`` As if - the explanation of Emergence

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Hungry Heart or Lonely Hunters


Everybody's got a hungry heart - Bruce Springsteen


Index


Following a discussion I had with my Dad, when I couldn't remember any of the quotes/poems, here is the complete thing. Startin' with Larkin...


Philip Larkin


It is only Philip Larkin 's title that refers back to Robert Louis Stevenson , or probably only the title.


This Be The Verse - Philip Larkin, April 1971

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.


* I don't really think that Larkin meant 'throat' in the sense that William Blake used 'gorge'.


Robert Louis Stevenson


The Verse is Robert Louis Stevenson 's (13 November 1850 - 3 December 1894).


The following commentary re: Stevenson and Housman courtesy of a blog post from Stephen Pentz on the Internet.


I copied this because why reinvent the wheel? Also, who knows how long other sites' posts will remain?


Three Variations On A Theme, And An Echo (from the Internet)

Robert Louis Stevenson suffered from ill-health for much of his short life. Nevertheless, he usually remained in good spirits. But he knew what he was up against. Thus, it is not surprising that, on more than one occasion, he composed his own poetic epitaph. He wrote the following untitled poem in 1879, at the age of 29.


Now when the number of my years
Is all fulfilled, and I
From sedentary life
Shall rouse me up to die,
Bury me low and let me lie
Under the wide and starry sky.
Joying to live, I joyed to die,
Bury me low and let me lie.

Clear was my soul, my deeds were free,
Honour was called my name,
I fell not back from fear
Nor followed after fame.
Bury me low and let me lie
Under the wide and starry sky.
Joying to live, I joyed to die,
Bury me low and let me lie.

Bury me low in valleys green
And where the milder breeze
Blows fresh along the stream,
Sings roundly in the trees --
Bury me low and let me lie
Under the wide and starry sky.
Joying to live, I joyed to die,
Bury me low and let me lie.
- George Hellman (editor), Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson Hitherto Unpublished (1916).


The poem sounds vaguely familiar. Eventually -- over a period of eight years -- it was transformed into what is perhaps Stevenson's best-known poem.


Requiem

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

- Robert Louis Stevenson, Underwoods (1887).


Another instance of less being more.


Home Is the Sailor


A.E. Housman (26 March 1859 - 30 April 1936)


'Requiem' took on an interesting afterlife in the hands of A. E. Housman. At first thought, one might not think of Housman and Stevenson as kindred spirits. But there is a sort of Housman feel to 'Requiem', don't you think? It wouldn't seem out of place in A Shropshire Lad.


Stevenson died in Samoa on December 3, 1894. On December 22, 1894, the following poem by Housman was published in the weekly issue of the The Academy above an obituary for Stevenson.


R.L.S.

Home is the sailor, home from sea:
Her far-borne canvas furled
The ship pours shining on the quay
The plunder of the world.

Home is the hunter from the hill:
Fast in the boundless snare
All flesh lies taken at his will
And every fowl of air.

'Tis evening on the moorland free,
The starlit wave is still:
Home is the sailor from the sea,
The hunter from the hill.


In closing, a modern footnote courtesy of Philip Larkin. Larkin's most famous (or, perhaps, infamous) poem begins with a line about one's 'mum and dad' which, out of delicacy, I will not quote here. Larkin knew English poetry inside-out, and had a delightful sense of humor. The title of his poem? 'This Be the Verse.' Yet another reason to love Larkin.


That is the end of the Internet's contribution


Fiona MacLeod


But there are other voices that also echo Stevenson


The Lonely Hunter

by the Scottish poet William Sharp , who used the pseudonym 'Fiona MacLeod': (12 September 1855 - 12 December 1905)


In 1896, 2 years after Stevenson's death, Sharp published this which proved influential, but was also influenced by Stevenson and possibly Blake as well.


Green branches, green branches, I see you
beckon; I follow!
Sweet is the place you guard, there in the
rowan-tree hollow.
There he lies in the darkness, under the frail
white flowers,
Heedless at last, in the silence, of these sweet
midsummer hours.

But sweeter, it may be, the moss whereon he
is sleeping now,
And sweeter the fragrant flowers that may
crown his moon-white brow:
And sweeter the shady place deep in an Eden
hollow
Wherein he dreams I am with him---and,
dreaming, whispers, 'Follow!'

Green wind from the green-gold branches,
what is the song you bring?
What are all songs for me, now, who no more
care to sing?
Deep in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to
me still,
But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on
a lonely hill.

Green is that hill and lonely, set far in a
shadowy place;
White is the hunter's quarry, a lost-loved hu-
man face:
O hunting heart, shall you find it, with arrow
of failing breath,
Led o'er a green hill lonely by the shadowy
hound of Death?

Green branches, green branches, you sing of
a sorrow olden,
But now it is midsummer weather, earth-
young, sunripe, golden:
Here I stand and I wait, here in the rowan-
tree hollow,
But never a green leaf whispers, 'Follow, oh,
Follow, Follow!'

O never a green leaf whispers, where the
green-gold branches swing:
O never a song I hear now, where one was
wont to sing
Here in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to
me still,
But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on
a lonely hill.


Carson McCullers


The Lonely Hunter is also a novel by Carson McCullers .

See what the Internet and Google gives us in the way of unexpected connections.


On June 4, 1940, Houghton Mifflin published the first novel by the American writer Carson McCullers, a sensitive story about misfits and social outcasts in a Southern mill town titled The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.


The success of McCullers' book made its title a familiar and oft-quoted phrase.


Hungry Heart


A song by Bruce Springsteen .


Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack
I went out for a ride and I never went back
Like a river that don't know where it's flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going
Everybody's got a hungry heart
Everybody's got a hungry heart
Lay down your money and you play your part
Everybody's got a h-h-hungry heart

Oh, I met her in a Kingstown bar
We fell in love, I knew it had to end
We took what we had and we ripped it apart
Now here I am down in Kingstown again
Everybody's got a hungry heart
Everybody's got a hungry heart
Lay down your money and you play your part
Everybody's got a h-h-hungry heart

Everybody needs a place to rest
Everybody wants to have a home
Don't make no difference what nobody says
Ain't nobody like to be alone
Everybody's got a hungry heart
Everybody's got a hungry heart
Lay down your money and you play your part
Everybody's got a h-h-hungry heart


William Blake


To my mind the origin, or first mention of this idea is William Blake 's idea that the heart is hungry, the only 'throat' or passage through which humans may overcome the natural secrecy of others.


'A Divine Image' is a poem by William Blake from Songs of Experience, 1789

Cruelty has a Human Heart
And Jealousy a Human Face
Terror, the Human Form Divine
And Secrecy, the Human Dress

The Human Dress, is forged Iron
The Human Form, a fiery Forge.
The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.


W.B. Yeats


And finally ... this all puts me in mind of W.B. Yeats '


The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.



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