The Happy Prince

We were asked to make our next post about Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction and to pick a particular stanza that stood out to us and then blog about it. As I sat in class absentmindedly looking across words and pages my mind clasped onto VI in It Must Change. It reads as follows:

Bethou me, said sparrow, to he cracked blade,
And you, and you, bethou me as you blow,
When in my coppice you behold me be.

Ah, ke`! the bloody wren, he felon jay,
Ke`-ke`, the jug-throated robin pouring out,
Bethou, bethou, bethou me in my glade.

There was such idiot minstrelsy in rain,
So many clappers going without bells,
That these bethous compose a heavenly gong.

One voice repeating, one tireless chorister,
The phrases of a single phrase, ke`-ke`,
A single text, granite monotony,

One sole face, like a photograph of fate,
Glass-blower's destiny, bloodless episcopus,
Eye without lid, mind without any dream--

These are of minstrels lacking minstrelsy,
Of an earth in which the first leaf is the tale
Of leaves, in which the sparrow is a bird

Of stone, that never changes. Bethou him, you
And you, bethou him and betou. It is
A sound like any other. It will end (340).

This verse made me think of my grandmother, a former English teacher, whose constant questions keep me interested and motivated. When my siblings and I were little, we would stay at her house while my father ranched and my other worked at the local Extension Office. We would often plea with her to "please tell us a story" and without fail the very first story she would tell us was of the Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. In which a beautiful golden statue of a prince, bejeweled and the pride of the city enlists the aid of a swallow to give away every piece of precious metal on the statue to the poor throughout the city. Each request from the prince begins with "Swallow, swallow, little swallow..." and time and time again the swallow delays his trip and does as the prince asks until he dies at the foot of the statue, and the statue is thrown away because it is no longer beautiful.

As a child I found this to be a tragic story, and each time my grandmother would answer our plea with "Once there was a swallow" we would moan and make her stop instantly, which would always maker her laugh. As an adult I laugh at how she taught us life lessons through this beautiful piece and smile as I try to connect it to class.

The line "Bethou, bethou, bethou me in my glade" reminds me so much of the "swallow, swallow, little swallow" my grandmother would croon to our eager ears as we waited for our story. I do not pretend to know exactly what this stanza by Stevens means exactly, but I can't help but to make the connection between the assistance from a once beautiful thing that was the Happy Prince, to the lines in this poem.