Ella writes a sonnet in honour of Eileen, on her twentieth birthday.
‘I know,’ she says, ‘that I have no hope of joining You except by walking after You; and even in this I am helpless unless helped by You. Therefore I entreat You to draw me after You.’ —Bernard of Clairvaux; Song of Songs 1.2–4.
Sweet as the cedar fragrance of Thy name,
O Love, Thy love is sweeter than sweet wine:
Let me love, past repenting, past all shame,
Thee, for my veilèd heart is wholly Thine.
My heart, as deer the waters, longs to seek,
O Love, after my Love; so would I run
To Thee; but I am tired, I grow weak,
Wearied by tending vineyards in the sun.
Draw me, even against my will, to Thee,
O Love, draw me, by any force, until
The day come when, feeling Thy life in me,
I shall run with all speed and with a will.
Draw me, I pray; I ask no more than this,
O Love! let me be kissed with His mouth’s kiss.
Ella muses:
Black stormclouds hid the sun of afternoon,
and the earth gaped; but ordinary dawn
returns in morning pinkness now, and soon
the cock’s crow wakes the town: The world goes on.
A bird pecks new-sown seed; the slimy clay
spins and is shaped; wind swells the fisher’s sail;
coins clink on tables; lambs are led away;
weavers take measurements to mend the veil.
The graveyard has not changed, except, perhaps,
crushed grass-blades near a newly-opened crypt,
now shut. Some mourners come. A chisel raps
on stone, carves out a chi in practiced script.
Yet, though midday, today, the city lies
in apathy: The third day He shall rise.
Ella Hansen writes:
I began this poem on New Year’s Eve and finished slightly after midnight. Although the solar year is now nearly two months along, the lunar year, to which the lunar imagery seems fitting, has just begun. In this poem, I was particularly reflecting on my survival of the previous year’s difficulties and trying to look forward with hope.
Once in a blue moon, I look down and see
Around my heart this flesh, pallid and cold
In fear, but living still: So let it be
Tonight, while the full moon is red as gold.
Smoothly and still in safety runs so red
The river’s streams, pulsed, quickened by Your will,
O You the Living Light who ever led
Heart from its wilful darkness, and lead still.
Let me not live unless to seek Your face.
Let me have strength to say: I shall yet live.
Let me not fall save, Lord, upon Your grace.
Let me not doubt You that Your hand will give
Both in Your sovereign wisdom peace and pain.
Let me so trust that life is not in vain.
Ella Hansen lights a Christmas candle and imagines the newborn Christ child.
When pieties are said, and lamps go dim,
That only moon and star touch midnight snows,
Beneath the shelter of a quiet hymn,
The first spark flickers, and a candle glows.
Did He whose strength kindled the fires of sun
See with such wide eyes candle-flame begun?
Ella Hansen starts to translate Catullus 31 and then wanders off in her own ideas.
Gem among islands, sweetest of all lands
Embraced by liquid lake or kissed by sea’s
Salacious waves, touching upon the sand,
Your lights among the green and shadowed trees
Are festal lamps. Shall I believe my sight,
That I have left the fields’ icy north glare
And see your palms in peace? Shall I, at night,
Lay down my body and my journey’s care?
Bright lions’ city, hail! Be glad and make
Your mistress’s joy your own, and waves, rejoice;
But softly now, and do not let her wake;
Gentle the laugh of your litoral voice,
Washing the dusk rocks of your eastern park,
Lest your dream fade your soaring lights in dark.
Ella Hansen offers a poet and dancer’s perspective.
Further up and further in! —C. S. Lewis.
Though for a time matter enthralls the soul,
The soul itself is such a thing apart
That, when the body breaks, it remains whole;
That life thrives ages past the beating heart.
For this, it goes unflinching through all pain,
Unmindful of its flesh, except as clay
To mould around what hindrances remain
Unyielding; the rest silent melt away.
For this, it fuses passion and the mind
To lose itself in rhythm, to be led
Forever inward, glancing not behind,
Slipped out of time, to stretch upward, ahead.
For this, when all its mortal strength is gone,
For this, in spite of this, the dance goes on.
Ella Hansen muses,
Twice I had ventured toward the realms of gold,
Clutching a crutch with feeble hand, and feet
Stumbling along the ancient pathways told
By ghosts of voices that I could not meet,
Dark words and shadows. Still they lured me on,
Echoes of scales that Sirens so have sung,
Until I saw my road in my clear dawn
And heard the poet speak in his own tongue.
Then I felt like some child who sees a star
Fall, and then holds the pitted stone in hand;
Or, having plunged into the sea blue-clear,
Trusts to the guidance shouted from the sand,
And thrashing smoothes to rhythmic strokes and strong,
First feels sharp salt, bright fish, tide’s hollow song.
Ella writes:
In Part I , I gave some basic strategies to find ideas for poetry. This article is obliquely about finding a form for ideas, though in essence, it is merely a list of a few forms with a variety of examples and random observations on each. (Descriptions of each form and definitions can be found in my glossary.)
Blank verse.
