Grave Matters

When last we met (HERE), we were discussing the poetry of Thomas Bailey Aldrich (the editor and poet who predicted “oblivion” for Emily Dickinson), and Madeline Kahn was singing Victor Herbert’s “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life” to Dr. Frankenstein’s monster in “Young Frankenstein.”

The featured poem was “Echo-Song,” and therein, Aldrich writ the word “yestere’en.” I kid thee, not. Quaint and archaic words were surely indication of proper & palatable poetic comportment for public presentation in the past, no?

I explored the word “yestereven” (waxed e’en more poetic with the insertion of an apostrophe, “yestere’en”) and discovered that it dates back to the 1300s.  My favorite use of the word I found dated back to the the Towneley Plays, a collection of thirty-two medieval English mystery plays from the 15th Century, and one line of dialogue reads thusly:

“My nek has lygen wrang…syn yister euen.”

At my age, I can relate to that!  My nek hath lygen wrang too!
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Time to move on. For today, I have another poem by Aldrich, “At Stratford-Upon-Avon,” a tribute to William Shakespeare.  Before you read it, a quick reminder that Shakespeare's gravestone there at Stratford-Upon-Avon bears this epitaph:

"Good frend for Jesus sake forbeare, To digg the dust encloased heare. Blese be the man that spares thes stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones"

Also, a mavis (in line 6 of the poem) is a song thrush (Don’t ask me how I did this, but I found a Wikipedia page that stated this, “It is a common bird that's aft fund in gairdens, shaws an widland wi muckle plaunt growthe athort Europe sooth o the Arctic circle.”  Now how in the world did I get to a Wikipedia page with a Scottish accent?)

BTW: The Scottish Wikipedia page is HERE.

Aldrich’s poem is fine, nothing particularly wrong with it, though it’s not particularly memorable.  At first glance, my initial thought was, “well, that’s appropriate, he wrote a sonnet in honor of Shakespeare.”  But no, it’s one line short.  A sonnet consists of fourteen lines, and this poem has thirteen.  There’s no couplet at the end.  And do I have this right?  The rhyme scheme is  abba / abab / cdbc / e? 

I only mention all of this because Aldrich is the very man who took such issue with Dickinson’s unconventional structures and rhymes that I kind of thought he’d compose a very traditional sonnet in honor of Shakespeare – so I’m just – surprised.
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Now, compare Aldrich’s work to Emily Dickinson’s "She laid her docile Crescent down" (given the title "The Monument" by Mabel Loomis Todd when she first published it in the third series of Dickinson’s poems in 1896). 

The speaker in the poem stands before the headstone of an unidentified woman’s grave, and in eight short, poignant lines, Dickinson offers so much more to consider about mortality, time and the fragility of life compared to the cold, enduring stone and the finality of Death than Aldrich does in his brief memoir.

What do you think?

One last observation before I close, a strange little connection my brain made between Aldrich’s poem and Dickinson – and the neurological nexus came at the end of line 10 in “At Stratford-Upon-Avon” when I read the word “momently.”

Dickinson used the word “momently” once, in her poem “It knew no medicine.” I mentioned that poem back in August when I discussed Hart Crane’s tribute to Dickinson entitled “To Emily Dickinson” (HERE), a sonnet.  Yes a sonnet  -- in honor of Dickinson.  Nuff said.

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NOTE:  An important update about Aldrich's "At Stratford-Upon-Avon" is HERE.  I have discovered that the work is, indeed, a full sonnet, complete with fourteen lines -- and that many sites which feature the work, present it as a thirteen line poem without the seventh line from the sonnet.