Time is a common theme in poems. Its immutable presence is able to at once bring one poem to lament lost time while another poem to beatify it because of the love they had for another person. The three poems this essay will discuss are A.E. Houseman’s To An Athlete Dying Young, Gwendolyn Brooks’ We Real Cool, and Edmund Spenser’s One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Sand. Each poem deals with time, but more specifically, each poem deals with change, and the impermanence of living.
The impermanence of living is oxymoronic: it requires to hold two opposing beliefs at the same time. It requires to at once believe that change is part of the essential fabric of life but that even change, changes. This is very present in these three poems. In Houseman’s case, the theme of time fleeting and change as permanent is used as a device with the manifestation of glory. Houseman states that “From fields where glory does not stay/And early though the laurel grows/It withers quicker than the rose” (Houseman line 10-12). Change here is referring to more than one thing: Housemen speaks about time, youth, glory, and athletic prowess all being fleeting. Thus, change is breed into the very fabric of youth; the subject of Houseman’s poem. This is supported by such lines as, “And the name died before the man” (Houseman line 20) which refers to glory; the idiom of “name” in the poem means reputation of celebrity status and how that reputation dies before the mortal man’s death who made the name famous for a short time. Houseman does this theme of change more service in the lines, “So set, before its echoes fade/The fleet foot on the sill of shade” (Houseman lines 21-22). Here the reader may see reference to change in Houseman’s choice of words such as “echoes fade” and “fleet foot”. Each refers to time or change in an oblique manner. Even “shade” is something that can be referenced to as dealing with time and change as shade progresses throughout the course of the day and is never stagnant. Echoes here may mean the echoes of glory, and “fleet foot” references the athlete’s prowess and glory; time is fleeting, nothing stays the same except change.
Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem We Real Cool also deals with change and youth’s impermanence. In this poem Brooks builds up the lives of her subject by denoting their living tasks such as “We/Jazz June” (Brooks lines 5-6), “We/Lurk late” (Brooks lines 2-3) and “We/Sing sin” (Brooks lines 3-4). Each of these lines establishes a perimeter of living. The things that these youth accomplish in their lives are in equal amounts fun, dangerous, and thrilling. This can be denoted in Brooks’ tone. The poem is entitled We Real Cool which states to the reader the subjects feeling of dominance, ego, and power over all things. This establishment of this world is necessary-this fine tuning of youth and its ventures-in order for the final line to have a hard-hitting impact; “We/Die soon” (Brooks lines 7-8). This is a definite reference to change, to the impermanence of living, of youth, of all of the elements and things that these subjects represented in these few terse but vivid lines. This final line represents how time is fleeting, how the enjoyment of life, just like the laurels in Houseman’s poem, are temporary. Emotions, accomplishments, the complete and utter state of being that inhabits a person’s soul while they’re alive becomes nil, as death, which represents change, captures and ends such things. Even in Brooks’ last word, “soon” she’s speaking to time, as soon and later are both elements of the same thing. She’s saying that these things of enjoyment are fleeting. Once again, like Houseman all things are ending and becoming at one and the same time. Life is changing, and death is a part of that change.
Edmund Spenser’s poem One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Sand deals with fleeting moments as well; “One day I wrote her name upon the sand/But came the waves and washed it away” (Spenser lines 1-2). Here the poem presents an elemental force, “waves,” and their effect upon a manmade structure “her name”. This is representational of love. Love is a name in the sand that’s present for a moment until waves (i.e. death) washes it away). It is interesting to note that the theme of time/change is so closely related to death in each of these poems. Death is the ultimate change; it’s a physical change manifested through metaphysical understanding. Spenser is different than the other poets in that he believes or puts faith in names, glory, abstract feelings like love; “To die in dust, but you shall live in fame” (Spenser line 10). Spenser goes on to state that “Where, when as Death shall all the world subdue/ Our love shall live, and later life renew” (Spenser lines 13-14). Spenser rejects this idea of death taming, owning, or destroying his love with this person, but the fact remains that death quits their love in this world (Spenser speaks of heaven) and therefore change is the only thing that is constant.
Each of these poets, through these particular poems, speaks toward the impermanence of living, glory, and of love. Change wiped out such vanities and laurel leaves and left the subject completely without. This is the common thread among each of these poems; the subject experiences the complete and utter devastating power of the end of things they once cherished. Change destroyed their happy lives, their coolness, their love. Here is the only permanent thing: change/death/time and the interplay between these three elements, they are, inside the world of these poems, almost interchangeable.
