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Passingshadow.com - a commentary on Tennyson's poem, "The Ancient Sage".Comments Page 2“What Power but the Years that make And break the vase of clay, And stir the sleeping earth, and wake The bloom that fades away? What rulers but the Days and Hours That cancel weal with woe, And wind the front of youth with flowers, And cap our age with snow?” All true, and perfectly good reasons for pessimism if that's what you're looking for. In this material world everything that gets created gets destroyed. Including us. It's the "way of all flesh". "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity". The days and hours are ever glancing by,And seem to flicker past thro’ sun and shade, Or short, or long, as Pleasure leads, or Pain; But with the Nameless is nor Day nor Hour; Tho’ we, thin minds, who creep from thought to thought, Break into ‘Thens’ and ‘Whens’ the Eternal Now This double seeming of the single world!— My words are like the babblings in a dream Of nightmare, when the babblings break the dream. But thou be wise in this dream-world of ours, Nor take thy dial for thy deity, But make the passing shadow serve thy will. Zoom out if you don't
like what you see when you're zoomed in. You're only
looking at the little picture not at the larger context.
Time is optional. The materialist is probably wondering why the
Sage keeps talking like he thinks it seems like there are two
worlds. There's the material, physical world we all live
in and maybe a few lunatics. That's one world, not "seems
like two". The Sage insists that he's got one foot in the
"real" world and one foot somewhere else. Maybe both feet
somewhere else. The Sage comments on his state of being in
two worlds by comparing himself to someone having a nightmare
and making so much noise that he wakes himself up. This is
undoubtedly a peek into Tennyson's mind. For Tennyson,
living in a material world was kind of nightmarish.
Definitely like some kind of a dream. He was stuck there,
but not entirely. Not by a long shot. He believed he
saw through the material dream; in fact he experienced exiting
the material dream on multiple occasions and that was more real
than the material dream. He (as mentioned before, like
most other "transcendent" types) found words, "shadows of a
shadow world", to be highly inadequate to express his experience
but was stuck with having to use them while in the material
dream where everybody was that he was talking to, but even
though highly inadequate the words occasionally led to a breach
in the material dream, at least for anyone who was listening and
interested. Undo their work again, And leave him, blind of heart and eyes, The last and least of men; Who clings to earth, and once would dare Hell-heat or Arctic cold, And now one breath of cooler air Would loose him from his hold; His winter chills him to the root, He withers marrow and mind; The kernel of the shrivell’d fruit Is jutting thro’ the rind; The tiger spasms tear his chest, The palsy wags his head; The wife, the sons, who love him best Would fain that he were dead; The griefs by which he once was wrung Were never worth the while”— I still say this world is a profoundly crappy deal. Who knows? or whether this earth-narrow lifeBe yet but yolk, and forming in the shell Look around. It's a
construction zone. Nothing here stays the same or lasts
forever; certainly not any individual human and certainly not
the world. Maybe everything, including you is on its way
to becoming something totally unrecognizable. Maybe you're
not looking at the end product. (Here I will insert a
quote from another author which may seem completely extraneous,
but I think so well states the core argument of this poem that
it belongs here. "Neither heavenly nor earthly, neither
mortal nor immortal have we created thee, so that thou mightest
be free according to thy own will and honor, to be thy own
creator and builder. To thee alone we gave growth and
development depending on thy own free will. Thou bearest
in thee the germs of a universal life." Pico della
Mirandola; Oratio de Hominis Dignitate.) But wakes a dotard smile.” The placid gleam of sunset after storm! “The statesman’s brain that sway’d the past Is feebler than his knees; The passive sailor wrecks at last In ever-silent seas; The warrior hath forgot his arms, The Learned all his lore; The changing market frets or charms The merchant’s hope no more; The prophet’s beacon burn’d in vain, And now is lost in cloud; The plowman passes, bent with pain, To mix with what he plow’d; The poet whom his Age would quote As heir of endless fame— He knows not ev’n the book he wrote, Not even his own name. For man has overlived his day, And, darkening in the light, Scarce feels the senses break away To mix with ancient Night.” The shell must break before the bird can fly. “The years that when my Youth began Had set the lily and rose By all my ways where’er they ran, Have ended mortal foes; My rose of love for ever gone, My lily of truth and trust— They made her lily and rose in one, And changed her into dust. O rosetree planted in my grief, And growing, on her tomb, Her dust is greening in your leaf, Her blood is in your bloom. O slender lily waving there, And laughing back the light, In vain you tell me ‘Earth is fair’ When all is dark as night.” It sounds to me like
Tennyson must have had some serious run-ins with depression to
be this eloquent, in-depth and persistent abut it. He
wrote this poem when he was 76 years old, and it probably
represents a lifelong struggle for him. |
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