ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

CAROLINE AMUSEMENTS
Can we not force from widdowed Poetry,
Now thou art dead (Great Donne) one Elegie
To crowne thy Hearse? Why yet dare we not trust
Though with unkneaded dowe-bak’t prose thy dust,
Such as the uncisor’d Churchman from the flower
Of fading Rhetorique, short liv’d as his houre,
Dry as the sand that measures it, should lay
Upon thy Ashes, on the funerall day?
Have we no voice, no tune? Did’st thou dispense
Through all our language, both the words and sense?
The Donnean idiom is fully sounded, in the abrupt beginning (forcing the muse,
no less), its wrenched syntax, and its relentless interrogation. But it is also
important to emphasize that Carew’s estimation of Donne’s art—his profound
attention to both stylistic and canonical matters, to Donne’s “line/Of masculine
expression” as well as to the swerve Donne created in the line of English
poetry—not only separates Carew from the many who celebrate Donne primarily
as a priest and for politically controversial reasons; 12 Carew’s testimonial also
powerfully recalls Jonson in his poem on Shakespeare and reminds us that the
desire motivating the verse is a generational one. “Have we no voice, no tune?
Did’st thou dispense/Through all our language, both the words and sense?” (my
italics).
It is a hoary cliché of funeral verse to say that all the arts died with the poet.
(Donne’s other mourners often utter and prove this sentiment.) But Carew
makes this challenge a central constituent of the poem, actually braves a
comparison with Donne; and in the marvelous conclusion to the poem, we are
asked to meditate on the moment of revered silence imposed by Donne’s
departure and the obvious disparity between this “dumb eloquence” and the loud
elegy itself, and then to imagine something different: the wheel turning again,
the diminished but definite sound of the elegist,
And so whil’st I cast on thy funerall pile
Thy crowne of Bayes, Oh, let it crack a while,
And spit disdaine, till the devouring flashes
Suck all the moysture up, then turn to ashes,
and then the definitive utterance:
Here lies a King, that rul’d as hee thought fit
The universall Monarchy of wit;
Here lie two Flamens, and both those, the best,
Apollo’s first, at last, the true Gods Priest.
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