Analysis of The House Of Dust: Part 03: 10: Letter
Conrad Potter Aiken 1889 (Savannah, Georgia) – 1973 (Savannah, Georgia)
From time to time, lifting his eyes, he sees
The soft blue starlight through the one small window,
The moon above black trees, and clouds, and Venus,—
And turns to write . . . The clock, behind ticks softly.
It is so long, indeed, since I have written,—
Two years, almost, your last is turning yellow,—
That these first words I write seem cold and strange.
Are you the man I knew, or have you altered?
Altered, of course—just as I too have altered—
And whether towards each other, or more apart,
We cannot say . . . I've just re-read your letter—
Not through forgetfulness, but more for pleasure—
Pondering much on all you say in it
Of mystic consciousness—divine conversion—
The sense of oneness with the infinite,—
Faith in the world, its beauty, and its purpose . . .
Well, you believe one must have faith, in some sort,
If one's to talk through this dark world contented.
But is the world so dark? Or is it rather
Our own brute minds,—in which we hurry, trembling,
Through streets as yet unlighted? This, I think.
You have been always, let me say, "romantic,"—
Eager for color, for beauty, soon discontented
With a world of dust and stones and flesh too ailing:
Even before the question grew to problem
And drove you bickering into metaphysics,
You met on lower planes the same great dragon,
Seeking release, some fleeting satisfaction,
In strange aesthetics . . . You tried, as I remember,
One after one, strange cults, and some, too, morbid,
The cruder first, more violent sensations,
Gorgeously carnal things, conceived and acted
With splendid animal thirst . . . Then, by degrees,—
Savoring all more delicate gradations
In all that hue and tone may play on flesh,
Or thought on brain,—you passed, if I may say so,
From red and scarlet through morbid greens to mauve.
Let us regard ourselves, you used to say,
As instruments of music, whereon our lives
Will play as we desire: and let us yield
These subtle bodies and subtler brains and nerves
To all experience plays . . . And so you went
From subtle tune to subtler, each heard once,
Twice or thrice at the most, tiring of each;
And closing one by one your doors, drew in
Slowly, through darkening labyrinths of feeling,
Towards the central chamber . . . Which now you've reached.
What, then's, the secret of this ultimate chamber—
Or innermost, rather? If I see it clearly
It is the last, and cunningest, resort
Of one who has found this world of dust and flesh,—
This world of lamentations, death, injustice,
Sickness, humiliation, slow defeat,
Bareness, and ugliness, and iteration,—
Too meaningless; or, if it has a meaning,
Too tiresomely insistent on one meaning:
Futility . . . This world, I hear you saying,—
With lifted chin, and arm in outflung gesture,
Coldly imperious,—this transient world,
What has it then to give, if not containing
Deep hints of nobler worlds? We know its beauties,—
Momentary and trivial for the most part,
Perceived through flesh, passing like flesh away,—
And know how much outweighed they are by darkness.
We are like searchers in a house of darkness,
A house of dust; we creep with little lanterns,
Throwing our tremulous arcs of light at random,
Now here, now there, seeing a plane, an angle,
An edge, a curve, a wall, a broken stairway
Leading to who knows what; but never seeing
The whole at once . . . We grope our way a little,
And then grow tired. No matter what we touch,
Dust is the answer—dust: dust everywhere.
If this were all—what were the use, you ask?
But this is not: for why should we be seeking,
Why should we bring this need to seek for beauty,
To lift our minds, if there were only dust?
This is the central chamber you have come to:
Turning your back to the world, until you came
To this deep room, and looked through rose-stained windows,
And saw the hues of the world so sweetly changed.
Well, in a measure, so only do we all.
I am not sure that you can be refuted.
At the very last we all put faith in something,—
You in this ghost that animates your world,
This ethical ghost,—and I, you'll say, in reason,—
Or sensuous beauty,—or in my secret self . . .
Though as for that you put your faith in these,
As much as I do—and then, forsaking reason,—
Ascending, you would say, to intuition,—
You predicate this ghost of yours, as well.
Of course, you might have argued,—and you
Scheme | ABCD EBXFFGHH XEXCIJHKX XLKMXEEHJNJAN OBXPXXXXXXXKX HDIOXXEKK KHQKAGPCCXMRPKRXXXKDXSXXX XLKQEXAEEXS |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111101111 0111101110 01011101010 01110101110 11110111110 1111111010 1111111101 11011111110 10111111110 010011101101 11011111110 11111110 1001111101 11010001010 0111010100 10011100110 11011111011 11111111010 11011111110 1011101110100 11111111 1111111010 101101101010 101110101110 10010101110 01110001010 11110101110 1001110010 010101111010 11011101110 0111100010 110101010 11010011101 10011100010 0111011111 11111111111 11010110111 11010011111 11001101101 11110100111 110100100101 11010010111 11011100111 1111011011 0101111110 1011001110 01010101111 110101110010 11010111110 11010101 11111111101 11111010 100010101 1010001 11001111010 110101110 01001111110 1101010110 1001001101 11111111010 11110111110 10001001011 0111101101 01110111110 11110001110 01111111010 1010100111110 11111001110 1101010101 10111111010 011111101010 01110110111 110101110 1101100111 11111111110 11111111110 11101110101 11010101111 10111010111 11110111110 01011011101 10010110111 11111111010 101011111010 1011110011 110010111010 110010101101 1111111101 111110101010 0101111010 110111111 111111001 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 4,278 |
Words | 766 |
Sentences | 51 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 8, 9, 13, 13, 9, 25, 11 |
Lines Amount | 92 |
Letters per line (avg) | 36 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 412 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 98 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 3:51 min read
- 103 Views
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"The House Of Dust: Part 03: 10: Letter" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/7075/the-house-of-dust%3A-part-03%3A-10%3A-letter>.
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