298
PARTISAN REVIEW
Dwells like the huge face of the afternoon.
[Lies]
When the heat grows tired, the afternoon
Out of the land may breathe a sigh
[Across these wires like a hand. They vibrate
With]
Which moves across those wires like a soft hand
[Then the vibration]
Between whose spaces the vibration holds
Every bird-cry, dog's bark, man-shout
And creak of rollock from the land and sky
With all the music of the afternoon.
Obviously these lines are attempts to sketch out an idea which
exists clearly enough on some level of the mind where it yet eludes
the attempt to state it. At this stage, a poem is like a face which one
seems to be able to visualize clearly in the eye of memory, but when
one examines it mentally or tries to think it out, feature by feature,
it seems to fade.
The idea of this poem is a vision of the sea. The faith of the poet
is that
if
this vision is clearly stated it will be significant. The vision
is of the sea stretched under a cliff. On top of the cliff there are
fields, hedges, houses. Horses draw carts along lanes, dogs bark far
inland, bells ring in the distance. The shore seems laden with hedges,
roses, horses and men, all high above the sea, on a very fine summer
day when the ocean seems to reflect and absorb the shore. Then the
small strung-out glittering waves of the sea lying under the shore
are like the strings of a harp which catch the sunlight. Between these
strings lies the reflection of the shore. Butterflies are wafted out over
the waves, which they mistake for the fields of the chalky landscape,
searching them for flowers. On a day such as this, the land, reflected
in the sea, appears to enter into the sea, as though it lies under it, like
Atlantis. The wires of the harp are like a seen music fusing seascape
and landscape.
Looking at this vision in another way, it obviously has symbolic
value. The sea represents death and eternity, the land represents the
brief life of the summer and of one human generation which passes
into the sea of eternity. But let me here say at once that although the
poet may be conscious of this aspect of his vision, it is exactly what
