“The sea is calm tonight”

Matthew Arnold was born on Christmas Eve, 1822, but the fact didn’t seem able to rescue him from his high Victorian mournfulness. Not a poet to make one feel all warm and sentimental. I picked the poem below for no better reason than it is NOT “Dover Beach,” and being about birds, it gives me a chance to link to Harry’s Advent Calendar of Birds, where you will find some lovely photographs, including this one of the spotted nightjar. It reminds me of the whippoorwills that used to sing on my parents’ doorstep. That’s how far back in the country we lived. My brother used to joke that we lived so far back in the sticks, we had to pipe in daylight.

Rebecca has some lovely Courier & Ives-ish photos of the 30-inch snowfall on Droop Mountain that should put sleighbells into your head.

Speaking of which, here’s my favorite version of “Jingle Bells.”

Oh — and here’s the poem, and just in case you wonder what the poem’s on about, the story is here. Ovid’s version is here, scroll down. And no reference to Matthew Arnlod is complete without a link to “The Dover Bitch:”

Philomela

HARK! ah, the nightingale—
The tawny-throated!
Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark!—what pain!
O wanderer from a Grecian shore,
Still, after many years, in distant lands,
Still nourishing in thy bewilder’d brain
That wild, unquench’d, deep-sunken, oldworld pain—
Say, will it never heal?
And can this fragrant lawn
With its cool trees, and night,
And the sweet, tranquil Thames,
And moonshine, and the dew,
To thy rack’d heart and brain
Afford no balm?

Dost thou to-night behold,
Here, through the moonlight on this English grass,
The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?
Dost thou again peruse
With hot cheeks and sear’d eyes
The too clear web, and thy dumb sister’s shame?
Dost thou once more assay
Thy flight, and feel come over thee,
Poor fugitive, the feathery change
Once more, and once more seem to make resound
With love and hate, triumph and agony,
Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale?
Listen, Eugenia—
How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!
Again—thou hearest?
Eternal passion!
Eternal pain!

— Matthew Arnold, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 1962

Do I get points for having Willie Nelson, Matthew Arnold, and Ovid all in one post?

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Via Morris Book Shop, the most literate cities in the U.S. Lexington/Fayette County rank # 15. But hey! We’re ahead of NYC.

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