Poet’s (And Songwriter too) Corner- Van Morrison’s “Rave On John Donne”

Click on to the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Van Morrison performing his Rave On John Donne.

Markin comment:I have been mad for John Donne’ s poetry ever since I read his poem Death, Be Not Proud. Yes, I know that he was a metaphysical poet (the two-hearts business) but he “spoke” to me and still “speaks” to me. Fortunately, we communists are indifferent to a person's personal likes (and dislikes) in music, poetry, literature and art or I would be in big trouble with touting Brother Donne. Thankfully he is long gone and cannot, reasonably, be cited as an active counter-revolutionary and therefore a person we would have to do something about. Whee! Put the subject John Donne (and other poets, mad men Whitman and Yeats) in a song done by Van Morrison and you have something that catches my attention every time. No question.
******
Rave On John Donne lyrics by Van Morrison

Rave on John Donne, rave on thy Holy fool
Down through the weeks of ages
In the moss borne dark dank pools

Rave on, down through the industrial revolution
Empiricism, atomic and nuclear age
Rave on down through time and space down through the corridors
Rave on words on printed page

Rave on, you left us infinity
And well pressed pages torn to fade
Drive on with wild abandon
Uptempo, frenzied heels

Rave on, Walt Whitman, nose down in wet grass
Rave on fill the senses
On nature's bright green shady path

Rave on Omar Khayyam, Rave on Kahlil Gibran
Oh, what sweet wine we drinketh
The celebration will be held
We will partake the wine and break the Holy bread

Rave on let a man come out of Ireland
Rave on on Mr. Yeats,
Rave on down through the Holy Rosey Cross
Rave on down through theosophy, and the Golden Dawn
Rave on through the writing of "A Vision"
Rave on, Rave on, Rave on, Rave on, Rave on, Rave on

Rave on John Donne, rave on thy Holy fool
Down through the weeks of ages
In the moss borne dark dank pools

Rave on, down though the industrial revolution
Empiricism, atomic and nuclear age

*Poet's Corner- Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"

Click On Title To Link To Dylan Thomas' Web Page.

Guest Commentary

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas


Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

In My Craft Or Sullen Art

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art

*Poet's Corner- John Donne's "Death Be Not Proud"

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Julian Glover Reciting John Donne's "Death Be Not Proud".

Commentary

There is no accounting for tastes sometimes but I have always liked John Donne's poem "Death Be Not Proud". The recent past has been one where deaths have occurred in my family and among some close friends and so naturally I have thought of this poem. Yes, I know Donne was one of those metaphysical poets that were always harping on the "divided heart" or "two heart" literary tropes associated with that poetic style. Still that last line always seems right to me concerning the vagaries of our attitudes toward death.

Death, as the noted Marxist historian and biographer of Leon Trotsky Issac Deutscher once noted, is still one of the three great tragedies of life that that we face (sex and hunger being the other two, the last of which Marxists have focused their struggles on eliminating). Maybe in a more just future we will be able to cope with its terrors better. I note, as well, that the early 17th century when clergyman Donne wrote his poems and epistles is still considered the great age of meditation on the theme of death in the English-speaking world. But enough- here is his poem.

Guest Commentary

John Donne

"Death be not proud, though some have called thee"

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee, 5
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell, 10
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.