A POEM BY GEORGE ELIOT

 

POEM BY GEORGE ELIOT

George Eliot is the name assumed by the English author by Mary Ann Cross (1819-80).  She is famous as a great novelist, not a poet.  Literary critics recognise her as a woman of outstanding intellect with particular interest in philosophy, psychological analysis and matters affecting human personality. During her lifetime she attained  high literary reputation, which declined after death. Her masterpieces in English fiction are Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), and Silas Marner (1861). These deal with humble rural characters with fidelity, shrewd humour, and unaffected pathos. Her later novels like Middlemarch (1872) deal mostly with social and moral problems and present her as a modern novelist.

            The short poem which is quoted below is of inspirational character and is listed among the best loved poems in English literature. Its title is:

                                    COUNT THAT DAY LOST

Briefly speaking the poetess differentiates between a wasted day and a well-spent day. A well-spent day is one when you have cheered up some body. On such a day you have done some self-denying deed and said a word “That eased the heart of him who heard.” On a wasted day you realise that “You’ve nothing done that you can trace/That brought the sunshine to one face.”

Life, according to Eliot, is a bunch of wasted and well-spent days. Through her poem, she wants to inspire the readers to avoid wasted days.  The chief aim of a man’s life should be to help others by his little deeds of kindness. Here is the full text of the poem:

            IF you sit down at set of sun

            And count the acts that you have done,

            And, counting find

One self-denying deed, one word

That eased the heart of him who heard;

One glance most kind,

That fell like sunshine where it went—

Then you may count that day well-spent.

 

But if, through all the livelong day,

You’ve cheered no heart, by yea or nay---

If, through it all

You’ve nothing done that  you can trace

That brought the sunshine to one face-

No act most small

That  helped some soul and nothing cost----

Then count that day as worse than lost.

 

            According to Eliot, to bring sunshine to at least one face a day should be the  aim of each one of us. It costs nothing except that spiritual love which heals the wounds of afflicted humanity.     

                                               

                                                ** ******

28^th May 2022                                                                    G.R.Kanwal