men and Women February 7, 2016 Vince Tollers University Presbyterian Church January-February, 2016

2 Monarch and Events 1830–48: stressful growth--first railways and Reform Parliament 1848–70: prosperity, optimism, and stability 1870–1901: breakdown of internal and external compromises modernism meets indolence and indifference WWI ( ) Old World ends Victoria: Edward VII: George V:

3 Series on Church Website Weekly, following session Google internet for poems and more information Bibliography after final session

4 God in Nature and the Nature of GodHumans in the God’s world Hopkins, Tennyson, and Hardy God’s men and women Robert Browning, FitzGerald, and Yeats Stoics at century’s end Henley, Stevenson, and Kipling

5 Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89)Aesthetic, brilliant, bi-polar Place as poet after Tennyson, Browning and, maybe, Arnold Influenced by these, and Romantics and PRB As Oxford student influenced by Newman, he converts to Catholicism, goes on to teach at the Univ of Dublin Suppressed poems published by Bridges in Best known Pied Beauty God’s Grandeur Windhover

6 God’s Grandeur (1877) by Gerard Manley HopkinsThe world is charged with the grandeur of God.     It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;     It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;     And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;     And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent;     There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went     Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — Because the Holy Ghost over the bent     World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

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8 Pied Beauty (1877) by Gerard Manley HopkinsGlory be to God for dappled things –    For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;       For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;    Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;       And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange;    Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)       With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:                                 Praise him.

9 brinded cow

10 Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92)In Memoriam (1850) – Faith in future Crossing the Bar (1889)- his own death

11 From the Epilogue, In Memoriam (1850)Alfred, Lord Tennyson From the Epilogue, In Memoriam (1850) Whereof the man, that with me trod This planet, was a noble type Appearing ere the times were ripe, That friend of mine who lives in God, That God, which ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves.

12 Crossing the Bar (1889) Alfred, Lord Tennyson Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, Be such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar.

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14 Transformations by Thomas HardyPortion of this yew Is a man my grandsire knew, Bosomed here at its foot: This branch may be his wife, A ruddy human life Now turned to a green shoot. These grasses must be made Of her who often prayed, Last century, for repose; And the fair girl long ago Whom I often tried to know May be entering this rose. So, they are not underground, But as nerves and veins abound In the growths of upper air, And they feel the sun and rain, And the energy again That made them what they were!                                     Transformations by Thomas Hardy

15 God’s Men and Women Robert Browning Edward FitzGeraldThe Bishop Orders His Tomb Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister Pippa Passes Edward FitzGerald Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam William Butler Yeats Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop

16 Robert Browning (1812–89) Wrote many poems about religious characters who reveal their flawed humanity in monologues or soliloquies Paints the souls of his speakers rather than their arms and legs (Fra Lippo Lippi)

17 The Bishop Orders His Tomb (A Dramatic Monologue)Speaker An imaginary Italian Renaissance bishop Moment On his deathbed, he orders his illegitimate sons to make his tomb Ornament Its details shows the worldliness of the Renaissance church

18 Browning’s The Bishop Orders His Tomb(see the handout) Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years: Man goeth to the grave, and where is he? Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black— 'Twas ever antique-black I meant! How else Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath? The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me, Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, And Moses with the tables [the handout shows the parallel to Moses in Exodus]

19 Soliloquy in a Spanish CloisterBrowning uses the speaker, moment, and ornament to show an unnamed monk’s trivial hatred for Brother Lawrence The rough sounds and cadence captures the speaker’s unspoken thoughts

20 Gr-r-r—there go, my heart's abhorrenceGr-r-r—there go, my heart's abhorrence! Water your damned flower-pots, do! If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, God's blood, would not mine kill you! What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming? Oh, that rose has prior claims— Needs its leaden vase filled brimming? Hell dry you up with its flames! (lines 33 f.) When he finishes refection, Knife and fork he never lays Cross-wise, to my recollection, As do I, in Jesu's praise. I the Trinity illustrate, Drinking watered orange pulp— In three sips the Arian frustrate; While he drains his at one gulp!

21 All service ranks the same with God: from Pippa Passes (1841) All service ranks the same with God: If now, as formerly He trod Paradise, His presence fills Our earth, each only as God wills Can work—God's puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last nor first. The year's at the spring And day's at the morn: Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in His heaven— All's right with the world! On New Year’s morning, her only holiday for the entire year, Pippa, an impoverished young silk-winder, sings as she wanders aimlessly. In each section of the poem, people who are at critical points in their lives make significant and far-reaching decisions when they hear Pippa sing as she passes by. Verse drama in 4 parts (spring, summer, fall, winter).

22 Edward FitzGerald ( ) Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam (1859) --Translated from Persian in quatrains that varied over 5 editions --Fatalistic, like Ecclesiastes Famous lines A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness— Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!"

23 Other Well-known QuatrainsSome for the glories of this world; and some Sigh for The Prophet's Paradise to come; Ah, take the cash and let the credit go, Nor heed the rumble of a distant drum And much as Wine has played the Infidel And robbed me of my robe of Honour, well ... I often wonder what the vintners buy One half so precious as the stuff they sell But helpless pieces in the game He plays Upon this chequer-board of Nights and Days He hither and thither moves, and checks ... and slays Then one by one, back in the Closet lays "The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."

24 William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop --6th of 7 poems in his Crazy Jane series --Tradition of “from the mouths of fools and babies” --Yeats combines opposites, the ying and yang

25 Crazy Jane Talks With the BishopI met the Bishop on the road And much said he and I. `Those breasts are flat and fallen now Those veins must soon be dry; Live in a heavenly mansion, Not in some foul sty.' `Fair and foul are near of kin, And fair needs foul,' I cried. 'My friends are gone, but that's a truth Nor grave nor bed denied, Learned in bodily lowliness And in the heart's pride. `A woman can be proud and stiff When on love intent; But Love has pitched his mansion in The place of excrement; For nothing can be sole or whole That has not been rent.' Crazy Jane Talks With the Bishop

26 Stoics at Century’s EndW. E. Henley Rudyard Kipling R. L. Stevenson Invictus If Requiem

27 W.E. Henley (1849-1903) (After his leg was amputated)Invictus (1875) W.E. Henley ( ) (After his leg was amputated) Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me, unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

28 Requiem (1887) Robert Louis Stevenson ( ) --His own epitaph on his tomb in Samoa --He died of TB at 44 Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea And the hunter home from the hill.

29 Rudyard Kipling ( ) Among most popular English writers in fiction and poetry Fiction: The Jungle Book and Kim, and many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" Poems including "Mandalay,” "Gunga Din,” and "If—“ (1910)

30 If by Rudyard Kipling Gunga DinIf you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,   But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,   Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,   And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew   To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you   Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!” If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,   If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute   With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son. If by Rudyard Kipling Gunga Din

31 Next Week: Love and RomanceThe Brownings Tennyson The Rossettis Hardy Yeats Etc.

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