Hospitable Poetry #8

Robert Charbonneau on "A Modest Love" by Dyer

If you are new to our series, here is the link to find the intro and the previous posts by Renee Emerson, A. A. Kostas, Brit McReynolds, Mark Rico, Esther Jane, Kilby Austin, and Zane Paxton.

Robert is one of my favorite teachers on Substack. I don’t mean to imply that everything he writes is didactic, but rather to emphasize that his perspective as a New Romantic poet is influenced by a deep understanding of craft and tradition. He writes not to demonstrate how much he knows but to convey it memorably to his readers. Robert wrote my favorite narrative poem I have read on the internet: The Redwood, or a Tall Tale, and I highly recommend it to both lovers of nature and mythic quests. Another favorite is “An Eastertide Sonnet,” and if you want to learn more about the meter it’s written in, perhaps check out “How Poetry Figures Time.”

This series has far exceeded my expectations because of you amazing readers. Thank you for interacting in the comments and sharing these essays and proving our thesis that hospitable poetry is for everyone.

Love, Abigail

Strawberries and Cream by Raphaelle Peale (1816)

Reflection by Robert Charbonneau

Abigail, being hospitable, invited me to the table to share a poem. I thought it fitting to bring something lyrical, since Abigail, in her introduction to the series, has said that hospitable poetry is poetry that serves the public, and since, once upon a time, it might have been expected of a guest invited to dinner to recite a lyric or two in front of the table.

The lyric is a hospitable poem precisely because its essence is concentration and generalization. Being relatively short, it won’t suck up too much air in the room, and being generalized, it will appeal to the most guests.

Having been studying almost exclusively Renaissance poetry for the last several months, I chose this lyric by Sir Edward Dyer (1540-1607).

A Modest Love
by Sir Edward Dyer

The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall,
The fly her spleen, the little spark his heat:
The slender hares cast shadows, though but small,
And bees have stings, although they be not great;
Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs:
And Love is Love, in beggars and in Kings.

Where waters smoothest run, there deepest are the fords,
The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move;
The firmest faith is found in fewest words,
The turtles do not sing, and yet they love;
True hearts have ears and eyes, no tongues to speak:
They hear and see, and sigh, and then they break.

---

Dyer was part of the literary circle that included Gabriel Harvey, Edmund Spenser, and Philip Sydney. They exchanged letters and dined with one another. I like to imagine Dyer recited this poem to them over dinner one night, amidst good wine and conversation. I imagine they might’ve been impressed by the last line in each stanza as if it were a trick Dyer had pulled off, finding a way to cap off each succession of images. They might’ve wondered, “How will he tie it all together?” and been satisfied by his success.

Afterwards, Dyer may have gone into the meaning of the poem, showing them how the trick was done. In the first stanza he might’ve explained how, though slight things have their shortcomings, they are the equal of great things in love. In the second stanza, how nature disguises her true nature. The first proceeds by antithesis, the second paradox. The whole thing is eloquent and supremely balanced. The lines are in halves, the stanzas in pairs. Everything is in parallel.

The sentiment is romantic. Tudor courtiers like Wyatt and Raleigh and Dyer were Romantics long before Keats and Byron and Shelley were. Indeed, these were the people the English Romantics were pretending to be, long after the world had become something different. The Renaissance poets went on expeditions and campaigns, as knights did. Sidney was ambassador to emperors and princes. Wyatt participated in tournaments and had an affair with Anne Boleyn. They would have actually been strumming instruments, too, while they recited their work, their poetry still closer to music than to thinking.

The essence of the lyric is concentration of expression and generalization of experience. All poetry differs from prose by virtue of its compression, and the lyric is perhaps the most compressed of all poetic forms. Where narrative poetry elaborates on the details of its story, the lyric implies a situation. Where dramatic poetry develops personality, the lyric suggests character. This is why it’s generalized. Compression breeds universality. In Dyer’s poem we have the sense of a character: romantic, perhaps forlorn, but also witty and worldly. His imagery is grounded in the world in which he lives. He ends on a melancholic note which, though poignant, I don’t think is meant to be taken too gravely. It’s all play. It’s all meant to serve at the pleasure of the court. Artificial, yes, but the Renaissance poets did not consider artifice a bad thing. It should not be evaluated on the authenticity of its expression (though I do not doubt that Dyer felt the meaning of what he was writing) but to be enjoyed, as poetry, for its music, for the way it stirs emotion and leads thought. It’s also a good poem to memorize, because of its brevity and excellent construction. A good poem for reciting at the dinner table after several glasses of wine.

And so I have recited it here. Thank you to Abigail for inviting me to the literary feast. You’re a gracious host.