“Fair flower, that dost so comely grow, / Hid in this silent, dull retreat, /Untouched thy honied blossoms blow, /Unseen thy little branches greet: /No roving foot shall crush thee here, /No busy hand provoke a tear.”
I was given “The Wild Honeysuckle” by Philip Freneau. I was immediately enthralled by the elegance of such language to present the flower in the throes and sadness of beauty and death.
When I look up the word poetry in the archive of my mind, only that poem is on the reference. “By Nature’s self in white arrayed, /She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, / And planted here the guardian shade, /And sent soft waters murmuring by; /Thus quietly thy summer goes, /Thy days declining to repose.”
At first the class was stuck in the same rhythm as old. We looked at shape poems and haikus, admiring the boredom we all found there. Then in a sudden turn, we were aimed at the great works of Shakespeare. His sonnets grab attention better than the previous attempts, yet still nothing stuck. Lastly we were each given a poem that we were supposed to respond to.
“Smit with those charms, that must decay, /I grieve to see your future doom; / They died—nor were those flowers more gay, /The flowers that did in Eden bloom; / Unpitying frosts and Autumn’s power /Shall leave no vestige of this flower.”
Many forget the poetry unit taught during their short education. I fondly recollect the collective groan that swooshed through the room as the teacher told his pupils that the next month was devoted to poetry. Words were not of interest to a middle schooler. At the time, I found the whole subject dreary. It could have been how lamely the teacher presented it or the acute focus on rhyme schemes. Even when again in high school the subject was brought forward, the collective wail of perceived pain found itself echoing. It was in that windowless room, in the dead of winter that I discovered my love.
“From morning suns and evening dews /At first thy little being came; /If nothing once, you nothing lose, /For when you die you are the same; /The space between is but an hour, /The frail duration of flower.”
This is the hidden power of poetry that is often ignored. Poems don’t have to follow a setup, or a pattern. A poem should instead be taken at face value. More than being read, it should be felt. A poet of greatness uses their art to impart us with emotion and thought that is harder and more complex in the rigor of standard writing. Will every poem be an open torrent of thought and revolution? No. If that was the case, then the majority wouldn’t be sighing at this article. But I’d bet a dollar there is a poem out there that can find a home in even the most illiterate heart.
