Sam Reads Poetry

An upper chamber in a darkened house,
Where, ere his footsteps reached ripe manhood’s brink,
Terror and anguish were his cup to drink;
I cannot rid the thought, nor hold it close
But dimly dream upon that man alone:
Now though the autumn clouds most softly pass,
The cricket chides beneath the doorstep stone,
And greener than the season grows the grass.
Nor can I drop my lids nor shade my brows,
But there he stands beside the lifted sash;
And with a swooning of the heart, I think
Where the black shingles slope to meet the boughs,
And – shattered on the roof like smallest snows –
The tiny petals of the mountain-ash.

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

Why I like it:

I think that for people who decide to dedicate themselves to an art, grief is an occupational hazard. We look at finished poems with what they managed to capture from real life – “imaginary gardens with real toads in them” – and see the real toads in it, but not the artist’s toil over those toads. For every real one, there were probably 30 that didn’t croak. The artist is by necessity someone who fails more than they succeed, and all that time away from real toads leaves you with a longing for life. A longing for toads that actually croak, and a desire to throw down the pencil and go catch a real one and call that a poem.

This poem is full of longing for life. Maybe even a longing for self: we don’t know who the grief-stricken man in the window is, but we sense the speaker’s desire to “hold [him] close”. The man is close to manhood, but isn’t quite there, he’s close to the grass, but removed by the height of his window. He sees the clouds, but can’t touch those either. Even the house feels distant from the man. All we see of the house is its darkness and a window up off the ground. I think that’s kind of a breathtaking metaphor for grief – being caught in a window, unable to touch the world and unable to exist in the house. The poem seems to say that grief is the experience of almost touching, and being unable to close the gap or pull away.

The only real touching in this poem is “where the black shingles slop to meet the boughs,” and there is something so crushing in that image. I don’t know if it’s because the man can see this touching but not experience it, or because what we see here is an incredibly baren form of relief from that longing – man is touching nature by extension of the black shingles of his house. It’s as though to say that grief is never complete; it’s never entirely not-touching – somewhere there will be a little bit of touching, but knowing that it’s there doesn’t provide relief from despair – it deepens it. 

And I love (and hate) that the cricket is chiding this grief-stricken man. Not only is “chide” phonetically a lovely word to give to a cricket, but the chiding of a cricket has to be so soft… It seems to say, softly: “you should know better than to feel this way. Look – the grass is incredibly green. The clouds pass softly. The world is soft and beautiful.” So often the real bite from grief comes from ourselves; that feeling that we’re wrong to feel grief.

A note on form:

Key:
A = Full rhyme
a = Near rhyme
F (e) = Full rhyme on F, near rhyme on E


1     An upper chamber in a darkened house,                                   A
2     Where, ere his footsteps reached ripe manhood’s brink,       B
3     Terror and anguish were his cup to drink;                                 B
4     I cannot rid the thought, nor hold it close                                 a (C)
5     But dimly dream upon that man alone:                                     D
6     Now though the autumn clouds most softly pass,                  E
7     The cricket chides beneath the doorstep stone,                       D
8     And greener than the season grows the grass.                           E
9     Nor can I drop my lids nor shade my brows,                            A
10   But there he stands beside the lifted sash;                                  F (e)
11   And with a swooning of the heart, I think                                B 
12   Where the black shingles slope to meet the boughs,               A 
13   And – shattered on the roof like smallest snows –                  a (C)
14   The tiny petals of the mountain-ash.                                          F  (e)

The poem uses full, masculine rhymes and appears to be a fairly regular Italian sonnet (ABBA) in the first 4 lines, then becomes suddenly English in the rhyme scheme (CDCD) of the second stanza before becoming something of a mess in the final 6 lines. Throughout, the poem plays with and defies the readers expectations for the rhyme scheme of a sonnet, and the effect is that it deftly enacts the grief that it describes. BEAR WITH ME, this might get tedious (and/or tenuous):

I love that “close” in the fourth line is a near (house/close) rather than an full (house/mouse) rhyme with the first line. The slight dissonance seems to enact musically the speaker’s inability to hold this thought close, and leaves an unresolved note lingering in the poem’s music. The following 4 lines are perfect masculine rhymes (DEDE) that, were the previous stanza also an English quatrain, would feel perfectly regular here, but coming after an Italian quatrain, they change the rhythm beneath us, and even though this new rhythm is very regular, there is a sense of it being slightly off. Meanwhile, “greener than the season grows the grass.” Something is right, but wrong.

Suddenly, in the 9th line, we have an full rhyme with the first line of the poem, just as the speaker is telling us that as soon as he closes his eyes or shades his brow this image reappears out of nowhere. 

The rhyme in line 10 sounds like it could be a near E rhyme, but might also anticipate a rhyme of its own (F), and throws more unresolved music into the mix. Then, again out of nowhere, an full B rhyme with a swooning of the heart. Viscerally, both the man and the poem are experiencing these resurgences. 

12th line, another full rhyme on A, and finally that image of touching, some resolution to this poems desire to touch, but not quite the touching it wants; resolution to some music, but absolutely out of place, and also thrown off by the lines rhythm, which takes an otherwise nearly perfectly balanced sonnet in iambic pentameter and throws in the only real disruption to the meter, tightening it to the ear:

–            –     /        /       –    /        –   /        –      / 
Where the black shingles slope to meet the boughs

13th line, a near A rhyme that brings “boughs” back to mind, but even more so “close,” with which it’s a perfect rhyme – 10 syllables from the end of the poem, and this chilling thought again of not quite being able to touch. 

At this point, the reader might anticipate a B rhyme to make the final four lines (BAAB), but instead the poem lifts the rhyme from the 10th line, “sash” with such an unexpected lightness that, for me, there is a heady, swooning, anti-gravity feeling to this final, full resolution to the poems music. 

I wish I could explain why that music feels so perfect for the poem’s theme, and for the emotions that the man in the window is experiencing, but it has that quality, especially that last rhyme with its headiness, that tells me “yes, grief sounds like this,” and I can’t say why.