This publish was written by Aaron Eastley, a Humanities Middle school fellow.
On a latest analysis journey, I discovered myself in a spot even quieter than the library archives I’ve typically visited. I used to be on Cranberry Island off the coast of Maine, following within the footsteps of Leslie Norris, a Welsh poet I’m writing a biography about. Norris taught at BYU from 1983 to 2003. On a number of events within the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties, he visited Cranberry on the invitation of his associates Charles and Jeanie Wadsworth: Boston-based artists who had constructed a house on the island with their very own arms in Nineteen Sixties and later added a separate storage with a small upstairs carriage home for visitors.
On the invitation of the Wadsworth’s daughter, Laurie, I stayed for a pair days within the carriage home as I accessed a file cupboard stuffed with letters stored by the household, in addition to the native archives of the Nice Cranberry Island Historic Society. I additionally explored locations on the island that featured in Norris’s assortment Islands Off Maine. I bought haul of letters and helpful contextual materials from the journey, however what has lingered in my thoughts is the silence I discovered.
The silence inside within the remoted carriage home was as profound as any I’ve ever skilled. It was noticeably silent, and upon listening, completely silent. A lot in order that stepping out the again door my first night, I used to be struck by the lapping of waves on the seashore 100 yards or extra away. I additionally slowly grew to become conscious of one other sound, barely audible however seemingly endless.
As if from a fantastic distance, there floated on the air the ghostly ringing of bells. Not sure at first what I used to be listening to, I found upon inquiry that bells are set atop buoys bobbing within the water all alongside the shoreline. When the wind and waves decide up, these bells clang loud warning to approaching boats. However even on calm days their faintly echoing music by no means solely fades away. The tolling, I shortly related, had discovered its manner into the ultimate stanzas of Norris’s assortment:
water bell
sea’s angelus
anchored fringe of rock
and steep of water
swing for us
audible hanging wave
easy component
mouth of the spherical tide
storm’s voice
swing for us
in our leaving
water tongue
clapper and protected hammer
sea’s elegy and sound
rejoice our passing
swing for us.
A “sea’s angelus,” rung not by human arms, however by the wind and waves, offers an impression of Nature itself paying homage to the ephemeral methods of all dwelling issues. Norris poignantly contemplates this earlier within the assortment, when he describes a tiny native burial floor: simply “twelve low headstones among the many spruce”.
“Right here lie the previous,” the poet notes, observing the grave of an aged couple who died inside a yr of one another: Thomas Manchester, aged “92 yrs 3 mos” and Hannah, his spouse, aged “87 yrs, 5 mos.” However right here, too, is a marker for Gilman Stanley, “a boy” who “sailed east and north / Out of Cranberry, previous Nova Scotia” and got here on June 16, 1861, to “Belle Isle.” There, the poet recounts, “the boy directly went / Down. The ocean took him.” The stone lists Gilman’s age at dying as “16 yrs, 8 mos, 28 dys.” So, in January 1861, Thomas, oldest of all, died first. Then Gilman, the youngest, drowned in June, and at last Hannah handed in November. Subsequent to the empty grave of Gilman and the shared grave of Thomas and Hannah is the ultimate resting place of a lady named Irene Stanley, who joined them in dying a long time later, in 1889.
As I in contrast the names on the headstones with info gathered from data preserved by the Historic Society, I noticed that the total story was bigger and extra carefully fitted to Norris’s imaginative and prescient of cyclical life and tragic loss than even he had realized. Norris instructed a pal that Islands Off Maine was “a daybreak to nightfall poem, a life to dying poem, a ‘native’ and ‘visiting’ poem, a gathering and parting poem, all these.” Norris noticed this within the distinction of young and old within the secluded graveyard not two minutes’ stroll from the carriage home door. However probably the most poignant determine within the cemetery, to me, is Irene, who my analysis revealed had been taken in by Thomas and Hannah when she was 9 years previous, changing into their daughter after her personal mom died. Gilman, I discovered, was Irene’s son. In the midst of her life, at age 54, Irene misplaced in fast succession a father, a son, and a mom. I’m haunted by this triangle of seemingly indiscriminate endings—as Irene will need to have been. “Swing for us / in our leaving,” certainly.
Norris was from his boyhood notably attuned to the poignancy of loss. I take into account the deep emotions of empathy that come to me as I learn Norris’s work one of many biggest items in my life. However a blessed counterpart to this reward are his humble expressions of hope. Many of those are present in his poems and tales about Christmas. Although written ostensibly for kids, I discover their matter-of-fact miracles splendidly encouraging. I’ll share two of my favourite examples.
Norris’s story Albert and the Angels is all about loss. Within the story, we meet a boy, Albert, and his little canine, Lucille, whose voice solely Albert can hear. Albert learns from his mom one Christmas that the factor she needs for many on the earth is a present that she misplaced way back: a small gold medallion on a fragile gold chain. Albert units out to exchange this treasure, however his finest efforts repeatedly fail. He fails to earn something like sufficient cash to purchase such a present, and the tawdry substitute he does safe, he then loses. His setbacks ring with the pressure of metaphor. Then comes the miracle. As Albert heads out in darkness the evening earlier than Christmas to attempt to discover what he has misplaced, he’s met by a jovial however businesslike boy not a lot older than himself. The boy leads Albert to a form of storehouse of all of the misplaced treasures on this world, the place he’s given the very medallion his mom as soon as misplaced. His information, he discovers, is likely one of the angels. The redeeming message is obvious: although issues which can be pricey to us could appear irredeemably misplaced, maybe they aren’t. They might be cherished by us once more if we don’t lose hope.
It’s Christ and His resurrection and atonement that in the end make this actual. His delivery introduced with it hope for deliverance, even from life’s cruelest sorrows—such because the grief Irene will need to have felt in 1861. Extra instantly, the affect of Christ and His teachings can deliver peace into our lives. Jesus, bringer of peace, is heralded in maybe my favourite of all Norris’s poems: his deceptively easy providing, “The Steady Cat.” This poem, together with a number of different Norris Christmas poems, focuses on the animals that witnessed Christ’s delivery. Norris writes:
I’m a Steady Cat, a working cat,
I clear the place of vermin.
The cat on the inn,
Is rarely skinny
However I’m by no means fats.
However I don’t complain of that.
I’m lithe and glossy and intelligent.
The mice I chase
Concerning the place
For I’m a Steady Cat.
However tonight, nicely issues are completely different.
I make the small mice welcome.
I ask all of them
To pay a name
And maintain my claws in velvet.
Sparrows out of the climate,
The delicate, roo-cooing pigeons,
These flying bands
Are all my associates,
We’re completely happy collectively.
All reside issues beneath this roof,
All birds, beasts and bugs,
We glance with pleasure
At Mary’s Boy,
Are protected in His love.
Neither as shy because the “Mice within the Hay” nor as haughty because the “Camels of the Kings,” the steady cat is a practical type, dispassionate however accustomed to killing. It’s peculiar for him to chase mice and catch birds. How refreshing, then, to appreciate that “tonight, nicely issues are completely different.” In Christ’s presence the lion can lie down with the lamb. We—all of us—are protected in His love.
