Dueling Earworms

[iolanthe_chubb]

All day long these two poems have been duking it out in my head. Each has three verses, but they could not possibly be more different. First, the downer.

~~~

AUTUMN

There is wind where the rose was

Comments

[iolanthe_chubb]

>>>>>>I know that in Tolkien's worldview, Eru will finally fulfill and consummate all things, but in saying that, am I projecting what I know of Tolkien's outlook onto the narrative, or is that hope actually within the text itself?

I don't think you're projecting at all, although without the Arthrabeth Finrod ah Andreth we'd really be bereft of any sort of definite answer to that question (and it's more of a strong suggestion than an answer). Silm and Akallabeth are one long "fighting the long defeat" as Galadriel calls it. We don't meet Hope in the form of Estel until the latter days of the Third Age. Even he doesn't know because no Child of Arda can, but he chooses to believe that beyond the Circles of the World there is more than memory.

As Gandalf tells Elrond quite succinctly in Movie FotR, "It is in Men that our hope lies."

That said, I think Tolkien was probably every bit as prone to grief and despair as de la Mare. The difference may be that from what little I know about de la Mare, I don't think he was a religious man at all. CSL said someplace (I'm way overdue for a reread of all of Lewis) that faith is in large part a choice you make when you get up every morning: hope or no hope, belief or at least acting as if you believe even when you're not having a good day of it. Over a lifetime those choices do inform one's entire outlook (and output!).

I've read a couple of W de la M's books of poetry but not his entire oeuvre. I always get a twinge of eeriness, sorrow, or terror at the base of most of his poems, even the ones for children. ("Miss T.," "The Listeners," even "Silver," which paints a lovely picture of both moonlight and narcissism.)

In "Autumn" he has definitely captured a moment of deep grief. There's no indication that the speaker will *never again* regain a sense of hope, but what he's depicting so well here is that moment that comes in grieving when you can see nothing else and for all you know you will go on feeling this way forever.

Now, then, another of my favorites of his, which I'm going to put up tomorrow, is really quite rollicking (especially for de la Mare), and IMO quite tongue in cheek. So you never know. :)