Great Poems—Easy to Memorize: O Western Wind—
O Western Wind, when wilt thou blow
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.
O Western Wind is a Middle English lyric, whose author is unknown; the date of its origin is impossible to fix. It comes to us from the oral tradition, and could have been composed at any point between the 12th and 16th centuries, but was first published in 1792. It falls within and combines the subgenres of the love-song and complaint.
To those of us waiting for the full arrival of this year’s (2015-16) El Nino, an address to the West Wind concerning its willingness and ability to bring rain can seem remarkably contemporary. The speaker is separated from his (or her) loved one, and wishes fervently for the comforts of home and a loving embrace.
Our method for memorization begins with the images: a lonely speaker addressing the Western Wind, which creates images of the same Western Wind and the rain which has not yet arrived. The exclamation “Christ,” reveals the intensity of the lover’s longing, while bringing the Deity to mind, as well as the unheeded admonishment to not “take the Lord’s name in vain.” At the same time, it functions to elevate this lyric to the level of prayer. We see the embrace and the pleasures of security and safety, which are implied to be lacking in the speakers current, but unreferenced, condition.
The images are: a speaker, the Western Wind, rain and the absence thereof, Christ, the speaker’s loved one and their embrace, and both the presumably warm and safe, longed for bed, and the absence thereof. This gives us a mini-narrative, which can be the thread that helps us see the poem both as a whole and as a linear sequence of events…
The sounds are simple: the repetition of “rain,” rhyming with the emphatic “again,” and the pronounced alliteration in the first line: “western,” “wind,” “when,” “wilt.” The rhythm is what is called “Ballad Measure,” i.e. quatrains (stanzas of four lines) with lines that alternate 4 beats and 3 beats. The rhyme scheme is abcb.
This poem is so straight forward, we can take the opportunity to consider the larger issue of the lyric as a genre, and how O Western Wind exemplifies the qualities we associate with other lyric poems. First, historically, the lyric was designated as a major type of poetry by Aristotle, along with the dramatic and the narrative, or epic genres. The name “lyric” comes from the Greek word for a stringed musical instrument, the lyre, and hence carries with it a strong association with music, song and dance. Early on, the lyric was more often sung than spoken, and certainly more often sung than written. In addition, according to The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (whose article on the lyric informs all these comments), the primary characteristics of a lyric poem in addition to musicality are: brevity, coherence or a clear focus, the expression of powerful feelings, sensuality, and the subjectivity of a speaker. In fact, a lyric often seems like we, the listeners, are eavesdropping on someone’s very private and innermost thoughts and emotions. There are examples of lyric poems from so many cultures and time periods, it can be considered a universal human expression. As we want to expand our repertoire of memorized poems, we will have occasion to discover many more poignant, lyric poems.
Note: Some anthologies eliminate the “O” in the 1st line and the “that” in the second, but I prefer this version.