Lesser Known Poets Series- continued,
6th poet chosen, James Thomson
(1.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_Dreadful_Night
The City of Dreadful Night
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The City of Dreadful Night is a long poem by the Scottish poet James "B.V." Thomson, written between 1870 and 1873, and published in the National Reformer in 1874,[1] then in 1880 in a book entitled The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems.
Thomson, who sometimes used the pseudonym "Bysshe Vanolis" — in honour of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Novalis — was a thorough pessimist, suffering from lifelong melancholia and clinical depression, as well as a wanderlust that took him to Colorado and to Spain, among other places.
The City of Dreadful Night that gave its title to this poem, however, was made in the image of London. The poem, despite its insistently bleak tone, won the praise of George Meredith, and also of George Saintsbury, who in A History of Nineteenth Century Literature wrote that "what saves Thomson is the perfection with which he expresses the negative and hopeless side of the sense of mystery ..."[citation needed]
References
Sullivan, Dick. ""Poison Mixed With Gall": James Thomson's The City of Dreadful Night — A Personal View". Retrieved 2008-09-29.
External links
Works related to The City of Dreadful Night at Wikisource
Quotations related to James Thomson (B.V.) at Wikiquote
The City of Dreadful Night at Project Gutenberg
The City of Dreadful Night public domain audiobook at LibriVox
Categories: British poemsScottish poemsFictional populated places in EnglandVictorian poetryWorks originally published in British magazinesWorks originally published in political magazines1874 poems
(2.)
https://inthedustiwrite.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/the-city-of-dreadful-night-james-thomson-laureate-of-pessimism-or-early-modernist/
The City of Dreadful Night. James Thomson: Laureate of Pessimism or Early Modernist?
FEBRUARY 20, 2012 / AKIRKWOOD
“It is a curious thing, do you know, Cranly said dispassionately, how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve.”[1]
Thomson has been referred to by many critics as a poet striving to find a voice in amongst the chaos, pessimism and mental confusion that marked the Victorian era and has variously been described as a social outsider, religious apostate and atheistic pessimist. Many critical studies of The City of Dreadful Night (1874) have described Thomson as a ‘laureate of pessimism’, stuck in his alienation to whom Faith, Love and Hope are dead. It is evident that Thomson’s work, up until 1860, reveals an anxiety in completely denouncing religious orthodoxy but after 1861, when he became more associated with Higher Criticism of the Bible and Darwinism, Thomson’s poetry took a more atheistic turn, culminating in the complete repudiation of religion in The City. Thomson explored his existential suffering in his poetry and essays and was undoubtedly responding to the pervasive nineteenth-century trend of feeling in the Victorian era of doubt which was largely brought about by the breakdown of orthodox religion, the dissolution of idealism and the destructive forces of growing industrialism.
However, to simply read Thomson in this context; refusing to abandon the all too apparent limitations this proposes, becomes reductive. Too many tired critical tropes have boxed Thomson under the category ‘Victorian pessimist’, failing to see the “dialectic of light and darkness”[2] that permeates his poetry. I propose to argue that Thomson’s proclamation of atheism in The City helped to shape a modernist sensibility within his poetry, allowing him to present the themes of alienation and disillusionment in new and experimental ways. As Thomson became increasingly aware and critical of the aporias of dogmatic religion, he proclaimed his repudiation of Christianity and looked for something else to replace it. Thomson’s City is a canvass to explore the modern sensibility in which “Man is mired – take your choice – in the mass, in the machine, in the city, in a loss of faith, in the hopelessness of a life without anterior intention or terminal value.”[3] In The City, his proclamation of atheism is manifested in the attack and inversion of religious themes in order to emphasise the meaningless of existence in a world with no God or hope for salvation. However, these religious principles are in fact made more conspicuous through their absence, the result being that their form lingers and residues of meaning, which are nevertheless detached from their Christian source, are revealed and it is the poet’s task to re-attach this meaning to a different symbolic system.
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The City of Dreadful Night
BY JAMES THOMSON (BYSSHE VANOLIS)
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: All was black,
In heaven no single star, on earth no track;
A brooding hush without a stir or note,
The air so thick it clotted in my throat;
And thus for hours; then some enormous things
Swooped past with savage cries and clanking wings:
But I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Eyes of fire
Glared at me throbbing with a starved desire;
The hoarse and heavy and carnivorous breath
Was hot upon me from deep jaws of death;
Sharp claws, swift talons, fleshless fingers cold
Plucked at me from the bushes, tried to hold:
But I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Lo you, there,
That hillock burning with a brazen glare;
Those myriad dusky flames with points a-glow
Which writhed and hissed and darted to and fro;
A Sabbath of the Serpents, heaped pell-mell
For Devil's roll-call and some fête of Hell:
Yet I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Meteors ran
And crossed their javelins on the black sky-span;
The zenith opened to a gulf of flame,
The dreadful thunderbolts jarred earth's fixed frame:
The ground all heaved in waves of fire that surged
And weltered round me sole there unsubmerged:
Yet I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Air once more,
And I was close upon a wild sea-shore;
Enormous cliffs arose on either hand,
The deep tide thundered up a league-broad strand;
White foambelts seethed there, wan spray swept and flew;
The sky broke, moon and stars and clouds and blue:
And I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: On the left
The sun arose and crowned a broad crag-cleft;
There stopped and burned out black, except a rim,
A bleeding eyeless socket, red and dim;
Whereon the moon fell suddenly south-west,
And stood above the right-hand cliffs at rest:
Still I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: From the right
A shape came slowly with a ruddy light;
A woman with a red lamp in her hand,
Bareheaded and barefooted on that strand;
O desolation moving with such grace!
O anguish with such beauty in thy face.
I fell as on my bier,
Hope travailed with such fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: I was twain,
Two selves distinct that cannot join again;
One stood apart and knew but could not stir,
And watched the other stark in swoon and her;
And she came on, and never turned aside,
Between such sun and moon and roaring tide:
And as she came more near
My soul grew mad with fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Hell is mild
And piteous matched with that accursèd wild;
A large black sign was on her breast that bowed,
A broad black band ran down her snow-white shroud;
That lamp she held was her own burning heart,
Whose blood-drops trickled step by step apart;
The mystery was clear;
Mad rage had swallowed fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: By the sea
She knelt and bent above that senseless me;
Those lamp-drops fell upon my white brow there,
She tried to cleanse them with her tears and hair;
She murmured words of pity, love, and woe,
She heeded not the level rushing flow:
And mad with rage and fear,
I stood stonebound so near.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: When the tide
Swept up to her there kneeling by my side,
She clasped that corpse-like me, and they were borne
Away, and this vile me was left forlorn;
I know the whole sea cannot quench that heart,
Or cleanse that brow, or wash those two apart:
They love; their doom is drear,
Yet they nor hope nor fear;
But I, what do I here?
*************************
Lesser Known Poets Series- continued,
two poems written, honoring sixth poet chosen James Thomson
(1.)
As That Dawning Hour, In Her Journey She Knew She Was Too Late
Beneath ashen skies and life's treasured ships - underneath deep tides,
ghosts, remorse, memories, all lost in yesteryear's breath abides.
She hurt, gone, life's truth that can never again be
blissful passions that burn swellings of singing seas
came aches, dreams lost, epic fluttering- heart's desires
broken sight of that ring, within massively raging fires
ghastly renderings of shattered hopes, faith without any gains
relentless moaning throughout night's aching and torturous pains!
Beneath ashen skies and life's treasured ships - underneath deep tides,
ghosts, remorse, memories, all lost in yesteryear's breath abides.
She found, old castle fallen down, in sad decay
remembering youth a'callin', knelt she to pray
amidst ruins that rumbled fiery flames in her soul
to consume shattered disappointments of life wearily droll
there within that moment, trepidation fanned sorrow's flames
with trembling lips, she cried, "All this, my weeping heart truly blames"!
Beneath ashen skies and life's treasured ships - underneath deep tides,
ghosts, remorse, memories, all lost in yesteryear's breath abides.
She knew, never more would sweetest of touch she feel
fiery embers that from loving heart none can steal
nights of love, ecstasy that seals desire's great need
and from that epic dying of love's loss, she never be freed
gasping as morbid thoughts delivered knowledge of Life and Fate
as that dawning hour, in her journey she knew she was too late!
Beneath ashen skies and life's treasured ships - underneath deep tides,
ghosts, remorse, memories, all lost in yesteryear's breath abides.
Robert J. Lindley, 4-17-2020
Narrative (sad romance), ( The Agony Of True Love Lost And Its Truly Unbearable Pains )
Quote:
(“Hell was not a pit of fire and brimstone. Hell was waking up alone, the sheets
wet with your tears and your seed, knowing the woman you had dreamed of would never
come back to you.”) ? Lisa Kleypas, Seduce Me at Sunrise )
Note:
Epic Loss and Dark are not always wed
nor the calamity of dreaded dreads
as spinning world churns its wicked abyss
deepest of hurts is that true love we miss. (RJL- 1977)
Syllables Per Line:
0 15 15
0 12 12 12 15 15 15
0 15 15
0 12 12 12 15 15 15
0 15 15
0 12 12 12 15 15 15
0 15 15
Total # Syllables:363
Total # Words: 248
******************
(2.)
Breaking, Those Invisible Chains Once Holding Me
waiting, until hurt yields its epic pains,
victim of no worries, no risks, no gains
wandering earthbound
pondering no sound
ghosting through life, as tormented lost soul
ripped heart begging, come please fill this hole
waiting, until hurt yields its epic pains,
victim of no worries, no risks, no gains
cascading earthbound
evading profound
fallen, into spirals of black despair
tipped into blackness of its darken lair
waiting, until hurt yields its epic pains,
victim of no worries, no risks, no gains
defending earthbound
pretending sane-bound
waking to gasps from life's abundant glee
breaking, invisible chains holding me
waiting, until light destroys dark remains,
victor, claiming new joyous treasured gains
Robert J. Lindley, 4-17-2020
Rhyme, ( Life, Hope And What Was So Fated To Be )
from- "a hard look back into speeding abyss of time"...
Syllables Per Line:
0 10 10
0 5 5 10 10
0 10 10
0 5 5 10 10
0 10 10
0 5 5 10 10
0 10 10
Total # Syllables:170
Total # Words:::::110