Don't Get Too Paltry

[poliphilo]

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Yeah, that's what I think too- only Yeats took it too far with that monkey gland treatment which turned him into a randy old muppet and probably killed him early. There's an art to growing old. You gotta let go, but not so your brain starts turning to porridge.  Listen, the world belongs to the young and anyone over a certain age ought to get out of the road and go sit under a bo-tree- but not so far out of the way as to be out of sight and hailing distance of passing traffic. There's this wisdom thing, see, and this death's head thing; both of which the old should cultivate and present to the young with a teasing smile so the young know they've got it coming.

Comments

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

There's this wisdom thing, see, and this death's head thing; both of which the old should cultivate. and present to the young with a teasing smile so the young know they've got it coming.

I have to smile because more and more I am sounding like my parents. You never admit the wisdom of the old until you start approaching that state yourself and when you´re over 50 that starts hitting home with frightening frequency. The young(er)folk may scorn us and our wisdom but all we have to do is smile that enigmatic smile and chuckle inwardly.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't actually be a good thing if the young paid too much attention to the old. They're here to make their mistakes and profit from them and take their places under the bo tree- ALL IN DUE COURSE.

Rabbi Ben Ezra - Browning

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in his hand
Who saith, 'A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'

Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed, 'Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?'
Not that, admiring stars,
It yearned, 'Nor Jove, nor Mars;
Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!'

Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a ark.

Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find a feast:
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men;
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

Rejoice we are allied
To that which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A ark disturbs our clod;
Nearer we hold of God
Who gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe.

Then, welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

For thence,- a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,-
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I a ired to be,
And was not, comforts me;
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.

What is he but a brute
Whose flesh has soul to suit,
Whose irit works lest arms and legs want play?
To man, propose this test-
Thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?

Yet gifts should prove their use:
I own the Past profuse
Of power each side, perfection every turn:
Eyes, ears took in their dole,
Brain treasured up the whole;
Should not the heart beat once 'How good to live and learn'?

Not once beat 'Praise be thine!
I see the whole design,
I, who saw power, see now Love perfect too:
Perfect I call thy plan:
Thanks that I was a man!
Maker, remake, complete,- I trust what thou shalt do!'

For pleasant is this flesh;
Our soul, in its rose-mesh
Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest:
Would we some prize might hold
To match those manifold
Possessions of the brute,- gain most, as we did best!

Re: Rabbi Ben Ezra - Browning part 2

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Let us not always say,
' ite of this flesh to-day
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!'
As the bird wings and sings,
Let us cry, 'All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!'

Therefore I summon age
To grant youth's heritage,
Life's struggle having so far reached its term:
Thence shall I pass, approved
A man, for aye removed
From the developed brute; a God though in the germ.

And I shall thereupon
Take rest, ere I be gone
Once more on my adventure brave and new:
Fearless and unperplexed,
When I wage battle next,
What weapons to select, what armor to indue.

Youth ended, I shall try
My gain or loss thereby;
Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
And I shall weigh the same,
Give life its praise or blame:
Young, all lay in di ute; I shall know, being old.

For note, when evening shuts,
A certain moment cuts
The deed off, calls the glory from the gray:
A whi er from the west
Shoots- 'Add this to the rest,
Take it and try its worth: here dies another day.'

So, still within this life,
Though lifted o'er its strife,
Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
'This rage was right i' the main,
That acquiescence vain:
The Future I may face now I have proved the Past.'

For more is not reserved
To man, with soul just nerved
To act to-morrow what he learns to-day:
Here, work enough to watch
The Master work, and catch
Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.

As it was better, youth
Should strive, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made:
So, better, age, exempt
From strife, should know, than tempt
Further. Thou waitedst age: wait death nor be afraid!

Enough now, if the Right
And Good and Infinite
Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,
With knowledge absolute,
Subject to no di ute
From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.

Be there, for once and all,
Severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I, the world arraigned,
Were they, my soul disdained,
Right? Let age eak the truth and give us peace at last!

Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me; we all surmise,
They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?

Not on the vulgar mass
Called 'work,' must sentence pass,
Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O'er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

But all, the world's coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:

Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

Ay, note that Potter's wheel,
That metaphor! and feel
Why time ins fast, why passive lies our clay,-
Thou, to whom fools propound,
When the wine make its round,
'Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!'

Part 3

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
That was, is, and shall be:
Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.

He fixed thee 'mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.

What though the earlier grooves,
Which ran the laughing loves
Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
What though, about thy rim,
Skull-things in order grim
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?

Look not thou down but up!
To uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp's flash, and trumpet's peal,
The new wine's foaming flow,
The master's lips aglow!
Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?

But I need, now as then,
Thee, God, who moldest men;
And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I- to the wheel of life
With shapes and colors rife,
Bound dizzily- mistake my end, to slake thy thirst:

So, take and use thy work:
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

Re: Part 3

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

I love Browning- but I'd never read that one all the way through before. A bit knotty, ain't it? But I largely approve the sentiment.

Re: Part 3

[senordildo.livejournal.com]

John Lennon adapted some lines from this poem into a song with the same title. His "Grow Old with Me" only exists as a rough demo, since he died before he could do further work, but the recording is perfect as it is, and quite poignant.

Re: Part 3

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's a lovely little song.

And proof- if any were needed- that Lennon was still a creative force at the time of his death.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I watched an old Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire movie yesterday, and how beautiful they were in their glittering clothes! An older woman, a character actress, said to Ginger, Listen, when you're my age, you take any attention you can get! And I thought about how Ginger herself got older and older--there's just a moment when one is beautiful and perfect--but that's because we have to procreate, so we look most fetching when our reproduction capacity is at its best.

Today, with my children coming in for Thanksgiving, I don't mind so much having silver hair near my ears: I look like a grandmother, and that's okay with me.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm much happier now than I ever used to be.

As a young person I was in a constant state of high anxiety.

There's a real pleasure in knowing that the high-octane years are past.

[sina-says.livejournal.com]

thanks for that.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you liked it.

[senordildo.livejournal.com]

Ah, monkey glands, all the rage in the 10s and 20s. They even feature in a Sherlock Holmes story, "The Creeping Man." Doyle got his science hopelessly wrong, but when the story was adapted for the Brett series, the producers unwisely decided to make it more plausible instead of just playing the outrageousness to the hilt, so they had much less fun.

Holmes on aging: "When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it. The highest type of man may revert to the animal if he leaves the straight road of destiny...When I have written to this man [the monkey gland supplier] and told him that I hold him criminally responsible for the poisons which he circulates, we will have no more trouble. But it may recur. Others may find a better way. There is danger there -- a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?"

Of course, if one believes that only ascedance after death involves that of the grass on one's tomb, then Sherlock's speech is hot air, but it sounds impressive none-the-less.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's an aberration in the Holmes canon- an ill-judged foray into science fiction.

I sense Doyle ventroloquising through Holmes in that passage. It's a good argument, but a little out of character, don't you think?

But at least, as others have remarked, Doyle had the taste and sense to refrain from making the great detective a convert to spiritualism.

Annie Proulx has a story about an early 20th century monkey gland operation that goes wrong and kills its subject It's a very discomforting, squirm-making piece of writing.

[senordildo.livejournal.com]

Doyle converted Professor Challenger into a spiritualist, but probably realized that fans would cry bloody murder if tried that with Holmes, who'd spent far more time in the public's eye. In "The Sussex Vampire," written around the same time, he has Holmes say, "This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply."

Many of the later Holmes stories collected in "The Casebook of SH" do seem strange in comparison to the better known, earlier entries, but that's part of why I enjoy them--they feature more scenes of violence and horror than usual, and Doyle even experiments by leting Holmes narrate sometimes. Holmes also gives more speeches than usual in the later stories, including my favorite, from "The Retired Colourman": "Pathetic and futile. But is not all life pathetic and futile? Is not his story a microcosm of the whole? We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow. Or worse than a shadow — misery."

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's always a bit of a shock to recall that Holmes was still detecting as late as the 1920s- that his career overlaps that of Hercule Poirot.

The Retired Colourman is one of my favourite stories, ditto Thor Bridge. The later collections are bittier, more hit and miss than the early ones, but the best of the late stories are as good as anything that went before.