I cannot stand aghast
at whatever doom hovers in the background
while grass and trees and the somnolent river
who know they are allowed to last for ever
— Keith Douglas (1940)
Last week, my friend Mark Wolf, a connoisseur of poetry as well as a distinguished federal judge, introduced me to the writing of Keith Douglas. Douglas was an English poet, most known for his war-time poetry. On June 9, 1944, only a few days after the invasion of Normandy, he was killed by a German mortar on the high ground overlooking Tilly-sur-Seulles. He was twenty four years old – joining a long line of English poets who died young: Rupert Brooke (d. 27), John Keats (d. 26), Lord Byron (d. 36), Percy Bysshe Shelley (d. 30).
The particular poem recommended to me by Judge Wolf was “Canoe,” written in 1940, shortly before Douglas went off to war. Evidently, he conceived the poem while in a boat with a young woman he loved, knowing that he might not see her again. Here is the poem:
Canoe
Well, I am thinking this may be my last
summer, but cannot lose even a part
of pleasure in the old-fashioned art
of idleness. I cannot stand aghast
at whatever doom hovers in the background
while grass and trees and the somnolent river
who know they are allowed to last for ever
exchange between them the whole subdued sound
of this hot time. What sudden fearful fate
can deter my shade wandering next year
from a return? Whistle, and I will hear
and come another evening when this boat
travels with you alone towards Iffley:
as you lie looking up for thunder again,
this cool touch does not betoken rain;
it is my spirit that kisses your mouth lightly.
I am struck by these verses for many reasons. For me, this poem is a painfully beautiful devastation – a fusion of life, death, and spirit. The poignant knowledge that the poet was to die only a few years after writing the poem and even foresaw his impending death. The image of a canoe slowly slipping along the Thames towards the little village of Iffley. The cool touch of the poet’s spirit kissing the lips of his beloved. My unanswered questions about the young woman in the poem. She was probably Ying Ching, also known as Betty Sze, whom Douglas met while a student at Oxford. From his letters, we know that he loved her far more than she loved him: “Dear Betty . . . To turn back time and make my choices again, I wish I could say that I would do everything exactly the same. But unrequited love is only less painful when compared to once-requited love. I wouldn’t have loved you as hard.”
But I would like to say more about another interior room of the poem: the sense that nature is eternal. Even though the poet faces the horror of war, he cannot be fearful “while grass and trees and the somnolent river who know they are allowed to last for ever” whisper to each other. At this dire moment of his life, the poet finds comfort in knowing that the grass and trees and river will remain beyond his own death, and indeed forever. In previous postings, I have talked about the “mindlessness” of nature. But whether nature has purpose or not, we human beings draw much solace and delight in leaf and sky and mountain peak.
Of course, poets and essayists have long celebrated nature. Here are lines from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous essay “Nature” (1840):
There are days which occur in this climate, at almost any season of the year, wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth, make a harmony, as if nature would indulge her offspring . . . when everything that has life gives sign of satisfaction . . . . I go with my friend to the shore of our little river; and with one stroke of the paddle I leave the village politics and personalities behind, and the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight . . . We penetrate bodily this incredible beauty: we dip our hands in this painted element: our eyes are bathed in these lights and forms . . . These sunset clouds, these delicately emerging stars, with their private and ineffable glances, signify it and proffer it.
It’s not surprising that poets emote on the delicacy and beauty of nature. Scientists do as well, even with knowledge of the gears and wheels below the surface. While poets reveal their deepest feelings in their poems, scientists strictly guard against such personal expressions in their journal articles. But those feelings are exposed in letters.
Here is a letter from Werner Heisenberg, pioneer in quantum physics, to Elisabeth Schumacher, the young woman who had captured his heart:
The final rehearsal for the St. Matthew Passion is on Thursday evening. I have reserved two tickets for us, and am looking forward to sharing this most serious side of art with you also. In the meantime, I have planted the lilac bush from Munich in the garden . . . a few hepatica and cowslips are now in flower in the large flowerbed. There are also quite a few of the small blue ones that also grow in your garden already up; only the crocuses are a little late. There is something calming and heartening in observing nature, day by day, as it slowly ventures out with new life and changes old and ugly disarray, almost effortlessly, into something orderly and alive.
This letter was written on March 18, 1937, when Werner was 35 and Elisabeth 22. He married her the following month.
Rosalind Franklin, the English chemist and X-ray crystallographer who played a critical role in discovering the structure of DNA, loved mountains.
In the summer of 1947, she went on a walking trip in Haute Savoie, in the Alps in Eastern France. After a 16-mile hike, she wrote to her brother the next morning
We started out in cloud at 4:30am, and the cloud lifted suddenly at sunrise, just as we came onto the glacier, revealing pink summits above a “mer de nuages.” [sea of clouds] I cannot describe the effects, I can only tell you that the sheer beauty of it made me weep.
And in a letter to her parents from a perch 8500 feet high on Mt Whitney, in Sequoia National Park in California:
It’s no good trying to describe the mountains. They all sound the same, but this was incredibly beautiful and got consistently and amazingly more beautiful as we went up – huge trees, alpine flowers and small lakes, huge rocky crags with quite a lot of snow remaining, and wide views of the desert behind us.
Nature replenishes us, restores us, comforts us when we are troubled, amazes and awes us with beauty. Why? Why do we feel refreshed and restored by the natural world? As in previous postings, my enquiry is both nonsensical and profound. Recently, I pondered this question while walking with my wife through a park where we live, in Concord Massachusetts.
As Douglas noted in his poem, nature will outlive our fleeting lives. Long after we’ve turned into dust, the mountains, the oceans, the sky will continue to spin out the long thread of time. Most of us long for something enduring in the face of our own mortality. Paradoxically, nature is all the more beautiful because it is constantly changing, offering new moments of beauty with each tick of the clock. On our slow walk, my wife and I stood near a tall pine tree while the wind gently flowed past. As the branches and leaves shuddered, the delicate patterns formed by the pine needles shifted and shifted and shifted, a natural kaleidoscope.
But I believe there is something more, almost impossible to put into words. Looking at pine needles shudder in a soft breeze or the pink summits of mountains covered with clouds or the spangle of stars on a clear night, I feel connected to something larger than myself. Paradoxically again, I must get outside of myself, outside of my own head, to feel that connection. When we truly “pay attention” to what we are seeing outdoors, we automatically lose ourselves. Our “self,” our ego, even the time and place of the moment all melt away, and we merge with something larger than ourselves. We are outside of ourselves and, at the same time, part of something larger. It is the same for poets and scientists. And this feeling has been understood by Buddhists for thousands of years.
Near the end of our walk, my wife and I stood next to a fabulous cherry tree at the top of a hill. Down below was the Old North Bridge, where the Revolutionary War began. The tree was in glorious bloom, the sky cloudless and blue. Standing underneath the tree and gazing up, we could see patches of blue between flowers. It looked as if the entire sky was filled with cherry blossoms. We were paying attention. Each blossom had five silky pink petals reaching out like little arms, embracing air and light, with a deepening red towards the center of the blossom. And there, the tiny delicate threads, the pistils, extending out like a flower within a flower, beguiling insects to alight for a few moments, to collaborate in the creation of new life.
Notes
“to turn back time and make my choices again . . . ” Keith Douglas, a biography, by Desmond Graham (London: Faber and Faber, 1973). See also, “letter to Betty,” in “Deeper than a Lifetime, PoetryandProze, https://poetryandproze.com/tag/betty-sze/
“There are days which occur in this climate . . . ” “Nature” (1844) in the Harvard Classics (New York: P.F. Collier and Son, 1937), volume 5, pg 223 and 225
“The final rehearsal for the St. Matthew Passion . . . ” Heisenberg to Elisabeth Schumacher, from Leipzig, March 18, 1937, in My Dear Li, by Werner Heisenberg and Elisabeth Heisenberg, trans. Irene Heisenberg (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011)
“We started out in cloud at 4:30am . . . ” letter from Franklin to her brother Colin Franklin, August 16, 1947, quoted in Chapter 6 of Rosalind Franklin, the Dark Lady of DNA, by Brenda Maddox (New York: Harper Collins)
“It’s no good trying to describe the mountains . . . ” letter from Franklin to her parents, July 15, 1956, Maddox, op. cit., chapter 17.
Reading this writing reminds me of a place I used to walk around with Dr. Alan in his town. I miss those places. Miss the winter time, when I went for a walk alone after a snowy night. I fell in love with tall trees and beautiful park. I lost myself at that time.
Thank you Mi-Oun Sopoan. I hope that you and your family are well during this
terrible time of the virus. I miss you.
love,
Dad/Alan
Thak you.
Thank you.
I love this blog. I use nature imagery all the time to describe psychic and mood states. When I walk I end up singing hymns and praise songs…I like the poem, but I most love the delicious description by Heisenberg, of as nature day by day “slowly ventures out with new life and changes old and ugly disarray, almost effortlessly, into something orderly and alive.” Keep writing and posting these pieces,I count them with my morning or evening devotions.