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William Blake's "Holy Thursday"
an analysis of the poem in Songs of Experience with some reference to Songs of Innocence


Deconstructing Walt Whitman's "Patrolling Barnegat"
helping to make sense of a poem which, despite what some analysts suggest, isn't a chaotic imagery-muddle

Logic and Language in "Patrolling Barnegat"
why does Whitman use these words and structures; what do they mean?

Metre in "Patrolling Barnegat"
the Pentameter's thesis is that this poem is not in "free verse".

Blake's "Holy Thursday"

Songs of Innocence and Experience

Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduc'd to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Blake's opening stanza serves as a furious riposte to the multitude of aristocratic voices who, pointing to the growth of agriculture and church-attendance at the close of the eighteenth century, asserted that England had become wealthy and virtuous.

As always in his work, Blake is determined to tell us that church-going does not automatically equate to goodness: in fact, the church's self-satisfaction blinds it to the damage it does to the innocent.

What is "Holy Thursday"?

"Holy" or "Maundy" Thursday refers to the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples as recorded in the biblical New Testament. One particularly significant episode during that event was that of the master's washing of his disciples' feet - an act which signified the utmost humility in service. English monarchs and the wealthy traditionally used this festival for symbolic acts of charity: with the complementary poem in "Songs of Innocence", Blake pictures such an act, of which he appears to approve, carried out in St. Paul's Cathedral.

However, our appreciation of the "wise guardians of the poor" thus advertising their charity may not be wholly shared by Blake's "Piper", the supposed narrator of the "Songs of Innocence". In their state of innocence, children should not be regimented; rather, they should be playing blithely on the "ecchoing green". The children in this poem 'assert and preserve their essential innocence not by going to church, but by freely and spontaneously, "like a mighty wind," raising to "heaven the voice of song." ' (Robert F. Gleckner: Point of View and Context in Blake's Songs - included in "Twentieth Century Views: Blake, A Collection of Critical Essays." Ed Northrop Frye: Prentice-Hall Inc. 1966)

Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!


With his "Holy Thursday" of the "Songs of Experience", Blake's "Bard" clarifies his view of the hypocrisy of formalised religion and its claimed acts of charity. He exposes the established church's self-congratulatory hymns as a sham, suggesting in his second stanza that the sound which would represent the day more accurately would be the "trembling cry" of a poor child.

The poet, as Bard, states that although England may be objectively a "rich and fruitful land", the unfeeling profit-orientated power of authority has designed for the innocent children suffering within it an "eternal winter". The biblical connotations of the rhetorical opening point us towards Blake's assertion that a country whose children live in want cannot be described as truly "rich". With the apparent contradiction of two climatic opposites existing simultaneously within the one geopolitical unit, we are offered a metaphor for England's man-made "two nations".

The righteous anger which drives the work implicitly denies the claims of the established church - which Blake condemns as complicit in creating poverty - to be "holy".

And their sun does never shine,
And their fields are bleak & bare,
And their ways are fill'd with thorns:
It is eternal winter there.

If one is starving and neglected, whatever the calendar might say about the season, the experience is that of living without sun or harvest. The image of thorns blocking one's path was, for the poet's Bible-wise readers, immediately recognisable as deeply defeating and depressing.

Blake was writing during the "agricultural revolution", whose pioneers congratulated themselves upon their vigorous increases in output. The poet argues that until increases in production are linked to more equitable distribution, England will always be a land of barren winter.

For where-e'er the sun does shine,
And where-e'er the rain does fall,
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.

As a symbolic poet, Blake tries to tap into what he sees as the energies which lie behind each icon. We may look up and imagine we see that familiar ball of hydrogen undergoing its constant thermonuclear process in the sky; we may feel what seems to be water falling upon us: but in symbolic terms their tedious physicality is meaningless.

The shining sun and the falling rain represent the generosity of the natural world which humankind has spurned. Only when people live in happiness can we claim that their world is rich.

Understood metaphorically, the final stanza tells us that in a land of life-giving sun and rain there would be no class condemned to starve.

Tutorial: deconstructing "Patrolling Barnegat" for GCSE and college enthusiasts

Whitman’s economical opening

With his opening four lines, Whitman offers us a rich overture. First, he iterates and reiterates the uncontrolled nature of the event: “Wild, wild” and gives us its all-embracing substantive (the abstract noun “storm”), particularised from any other storm simply by the definite article “the.”

Next, he tells us the characteristics of the most significant material, the “sea.” With two words, he paints the tide as in, the waves as large and the current, or the speed of the water, as fast: “high running.”


the senses and the imagination

The second line is devoted to two types of sound.

While “running” and “roar”, because of their familiarity, merely hint at personification, Whitman introduces the notion of animism quite clearly with the word “muttering.” (Strictly speaking, this is not “anthropomorphism,” as Whitman does not suggest that the gale has taken the form, or “morph” of a living creature.)

The line which follows throws us immediately into the unarguable realisation that Whitman regards the storm as being driven by conscious spirits. It is the “fitful,” or irregular, nature of the devilish outbursts which makes them unnerving on a non-material level. It seems as though the minds which Whitman imagines as driving the storm are revelling in the power they are unleashing.


form and meaning

Whitman’s reading of the Christian Bible had a great impact on his writing style, but his layman’s studies of the latest nineteenth century thinking on scientific and theological matters led him towards a kind of deism in which all parts of the universe are seen as infused with cosmic energy.

Consequently, we can read his “trinity” of “waves” (the sea), “air” (the wind) and “midnight” (the darkness) not as the Christian god's three-in-oneness of father, son and holy spirit but of a corresponding wicked trio combined into one supremely cruel unit.

The absence of a comma after “trinity” does not help us to understand that the trinity is doing the lashing rather than itself being lashed.


the patrol is watching the trinity

The question of who is doing what is relevant to our understanding of the final line. Here it is not the “savage trinity” which is “watching,” but the “dim, weird forms” (i.e. the people of the patrol) who are watching the savage trinity. Because of the poem’s dense structure, compounded by Whitman’s determination to end each line with a participle, it is not always immediately evident which substantive (or “noun”) is the subject or object of which participle.

Consequently, many commentators on this poem seem to miss the point, reading “Patrolling Barnegat” as an inchoate accumulation of imagery. In fact, Whitman’s logical thread is almost entirely unbroken if we have the wit to unravel it.

In the fifth line, Whitman draws our attention to the margin between sea and sand, introducing the imagery of fast-breaking foamy waves and of blown wet sand and giving his first indication of the temperature: driving snow. It is here, in line 7, that we are given the start of the description of the actions of the patrol, whom Whitman does not name until the penultimate line (“group of dim, weird forms”).

Thus the subject indicated by the poem's title is preceded by five clauses and phrases before we are allowed to reach it.

However, if we had been attentive, the relative pronoun “where” should have alerted us to the existence of the new phenomenon which will eventually be revealed as the patrol.


sailing ships in danger

The patrol is “breasting”, or walking against, the wind.

Whitman describes the gale as a “death”-wind as because it is a wrecking wind. Barnegat lies on the east coast of the USA, so a gale blowing from the east will drive the wind-powered ships standing out at sea towards the land. The history of coastal wrecks and drownings throughout the nineteenth century is testimony to the validity of Whitman’s concern. (Westerly winds would blow sailing ships more safely out to sea.)

The town of Barnegat itself stands within a bay protected by the long parallel barrier of Long Beach Island and Island Beach Peninsula. The beach below the town appears to have a fetch (the distance over which the wind blows without intervening land) of only three miles, leading us to the (unverified) conclusion that Whitman must be experiencing the storm from the narrow barrier itself. Here he would have had water on both sides of the low-rise sandy barrier which was being battered on the eastern side by huge waves breaking after crossing several thousand miles of the North Atlantic.

For more information about Barnegat, follow these links:
General:
http://en.wikipedia.org/Barnegat_Bay
Map:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Barnegat_cdp_nj_029.png
Book Review:
http://www.nj.com/weblogs


the poet admires the patrol

In the eighth line, Whitman reveals his admiration for the folk on the beach. Whereas the storm is chaotic, the people of the patrol are “watchful” and “firm.” The word “advancing” itself suggests the determined forward movement of a formation of soldiers, although we know from our histories that these early lifesaving patrols were made up mainly of volunteers.

With his ninth-line evocation of the team's trying to seeing clearly through the tumult, the poet reminds us why the patrol is there. Their very feebleness under the assault of the elements tells us how difficult any attempts they make at rescue might be.

By suspending us in time by the device of his dangling present participles, Whitman demonstrates that his intent is not to portray the dramatic events of an attempted rescue. Rather, his target is the effort put into a struggle which may have no definitive resolution at all; these folk will keep a look-out along the beach all night “tirelessly.”


old words, contemporary meanings

“Wending” is a fascinating, almost lost, lexeme. We see its relic in what we label as the simple past tense of “to go”: I went etc.

In fact, “to wend” is a verb in its own right, partly robbed from to plug a gap in the "to go" verb. (Children who say “I goed,” know better than most of us realise.)

Whitman’s people are more than merely “going”: they are making their way forward, changing direction with some purpose as their mission requires.


more than sex

There is an underlying sensual, or sexual, drive to Whitman’s early poetry, a drive of which he later became aware. Having made this observation and having recognised the poet’s susceptibility to masculine strength and courage, we should attempt to understand the particularity of each of his subjects separately. Briefly, summarising his verse as “it’s all about sex” is not an adequate way of coming to an understanding of it.

comments are welcomed

Logic and language in "Patrolling Barnegat" - for GCSE and advanced students

the patrol

The title (which in Whitman’s original American English is spelled "Patroling Barnegat") offers a major key to understanding this opaque poem.

There are people on this beach who, through Whitman’s effort to pull us directly into the power of the storm, have been hidden so subtly that we must peer closely into his tight structure before we might spot them.

The “group of dim, weird forms” is the patrol – a group of people on the look-out.

What is the first reference to them?

Of course, the personification of the weather – variously appraised as “muttering”, as shouting like devils, as “savage” – implies a human observer who, in these early lines, would appear to be the poet himself.

However, in the fifth line the poet directs our attention to “there”, which, to put it at its simplest, is not “here”: the position which he occupies as primary observer. After telling us of the state of the margin between sea and land, he tells us that this is the “where” – or spatial location – of the patrol of “dim, weird forms”.

comprehending the -ing line-endings

At this point we can see that whereas hitherto the present participles (the –ing words) have referred to various aspects of the storm, they now begin to refer to the patrol: “breasting”, “advancing”, “wending”, “confronting”, and “watching” all tell us about what the “group of dim, weird forms” is doing.

The line in parentheses (brackets) is a set of imagined questions in the minds of the poet and / or the patrol members.

“never remitting” and “careering” refer once again to the storm.

Whitman's spurning of the finite verb

Throughout his work, Whitman frequently creates stanzas which contain no finite, or “complete”, verb. He has his reasons for this, which involve his desire to plunge us into the experience of being within his chosen phenomenon without reference to time, person or number.

Formal English tends to demand a complete verb as part of each discrete statement; this is a tyranny which many literary writers have striven to avoid, since it usually binds us into being specific about person, number and time.

Some languages are happy without, and allow us more easily to become absorbed into the intense moment of the experience, with no thought for the past, the future or even the present as a temporal concept.

Chinese, for example, offers opportunities for writers to abstract themselves from the world of the clock. “Tian qi hen hao” may be translated roughly as “weather” (tian qi – literally something like, but much more than, “sky energy”) “very” (hen) “good” (hao). There is no need for further specification, although this can be provided by introducing qualifiers or simply by the context. We render it into English as “The weather is very good”, because we feel a need for a verb form (“is”). Certain western grammarians have decided that because they believe any statement must contain a verb, “hao” should be classified as a “stative verb”: a verb which expresses a state of being.
However, in the English sentence we derive from the Chinese original, we classify “good” as a “complement” (or, less precisely, an “adjective”), while the empty, but time-specific, lexeme “is” gets classified as the verb.

filling the verse with present participles

Whitman’s way round in Patrolling Barnegat was to adopt the present participle (running, muttering, advancing etc). As Michael Swan points out in Practical English Usage (OUP 1980 & later), “present participle” is not a very good name, for it can be used to talk about the past and future too:

it had been running
it was running
it is running
it will be running
it will have been running
etc.

David Crystal in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (CUP 1987 & later) reminds us that in some classifications, participles were listed separately from verbs.

However, the present participle's chameleon-like quality allows Whitman to employ it as his carry-all in his attempt to get us to lose ourselves in the experience.

being kosmos

Gay Wilson Allen in Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass: Introduction(1955) tells us that Whitman “searched always for some profound truth residing in or emanating from external form, surface appearance or ‘show.’” The poet could range imaginatively over any part of the cosmos, both materially and spiritually, so could become any part of it. In his Song of Myself, he calls himself “a kosmos”, by which he means (note the finite verb!) “a symbolic microcosm of the macrocosm” (Allen 1955) or an individual who contains all the universe within himself.
In Patrolling Barnegat, because Whitman feels no impulse to tell us about antecedents, consequences or outcomes (what happens before, or as a result of, the storm), the present participle becomes his form of choice which he thrusts upon us line by line by line.

Link to the poem:

http://erzsebel.com/poetry/?p=750

http://www.universalteacher.org.uk

more coming

If you have a GCSE question, please ask the Pentameter Tutor.

Tutorial: Metre in "Patrolling Barnegat": for keen GCSE and advanced students

measuring the metre

Whitman was one of the pioneers of “free verse,” believing the organic energy of the poetic impulse to be too important to be confined within the then-established metrical conventions. A self-taught individualist, he seemed to feel that if he followed others’ rules too slavishly he would fall into the sterile pattern-making of the hack versifier.

Although we can analyse the metrical shape of Patrol(l)ing Barnegat, whose structure does demonstrate more regularity than much of his other work, we do need to be aware of this ambivalence Whitman felt towards all orthodoxies.


scanning the poem

The difficulty of scanning Patroling Barnegat begins with its opening words. The convention we have inherited from classical times is to divide each line into “feet,” each “foot” containing one accented (or, less precisely, “stressed”) syllable and at least one unaccented (“unstressed”) syllable.

For example, the “iambic pentameter”, which is the form best known to GCSE students and a favourite of English poets, can be scanned thus:

Five (penta) “feet”, each of one “iamb”: i.e. one unaccented syllable plus one accented syllable, as in Keats’ Lamia:

she WAS / a GOR / -dian SHAPE / of DAZZ / -ling HUE,
verMIL / -ion SPOTT / -ed, GOL / -den, GREEN / and BLUE

[ Feet divided by slashes; accented syllables in capitals ]

For the fastidious, the last part of “vermilion” could be scanned as two syllables (li – on), and is typical of rhythmical variation within the established metre.


defying classical orthodoxies

Paul Fussell, in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (PUP 1974), points out that “disagreement over the nature (and even the ‘existence’) of the foot has been traditional since the late Renaissance.”

However, that knowledge does not really help us in the GCSE, whose examiners tend to be happier with one-size-fits-all analyses.

Fussell also regards it as “perhaps unfortunate” that we have borrowed our terminology from the classical Greeks, as this leads to our trying to force analytical measures onto English shapes for which they may not be properly fitted.


identifying Whitman’s monosyllabic feet

Aware of Fussell's encouragement, we would seem perverse were we to scan the two opening words of Patrolling Barnegat (“Wild, wild”) as other than two fully-accented syllables each of full length – i.e. as two separate monosyllabic feet; “storm” also begs to be accented. Once again, although they run one after another, the three syllables “sea high runn” would seem to demand individual accenting. Thus, we produce the pattern:

WILD, WILD the STORM, and the SEA HIGH RUNNing,

which has a spring all of its own, with no reference to regular forms of the hexameter (or six-foot line).


playing with dactyls

The second line seems to fall into six feet of three syllables each:

STEAdy the / ROAR of the / GALE, with in / -CESSant / UNdertone / MUTTering,

[We call a foot comprising accented + unaccented + unaccented syllables a “dactyl”]

However, by introducing a break, or “caesura”, in the middle of his third foot and by missing out the third syllable in his fourth foot, Whitman avoids the monotonous “tumpity tumpity” rhythms that dactyls can impose upon English verse. With their drive from the start of each foot, the dactyls offer us a sense of the unremitting power of the waves, while the breaks remind us subconsciously of the storm’s unpredictability.


infusing energy

Again, the third line seems to scan best as six dactyls, with a caesura replacing the last syllable of the third foot.

For his fourth line, Whitman echoes the pattern of his first, opening with two full monosyllabic feet, continuing with three dactyls and finishing with an accented + unaccented two-syllable foot (a “trochee”):

WAVES,/ AIR, / MIDnight, their / SAVagest / TRINity / LASHing,

Every line of Patrolling Barnegat except the final one can be scanned as being of six feet, although some with their vigorous cascades of syllables might read more effectively with seven or even eight accents. Whitman confounds conventional scansion, because the energy he is trying to infuse into the spoken word depends more upon the stresses, the changing speeds, the timbre and other qualities of the reader’s voice.


shifting patterns

The shifting patterns of the feet seem to convey something of the uncertainty imposed upon the watchers by the display of the elements. A listener to the poem can never be sure how the rhythm will develop, just as on Barnegat beach, Whitman’s own senses seem to have been overwhelmed.

On close inspection, the phrases which portray the folk on patrol demonstrate a greater metrical consistency than those which portray the storm:

“ ... the / EASTerly / DEATH-wind / BREASTing,” dactyl + trochee + trochee
“ ... WATCHful and / FIRM ad / -VANCing,” dactyl + trochee + trochee
“ ... TIREless till / DAYlight / WENDing,” dactyl + trochee + trochee
“ ... WARily / WATCHing.” dactyl + trochee

It is almost as though the patrol is inserting some order into the situation through its own steadiness.

Although he was a diligent re-writer, Whitman will not necessarily have deconstructed his own poem in this kind of detail. Effective creation synthesises deep knowledge of the craft with the impulse of inspiration. Our metrical analysis of this work should not function as a kind of desiccated murder of our spontaneous response; rather, it can help us to see how the writer has achieved his effect on us and thus enable us to improve our own skills in rendering experience into words.