The Speck in Space
A poetry Anthology
Heaven-Haven
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
In Heaven-Haven, Hopkins not only prays for a day when he can
be free of the physical stresses of the world, but also the emotional
pains. Life is filled with turbulent storms of anger and despair.
Hopkins sees Heaven (death) as an escape from the harsh "sharp
and sided" reality of life. Life to Hopkins is a sea. One
moment a man is rich and happy and the next fate has thrown him
a curveball and sent him to the poorhouse. There is no escaping
the acrid aspects of life, so Hopkins turns to death.
Throughout the World
Throughout the world, if it were sought,
Fair words enough a man shall find:
They be good cheap, they cost right nought,
Their substance is but only wind:
But well to say and so to mean,
That sweet accord is seldom seen.
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
Wyatt is sharply criticizing society. Words are free for anyone
to use and something complimentary or pleasant is so easy to say,
yet "seldom" are such words heard. In Wyatt's eyes people
are bitter and do not take the time to praise ones fellow person.
Wyatt believes that words are valuable and powerful yet ironically
are nothing but air. Why are people so harsh when being polite
costs nothing more?
Space Oddity
Ground Control to Major Tom x2
"Take your protein pills and put your helmet on"
Ground Control to Major Tom
"Commencing countdown engines on Check ignition and
may gods love be with you"
This is Ground Control to Major Tom
"you have really made the grade and the papers want
to know who judge you where,
now its time to leave the capsule if you dare"
This is Major Tom to Ground Control
"I am stepping through the door and I am floating
in the most of peculiar way
and the stars look very different today. For here am I
sitting in a tin can,
far above the world, planet earth is blue and their is
nothing I can do….. Though I am across a 100,000 miles, I
am feeling very skilled and I think my spaceship knows which way
to go. Tell my wife I love her very much."
[G.C.] "She knows"
Ground Control to Major Tom "Your circuits dead their
is something wrong.
Can you here me Major Tom ?" (x3)
[Major Tom] "Here am I floating in a tin can far
above the world
planet Earth is blue and their is nothing I can do."
David Bowie
David Bowie captures the futility and insignificance of man. Major
Tom's epic journey into space has really produced nothing. When
Major Tom looks out on the Earth he feels "skilled"
and powerful, even though he is a hundred thousand miles away
from Earth and powerless to do anything but "float in a tin
can." Then at the peek of Major Tom's accomplishment his
circuits go dead and he is stuck in space. The once "powerful"
Major Tom is now stuck a hundred thousand miles away from Earth
with no way of returning. David Bowie realizes the insignificance
of man in the Universe and expresses that feeling in this song.
The futility which Major Tom suffers from is shared by all humankind.
Grand is the Seen
Grand is the seen, the light to me - grand are the sky
and the stars,
Grand is the Earth, and grand are lasting time and space,
and Grand their laws, so multiform, so puzzling, evolutionary;
But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending,
endowing all those,
Lighting the light, the sky and the stars, delving the
Earth, sailing the sea,
(What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul?
Of what amount without thee?)
More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul!
More multiform far - more lasting thou than they.
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman begins by expressing his awe of natures deepest mysteries
such as "lasting time and space." This reflection leads
him to be far more perplexed and mystifies by something else :
his mind and soul. His self-conscious, he realizes gives the stars
and the sky significance. His "unseen soul" allows him
to comprehend and appreciate the true scope and magnitude of the
Universe. The gift of man is that "unseen soul." That
which separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.
Bright Star!
Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art
Bright star! Would I were steadfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round Earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors -
No - yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel forever its soft fall and swell,
Awake forever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever - or else swoon to death.
John Keats
Here to in this poem is mans insignificance portrayed. The bright
star, lit through the ages, is not affected by the movement of
the seas, the tides of storms, nor the acts of man. The love the
man in the poem expresses for this woman is vacillating and exits
for just a brief time in the eyes of the star. The man in the
poem wants to be as steadfast as the star; to forever be able
to hear her sweet breath and feel her "ripening breast."
His wish is to live forever, to take in these wonders, or die.
Vacuum
What makes space the final frontier?
A vast emptiness can offer us
Giant boulders and fiery furnaces
do not hand out the meaning of life
they do not cure the cancer in man
nor do they bring an end to war
the knowing eye looks inward
looks for the answers where answers are found
it does not run into a vacuum for
substance
The 3rd rock
The "Undiscovered Planet"