Prior to the November election, I invoked the poetry of W.B. Yeats, asking his question,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
We know the answer, because more than 77 million Americans voted for the narcissist grifter Donald Trump, a convicted felon, and that rough beast became President of the United States today.
Since the November election, I’ve been drawn to the poetry of Matthew Arnold and W. H. Auden, specifically “Dover Beach” and “September 1, 1939.” Both have, I believe, important messages for us on this dark day, January 20, 2025.
In Arnold’s poem, two lovers are standing on Dover Beach, or perhaps on the cliffs overlooking it. The narrator begins
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;
But he (or she) is a pessimist, aware not so much of the apparent serenity of the sea but of an ‘eternal note of sadness’ that it brings with it, a note that many others, including Sophocles on the Aegean, have heard, seen and felt over the centuries. The narrator concludes with a plea:
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Could there be a more perfect description of our country today: a darkling plain, confusing alarms of struggle and flight, and ignorant armies clashing by night?
“Dover Beach” is a poem I have loved from the day I first read it; however, by some trick of the brain I always think of it as having been written before one of our World Wars. Not so, Arnold (1822-1888) was thoroughly Victorian in time and temperament, and he is bemoaning what he perceived as a loss of religious faith.
My error aside, the message matters: we must be true to one another today and for the next four years. And we cannot define ‘another’ to mean just our close friends and family, because we need to reach out and find common cause with everyone who believes in the rule of law, and in fair play.
“September 1, 1939” is definitely an anti-war poem, a plea for love and compassion in a darkening world that is strikingly relevant today. Auden (1907-1973) was a master of language, and I urge you to read his poem aloud. A few lines:
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
The ‘elderly rubbish’ that dictators talk, doesn’t that perfectly describe Trump’s Inaugural Address?
And my favorite stanza of Auden’s poem (with emphasis added!):
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Each of us does have a voice, and we must use those voices to undo the folded lies. And because no one exists alone, we must love one another or die.
Thank you for your attention.
The Merrow Report 