The food and service were great and the company even better. We were in a room by ourselves, the fireside room, which was most pleasant. Dad and my nephew both tend to feel the cold, so they sat on the fireside side of the table.
The title of this post refers to a conversation earlier in the day, that occurred while we were at CJ Wijns in the morning. The talk took a literary turn in the car on the way there. When we got to Birch Bay, someone commented on how calm the water was, and I said, "That's why it's called the Pacific Ocean." My brother was reminded of the line, "When stout Cortez with eagle eyes" first saw the ocean--although he also said the poet Keats got the explorer wrong, that it was not Cortez who discovered the Pacific Ocean. I remembered the poem, but I didn't think it was "eagle eyes"; I wasn't sure what it was, but I did say that when they saw the ocean in the poem they gazed on one another "with a wild surmise." So when we got to the CJ Wijns we had my sister, who is a techie geek and owns a Blackberry, google Keats's poem "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer":
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
So my brother was right about the "eagle eyes." We continued to have a nice time, good conversation, and my brother said our time together was making us "jocund company," and he had my sister find Wordsworth's poem "Daffodils." I wanted to be literary too, so I quickly added, "Isn't that the one where he wanders lonely as a cloud?" It was:
I wander'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
We all agreed that we were a jocund company, and that in the future this time together drinking coffee and talking would flash upon our inward eye in moments of solitude. I trust when it does, our hearts will with pleasure fill and dance with the daffodils.
In the evening when we were having dinner, we happened to talk about my sister having gone to Appalachia while she was in college and that one of the things she saw there was a blacksmith's shop. My dad was quite interested in that, so after we talked about it, I suggested that my sister look up "The Village Smithy." I didn't know who it was by, but I remembered the first line, "Under the spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands." Both my parents learned this poem in school. It's by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.
Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.
And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.
He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter's voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.
It sounds to him like her mother's voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.
Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begun,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.
Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.
I didn't want to get political, so I didn't bring up how this would be a good poem to teach today for the line he "looks the whole world in the face,/ For he owes not any man." When my parents went to school, this was a value they learned. Today, our whole economy is built on debt, and that's why we're in a financial crisis. If Americans still strove to "owe not any man" we could look the whole world in the face again. But I digress.
The blacksmith poem reminded my dad of another poem he had learned in school, called "A Psalm of Life," so my sister found that one too. It's also by Longfellow and has a similar theme of doing good work in the time we're given:
What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest,"
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act so each to-morrow
Finds us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing
Learn to labor and to wait.
Later, my dad also remembered a poem by Robert Frost that he thought was called "The Buzz Saw," and it made him think of the buzz saw on the farm when he was growing up. However, when my sister found and read the poem, it turned out to be far sadder and more tragic than my dad had realized, so I won't reproduce it its entirety here. It's actually called, "Out, Out--." The opening lines are probably what my dad had in mind:
The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
My brother said the title of the poem came from Shakespeare's MacBeth, who says, "Out, out brief candle," upon hearing of his wife's death and goes on to give a speech about the meaninglessness of life. If one mis-spends one's life as MacBeth did, one might speak as he did when approaching its end. We were celebrating my dad's 80th birthday, and his fourscore years have been well-spent. So I'll conclude by quoting from another great literary work, Psalm 16. On my dad's actual birthday, which was two days before this dinner, my brother read us an essay he had written in honor of our parents' 55th wedding anniversary, and he quoted Psalm 16:5-6.
The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;
Thou holdest my lot.
The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
Yea, I have a goodly heritage.
Later he went back to the third verse of the same Psalm:
As for the saints in the land, they are the noble
In whom is all my delight.
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