Sunday, November 6, 2011
On Seeing Two Swallows Late in October
Upon re-reading some of the Bird Poems after reading and discussing Adam's post on the ridiculousness of their overly-romanticized sentiments, I found myself wondering what kind of purposes Clare had in mind for the poems. The poem "On Seeing Two Swallows Late in October" also personifies the birds. The sonnet structure of the poem and its contents, including two swallows building a home in a chimney, put forth a sense of love and romanticism. However, the happiness of this scene is broken by Clare when the birds "leave us lonely till another may". Clare expresses a desire for the return of this happy scene by inviting the swallows to return to their old dwelling where they will find solace from the winter "above the old fire side". To me, this sentiment seems to reflect the very human desire for the warmth, comfort and affection one finds with a lover, by the fire, during winter. I can not tell if this is a biased over-analysis, or if Clare genuinely wishes to connect emotional human sentiment to the birds. Does Clare want us to realize a sense of connection between humans and birds (nature)? Does Clare simply want to record the sentiments the experiences he has when witnessing his beloved birds? Or is it maybe a combination of the two in which Clare wants to highlight the inner reflections we may have when observing these parts or scenes of nature?
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I think another interesting thing about the line "leave us lonely till another May" is that it betrays a human projection on to nature. The bird poems generally depict man as hunters/killers, wrecking havoc on nature. Yet here, Clare briefly allows the possibility that birds could be here for OUR pleasure. This definitely supports your idea of human & bird/nature connection, but a poem like "To the Snipe" seems like it's going for the contrary idea (a DISconnect).
ReplyDeletePoems like "The Nightingale's Nest" (p. 213) or "The Autumn Robin" suggest more ways to answer these questions--what do we make of the speaker invading the nightingale's bower, instructing someone else how to get at the nest, but in the end deciding to leave it undisturbed? Does the Robin seek sympathy with people, or inspire sympathy from the gypsy boy or clownish hunter by behavior that it engages in for completely different reasons? Put another way, what kind of agency do the poems give the birds, and how does this relate to the agency of the speaker or characters?
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