Two poets, two centuries. One from the 17th, the other closer to us, lived in the early part of the 20th. One described as the vagabond poet the other writing dark, moralistic and deeply philosophical poems in the Elizabethan age. Reading these two poems in the 21st Century one finds how Fulke Greville and Don Blanding comes close to each other when talking of the hopelessness of the human condition and the need for escape. The first excerpt is from the Chorus Sacerdotum in the closet drama, Mustapha by Greville:
Oh wearisome Condition of Humanity
Borne under one Law, to another bound.
Vainely begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound.
What meaneth Nature by these diverse laws?Passion and reason, self-division's cause:
Is it the mark, or Majesty of Power
To make offences that it may forgive?
Nature herself, doth her own self deflower,
To hate those errors she herself doth give. ...
Blanding's poem, The Double Life, talks of escape. The poet writes:
How very simple life would be
If only there were two of me
A Restless Me to drift and roam
A Quiet Me to stay at home.
A Searching One to find his fill
Of varied skies and newfound thrill
While sane and homely things are done
By the domestic Other One. ...
If only there were two of me
A Restless Me to drift and roam
A Quiet Me to stay at home.
A Searching One to find his fill
Of varied skies and newfound thrill
While sane and homely things are done
By the domestic Other One. ...
and he seems to be voicing the same Grevillian complaint when he goes on to say,
... But shackled to that Restless Me
My Other Self rebelliously
Resists the frantic urge to move.
It seeks the old familiar groove
Who knows why this is so? Are human being destined to be permanently split, the rebellious self always cowering under the glare of Nature's crazy order? My Other Self rebelliously
Resists the frantic urge to move.
It seeks the old familiar groove
Copyright, Rajat Chaudhuri, 2010.
Don Blanding's image courtesy Olpoetry.com
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