Until the boredom was erased and the print took on a life of its own, before the student’s eyes were connected to reality, until the realization came that the book held in his hands was not an inanimate thing, nor even a symbol of awe, but rather a throbbing, living reality in free perspective, this neophyte turned the page to the threshold of poetry, thinking it a dead thing of the past for which archaeologists could probe with blade and spade. Aye, may poetry rest in peace, or so he thought.
As the pages flipped ever so slowly, the youth began to see that humankind other than building bridges, to invent, to cure the sick, to comfort, to love, in short to create, there apparently will always be poetry — exuberant imagination. For as he read some penetrating images and reflections, he felt within a stirring of a kind of divinity that led him to identify with the world and in turn discover that the world is not outside but within his very soul of tears and joy.
The student put down the book to ponder Keats’ seemingly contradictory words:
Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
What does Keats mean? Surely, truth is not all beauty and is beauty always truth? Are not flowers at a funeral beautiful yet deceptive, hiding the horror? Could Keats have actually believed that the truth of his untimely fatal illness was beauty, too?
Then the student returned to book and read “The Song of Opposites”:
Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow, ‘
Lethe’s weed and Hermes’ feathers;
Come today, and come tomorrow,
I do love both together!
I love to mark sad faces in fair weather;
And hear a merry laugh amid the thunder;...
Infants playing with a skull;
Morning fair and shipwreck’d hull;...
Pines and lime trees in full bloom,
And my couch a low green-tomb.
Perhaps the student will learn that poetry’s re-creation of stimuli in terms of human content taking on the wealth of nature’s potential beauty and with it awe and fear, enriches the mind and fills the treasure chest of one’s heart with vibrant truth, despite tragedy ever lurking. For poetry is not a flight nor escape; rather its roots are firmly planted in the clay of life and death and through imagination the truth finds beauty in love and faces fate purged by courage.Hopefully, the student will discover he is a child of nature and spirit fused by poetic insight and uncovers the ability to love in the face of the shades of truth and thus find ultimate beauty — and all he needs to know.
Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: January 13, 2004.