Stormcock in elder

Stormcock in Elder

Ruth Pitter

Ruth Pitter

Ruth Pitter (1897 - February 29, 1992) was a British poet. She was the first woman ever to receive the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (in 1955), and was appointed a Commander of the British Empire in 1979 to honour her many contributions to English literature. In 1974 she was named a Companion of Literature, the highest honour given by the Royal Society of Literature

Stormcock in Elder

Also known as 'Mistle Thrush' It gets its country name 'stormcock' because it sings in all weathers. There's something about its clear, tumbling song that puts one in mind of the peace and clarity that comes after a heavy spring rain shower (allpoetry.com/RuthPitter)

Elder(berry)

 a common shrub with black fruit or a small tree of Europe and Asia; fruit used for wines and jellies

Form

A seven stanza poem which is separated into sets of six lines, or sestets.

Each of these sestets follows a specific and structured rhyme scheme. The lines of each sestet follows a pattern of ababcc.

The repetitive, controlled form of this poem is reassuring as it offers a logic and understandable pattern to life. The unchanging pattern is also reassuring because the reader can predict upcoming patterns and so feels ‘at home’ in the work.

Stanza one

The idea of a “hermitage” (the dwelling of a hermit, especially when small and remote) is unsettling, especially when coupled with the words ‘dark’ and ‘aloof from the world’s sight and the world’s sound,’ as the reader feels he is in the company of an isolated speaker who has sought refuge away from the world.

Stranger still, is that the speaker has sought a confined space (limited by an old roof, a small door, with only enough space to “grope.”

Then, the reader understands that from this dark, small, silent, and isolated space the speaker has found not bread but “celestial food instead.”

The speaker is thus positioned in a religious context, perhaps looking for religious contact through isolation and deprivation.

This stanza ends with a (:) colon, and so the poem opens up as a definition of “celestial food.”

Note:

“The word celestial is primarily used to describe things that have to do with the heavens such as angels, spirits, stars and planets. It does not come from words meaning God or soul though, but from the Latin word for sky caelestis, which also gave rise to the word ceiling. So really, all you have to do is look up and you'll remember what celestial means — whether you're inside or outside” https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/celestial

Also, “celestial” - of or from the sky or outside this world: The moon is a celestial body. (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/celestial).

The attentive reader thus realises that the « celestial food » is coming from the skies, as a bird would.

Stanza two

This stanza focuses on both sight and sound.

Remember, the location of the speaker is “aloof from the world’s sight and the world’s sound”… and so any sensory experience is in a vacuum, away from the world.

Note: the Stormcock is not yet named, and we cannot identify what she is looking at as a bird. Indeed the pronoun “Him” and his “singing glorified” again keeps us locked into a religious interpretation of her experience, especially as he is singing like an “unfailing chorister” (someone who sings in a choir in a church) and is enjoying the “pride of poetry.”

Stanza three

We discover the bird in the same way as the speaker. First we hear his voice, and then we see parts of his body: throat, breast, bill, tongue. Each body part seems intimate and alive. Note: each body part is doing an action: the throat is throbbing (alliteration), the breast is dewed, the bill, that is polished, is opened wide, and the tongue is shown to be pointed. The accumulation of this knowledge intensifies our feeling of wonder… and not least because the page is “scarcely an arm’s-length from the [our] eye”, just as the bird is the same distance from the speaker’s eye.

We are being encouraged to share in the experience with the speaker, and yet still do not know what bird we are looking at… which is often the case when you first see a bird!

Stanza four

We continue with an accumulation of body parts, which teaches us not only about the animal but also about the speaker – who is clearly attentive and admiring of the bird: the large eye, the feathers, the feet, the scale, the sinew, and the claw.

The reader is an active participant in the poem, as they have to piece together the various parts of the puzzle… and, indeed, the whole seems so much more than the individual parts.