Poem of the Week: The Rebel by Lionel Johnson | hair

The rebel

To Arthur Chamberlain

But that’s all over now.
Dreamers of dreams will not discover in me
Fallen memories of the Holy Land;
He looks into my eyes and seems to understand
exiled secret; In my common,
A company enchanted by high things that cannot be seen

Because it’s all over now.
Just a merchant in the earth’s market, not a lover,
I keep the dusty and beaten path for everyone.
Although the broken echoes fill the market, calling out
I return to my silent memories: cold air
They die and leave me to take care of them.

And since it’s all over now,
And I cannot recover at any cost
Abdicated throne, abandoned crown:
And make me sit in the heart of the vast city,
To wear old love looks faded,
It is appropriate to love without thinking about it or abandoning it.

The works of Lionel Johnson (1867-1902), the English poet and writer, were greatly admired and had a formative influence on his friend W. B. Yeats. His poems are shaped by his classicism, his awareness of his Welsh origins, and his sense of strong personal belonging to Ireland. Johnson was a member of Yeats’ Rhyming Club, and was associated with the Decadent movement of the 1890s.

Rebel is one of his flawless lyrical pieces. Its three beautifully harmonized six-line stanzas are linked by a delicate refrain, beginning each time with a different conjunction. The avoidance of the denouement at the end of the first verse is particularly notable, thanks to the first connective word in the first line of the new stanza, “For all this is over.” The rhyme in the opening lines of each stanza (“discover”; “done/lover”; “done/reclaimed”) asserts the certainty that “all of that” will be lost, and that an ineradicable echo or shadow will remain. Renegade is a song of disillusionment and defeat, shot through with the brilliance of a memory that refuses to completely fade into the past.

The missing ideal is not clearly defined. In the first stanza it takes the form of “holy ground,” “banished secret,” and “enchanted communion with high, unseen things.” Some of the symbolism is reminiscent of Johnson’s conversion to Catholicism in 1891, and raises the possibility of lament, not for a lost faith, for which there seems to be no evidence, but for the ideals associated with it. However, phrases such as “enchanted communion” and “banished secret” suggest that Johnson’s sacred ground is a broader, and perhaps evocative, internal one.

Based on the more famous poems, such as The Dark Angel, Johnson’s life and work are usually interpreted through the prism of repressed homosexuality. “Rebel” can be read as a farewell to the erotic magic that could only be achieved in a dream, or through its poetic expression.

Many of Johnson’s poems bear dedications. The identity of the devotee here, Arthur Chamberlain, is uncertain, but he may have been his Rhymers’ Club partner, A. B. Chamberlain, who is described in Book II of the Rhymers’ Club Anthology as a “frequent associate guest”. Perhaps he was the special friend to whom Johnson entrusted another beautiful lyric, The Principle of Silence. If the date 1887, given to the rebel in the 1895 collection of poems, is correct, this suggests that the poem had previously existed at the club: of course, friendship may have come first, or the dedication was added later. Renegade’s opening conjunction “But…” suggests that the imagined reader will realize that, despite the intensity of the recollection, whatever prompted the emotion is “over,” and will share the remorse.

In the opening and closing stanzas, there is an emphasis on the speaker’s physical appearance, eyes, and gaze. These details are consistent with the intimate tone, the feeling that the poet is trusting someone whose face he can imagine. At the same time, the poem has a broad embrace: its intensity recognizes all “dreamers” young and not so young.

Unexpectedly, the second stanza evokes an ancient Bedouin scene: the poet is “a trader in the land market, not a lover” and “broken echoes fill the market” as if memories stirred and died once again on the commercial and deteriorating land. Aiming to depict the ordinary ‘dusty, trampled road of all’, Johnson creates a particularly haunted scene, before the ‘silent memories’ are dragged away ‘into the cold air’, replaced by oppressive and seemingly deserted ‘care’.

In this new, bleak place, the images of abandoned earthly grandeur, the throne and the crown, represent the price and scale of the speaker’s loss. It was a kingdom, and it could not be restored. He chose to disappear, crouching “in the heart” of the urban landscape. He wishes to remain anonymous. But there is still the implication that his feelings must be hidden from someone who might notice them so tenderly: he tells himself not to “put on” the “look of old love” but to “put on” [them] “Down” – as if he were capable of committing a slow but violent act of erosion of himself, such that only the “dull look” remained of him. However, this view seems to be just a mask: “a love worthy of the love that no one has thought about, or that has been abandoned.” None of the denials the poems recount are convincing, and yet the denials are emotional and central: a survival mechanism, not a pause. One of the secrets of Johnson’s extraordinary lyricism is that the speaker has forgotten nothing of the glow and richness of his lost sacred land.