1 - Dr.Williams and Mr.Hyde

Summary

Williams's lyrics are frequently preoccupied with confinement. In the 1909 Poems, for example, “On a Proposed Trip South” expresses the poet's dissatisfaction with the season (winter) and his joy at the prospect of a trip to a warmer climate: “truth to tell I tremble with delight / At thought of such unheralded reprieve” (CP1, 22). Of course, the lyric poem has traditionally been useful for poets lamenting their particular circumstances and longing for a wider, happier venue, yet the variety and range of Williams's dissatisfactions are somewhat unusual. In the last of the 1909 Poems, “Hymn to Perfection,” he even invokes a new god to liberate him from imprisonment:

For thee, O Perfection, great ruler,

Chief God of all monarchs, I shatter

The stillness of heaven; awaken,

Like waves on an ocean which scatter

A widening tempest, the uproar.

And cry who will, “Pile the bare mountains,

All rock, in gigantic confusion!

Aye, let every desperate bellow

Of sea, earth and sky in collusion

From tripling trumpet be blasted

Upon the huge pillar! Profusion

Of space so engirds thee, as ever,

Thou wouldst hold undisrupted seclusion.”

But not I! One with man, yet immortal;

For me hast thou built no constriction.

This heart doth outvie the weak eagle.

Not sight so o'errides all restriction.

Then hail! thou great God, from my woodlands

I sing, and Thou calm'st my affliction!