“Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday:

Starblossom’s Song, John Masefield

Queens long ago
Knew sorrowful days,
Seeing their husbands killed,
Their sons destroyed.
Death makes the full heart void,
The cold heart filled,
Those women knew Death’s ways,
I also knew.

Father and mother gone,
He whom I loved, and now
My sons, my lovely sons,
My three bright boys
Killed, while the sunlight shone,
And blossom filled the bough;
I was so happy once
But Death destroys.

Yet, although Death is great,
Earth’s many million tears
Move on the heart of things
Quickening a change to be;
And drop by drop the sea
Moans from its springs,
Its cry will reach God’s ears;
Man has not long to wait.
Death is but a tool of Fate.


This is from Masefield’s 1915 play The Faithful, an adaptation of the Chūshingura story aka legends that developed around the incident of the forty-seven rōnin. By all accounts (I’m certainly not reading the whole thing) it’s reasonably faithful to the plot beats but fails badly at the Japanese culture that drives the characters and story (I mean, “queens”? srsly?). Taken as a Edwardian* lyric divorced from its Japonesme origin, though, I like it.


* Okay, technically Georgian, but I often think of the arts of George V's first years, till the Great War finally started, as Still Edwardian.

---L.

Subject quote from The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot.

Comments

[sovay]

This is from Masefield’s 1915 play The Faithful, an adaptation of the Chūshingura story aka legends that developed around the incident of the forty-seven rōnin.

I had no idea he'd done one of those. I feel for the Japanese gentleman in the next seat.

Earth’s many million tears
Move on the heart of things

I like that. It reminds me of something which I am sure will recall itself to me while I am out running errands and not near a computer. (At the moment my brain is trying to match it with Dylan Thomas.)

[larryhammer]

I like that.

Exactly -- Masefield is a skilled enough poet, there's a few excellent lines like that. It's just, ow, wrong means for deploying those skills.

(What annoys me the most, actually, is that the character who sings the song has a name, but the script just attributes her lines to "Woman" -- talk about female erasure.)

[sovay]

the character who sings the song has a name, but the script just attributes her lines to "Woman"

*explosive decompression noise*

[larryhammer]

We need an emoji for that.