நாளொரு பக்கம் 81
Thursday, the 4th June, 2015
To have great poets, there must be great audiences.
Walt Whitman: poet (1819-1892)
This quote is the mantra of the famous US magazine, Poetry; Ezra Pound was overruled. Art, Aesthetics and Imagery, interwined as they are, flourish only in the fertile, irrigated and manured soil of the Rasika Mandram.
Walt Whitman was a Guru to most readers, but had to self-publish his Leaves of Grass; this he did throughout his life. A poem therefrom is reproduced to exemplify the point made in the mantra. A tearful tribute to Abraham Lincoln, it is such a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi also.
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
-x-
Image Credit: http://www.mandm.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/arrogant-300x283.jpg
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