24 December 2005, the day before Christmas, @ 6:00 am in Niagara Falls, Canada...
It is 6:00 am as I start this in the lobby of the Hampton Inn in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. I am here for the free breakfast. In fact, I am the only one here right now.
To be the only one in a place is not an unusual circumstance for me. I usually wake early, and I often am left to my own thoughts. To ruminate. To weigh events. To digest matters learned. Things you already know. Things that you find out. Things that become clear. Time to put it all together. I am Robinson Crusoe, waiting for an epiphany.
Today, my friend, it is just you and I. Let me tell you what is on my mind.
I read that today is Matthew Arnold's birthday. He was a poet who was born in England on this day in 1822. Most people recognize him from his work, Dover Beach, the first and last stanza's of which I reproduce below:
The sea is calm tonight,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
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.
I was a 10th grade high school student when I first read Dover Beach. I distinctly remember the day. It was during an early Sunday evening after I had attended a high school basketball game with our arch rival, DeSales High School in Lockport, New York. I met a pretty, blonde-haired girl with a pony tail in the stands that day. We talked for quite a while. I said goodbye, and I thought I would not see her again.
Well, there was a knock on the door of my parents home about 5:00 pm. And, there she stood. The DeSales girl.
I was awestruck. How did she know where to find me. Like a 10th grade boy, I barely said a word.
She said that she just wanted to say goodbye because things had been so hurried after the game. And, there, in front of my parents and my dog, she stepped forward and kissed me on the cheek. I never obtained her name.
My mother said, "Well, you must have made a good impression." My father just smiled. I turned, red-faced, and walked back to my bedroom. My parents never asked any more about the incident, which, even to this day, seems strange and wondrous to me. It makes me admire their restraint. I am sure they saw my blushing awkwardness and decided to let the whole thing ferment with me. Wise people.
At any rate, when I returned to my room, I opened a book, which I had obtained from the library for an English class, to some random page. I landed on Dover Beach. And, although the February weather in Niagara Falls, New York, was blistering cold and drifts of fine white snow had clogged our sidewalks, I came to the window and breathed the sweet night air! Outside my home, almost 180 degrees of the horizon was populated by chemical factories, an electrical substation, and a paper mill. A step outside would reveal that the newly fallen snow already was becoming soiled by the grime from factory stacks. Yet, inside me and remarkably, the sea was calm tonight.
I turned and fought in vain with a dictionary to learn what a "darkling plain" is. Only much later was I to learn from a criticism by Ian Hamilton (A Gift Imprisoned: The Poetic Life of Matthew Arnold) that this phrase by Arnold refers to a passage in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, The Battle of Epipolae, where--in a night encounter--the two sides in battle could not distinguish friend from foe. The whole experience caused me for years to believe that poems involved unfathomable mysteries. Of course, now, I believe that poems just are what they are. Sometimes songs. Sometimes stories. I do not try to dissect, but to enjoy.
Much later I read Arnold's Calais Sands:
A thousand knights have reign'd their steeds
To watch this line of sand-hills run,
Along the never silent Strait,
To Calais glittering in the sun;
To look tow'rd Ardres' Golden Field
Across this wide aerial plain,
Which glows as if the middle Age
Were gorgeous upon earth again.
Oh, that to share this famous scene,
I saw, upon the open sand,
Thy lovely presence at my side,
Thy shawl, thy look, thy smile, thy hand!
How exquisite thy voice would come,
My darling, on this lonely air!
How sweetly would the fresh sea-breeze
Shake loose some band of soft brown hair!
Yet now my glance but once hath roved
O'er Calais and its famous plain;
To England's cliffs my gaze is turn'd,
On the blue strait mine eyes I strain.
Thou comest! Yes! The vessel's cloud
Hangs dark upon the rolling sea.
Oh, that yon sea-bird's wing were mine,
To win one instant's glimpse of thee!
I must not spring to grasp thy hand
To woo thy smile, to seek thine eye;
But I may stand far off, and gaze,
And watch thee pass unconscious by,
And apell thy looks, and guess thy thoughts,
Mixt with the idles on the pier. --
Ah, might I always rest unseen,
So I might have thee always near!
To-morrow hurry through the fields
Of Flanders to the storied Rhine!
To-night those soft-fringed eyes shall close
Beneath one roof, my Queen! with mine.
It seems to me that
Calais Sands was motivated by hope entirely. In a
commentary by Julia Touche we read that:
In 1850 Matthew Arnold met and fell in love with Frances Lucy Wightman, the daughter of Sir William Wightman, Judge of the Court of Queen's Bench....He wished to marry her, but her father objected to this because Arnold did not seem to have the financial means to support a wife and future children....He was forbidden to see his beloved until he could prove that his financial situation had changed. However, both were able to exchange letters on a regular basis.
In August 1850, the Judge took his family on a trip to Flanders (via Calais) and Germany. Arnold, himself on a trip to the Italian lakes, stayed in Calais for a few days, just hoping to catch a glimpse of Frances Lucy. "Calais Sands" must have been written at that time, for the poem clearly shows what his emotions were at that time.
In the spring of the following year, Matthew Arnold was appointed an Inspector of Schools, a job which would earn him £ 700 a year -- enough to support a family. The couple announced their engagement in early April , married on the 10 June 1851, and spent their one-week honeymoon at Alverston in Hampshire. On the 1 September, they took a ferry from Dover to Calais and then travelled on to Paris. It is not clear whether the "Dover Beach" was written on 1 September, or whether Arnold had already written a draft of it earlier....Parts of "Dover Beach" seem to be quite compatible with the honeymoon scenery. Others, though, seem to express deeper thoughts and questions that seem to have been considered beforehand. The general melancholy of the poem greatly contrasts the happy situation in which Matthew Arnold found himself.
So, Arnold wrote Calais Sands based upon what he dreamed for, not on the basis of what he had. When I finally learned the circumstance of the poem and the poet when this was written, I immediately understood the longing and heartache that Arnold must have felt knowing that he could not have what he desired most. To feel this way is similar to standing alone on a dray sandy foothill over the vast and beautiful expanse of the Grand Canyon, knowing you can never step across.
Now, I will tell you what surprises me the most about Matthew Arnold: I am astonished that such a seemingly priggish, elitist man could produce such poetry. I think Arnold was one of the greatest poets of the Victorian era. Arnold was devoted to "high culture" as a guidepost for society. By high culture is meant those aspects of culture which are most highly valued and esteemed by a given society's political, social, economic, and intellectual elite. How very highbrow! Such poetry from such a person. Seems incongruous. Yet, the world has been filled with people who boiled with incongruities: Bill Clinton, Fidel Castro, Mao, Napoleon, Nixon. The list could go on. Maybe it is not so strange, then, to find that barnacled, old professors can like poetry, eh?
The lobby is populating. Two kids on the next table playing with monkey puppets. Very cute. They make the monkey puppets talk, interact, and laugh. Sweet, funny play time. Brother and sister, I am sure. About 10 and 8 years old. Close for life. For them, ahead is the world, so various, so beautiful, so new. May you two see the land of dreams and draw in the sweet night air!
