THE
NOBLE NATURE
“The Noble
Nature” is a poem written by the English poet and playwright Ben Jonson (1572-1637).
Whereas William
Shakespeare (1564-1616) is taken as the greatest dramatist of the Elizabethan
era, there were some of his contemporaries who cannot be omitted. The chief among
them was Ben Jonson. He had a good education in Westminster school, patronized by the historian Camden.
To begin
with, Jonson served in the war in Netherlands which was being carried on
against the tyranny of Philip II.
On his return
to London, he joined the players and like Shakespeare , acted and altered
plays, until he found his own power as a dramatist.
One of his
first plays was Everyman In his humour, first acted in 1596.
Jonson
was a man with a strong sense of what was right, and had an honest hatred of
every kind of folly of affectation. He is still celebrated for his comedies
including Volpone and The Alchemist. His forte in these and other
plays is the exposure of human vices like greed, vanity, pretension, cupidity
and mendacity.
Ben Jonson
is not a great poet like Shakespeare, yet some of his poems like Hymn to Diana,
Still to Be Neat, The Hour Glass, To Celia and The Noble Nature find place in
English anthologies. These poems are marked by profuse sweetness and grace.
The text
of The Noble Nature reads as follows:
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak three hundred
year,
To fall a log at last, dry,
bald and sere;
A
lily of a day
Is
fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that
night;
It was the plant and flower of
Light.
In small proportions we just
beauties see;
And in short measures life may
be perfect be.
The
words noble, lily and oak in this poem have been used here as symbols. Noble
stands for impressiveness in quality and grace. Lily is a symbol of
peace, purity, hope, faith and innocence. Although, Jonson does not present the
oak in a favourable light, it too, is an established symbol of strength,
endurance, longevity and majesty.
The
difference between a lily and an oak is that the lily is instantly
creative. It exhibits its beauty, grace
and floral light at the very moment it
blossoms. It does not keep its lovers waiting.
By contrast, the oak tree lacks this quality. It takes about 150 years
to become useful even as farm timber.
Jonson
rightly claims that a lily of a day is fairer far in May than an oak tree which stay for three hundred years only to fall like a log dry, bald and sere.
Finally,
a similar thought by the American journalist
Gamaliel Bailey (1807-59). According to him we live in deeds, not years;
in thoughts, not breaths; in feelings not in figures on the dial; we should count
time by heart-throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts
the best.
********
15th May 2021 G.
R. Kanwal
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