Another seminal poem: The Choir Invisible

I may lose some credibility with some of you but I still hold true to my original statement that I am not a poetry lover. I must be getting older or the levels of testosterone are diminishing... either way, I am happy to announce that I have finally mastered another poem!

For some reason I cannot pick simple haiku or ten line sonnetts. I've got to go for the long ones. Let me introduce you to George Elliott's glorious work, The Choir Invisible. If you have actually taken time to read the namesake of this blog (The Happy Warrior by William Wordsworth) you will quickly see that these two poems share many common themes. I love words, thoughts and actions that inspire me to greatness and someday hope that, like Nathaniel Hawthorne's Great Stone Face, I might come to actually achieve some of the greatness spoken of by Wordsworth and Elliott. For now I revel in the beauty of the words and the idea of "joining the choir invisible" and of "he (the happy warrior), that every man in arms should wish to be."

The Choir Invisible
O MAY I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirr’d to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man’s search
To vaster issues. So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing as beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we struggled, fail’d, and agoniz’d
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolv’d;
Its discords, quench’d by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air.
And all our rarer, better, truer self,
That sobb’d religiously in yearning song,
That watch’d to ease the burthen of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,
And what may yet be better,—saw within
A worthier image for the sanctuary,
And shap’d it forth before the multitude,
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mix’d with love,—
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gather’d like a scroll within the tomb Unread forever.
This is life to come,
Which martyr’d men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffus’d,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
-George Elliott

As a curious side note, George Elliott was actually a woman who took a masculine pen name in order to improve the possibility of gaining acceptance for her craft.