AG : I had xeroxed a couple of other lines of his, of Henry King, but.. there’s one that’s pretty...“The Dirge”, in the fourth stanza, talking about life. Well, it’s another thing like that – “What is the existence of man’s life?” – Is it “war”?, is it “a storm”? is it “a flower”? is it “a dream”? is it “a dial” (a sun dial)? – It’s another of those logical comparisons. That’s why they call it metaphysical-type poetry, because they make a logical comparison (and) shake it up. – “It is a dream whose seeming truth/ Is moralized in age and youth/ Where all the comforts he can share/ As wandering as his fancies are/Till in the mist of dark decay/ The dreamer vanish quite away” – (That’s like that Shakespeare – “leave not a wrack behind/ We are such stuff as dreams are made of ” – (but) that gives you a funny shiver) – “Till in the mist of dark decay/ The dreamer vanish quite away” – (that’s a good formulation for the… that sense of.. vanishment.. you know, evanescence, and vanishing of the whole.. silver bubble of the universe, and it’s… there’s a kind of interesting metaphysical idea that the entire universe just… or the entire universe is like a dream which depends on a dreamer to be there and as the.. in the mist, when the dreamer begins vanishing, then everything else goes, I guess. Or maybe, what is it?, the dream goes on, the misty dream, the misty forest. dream,goes on, but the dreamer vanishes? Is that what he’s saying? – Then.. well, you can read the other stuff yourself.
I like the end of ” The Surrender“, also. If you’re ever in the situation where you have to give up love and break off, once, and from somebody you really do like, and still dwell on. It’s a very pretty end,,
“We must in tears/ Unwind a love knit up in many years./ In this last kiss I here surrender thee/ Back to thy self, so thou again art free./ Thou in another, sad as that, resend/ The truest heart that Lover ere did lend./ Now turn from each. So fare our sever’d hearts
“As the divorc’t soul from her body parts”. – (That’s like a very serious love that got interrupted, or stopped. or they had to break up. It’s very mellow. I mean it’s not like somebody screaming or putting anybody down)
[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately seventy-eight-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately eighty-one-and-a-quarter minutes in]