Jean-François Millet's The Gleaners and Poetry

The Wheat Fields

Lo, the drowsy heat of summer

Hanging humid, low and near,
As peasants gleaning frail and humble

Thank the Lord whom they revere.

Lo, the wheat-line yon receding

Into gray obscurity—

How thankless greed absconds with nature

And her virgin purity …

-jwm

Poetic Parameters:

Stanza Type: Quatrain

Meter: Line 1 in each stanza is eight syllables; lines 2 and 4 in each stanza is seven syllables; and line 3 in each stanza is nine syllables

Rhyme Scheme: xaxa xbxb (where ‘x’ represents unrhymed lines)

Composition: May 19, 2019

This poem was inspired by an 1857 painting titled, The Gleaners; a work of art produced by Jean-FrançoisMillet (1814 – 1875). One of the founders of the Barbizon School, Millet’s realist style significantly helped usher in the modern period of art.

Millet had an empathetic eye for conditions surrounding the rural life of peasant farmers, as he himself grew up in these conditions. After having trained in Cherbourg and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and after the French Revolution, Millet moved to the village of Barbizon to paint the harsh life of rural peasantry.

The Gleaners was first exhibited in Salon in 1857. It was initially received with criticism as it seemed to glorify the arduous existence of the impoverished- an implicit condemnation of the middle- and upper-class tiers of society. It did not help that the poor significantly outnumbered the rich, and that there was a palpable tension between the lower-class and those who were well off.

Lo, the drowsy heat of summer

Hanging humid, low and near,

As peasants gleaning frail and humble

Thank the Lord whom they revere.

The first stanza of the poem focuses on the peasants who are gathering up scraps of leftover wheat grain. Despite the wafting heat of the heavy summer day, and despite the scarcity of wheat left, I wanted the stanza to depict the poor as thankful that Providence has brought them the opportunity to gather food together. I wanted to depict them as grateful harvesters of nature’s bounty.

Lo, the wheat-line yon receding

Into gray obscurity—

How thankless greed absconds with nature

And her virgin purity …

The second stanza is an entirely different story. The abundance of wheat, if you look off into the distance of the painting by clicking the image, seems to be disappearing at an alarming rate, as if being devoured by some ravenous entity.

Wholescale farming is, of course, necessary, but the poem wants to do two things. It wants to magnify the rapacious indifference of the process- a sort of  thankless, and even violent apathy with regard to what is being done, as if nature herself were being plundered. 

The poem also wants to show the disparity between the poor and the rich: between the peasants who are both humble and thankful; and the overabundance achieved by insatiable greed (represented by the overseer on the horse).

In short, the second stanza is a diatribe aimed at greed- whose destructive proclivity wreaks havoc on both nature and humanity.

The last element of the poem is the ellipsis at the end, an indicator that this marauding of nature is ceaseless.

To Rebel or Not to Rebel

I'll be reciting the poem below tonight ...


Those Evil Few

With wealth, the likes of Helen's Troy,
There are these few that think they're coy
They seem so modest- but I warn,
Their modesty is but a ploy

They hung two 'thieves' the other morn-
In fact, the day my son was born.
Their crime: some stolen fruit, some grain ...
Two homeless, hungry men forlorn.

I felt indignant, bitter pain,
As I stood watching through the rain:
"If I were starving, like these two,
Would I steal food ... and thus be slain?

Who knows how many men they slew-
But here is this, and this is true:
That if they touched my starving son
I'd grab a sword and run them through!

For by their greed their wealth was won ...
My wherewithal? - it's next to none.
Those evil few, so fatly fed,
Impoverished me ... and everyone!"

And still the hungry hang there dead,
Condemned by laws those few have said.
And now my hunger has me torn:
Obey their laws ... or steal their bread?

-jwm



Poetic Parameters:

Stanza: seven quatrains
Meter: tetrameter (e.g. four metric feet, or eight syllables per line)
Rhyme Scheme: aaba bbcb ccdc dded eefe ffgf gghg

Note:

The poem’s overall structure was inspired by a Robert Frost poem I read sometime ago, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (a poem whose style was in turn modeled on an even older form known as a Rubaiyat stanza).

A Stoic Found

The swing that breaks the dang’ling bag
Sends candy bouncing all around:
They rush and rush and push and fuss,
And knock each other to the ground.
No thoughts of others, only self
Where skewed desires all abound-
It rushes, pushes, and it kicks,
For candy does it punch and pound.

The seeking of it hardly stops
When all the revelry and sound
Diminish by the quiet yard
Where some young kid is candy crown’d;
What festers is a bitter taste-
A blight from loss, a wound profound,
‘Til vengeance from ambition breeds
A stronger greed that knows no bound.

But see how there that candy lay
Beside my foot, that fell inbound,
How that I have but little care,
Just peace that would the gods astound.
‘What is to thee indifferent shun’
These Stoic principles expound.
And so I’m freed from all their greed,
A slave to no one’s candy mound.

-jwm


Of the Poem:

Yeats' poem, the Song of Wandering Aengus, inspired the general structure behind this poem above. In his poem Yeats uses three stanzas, each containing eight lines (called an octet). Each line is done in a tetrameter (that is, eight syllables), and his rhyme scheme is x.a.x.a.x.b.x.b. for each stanza.

The stanza type in this poem is the same, and I hoped to achieve the same meter; but rather than Yeats' x.a.x.a.x.b.x.b rhyme scheme, I wanted to have an x.a.x.a.x.a.x.a. all the way through (this is what made doing this particular poem enjoyable).

The hardest part was achieving a single idea in each stanza as well as Yeats did. Still, I’m happy with the results.

The subject matter of the poem derives from the Discourses of Epictetus, Book IV, Chapter VII. In it he uses an analogy- children scrambling for figs and nuts- to show how ridiculous our behaviors become when we place intrinsic value in something whose value is at best a matter of indifference. Here's a segment from that chapter:

A man scatters dried figs and nuts: the children seize them and
fight with one another; men do not, for they think them to be a
small matter. But if a man should throw about shells, even the
children do not seize them. Provinces are distributed: let children
look to that. Money is distributed: let children look to that.
Praetorships, consulships are distributed: let children scramble for
them, let them be shut out, beaten, kiss the hands of the giver, of
the slaves: but to me these are only dried figs and nuts. What then?
If you fail to get them, while Caesar is scattering them about, do not
be troubled: if a dried fig come into your lap, take it and eat it;
for so far you may value even a fig. But if I shall stoop down and
turn another over, or be turned over by another, and shall flatter
those who have got into chamber, neither is a dried fig worth the
trouble, nor anything else of the things which are not good, which the
philosophers have persuaded me not to think good.

I imagine a modern day Stoic (perhaps another Epictetus) chiding those who would embrace conflict to achieve an end whose value is less than indifferent, who exchange integrity of soul for so trivial a thing. The fact that they would set up embattlements and wage warfare for these things only serves as testimony to their level of dilapidation. He warns elsewhere: Mischief is a great mystery to those who inflict it, O thief.

The voice concludes with a brief awareness of its placid state in relation to its environment of greed, and considers whence its state of peace.