The first poem I'll read is from untitled subjects
and it's about the prime minister of England,
who might be said to be the only real prime minister
in the 19th century.
Melbourne was really a prime minister of the 18th century.
Dizzy, Dizzy was really scarcely a prime minister at all.
He was a glorious public figure.
As you know, he was the popular prime minister with the queen.
He was the one Victoria liked.
He knew how to make Victoria feel adored.
And she liked to feel adored.
The prime minister that interests
me in the 19th century though is Gladstone.
A man who seems to be far less of a figure to us.
In any case, we find him in this poem at the end of his life,
well, past 80, on the first of what
was to be his indeed his last vacation.
The notion itself didn't really exist yet.
The date of the poem is 1897.
We are on the Riviera which had not yet
become a really celebrated watering place,
but it was cheap.
And he is there with his secretary, probably
John Morley, but not to any--
I'm not sure who the secretary is, he is not me.
He is a foolish man.
But concerned with his chief, and he speaks first, it
is his voice that we hear.
The poem is preceded by a remark--
a remark of Gladstone's.
Can you all hear me clearly?
A remark of Gladstone's to the effect
that all he'd ever wanted was an interval between the house,
and the grave.
Deeply desired.
"In that summer, at Bordighera, in a fashion somewhat agitated,
he confided his dreams, haunted by halls and lines of people--
horrors, outright, the frequent burden
of which was a weak old man, gradually
bruised to death by clubs.
What is politics in England, John, but a long Khyber Pass.
With all the misery of a passage in, and no passage out.
We were walking the beach together,
the air was sullen, all this coast from Menton
to Santa Margharita one mild Miltonic hell.
Where the welkin glistens and reeks,
every surface swelters until Earth's face cracks,
and only the sea is whole, running high
along the sand, huge green masses of water shattering
to mere foam at our feet.
In this heat, who would expect such a sea?
Mr. G delights in it, has a passion for its sound,
would like to have it in his ears, all day, all night.
It is the truth of Dante's Banquet my boy, where
the noble soul is said to be like a good mariner,
for he, when he draws near port, lowers his sails
and enters softly with gentle steerage.
It is his way of speaking I can catch,
though I am separated from him in the order of ideas
by an interval that must be called a gulf.
Forgive me if I go too far, I am simply a funnel.
My local memory has always been vivid.
I seem never to have forgotten the circumstance, a scene,
a single syllable for all my personal rank
as a vanishing quantity.
Why else should Mr. G have kept me with him
past his years of employment?
Years of parliamentary meddle and muddle.
In the long run, John, we are all dead.
Memoirs are as hateful to me as monuments.
But a memory like yours is another thing.
Striding down the beach, desecrated
by gold-necked bottles, lobster claws, and bits of veal pie,
he would ask me to prod him into reckoning
of what has been his life.
88 years have deterred none of his senses,
save perhaps that of reality.
The man is a great white rock with a little moss
on it, just so, and the green sea water beneath.
One word of mine suffices to release that affluent language
he bestows so effortlessly.
And once, indeed, he admitted speculating
why the room seemed to fall silent,
only to discover I had stopped talking.
It was a genuine discovery.
The word, this time, with some trifling bon mot
of mine on the heir apparent's appearance.
That was enough.
Three decades of her Majesty's crisp, incessant orders,
John, have convinced me quite of the unfailing, the--
shall I say-- hereditary antipathy of our sovereigns
to their heirs apparent.
The single time I dined with the prince and his mother,
a swan, very white and tender, stuffed with truffles, as well,
was the best company at table.
And the queen's sole remark to her son and myself was the dogs
behaved better to the furniture than in the past.
The sole improvement, quite certain, in modern times.
Ah, my boy, we are well away from balmorality here.
The terrible tartanitis which overtook the throne in my time,
hard upon the mort d'Albert.
A remarkable statesman, mind you, but the stock was weak.
You recall a cousin, a Ludwig of Bavaria,
talked with his eyes tight shut.
Drowned himself in the ornamental lake
with his doctor.
No stamina in the family, though the queen
is of the family and endures.
Her words to me when I took my leave, simple perfection
of perfect simplicity.
Often, Mr. Gladstone, I believe, after a period
of strenuous reform, a moment comes quite suddenly
when the British people tires of being, ah, improved.
God, John.
Thank God I'm quit of such encounters.
And then, as we proceeded to the pier, from which a superb view
might be had, waves hurling themselves over each other
to the rocks, he took from an inner pocket,
with a sharp glance into my eyes,
a green Morocco notebook, quite glossy with wear.
I was but 18, John, when I entered these words.
Judge, if I have kept faith with these emotions of mine.
The diary was in his backhand, tiny script
unchanged subsequently.
On board the Queen of Scotland, they rose to breakfast,
but uneasily.
Attempted reading first book of Herodotus,
not too unwell to reflect.
Returned to bed, then translated a few lines of Dante,
also beauties of Shakespeare.
By evening, high wind blowing, quite ill, though still in bed,
yet could not help admiring the white crests of the waves,
even as I stood at the cabin's low casement.
He took it from me with a gesture toward the sea,
and we walked on, Mr G. gloating in the huge force, the swell
and beat of the rollers on the shore like a titanic pulse.
As they ran bounding toward us with bright persuasions
of grace and power, he wondered if we
had not more and better words for the sea
than the French language, flot, vague, onde, lame,
as against breaker, billow, comber, bore, eager, roller,
swell, and surge.
He quite shouted the words into the tide.
I have never seen him so happy."
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.