Mojo, The Bard, & Me

And dying eyes gleam’d forth their ashy lights,

Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights.

Narrator

Lucrece                                                Line 1,378

And here is new territory for us today. Lucrece, also known by the title The Rape Of Lucrece, is an 1,855 line poem by Will. It is, as you might expect, about the rape of a lady named Lucrece. In my compilation it is titled simply Lucrece.

So what do we have for today’s line? It’s sort of interesting, and I’ll give you a little context. Lucrece was raped in her own bed the previous night by a house guest. Her husband is away, the house guest/rapist has left and now Lucrece is wandering around the house quite understandably distressed. She’s stopped at this moment in the poem to look at a painting on the wall. It’s a painting of the battle of Troy. The description of the painting goes on for a whole page, and today’s line is at the beginning. I’m going to give you the whole seven lines of this stanza that are near the beginning of the description of the painting.      

                A thousand lamentable objects there,

                In scorn of nature, art gave lifeless life:

                Many a dry drop seem’d a weeping tear,

                Shed for the slaughter’d husband by the wife:  

                The red blood reek’t, to show the painter’s strife;

                                And dying eyes gleam’d forth their ashy lights,

                                Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights.

So you can sort of get a little better sense of the meaning of these words (at least I think you can) with the whole stanza there. Remember, this is presumably a picture of a battle with a bunch of people getting killed. And be advised that as Lucrece is looking at the painting she is not doing very well at all dealing with having been raped, and in fact is going to kill herself over it before this poem is over. All in all, it’s not a very upbeat poem. 

So it might be easy to read into today’s Totally Random lines that Will is really talking about Lucrece when he talks about those ‘dying eyes’ and their ‘ashy lights, Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights.’ Lots of interesting word choices here. Both lines have subjects described as ‘dying’. The lights are ‘ashy’. That’s an interesting adjective: ‘Ashy ligts’. What image does that conjure? I guess, followed up by the ‘dying coals’ line, we can imagine the wood in the fire after it’s burnt down and we can see a little red among the gray ashes? The flames are long gone, just a memory. The fire is still hot underneath, it’s got life, but left as is it’ll grow cold.

Well, that’s a fairly in-depth analysis of the lines, certainly more than we usually get into. But what’s it telling us? I guess it’s telling us that Lucrece is a goner. And, unfortunately, she is. More than that? I dunno. I don’t want this to get into an English class, but every once in a while I think it’s good to really get into the language. Don’t you agree?

One last note on this stanza: When reading the phrase ‘art gave lifeless life’ for some reason it made me think of that famous Keats poem Ode on a Grecian Urn. If you’re interested you can take a look at that one here. It’s only fifty lines, as opposed to 1,855 lines.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44477

It’s a very different poem, and quite different in mood, not nearly so dark like Lucrece. But there’s something in there that made me think that John Keats drew something from Lucrece. What do you think?

So that fire there's got quite a bit of life left, the flames are still red. I was trying to find a picture of ashy lights, but this is all I could come up with. And yet, it might be the perfect photo for today's stanza. This is an old photo and that's my old friend Matt there in the sweater vest. He's been gone for several years now, and yet 'in scorn of nature' the art of this photo gives 'lifeless life.'