I love this poem. (“the sympathy in their vast shy hearts” … I love that line) It’s by DH Lawrence, and it’s called “The Elephant is Slow to Mate”.
The Elephant is Slow to Mate
The elephant, the huge old beast,
is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste
they wait
for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts
slowly, slowly to rouse
as they loiter along the river-beds
and drink and browse
and dash in panic through the brake
of forest with the herd,
and sleep in massive silence, and wake
together, without a word.
So slowly the great hot elephant hearts
grow full of desire,
and the great beasts mate in secret at last,
hiding their fire.
Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts
so they know at last
how to wait for the loneliest of feasts
for the full repast.
They do not snatch, they do not tear;
their massive blood
moves as the moon-tides, near, more near
till they touch in flood.
Eeek – cannot disagree more with you (most unusually).
Excruciatingly sentimental anthropomorphism salted with tons of sleepy synonymns for “big”.
I’d much prefer Lawrence writing about being sat on by an elephant.
To a large extent the anthropomorphism is the point of many (if not all) of Lawrence’s animal poems. He uses this technique most of the time as a way of talking about how humans are or how they should be, and in this case the meaning of the poem is fairly clear, namely, that human sexuality should be like what he imagines elephant sexuality to be, slow like the tides.
That comment is intended as descriptive rather than evaluative. If you don’t like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing that you won’t like. My own view is that this anthropomorphism technique is like the pathetic fallacy in that sometimes it generates extremely good poetry and sometimes it generates extremely bad poetry, as well as everything in between.
Among Lawrence’s work, the example of this technique that moves me most powerfully comes from his “Tortoise Shout” sequence in which the tortoise becomes an emblem of our entrapment in the agonies of a human sexuality that is inadequate to who we truly are. I really need to write a commentary on that sequence, if I ever get around to finishing my commentaries on Wordsworth and Shelley that I’ve been postponing forever.
In terms of being an animal allegory, I see a resemblance to T.S. Eliot’s The Hippopotamus, which is his searing indictment of the lukewarm church.
Here’s a snip:
The hippopotamus’s day
Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts;
God works in a mysterious way —
The Church can sleep and feed at once.
Bryan,
I’m afraid I always found “Tortoise Shout” even more toe-curling. My problem is when the anthropomorphism buries the contemplated object so deeply beneath the poet’s fanciful conjecture, you end up hardly glimpsing anything truthful about the orginal object. Not sure it’s a problem inherent with this particular genre at all, nor with many of the rest of Lawrence’s related and gorgeous poems (apart from Tortoise); it’s just when the poet’s eye wanders off towards his navel, as it were. (Whereas Eliot’s Hippo, which Laura posted above – and I didn’t know – is simply completely, knowingly naughty and barbed and very funny).
Maybe I’m saying the challenge of anthromorphism is to rise above the self-set challenge, and not just riff ponderingly on your One Good Idea (that elephants are, gosh, big and slow and kinda awesome).
Jody,
Very interesting points. You’re probably aware that in the “Tortoise Shout” sequence Lawrence was reworking both a theme and imagery that he lifted from Melville. The tortoise imagery, and the reading of metaphysical concerns into tortoises, comes from Melville’s short story “The Encantadas”, whereas the theme of sexuality as torment, a sign of our entrapment in a fallen world, comes from Melville’s poem “After the Pleasure Party”:
“What Cosmic jest or Anarch blunder
The human integral clove asunder
And shied the fractions through life’s gate.”
Lawrence’s technique is, admittedly, straightforwardly allegorical, every bit as much as John Bunyan, and I would be the last to say that his use of allegory is anywhere near as subtle as it could be. It is fascinating to contrast Lawrence’s revision of Melville’s tortoises with that of a much more subtle and elliptical poet, Hart Crane:
“The willows carried a slow sound,
A sarabande the wind moved on the mead.
I could never remember
That seething, steady leveling of the marshes
Till age had brought me to the sea.
Flags, weeds. And remembrance of steep alcoves
Where cypresses shared the noon’s
Tyranny; they drew me into hades almost.
And mammoth turtles climbing up sulphur dreams
Yielded, while sun-silt rippled them
Asunder…”
(from “Repose of Rivers”)
Even so, I personally would not go as far as you seem to in condemning Lawrence’s allegorical technique entirely, although I can appreciate your preference for a poet disciplining herself to see what is, rather than reading human meanings into external things. One of my very favorite poets, Wallace Stevens, urges the same discipline.
“One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves…”
I’ll let you know when I’ve posted my commentary on Lawrence’s “Tortoise” poems, because I would be interested in carrying the discussion further with you.