Thoughts too deep for tears

My father has bought himself a new fountain pen, the Franz Kafka pen from the Mont Blanc writer's series. Its body is dark red (bearing an uncanny resemblance to blood) and its finishings, silver. Here's my favorite bit - a small cockroach with every detail realistically carved onto the silver nib.

To accompany the new pen are several bottles of ink from a company called Private Reserve Ink. Over the past few days, he's been trying out a shade, Naples Blue, with the Kafka pen, scribbling on recycled paper and leaving them by the computer. Today, as I waited for a printout of a style sheet for my editorial work, I read some of those scribbles.

On one sheet, he'd been writing out verses from Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood." Years ago, my father gave me a Penguin book of William Wordsworth poems, and I remember how he pointed out a favorite verse of his, the same that Natalie Wood recited in the film, Splendor in the Grass. Say what you will of it, but it was one of the saddest films I watched as a teenager. (Later, when I watched Sylvia Chang's Tempting Heart, I thought it reminded me very much of Splendor in the Grass.)

"What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind."

And here is my favorite verse, which comes after my father's.

"And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober coloring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's immortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

~ William Wordsworth

Posted by Monoceros at February 22, 2006 1:54 PM