Vacillation

A poet wavers between body and soul, joy and remorse, faith and art.

Eight short sections swing between opposites, as the title promises. The first asks what joy can be, if life runs between extremes until death destroys them. The second pictures a tree half flame and half green leaf, and the man who hangs between them knowing no grief. The third gives worldly advice, then urges preparation for death and a test for every work: whether it is fit for men who go laughing to the tomb. The fourth recalls a moment in a London shop, when he was past fifty and his body blazed with happiness for twenty minutes. The fifth swings back to the weight of remorse. The sixth has an ancient lord and a conqueror both crying that all things must pass away. In the seventh, Soul and Heart argue: the Soul offers the purifying fire of salvation; the Heart asks what theme a singer would have then. The last section courteously dismisses the Catholic writer Von Hügel. The poet admires the saints and their miracles, but will follow Homer and his unchristened heart.

Line by line

1. Lines 1 to 10What is joy

   Man runs his course between extremes until a "brand, or flaming breath" destroys all such opposites, day and night alike. The body calls that ending death and the heart calls it remorse. The section ends by asking what joy can be, if they are right.

2. Lines 11 to 18The burning tree

   A tree is half glittering flame and half green, dew-wet leaf, each half consuming and renewing the other. The man who hangs the image of Attis between the fury and the leaf may not understand what he knows, but he knows no grief: holding both extremes brings a kind of peace.

3. Lines 19 to 26Worldly maxims

   Get what gold and silver you can, satisfy ambition, fill the days with sunlight. But remember some hard truths: women love idle men though their children need money, and no man ever had enough of children's gratitude or a woman's love.

4. Lines 27 to 34Laughing to the tomb

   No longer caught in forgetfulness, begin at forty to prepare for death. Judge every work of mind, faith or hand by that thought, and dismiss as wasted breath whatever is not fit for men who go "Proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb".

5. Lines 35 to 44Twenty minutes of happiness

   With his fiftieth year behind him, he sat alone in a busy London shop with a book and an empty cup. Gazing at the street, his body suddenly blazed, and for twenty minutes or so he felt such happiness that he was blessed and could bless others.

6. Lines 45 to 56Responsibility weighs

   The swing back is immediate. Summer sun and winter moonlight are lovely, but he cannot look at them, because responsibility weighs him down. Things said and done long ago, and things he failed to say or do, come back every day to appal his conscience or his vanity.

7. Lines 57 to 66Let all things pass

   An ancient Chinese lord, smelling new-mown hay, and a conqueror halting his army where Babylon or Nineveh once stood, both cry that all things must pass away. Wisdom and victory end in the same acceptance of loss.

8. Lines 67 to 71The meaning of song

   The branches of night and day, where the gaudy moon hangs, spring from man's blood-soaked heart. Asked what all song means, the refrain answers once more: let all things pass away. Poetry itself is made from, and sings of, what perishes.

9. Lines 72 to 77Soul and Heart

   Soul and Heart argue in turn. The Soul urges reality and the purifying coal of Isaiah; the Heart asks what a born singer would do without a theme, and fears being struck dumb by that fire. Its last question is the clincher, asking what theme Homer ever had but original sin.

10. Lines 78 to 84Von Hügel and the saints

    He asks whether he must part from Von Hügel, though they are alike in accepting the miracles of saints. The undecayed, healing body of Saint Teresa is honoured, and he wonders whether the same arts once preserved Pharaoh's mummies.

11. Lines 85 to 89Homer is my example

    He could find relief in becoming a Christian and choosing a comforting belief, but that would be to play a predestined part. Homer and his unchristened heart are his example. Recalling Samson's riddle of the lion and the honeycomb, he sends Von Hügel away, with blessings.

Themes

Context

The poem was collected in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1933). It is a companion to "A Dialogue of Self and Soul" in the same book, which also stages an argument between the claims of the soul and the claims of ordinary, sinful life, and also ends by choosing life.

Several allusions need explaining. Attis was a god of vegetation whose image was hung on a sacred pine in his festival. Isaiah's coal comes from the Bible, where an angel purges the prophet's lips with a burning coal. Baron Friedrich von Hügel was a Catholic writer on mysticism; Saint Teresa of Ávila's body was said to have remained uncorrupted in its tomb. The lion and the honeycomb recall Samson's riddle: out of the strong came forth sweetness.

Form

Eight numbered sections in different forms: short lines with interlaced rhymes, two sections of ottava rima, a lyric in tetrameter, a twelve-line section, three short stanzas each ending on the same refrain, three rhymed couplets of dialogue, and long rhymed couplets to close. The shifting forms act out the vacillation of the title.