(Untitled) [Rome]: photo by anica, 17 May 2016
II
Ye Country Comets, that portend
No War, nor Prince’s funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the Grasses fall;
III
Ye Glo-worms, whose officious Flame
To wandring Mowers shows the way,
That in the Night have lost their aim,
And after foolish Fires do stray;
IV
Your courteous Lights in vain you wast,
Since Juliana here is come,
For She my Mind hath so displac’d
That I shall never find my home.
I
Ye Living Lamps, by whose dear light
The Nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the Summer-night,
Her matchless Songs does meditate;
Ye Living Lamps, by whose dear light
The Nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the Summer-night,
Her matchless Songs does meditate;
Visitors on a ride at Wanda City theme park: photo by Rolex Dela Pena/EPA, 30 May 2016
Ye Country Comets, that portend
No War, nor Prince’s funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the Grasses fall;
A new glass-bottom sightseeing platform on the highest peak of China’s
Shilin Gorge near Beijing extends out 108 feet and hangs 1,312 ft up
from the foot of the cliff. A woman takes a selfie on the platform.: photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters, 29 May 2016
III
Ye Glo-worms, whose officious Flame
To wandring Mowers shows the way,
That in the Night have lost their aim,
And after foolish Fires do stray;
Visitors on the platform on Shilin Gorge in Beijing, China: photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters, 29 May 2016
IV
Your courteous Lights in vain you wast,
Since Juliana here is come,
For She my Mind hath so displac’d
That I shall never find my home.
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678): The Mower to the Glo-worms, summer 1650 or summer 1651, posthumously published in Miscellaneous Poems, 1681
A couple takes a selfie on the platform: photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters, 29 May 2016
A
guard opens the entrance doors at Wanda Mall at the Wanda Cultural
Tourism City. China's largest private property developer, the Wanda
Group, is pitting its offering against Disney and its US$5.5 billion
Shanghai theme park opening next month.: photo by Mark
Schiefelbein / AP, 30 May 2016
Two
restaurant workers wait to welcome customers outside a restaurant as a
man sits and rests in a street in Beijing: photo by Nicolas Asfouri / AFP, 30 May 2016
Performers of a fantasy play greet the audience at the outdoor theme park at the 200-hectare Wanda City: photo by Rolex Dela Pena/EPA, 30 May 2016
A man views the landscape from the glass sightseeing platform 1,312 feet up: photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters, 29 May 2016
The glass sightseeing platform on Shilin Gorge from below: photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters, 29 May 2016
Performers of a fantasy play greet the audience at the outdoor theme park at the 200-hectare Wanda City: photo by Rolex Dela Pena/EPA, 30 May 2016
The platform on Shilin Gorge is seen over a ride at an amusement park in Beijing: photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters, 29 May 2016
A performer in a fantasy play is elevated by a high wire at Wanda City theme park: photo by Rolex Dela Pena/EPA, 30 May 2016
A man views the landscape from the glass sightseeing platform 1,312 feet up: photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters, 29 May 2016
The glass sightseeing platform on Shilin Gorge from below: photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters, 29 May 2016
The Magical Exocet (L'atome et le vide): photo by Cathy Lehnebach, 3 August 2015
Your courteous Lights in vain you wast
Your courteous Lights in vain you wast
Noctilucent clouds, Kuresoo bog, Soomaa National park, Estonia: photo by Martin Koitmäe, 2009
Noctilucent clouds, Kuresoo bog, Soomaa National park, Estonia: photo by Martin Koitmäe, 2009
Female Glow Worm (Lampyris noctiluca) in field grass, Princes Risborough, Bucks.: photo by Timo Newton-Syms, 2007
.Shia fighters with Iraqi security forces fire artillery during clashes with Islamic State militants near Fallujah, Iraq: photo by Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters, 30 May 2016
Shia fighters with Iraqi security forces fire artillery during clashes with Islamic State militants near Fallujah, Iraq: photo by Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters, 30 May 2016
Thanks, Tom. Great post. Marvell lives on!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Terry, on behalf of the magical Mister Marvell.
ReplyDeleteI've long been dazzled by this lovely small artisanal poem -- triumph of an amber-in-glass cabinetmakerlike lyric tradition which peaks in the work and and dies with the passing of this brilliant poet.
It manages to combine extremely particularized celebration of the local and natural with a rumour of something historical and unnatural, signalling subtly, in Marvell's unique way, toward larger matters (the fall of a kind of government and a political order and an idea about the cosmos).
It seems all but indestructible.
One can't ruin it even by imbedding it in a delirious matrix of images of the end of human civilization and sensibility as known.
These lunatic Chinese tourist-market "amusements", which amuse by numbing and stunning (further alienating the alienated and dehumanizing the post-human), appear from this distance a not too subtle form of social control, and from the evidence, they seem quite effective at that.
I thought the Jia Zhangke film World, made a dozen years ago, and staged in a Chinese theme park duplicating in scale model the major tourist venues of the globe (Eiffel Tower, Pyramids & c), the whole show running on the miserable labour of hideously exploited migrant-caste "performers", looked like arresting prophecy at the time it came out... now it begins to look more like historical realism, and all the scarier for that.
Jia Zhangke: World (2004)