THE ARROW AND THE SONG

 

THE ARROW AND THE SONG

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to  earth; I knew not where;

For so swiftly it flew, the sight,

Could not follow it in its flight.

 

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For who has sight, so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of song?

 

Long, long afterward, in an oak,

I found the arrow still unbroke;

And the song from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.

         

          The brief poem given above is both symbolic and inspirational. It is the creation of the  American poet, Henry Wordsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). Short in length, it has massive  breadth and depth. Simple in diction, it Is complex in meanings. Like all the brief poems of Longfellow, this one , too, is delightfully melodious.

 

            Both the arrow and the song, as used in this poem, have everlasting life. The arrow remains unbroken and the song does not fizzle out.  The first one remains unchanged wherever it falls against a person whom it was aimed at out of enmity.  Its impact survives the passage of time like enmity, hatred, hostility and bitterness which should be avoided for these negative reasons.  The song, a symbol of love, kindness and friendship towards the entire humanity despite differences in castes and creeds, faiths and beliefs, does not turn into nothingness. Its soothing impact  and delightful melodiousness  go on showing their  balmy effect.  

           

            So, let us abandon the arrow and embrace the song in our dealings with friends and foes.  

            Remember, all out actions and utterances become eternal facts of our life and character. Therefore, don’t regard them as temporary phenomena.

 

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19^th July 2022                                                                          G. R. Kanwal

COUNT THAT DAY LOST

 

COUNT THAT DAY LOST

‘COUNT THAT DAY LOST’ is a short but one of the loveliest poems written by George Eliot.  This versatile  English author  was born on 22^nd November 1819 and passed away on 22^nd December  1880. Her original name was Mary Ann Evans. She was  a novelist, poet, journalist and translator of great fame. As a novelist she was vastly readable and is known for such popular works as The Mill on the Floss, Romola, Silas Marner, and Middle March.

                 ‘Count That Day Lost’ is an inspirational poem.  It defines the nature of a day well-spent by any unselfish and kind-hearted man who loves to cheer up the people he meets.  Our days are  not meant to be spent in doing idle things. That day will be considered as  lost when no good deed is done to some needy person.  Gainful  days are intended to add warmth to the hearts of the people we meet and by providing  brightness to their lackluster lives.     

                    The poem reads as follows:

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 a worse than lost.

 

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14^th July 2022                                                                          G. R. Kanwal

A POET”S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

 

A POET”S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

The poet here is William Shakespeare(1564-1616 ) and the  philosophy of life given below  has been taken from a very small  bunch of his works.

1.      Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.

And then is heard no more; it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.                                                      Macbeth   Act 5, Sc.3

                                    ………….

2.        All the world is a stage,

And all the men and merely players:

They have their exits and entrances;

And one man in his life plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

And then the whining school boy, with his satchel,

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover

Sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like a pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the canon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth stage shifts

Into the lean and slipper’s pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose well sav’d a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again towards childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.           As You Like It,  Act II, Sc.VII

                                   …………..

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,

Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown;

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above the sceptred sway,

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself,

An earthly power doth then show likest God’s

When mercy seasons justice.                                                Merchant of Venice, Act Iv, Sc. I                                                   …….…………..

 

By a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, ‘t is a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there ‘s the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.

Must give us pause. There ‘s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover’d country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of ?                                          Hamlet, Act III, Sc. I

                                            ……………..

 

Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O, no ! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken.

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth is unknown , although his height be taken..          Sonnet CXVI

 

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me be prov’d

I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.                                                  Sonnet CXVI

 

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10^th July 2022                                                                                     G.R.Kanwal

 

 

 

 

TRUE LOVE

 

 

                                                TRUE  LOVE

British poet and dramatist William Shakespeare (1564-1616) said in one of his most popular sonnets:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

 

O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his heights be taken.

 

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out ev’n to the edge of doom:

 

If this be error, and upon me proved

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

 

                The type of love that Shakespeare has mentioned here is rare. For most of the so-called lovers,  love is now a time’s fool.  Their love is short-lived. They don’t mind becoming unfaithful to their lady loves one after the other. Love, for them , is a passing show.  When they break an alliance, they don’t regret. They experience no compunction of soul. Their love is physical, neither psychic nor spiritual.   No doubt, there was a time , some centuries ago, when the bonds of love between lovers were deep and ever-lasting.  Their union had a religious touch and the relationship they lived was sacred. The body was just a means of existence, not its end.  It was the soul which had its main attraction.  It had no satiation point.  As Shakespeare says it was no ‘Time’s fool though rosy lips and cheeks with his bending sickle’s came.

                Shakespeare closes his sonnet with the following lines:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out ev’n to the edge of doom.

 

It is this endless love which is the dream and aspiration of true lovers.  Their loyalty to each other is not an short-lived illusion  but a continuous reality.

 

Alas! this type of  true love ,as Shakespeare has mentioned, is now past history.

About 300 years after William Shakespeare , English poet  Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) had to lament the loss of true and faithful love in these words:

 The sea of faith

Was once ,too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing  roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

 

He ends this short , but profound , lament with the following prayer:

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! For the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

 

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6^th July 2022                                                        G. R. Kanwal

                                                                

HAPPINESS : SOME INTERESTING VIEWS

HAPPINESS : SOME INTERESTING VIEWS

There is no universal definition of happiness. Dictionaries mention it as joy, delight,  bliss, cheerfulness, high spirits , ecstasy, etc. ; and a happy person is  supposed to be contented, pleased, gratified , fortunate, etc.

According to the English divine and Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson (1630-94): man courts happiness in a thousand shapes; and the faster he follows it the swifter it flies from him. Almost everything promises happiness to us at a distance, but when we come nearer, either we fall short of it, or it falls short of our expectation; and it is hard to say which of these is the greatest disappointment. Our hopes are usually bigger than the enjoyment can satisfy; and an evil long feared, besides that it may never come, is many   times more painful and troublesome than the evil itself when it comes.

The  American Senator, John J. Ingalls (1833-1900 -1900) expressed the following  views in one of his philosophical writings on this topic:    

Happiness is an endowment and not an acquisition. It depends more upon temperament and disposition than environment  It is a state or condition of mind, and not a commodity  to be bought or sold in the market.

A beggar may be happier in his rags than a king in his purple. Poverty is more compatible with happiness than wealth, and the inquiry, “How to be happy though poor?” implies a want of understanding the conditions upon which happiness depends.

The man who is unhappy when he is poor would be unhappy if he were rich, and he who is happy in a palace would be happy in a dug-out.

There are as many unhappy rich men as there are unhappy poor men.

Every heart knows its own bitterness and its own joy.

Not that wealth and what it brings is not desirable --- books travel, leisure, comfort, the best food and dress , agreeable companionship – but all these do not necessarily bring happiness and may co-exist with deepest distress , while adversity and extreme poverty , exile and suffering are not incompatible with the loftiest advancement  of the soul.

And finally, as the American clergy H.W.Beecher (1813-1887) puts it: Happiness is not the end of life; character is.

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4^th July 2022                                                            G.R.Kanwal

 

 

 

 

SOLITUDE

 

SOLITUDE

What follows is a short poem by English poet Alexander Pope I1688-1744).  Pope was a satirist.  This poem on solitude does not belong to his major poetic interests. It is an exception but very popular because of its recipe for ‘health of body’ and ‘peace of mind. It begins with a simple secret of happiness.

Happy the man,  whose wish and care

A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air

In his own ground.

 

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,

Whose flocks supply him with attire;

Whose trees in summer yield him shad,

In winter, fire.

 

Blest, who can unconcern’dly find

Hours, days and years slide soft away

In health of body, peace of mind,

Quiet by day.

 

Sound sleep by night; study and ease

Together mixt, sweet recreation,

And innocence, which most does please

With meditation.

 

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;

Thus unlamented let me die;

Steal from the world, and not a stone

Tell where I lie.

 

            The theme of the poem is relevant in today’s crowded city life. Peace and happiness, according to Pope, like in one’s paternal village where every need of life is fulfilled naturally and there is ill effect of the madding crowd on one’s days and nights. There is also a plea for living a contented life which is void of material hunger and social competition.  This type of life is marked by innocence, aloofness and meditation. But it s not  poor life. In fact, it has its own reflective and meditative richness which ensures: ‘health of body, peace of mind’ in every age and every land.

 

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2^nd July 2022                                                                           G,R.Kanwal