Many literary works have been canonised by the hearts and voices of countless people.
| Photo Credit: Sreejith R. Kumar
To understand the human condition, we go back to memorable lines from poets which have stood the test of time with their truth and relevance. Any situation or event can trigger in us a sense of deja vu, and lines that lie in the synapses of memory spring to mind.
While we are familiar with the titans of literature, there are many less-renowned authors whose lines we quote without being aware of them, their names not up for a quick recall.
Thomas Gray, the precursor of the Romantics, has written one of the most-loved, oft-quoted poems in the English language, Elegy written in a country churchyard, full of wistful melancholy and a reflection on the transience of life.
The lines “Full many a gem of purest ray serene/ The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear...” tell us of unacknowledged genius in obscure corners, those who lived faithfully quiet lives and rest in unvisited tombs. The line “The paths of glory lead but to the grave” is a gentle reminder of our mortality.
Shakespeare, the ultimate wordsmith, had immortal lines on every conceivable vicissitude of life and dominated his age and time, his contemporaries largely living in his shadow. Yet, when we need to describe the mesmerising beauty of a woman, we turn to Christopher Marlowe’s “mighty line”, “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burned the topless towers of Ilium… Oh thou art fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars”. These lines bestow bounteous praise with an overwhelming emotion on an object of beauty.
Then there is Ode by Arthur O’Shaughnessy in which a chorus of artists, poets and dreamers, “the movers and shakers of this world”, envision a new world heralding a change in the existing order. Many may have lost the battle but the vision endures in its glorious effort.
William Johnson Cory, a schoolmaster at Eton threw light on the enduring legacy of friendship and loss: “They told me Heraclitus, they told me you were dead/ They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed/ I wept as I remembered how often you and I/ have tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky”.
Heraclitus was an ancient Greek poet on whose death his friend Callimachus wrote an elegy. Cory’s is its English version. Grief often brings us to this poem.
Edwin Markham, an American poet, inspired by the painting of Jean Francois Millet, wrote Man with the Hoe on the plight of the peasant, a sad miserable figure burdened with work, with little empathy from his fellow beings. “The emptiness of ages in his face/ and on his back the burden of the world”. The most telling line in the poem is “Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop”.
The poet’s anguished cry is an invocation to the world: “Oh masters, lords and rulers in all lands/ How will the future reckon with this man/ How answer his brute question in that hour/ when whirlwinds of rebellion are let loose?” At once an appeal and interrogation of the world’s conscience, it addresses itself even today to the humanitarian crises looming large around us.
The poem was called by philosopher, peace activist and novelist Jay William Hudson “the battle cry of the next thousand years”.
The famous nursery rhyme Twinkle, twinkle little star by Jane Wyman, handed down generations, has gladdened the hearts of countless children. The poem runs through four stanzas, though the first is the most memorable.
The little star epitomises the Socratic wonder of every child at the mystery of the universe. The poem has lent itself to several adaptations, translations, musical scores and even a parody by the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland.
So much for these lines that have been canonised by the hearts and voices of countless people.
sudhadevi_nayak@yahoo.com
