Poems and Imitations with a Letter from T. S. Eliot

Robert Ellrodt, Professor Emeritus of English at the Sorbonne Nouvelle,
is recognized internationally as one of the premier scholars of Renaissance
literature during the latter half of the twentieth century. When I was a graduate
student in the English Department at Yale during the early seventies, his
L’Inspiration personnelle et l’esprit du temps chez les poètes métaphysiques anglais
(1960) was required reading for Louis Martz’s dissertation students, and C. S.
Lewis’s review of Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser (1960) drew attention
not only to Professor Ellrodt’s careful scholarship, but also to his remarkable
command of English. Four decades later, when I had the honor of reviewing
Seven Metaphysical Poets (2000), I, too, was moved to take note of his strikingly
clear and forceful English—superior by that time to much of what was
being published by native speakers. In recent years, Professor Ellrodt’s scholarly
activity has continued unabated, including trenchant studies of Shakespeare,
especially King Lear.

Given his rare competence in English, it is not surprising that Robert Ellrodt
has also translated numerous works of English literature—Shakespeare’s
Sonnets, Donne’s Poems, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity
She’s a Whore from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but also Keats
and Shelley. These translations are principally works of scholarship as well,
carefully annotated and translated with the needs of French readers in mind.
Professor Ellrodt’s mastery of English, however, goes far beyond mere competence,
as the documents that follow demonstrate. As a young man studying
the English Metaphysical poets, a study that would eventually result in
L’Inspiration personnelle, he felt challenged to emulate them—in their own language.
These imitations came to the attention of T. S. Eliot, then an editor
at Faber and Faber, who, like so many others, was struck by the “very exceptional
degree” to which Professor Ellrodt was bilingual. While not seeing the
imitations as publishable as a collection, Eliot did write, “It would be interesting
to see a few of these poems published in a magazine.”

This desideratum is now realized here after more than sixty years. With
Professor Ellrodt’s gracious permission, we reproduce Eliot’s letter, followed
by the imitations of John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, John
Milton, a Cavalier poet writing in a “metaphysical vein,” and Andrew Marvell.
Finally, we add a number of original poems, recently composed in English,
beginning with “Mont Blanc 2008” and culminating with a recent poem
to his wife Suzanne, which provide a sense of Robert Ellrodt’s inspiration
personnelle as a poet. Each of these documents possesses an intrinsic interest
and claim on our attention. Together they exemplify an ideal of linguistic
and literary culture that is in grave peril of disappearing. At a time when the
teaching of foreign languages in this country is sadly neglected, and a vulgar
variety of English, debased by advertising and Internet jargon, is rapidly
becoming the lingua franca of the Global Village, Robert Ellrodt’s commitment
to strengthening the ties between his native French and English, which
he handles so elegantly both in prose and verse, provides a powerful example
of how a sound knowledge of another language enhances one’s grasp of his
own and deepens the imagination’s resources.

We are grateful to Robert and Suzanne Ellrodt for the opportunity to publish
these pieces.

—RVY

Geoffrey Faber, Chairman. Richard de la Mare, Vice Chairman
Morley Kennerley (USA), T.S. Eliot, W.J. Crawley, P.F. Du Sautoy

FABER AND FABER LIMITED
PUBLISHERS
24 Russell Square London W.C.1.

Fabbaf Westcent

London Museum 9543

14th July 1949.

Monsieur Robert Ellrodt,
Fondation Thiers,
Paris, XVI,
France.

My dear Sir,
Some time ago Monsieur Henri Fluchère sent me the enclosed selection of your poems. I have examined them from time to time with much interest and when i find anything of interest to me in poems submitted I usually retain them for considerable period.

Your seventheenth century poems might certainly be remarkable tour de force for any English poet to have produced. And still more remarkable for anyone whose native tongue is not English, You must however be bilingual to a very exceptional degree.

It is, however, the drawback of this kind of exercise in the idiom of a past age that it remains an exercise and can hardly be published except as an exhibition of viruosity. It would be interesting to see few of these poems published in a magazine, but I do not see what you can do at the present time with a collection of them.

Your poem in your own idiom is another matter and of that I can only say that it exhibits a great deal of skill, though I think it is too much a mixture in language of various periods. You still want to find a style of your own which will be completely modern and also arrive at a greater degree of simplification. I shall be interested to see more of your work in a year or so.

Yours sincerely,
T.S. Eliot

IN IMITATION OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY POETS

Imitation of John Donne

Holy Sonnet

This is my wealth, my store, my sum of years:
So many days that meant a growing death,
So many sighs that were but empty breath,
Unresting thoughts still breeding idle fears,
Or scum of hope soon melted into tears.
Nothing in me but what is not, or hath
Some sin in it, that’s nothing. Time unsaith
Each minute past and void extinction nears.
First out of nothing man arose, and now
That nothing would be all, and may, since Thou,
World’s All, didst once in nothing dwell: my fear
Of nothingness, then, shall to nothing fall
If Thou wilt take my nothing to Thine All.

Imitation of George Herbert

Sickness

Lord, in my health I sinned and pin’d
And drew to death until thy love,

To mend my foolish mind,

Sent to me pain, thy fierce and fiery dove.

Now agues grow in all my bones;

Each part in my disjointed whole

With broken music groans:

All sweet consort from me rude sickness stole.

Repair not, Lord, a ruinous inn,

Nor tune again each thankless part:

One cankering bosom sin

Might shatter all, and man disgrace Thine art;

But cure my soul: there’s no more fear,
For I shall whole arise again.

Thy trump I shall not hear,

Nor buried bones behold thy Son, in vain.

Imitation of Henry Vaughan

Love’s Weight

When shades benight the silent sphere
I feel Thy light, Lord, from above,
And the still music of Thy love
Within my glowing bosom hear.

In sweet, bright air, on wings of calm,
My hushèd heart doth lightly swim,
And silent dew—the tears of Him
Who healeth pain—like holy balm,

Fill this shrunk, hard and barren thing.
My heart was light and floated free

On froth and foam in the world’s sea,

Until Thy love did load and bring

This earthen vessel to Thine haven.
O! let it stay and harbour there,
Or fill it more than it can bear
So it may sink to a strange heaven

Of peace and light in my Lord’s sea,

And turn to gold: then its own weight,
Its weight of love, shall ne’er abate
But grow in deep eternity.

Imitation of Milton

Sonnet to the Trinity

Thee first I name, eternal, uncreate,
Sole fount of light among the holy Three,
Sole being, essence undivided, Thee
First I praise, whose unfathomed will is fate,
Father invisible. Next consecrate
Due worship to Thy Son, who set us free
From primal sin and raised the blessed tree,
Christ’s cross, whereby each soul regenerate
May climb to God again. And last invoke
Thee, Holy Ghost, nor least though third, whose love
Burns ever ‘twixt the Father and the Son.
So burn in me, and in my bosom choke
Things evil, till thy undefilèd dove
Shine on the world and heaven and earth be one.

In the spirit of Cavalier poetry
when in the Metaphysical vein

Love undone by love

Ask me not, ye, lovers wise,

Why I only kiss

Th’absent air in idler wise

And seek no nearer bliss.

He who starves in plenty’s store

No pity shall obtain:

Foolish loves deserves no more

That will not reap his gain.

Sweets of sense love ne’er denies

And sweets on her grow rife;

Never tree in Paradise

Bore fairer fruits of life.

Passion still pursues its good

Nor ever will forgo;

Love had sooner found his food,

Had I not loved her so.

Had I only loved her less,

My love had bolder been;

Her body might with substance bless

Mine, whom vain thoughts made lean.

Had I lov’d her not at all,

Or a Summer’s night,

Now at least I might recall

The senses’ short delight.

Deeper love bids me abstain

From a lover’s bliss;

Her surer love until I gain

I must my heaven miss.

Love so pure may wonder breed

And to tell you true,

Scarce know I from what rare seed

Nor how it ever grew.

In the spirit of Andrew Marvell’s love poems

Love’s Ecstasy

Oh! love me so I shall not dream
Of other women, other joy!
My love, in passion’s white extreme,
Will suffer no impure alloy.

Beware! the earth is crumbling fast,
The sky is thinner grown and rare:
Your feet a firmer shadow cast,
Your kisses breathe diviner air.

.
Your own abiding presence fills
All vacant space to brimful ease;
Your own entrancing gesture stills
All ruder motion till it cease.

The rifts of time you heal and make
All expectation actual:
Both past and future for your sake,
Crowd all their sweets into one ball.

Begetting tears, without a noise,
The stars are wheeling round the pole:
Oh! let your love, in surer poise,
My circling world of thoughts control!

All things dispersed, opaque, unknown,
Within your eye shine one and clear;
Each hath no being but your own;
A denser world, a fuller sphere.

So full, so clear, so deep, no sin
Nor fear of other’s gaze, no shame
Of self, nor shadow, steal within
This lucid orb, for ever same.

Fair object, held in my desire,
Yet holding all and shining free,
Love’s conquest over time entire,
Take me to your eternity.

Poems 2006–2009

Mont Blanc 2008

dedicated to Percy Bysshe Shelley

Not in lone splendour
but tallest of the peaks
profiled against a wide expanse of sky
Mont Blanc still soars,
though half-despoiled of its snowy robe.
Will the slow process engineered
by nature’s whim or man’s profligacy
reduce it like the neighbouring crags
to naked rock?
Shall the sound of waterfalls cease
and the swooping eagle fail to spy
on the desiccated slopes
a living prey?
Shall all this glassy brilliance,
sun-lit or moon-relumed,
melt in dark extinction?
Shall all luxuriance of fur
or feathered gorgeousness in beast and bird,
all graceful flight of hare or doe,
all flutterings of wind or dove
in innumerable boughs,
all sweetness of scent in flower or shrub
give way to unrelieved greyness,
stale uniformity?
Shall earth, undressed, uninhabited,
roll on in illimitable space
for myriads of millenia to come,
a wandering lifeless globe,
in utter desolation ?

This is, I know, emphatic wordiness
in this unromantic age,
bound to remain unheeded,
unless clamouring (not unjustly)
against all wrongs inflicted
by economic greed
on earth and sea and sky.
Yet wiser policies would only win
a respite for centuries, not cosmic eras.
“Shoulder the sky,” a later poet said,
“and drink your ale.” . . .
Epicurean or Stoic attitudes
may serve for an hour—or a life-time—
yet cannot slake the thirst of a mind
hoping still the mystery of things
may clear up when we cross the door
opening on death’s unknown wonder.

ROCK OF AGES
A dream

Inaccessible it seemed, cliff-edged
and silver-streaked by the moon,
a boulder emerging from the plain
unmoved for ages.
My feet had wandered round it, and only left
their imprint on the earth at a distance,
intricacies of spiky leaves forbidding
closer approach—or so I imagined.
A sudden whirl of migratory birds
spread a feathery mantle of fluttering wings
on the bare summit. I rushed
with outstretched hands, found a way
through the tangle of briars, and reached the rock
but could not climb.
The frightened birds flew off,
indignant. At the base
my blood-stained fingers caressed
the weathered rock—
content with the feel of dateless endurance.

Age

Age is stealthy creeping—welcome
in oak or mountain peak, mellowing stone,
burnished bronze or buried urn.
Age cripples human limbs, yet leaves
the heart and brain so long untouched
birds sing in every vein, each morning
breaks with new splendour and the winds
of Spring ruffle the thinning hair.

Age stirs cold-warm embers and glows,
dreaming of sun-drenched youth
and innocence of love.

Silence

Silence sits on the waves
sun-drenched, fusing sea and sky.
Silence sits on the mind
in unfathomed vacancy.

A lone gull’s cry
tears the silken air.
Light fingers of memory
stir a pool of dormant thoughts.

The boy’s dream of reaching heaven
by walking on the seafloor
to the far horizon.
The youth’s dream of embracing
mermaids’ breasts in smooth sea swell.
The grown-up man’s striving
to spy truth in midday glare.

Age has other yearnings:
tranquil dissolution
in the unceasing murmur
of waves breaking for ever
on the proud rock’s endurance.

Evening

The cool of the evening.
The heated grass and leaves
inhale the freshening air,
closing petals enfold
in flowery cups early drops of darkness.
The unfevered heart is still;
only small gnats of thought
roam in the vacant brain:
the day’s petty concerns,
remembered acts of love,
frustrated fantasies.
Up and down they dance and die,
among the untroubled boughs!
The level field, altar-wise,
seems to wait for some holy rite,
the elevation of the moon,
a lucent host in a darkling sky.

What if the world’s wide stage
in the rising tide of night
engulfed, rose never more.
What if this sentient form
out of sleep never woke?
Have we still to live on faith
in nature’s course and man’s?

Ever-haunting childish fears
of going into the dark alone
are stilled by our deeper longing
for the womb of night.

On your smile

A smile flits on your face,

A smile known for so many years,

And ever dear

Since your fingers pressed on my lids

For the first time,
And my eyes, reopening,

Wondered at an angel’s face,
Only known before in my dreams.

Such a smile lighted your brow

When you agreed to link our hands

For ever on the uncertain path
Of life’s fitful journey.

Next came the smile of motherhood

To greet each new-born babe, and later

The smile of welcome for children
Coming home after straying far.

And ever the smile of delight

When a fair sight takes your fancy,

Or when a fragrance fills the air,
Not sweeter than your own breath.

Or the sober pensive smile
Sitting on your lips when you hear
Such music as may still and soothe

All sorrow in the listening heart.

Keep that smile when bending low

To close my eyes with a last kiss,

Tempering each other’s grief:
Parting then will be endured.

And if an envious fate decreed

You should die first, though younger far,

My kiss upon your silent lips

Would meet, I hope, the self-same smile.