Life

It is strange how the human condition is perceived and recorded. Not necessarily the dry APA (American Psychiatric Association) style required for “research papers” presented by neuroscientists or psychiatrists in their appropriate “Journals” but the more human kind - nearer the “heart” of humanity. The best of these are good novelists and especially, in my estimation, poets.

The human conditions or emotions most recorded in poetry, song and novels are, I believe, love, birth, life and death – those important milestones in anyone’s life.

As I have stated many times before, poetry affects me in more ways than I can possibly say. Poetry seems to touch some hidden part of my soul. There have always been poets – often, in olden times, troubadours bringing news and songs to far flung villages. And it was discovered very early on that the best way to remember long stories was to render them into verse. The rhyme and rhythm was easier to recall.

The rhythm is often associated with the beating of the human heart and a good reciter of poetry seems to capture that as he or she reads from the volume or recites from memory. This resonates with the listener.

I can only read in English so everything I read is either originally written in that language or translated. Whether it is the flexibility and the vast vocabulary of that language I’m not sure but there is a massive treasure trove of English poetry.  

I usually include a verse or two from a poem that has made an impression on me but now I attach below, the whole of what I think is my favourite poem written by a man I greatly admire and who suffered greatly – the American, Henry Longfellow. He married twice but both wives died – the first after a miscarriage in 1831 and his beloved second wife died an awful death, burned in a tragic accident in their home in 1861, a death from which he never really recovered. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the age of 75 in 1882. A great poet and a great man.

The Day is Done

The day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of Night,

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist,

And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me

That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,

That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,

Some simple and heartfelt lay,

That shall soothe this restless feeling,

And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,

Not from the bards sublime,

Whose distant footsteps echo

Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,

Their mighty thoughts suggest

Life's endless toil and endeavor;

And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,

Whose songs gushed from his heart,

As showers from the clouds of summer,

Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,

And nights devoid of ease,

Still heard in his soul the music

Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet

The restless pulse of care,

And come like the benediction

That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume

The poem of thy choice,

And lend to the rhyme of the poet

The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,

And the cares, that infest the day,

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,

And as silently steal away.

                        Henry Wadsworth Longfellow