The Sunlight on the Garden
The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.
Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.
The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying
And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.
Commentary
An truly beautiful poem - the complex, intertwined images building up into an ominous picture of a world spiralling into war. The superposition of the large-scale and the highly personal is highly effective, the ending lending the rest of the poem a new and enhanced perspective. And the poem is lent an extra poignancy by the knowledge (see the first link) that it was addressed to the wife who had just left him.
And speaking of complex and intertwined, don’t miss the exquisitely crafted rhyme scheme, the combination of internal and end rhymes having a delight all their own. The technique of rhyming the last word of a line with the first word of the next is, incidentally, reminiscent of Joe Haldeman’s “Lines Composed on a Noisy Plane to Atlantic City”, in Zelazny’s ‘Wheel of Fortune’ anthology. Zelazny refers to it as an old Welsh verse form - if anyone can shed further light on this, do write in.
Notes
“We are dying, Egypt, dying”: echoes Antony’s word to Cleopatra in Act 4 of Antony and Cleopatra.
– http://www.wmich.edu/english/tchg/lit/pms/MacNeice.Sunlight.html
Biography
MacNeice, Louis:
1907-63, Irish poet. Educated in England, he became a classical scholar and teacher and later was a producer for the British Broadcasting Corporation. In the 1930s MacNeice allied himself with a group of poets of social protest led by W. H. Auden. His later poetry, expressing the futility of modern life, retains the sparkling wit, ironical flatness of statement, and colloquial tone of his earlier verse. His volumes of poetry include Poems,, Springboard (1945), Holes in the Sky (1948), Ten Burnt Offerings (1952), and Solstices (1961). He also rendered poetic translations of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (1936) and Goethe’s Faust (1951).
– http://www.encyclopedia.com/printable/07828.html
Links
Seamus Cooney has an detailed commentary on the poem
[broken link] http://www.wmich.edu/english/tchg/lit/pms/MacNeice.Sunlight.html
Dickinson's 'There's a Certain Slant of Light' has reminiscent imagery
poem #92
And Henley's 'The Rain and the Wind' resonates nicely with the ending
poem #117
As for MacNeice, we've run two of his poems:
poem #18
poem #521
— Martin
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Abraham Thomas · 17 April 2001
George Macbeth comments on this poem:
“One of MacNeive’s saddest and most beautiful lyics. [MacNeice] once said that if forced to choose between sound and sense he would have a slight preference for [sound]. In this poem the sense seems to be conveyed through the music. The rhyme scheme … has the effect of dovetailing the lines together and producing a constant sense of echo emphasising the lingering, fading quality of the joys of life which the poem is talking about.”
– George Macbeth, Poetry 1900 to 1975 (Longman)
Allstar Mortgage Inc · 28 February 2005
Hello.
I am Rex Patton, an amateur poet.
I have come upon your listing while cruising the -net at work, thus the address: Allstar Mortgage. If you should wish to communicate with me please use this address : I believe that the show of an end-rime being followed by the next initial rime, as in portions of Mr. Loius MacNeice’s “Sunlight OnThe Garden”, if followed to completion of the piece, is called Serpentine rime. If it is done on every-other-line, it is called Broken Serpentine rime. This would lead me to idenify Mr. MacNeice’s example as perhaps being Partial Serpentine rime. Your site is quite lovely and I shall be visiting often. Thank you. Rex Patton. Anderson, Indiana.