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Mar. 16th, 2014 01:16 am1350
The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants -
At Evening, it is not
At Morning, in a Truffled Hut
It stop opon a Spot
As if it tarried always
And yet it’s whole Career
Is shorter than a Snake’s Delay -
And fleeter than a Tare -
’Tis Vegetation’s Juggler -
The Germ of Alibi -
Doth like a Bubble antedate
And like a Bubble, hie -
I feel as if the Grass was pleased
To have it intermit -
This surreptitious Scion
Of Summer’s circumspect.
Had Nature any supple Face
Or could she one contemn -
Had Nature an Apostate -
That Mushroom - it is Him!
***
The bubble antedates by being more perfect than what surrounds it, I assume, hence being more like a root cause or a platonic form than the sorts of compromised manifestation likely to endure in a world of those. That prepares us for the shock of the mushroom being either the face of nature or of that which escapes from it: perfection's either at the bottom of imperfect things (Platonism) or something they obscure unless they reveal it by negation (gnosticism). The alibi bit is more amazing still - we can see her etymological meaning ("other place"), the sense that another place is possible; but we of course see this through the lens of the legal meaning, which also colors it: it's the germ of an excuse, a place we might have been but have not been. We're guilty in the sense that we're part of imperfect, in-progress, is-what-it-seems nature, and our thoughts are of and from that. But some give the seeming of having come from elsewhere - and maybe to effectively do that, of not participating in the crime of existing, they need to go away before they're understood.
"Surreptitious scion of summer's circumspect" - does this add to that effect? Could she have the grafting meaning of "scion" in mind? And does she mean a clandestine lookout kept by summer or something else looking clandestinely about during summer? Might work similarly either way: summer as a life-giving principle that's looking to escape its tether, or summer as a magic time when things are let into life, during which if you're careful you can give life to what's forbidden. Either way a different sort of life may be being grafted onto that we're accustomed to.
The grass seems pleased, though - this isn't a replacement of nature but a completion. A conspiracy of summer, morning and grass against nature itself? And why even divide the two meanings: suppose the originary principle(s) of nature are the same as these visiting, seemingly impossible ones. What's seen as apostasy's often the return to a source the apostate comes to view as having been betrayed.
In poetry "elf" doesn't evoke Legolas, but Spenser. Is she attacking time here? The mushroom evades decay, as presented. Did she know it was an agent of decay? Presumably. Might fit the "face of nature" reading - you die that I may live, my children.
The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants -
At Evening, it is not
At Morning, in a Truffled Hut
It stop opon a Spot
As if it tarried always
And yet it’s whole Career
Is shorter than a Snake’s Delay -
And fleeter than a Tare -
’Tis Vegetation’s Juggler -
The Germ of Alibi -
Doth like a Bubble antedate
And like a Bubble, hie -
I feel as if the Grass was pleased
To have it intermit -
This surreptitious Scion
Of Summer’s circumspect.
Had Nature any supple Face
Or could she one contemn -
Had Nature an Apostate -
That Mushroom - it is Him!
***
The bubble antedates by being more perfect than what surrounds it, I assume, hence being more like a root cause or a platonic form than the sorts of compromised manifestation likely to endure in a world of those. That prepares us for the shock of the mushroom being either the face of nature or of that which escapes from it: perfection's either at the bottom of imperfect things (Platonism) or something they obscure unless they reveal it by negation (gnosticism). The alibi bit is more amazing still - we can see her etymological meaning ("other place"), the sense that another place is possible; but we of course see this through the lens of the legal meaning, which also colors it: it's the germ of an excuse, a place we might have been but have not been. We're guilty in the sense that we're part of imperfect, in-progress, is-what-it-seems nature, and our thoughts are of and from that. But some give the seeming of having come from elsewhere - and maybe to effectively do that, of not participating in the crime of existing, they need to go away before they're understood.
"Surreptitious scion of summer's circumspect" - does this add to that effect? Could she have the grafting meaning of "scion" in mind? And does she mean a clandestine lookout kept by summer or something else looking clandestinely about during summer? Might work similarly either way: summer as a life-giving principle that's looking to escape its tether, or summer as a magic time when things are let into life, during which if you're careful you can give life to what's forbidden. Either way a different sort of life may be being grafted onto that we're accustomed to.
The grass seems pleased, though - this isn't a replacement of nature but a completion. A conspiracy of summer, morning and grass against nature itself? And why even divide the two meanings: suppose the originary principle(s) of nature are the same as these visiting, seemingly impossible ones. What's seen as apostasy's often the return to a source the apostate comes to view as having been betrayed.
In poetry "elf" doesn't evoke Legolas, but Spenser. Is she attacking time here? The mushroom evades decay, as presented. Did she know it was an agent of decay? Presumably. Might fit the "face of nature" reading - you die that I may live, my children.
