So this could be a poem spoken by a girl who just escapes
from her house at night and goes out
and finds the man she's in love with.
Or it could be about the human soul in search of God.
It's in a way both, and you can take it on either level.
And the greatness of the poem is partly in the fact
that it makes sense on both levels, as good poems have to.
Unless they make complete human sense, unless they fail.
Julian says this about Saint John of the Cross--
he doesn't violate the laws of our world.
And Gerard Manley Hopkins said of the young Yates of a poem
Yates wrote, poetry, that common sense belongs on Parnassus,
as well as anywhere else.
And I think this is true.
Poetry is basically common sense or it's nothing.
I mean, it follows the way we feel and think.
This doesn't mean it's the kind of common sense
that gets you to the grocery store and back.
It may be the common sense of dreams.
But it's a kind-- it makes sense in a way or it's nothing.
Well, this poem reads, "Once in the dark of night, my longings
cut and raging in love's ray o' windfall of delight.
I slipped unseen away as all my home in a deep slumber lay.
Secure in more than night, close head and up the stairs
a secret way.
Oh, windfall of delight, in the night in feigned array
is all my home in a deep slumber lay.
There in the lucky dark, stealing in secrecy by none
has spied.
Nothing for eyes to mark, no other light, no guide,
but in my heart, that fire would not subside.
That led me on that dazzle truer than high noon is true,
to where they're weighted one I knew.
How well I knew in a place where no one was in view.
Oh dark of night, my guide.
Oh, sweeter than anything sunrise can discover.
Oh, night drawing side to side the loved and lover.
The loved one wholly and solely in the lover.
There in my festive breast, wild for his pleasure garden,
his alone.
The lover remained at rest and I gave all I own,
gave all in air from the cedars softly blown.
Oh, in wind from the wall, as my hand and his hair
moved lovingly at play.
He let soft fingers fall and I swoon dead away wounded,
all senses in oblivion lay.
Quite out of self suspended, my forehead
and the lover's own reclined.
And that way the world ended, with all my cares
entwined among the lilies falling and out of mind."
Al I could be is I think, as I said,
either a girl or the soul speaking to God, equally well.
The original is a great poem.
The translation maybe gives a little idea, but I don't know.
It's a daring poem in a way as the Song of Songs as daring.
Saint Theresa tells us that she knew
of nuns who had blocked their ears when the Song of Songs
was read because they thought it improper, too physical, and so
on.
And Saint Teresa just says, that shows
how corrupt we human beings are that we take
something like this as bad.
And there have been people who thought that a poem like this
is too physical to be a good religious poem, who
think that the very fact that it could be a human love poem
means that it's not a good religious poem.
Well, Saint John of the Cross did not feel that.