Død og tro

Føler jeg burde komme med en motvekt til forrige, beinhardateistiske dikt. Derfor prøver jeg med et av Tennyson, som er voldsomt religiøst, men også fantastiskt flott og med en nesten overjordisk nydelig metafor- og bildebruk. Dette er prologen til Tennysons store dikt "In Memoriam", der han minnes sin venn Arthur Hallam. Les og nyt. 

Strong Son of God, immortal Love,

    Whom we, that have not seen thy face,

    By faith, and faith alone, embrace,

Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;

    Thou madest Life in man and brute;

    Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot

Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:

    Thou madest man, he knows not why,

    He thinks he was not made to die;

And thou hast made him: thou art just.

Thou seemest human and divine,

    The highest, holiest manhood, thou:

    Our wills are ours, we know not how;

Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

Our little systems have their day;

    They have their day and cease to be:

    They are but broken lights of thee,

And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

We have but faith: we cannot know;

    For knowledge is of things we see;

    And yet we trust it comes from thee,

A beam in darkness: let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more,

    But more of reverence in us dwell;

    That mind and soul, according well,

May make one music as before,

But vaster. We are fools and slight;

    We mock thee when we do not fear:

    But help thy foolish ones to bear;

Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

Forgive what seem’d my sin in me;

    What seem’d my worth since I began;

    For merit lives from man to man,

And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

Forgive my grief for one removed,

    Thy creature, whom I found so fair.

    I trust he lives in thee, and there

I find him worthier to be loved.

Forgive these wild and wandering cries,

    Confusions of a wasted youth;

    Forgive them where they fail in truth,

And in thy wisdom make me wise.

 

Melankoli og død

Jeg føler meg litt melankolsk i kveld og prøvde å finne et dikt som kunne beskrive hvordan jeg føler meg. Jeg lyktes ikke helt, men fant i alle fall på at jeg kunne trykke dette diktet, et dikt om omhandler død på en merkelig, matter-of-factly måte som alltid har fascinert med. Kanskje er det tonen, for det ikke er temaet, som fascinerer med i kveld. Flott er det i alle fall, og får meg til å tenke på at jeg paradoksalt nok, ikke bruker nok tid på å lese dikt:

"Aubade" av Philip Larkin

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.