In the Shadow of the Sun
The moon is kinder than the sun—
Although we can make the latter run,
Usually we run from it, blind
From worshipping its pagan mind:
Our sun is too much with us, forming
Shades of global warming,
Its beams too reverend and strong
To be revered for long
Lest, like moths to light, they fly
In the porches of our eye:
Difficult enough to cope
With brilliance in the telescope,
We must view an object of desire
Indirectly, as a paper fire,
While its pale and sickly satellite,
Hidden safely in the night
Behind its secondary skin,
Seeks a path of pure reflection,
Keeping a respectful distance
To the sun’s starstruck insistence:
Insights into heaven usually occur
At a less pretentious temperature.
February 13th, 2022
Kaiholu
Explanation
This is about pomp airs pageant glitter swagger strut blazon emblazon display majesty swank flash flame flamboyance and froth.
As Hamlet said, “I am too much i’ the sun.”
We ourselves may be just shadows created by an elusive projector, simulations, as the film The Matrix proposes.
As Shakespeare wrote: “I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips, let no dog bark.”
He also wrote, “The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.”
As Emerson said, “To be simple is to be great.”
As John Morley wrote in the Life of Gladstone: “Simplicity of character is no hindrance to subtlety of intellect.”
As Alexander Pope wrote, “Simplicity is the mean between ostentation and rusticity.”
Or as Thomas Hood wrote about the falsely enlightened: “A lighthouse without any light on top.”
As people say out West, “Big hat, no cattle.”
As Shakespeare’s breathtaking misanthrope Timon of Athens says in Act IV, Scene 3, lines 2149–2153:
The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea: the moon’s an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun:
The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears:
In Nabokov’s Pale Fire, the annotator Charles Kinbote’s questionable kingdom, Zembla, may resemble Novaya Zembla off of Russia. In fact, Kinbote’s absurd story is the actual story of Nabokov. Zembla has a bad poet, Conmal, who translates “pale fire” as “silvery light.” So the phrase “pale fire” only appears in the title of Nabokov’s book. Conmal has stolen “pale fire” from Shakespeare, and left in its place a bad translation.
Another source for the poem is John Donne’s 1633 poem, “The Sun Rising”:
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us? . . .
Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long; . . .
Another line comes from the last couplet of Andrew Marvell’s poem, “To His Coy Mistress”:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
The poem also refers to Luis Buñuel’s film, That Obscure Object of Desire.
With so many quotes, there is barely enough space for the part I wrote. People impressed with their own education never write anything; they are too busy quoting. I hope I am not my own subject.