Now and then

January 27, 2014

Now and then

The first Richard Wilbur poem I remember coming across – now many years ago – was “A Late Aubade” – in Lawrence Perrine and Thomas Arp’s Sound and Sense (8th edition, p. 52). There’s a definition in their “Glossary of Poetic Terms.” An aubade is “a poem about dawn; a morning love song; or a poem about lovers parting at dawn.” Or, in this case, a poem about not parting even by noon. What I immediately liked about “A Late Aubade” was its sense of the conditional, what could be or could be or could be but is not.

          Hope depends on the conditional. The future is always subjunctive, speaking of conditions contrary to fact. It is completely unreliable, a will-o’-the-wisp. All the future holds certainly is death. May that not come too soon. So Horace in the Odes, I.4:

        Pale death kicks indifferently against the door of the poor man’s hut

             and the king’s tower gate.  O dear Sestus,

        life is too short to depend on far-off hope.^*

And I.9:

        Be wise, pour the wine, trim long hope

           for time is short.  As we speak, envious time runs away.

        Seize the day, put no faith in what may come.^#

This is, I'm afraid, far from the party line in my party, where St. Paul chairs the convention. Here hope is one of the three great virtues: faith, hope, and charity. Things aren't always getting better, because death is moot and all that matter is the Judgment Day, when we will be caught up in the air to join the faithful while our enemies will sink like stones through the lake of fire into the dark sulfurous depths of Hell. Then, from our place of eternal reward, we can look down on them in their eternal suffering.  What more could we hope for?

Perhaps this, that she will stay a little longer.  Here and now!

W

^*Pallida Mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
     regumque turris. O beate Sesti,
  uitae summa breuis spem nos uetat inchoare longam. 

^#. . . sapias, uina liques et spatio breui
     spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit inuida
  aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.