Return to Sado Island

Nigel Price · 11 Apr 2003, 17:44 · from urth-v0304.mbox · original

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From: "Nigel Price" <nigel.aprice at virgin.net>
Subject: (urth) Return to Sado Island
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 18:44:44 +0100
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In response to my query about the haiku at the end of "The Death of Dr.
Island", Alga said:

>>Six years--gosh, are we all six years
>>older? Surely not! Post the list, Nigel,
>>for the Web is six thousand times bigger
>>than it was six years ago and I will do
>>a search.

Okely-dokely!

Way back in 1997, the thread lasted for about three messages (from alga, two
from Ranjit), and went as follows...

#1	From: "Alice Turner" <al at interport.net>
	Subject: (urth) Dr. Island poetry
	Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 14:33:00

Has anyone tracked down the poetry quoted in "The Death of Dr. Island?" The
epigraph is from Hopkins and cited, but there are three fragments, uncited,
quoted.

	And missing thee, I walk unseen
	On the dry smooth-shaven green
	To behold the wandering moon,
	Riding near her highest noon,
	Like one that has been led astray
	Through the heaven's wide pathless way.

I'm clueless, though it's got to be fairly modern despite the "thee"---maybe
an antiquarian like de la Mare, though I'm not sure he's in public domain
yet.

	The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns
	And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven,
	The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes,
	The lightening flash of insect and of bird,
	The lustre of the long convolvuses
	That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran
	Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows
	And glories of the broad belt of the world,
	All these he saw.

I was so certain that this was from Shelley's -Alastor- that I read it
(Alastor) through twice, incredulous not to find it. Well, it's got to be
Romantic, it's a narrative poem....

	Seas are cold tonight...
	Stretching over Sado island
	Silent clouds of stars.

That's a haiku. Sado is a Japanese island.

Well, they're all concerned with nature, the earth and the heavens. They
could all be Wolfe's own pastiches (the -Alastor- one is awesomely good, if
so--I worship that "convolvuses"). But if they're not, I'm quite curious.

-alga-

#2	From: Ranjit Bhatnagar <ranjit at moonmilk.com>
	Subject: (urth) Island Poetry
	Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 16:35:00

> And missing thee, I walk unseen

Milton, Il Penseroso, which begins

	Hence vain deluding joyes,
        The brood of folly without father bred,
	How little you bested,
        Or fill the fixed mind with all your toyes;

> The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns

Enoch Arden?  "a passage much quoted already and which will be no doubt
often quoted, the description of Enoch's tropical island." -- Gerard Manley
Hopkins writing to A. W. M. Baillie.

I'm no scholar; I just plugged 'em into AltaVista and HotBot. No luck
digging up the haiku.  (www.altavista.digital.com; www.hotbot.com)

Milton poem:
	http://www.lexmark.com/data/poem/milton02.html
Hopkins' letter mentioning Arden:
	http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_se/Hopkins.html

#3	From: Ranjit Bhatnagar <ranjit at moonmilk.com>
	Subject: (urth) Poetry again
	Date: Sat, 9 Aug 1997 22:34:27

Because I can't find my copy of Dr Island, I can pass my time with this
instead.

For what it's worth, the quoted poem appears to be "Enoch Arden", by Al
Tennyson.

There was a silent movie made of the story in 1915 starring Alfred Paget as
Enoch Arden.  "Seaman Enoch Arden returns home after a long absence marooned
on a desert island. At home he finds his wife married to another, and though
he loves her, he cannot bear to disrupt her current happiness."

That would be the island that Hopkins mentioned in the letter.  Hmm,
*island*.

Tennyson published "Enoch Arden" in 1864.

Richard Strauss based a melodrama on this poem, and Glenn Gould once
performed Strauss's work on the radio.

I will refrain from quoting a (barely) naughty limerick on the subject, but
you can find it here:
http://www.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~ad/LimericksDir/P.html

What a font of trivia is the web!

	r.

----------------------------------

That's as far as it went. I've searched for the haiku with Google, but got
nowhere, though I did laught at Ranjit's naughty limerick...

Nigel

--=20

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