Sunken Gold
In dim green depths rot ingot-laden ships,
While gold doubloons, that from the drowned hand fell,
Lie nestled in the ocean-flowers' bell
With love's gemmed rings once kissed by now dead lips;
And round some wrought-gold cup the sea-grass whips,
And hides lost pearls, near pearls still in their shell
Where sea-weed forests fill each ocean dell,
And seek dim sunlight with their countless tips.
So lie the wasted gifts, the long-lost hopes,
Beneath the now hushed surface of myself.
In lonelier depths than where the river gropes,
They lie deep, deep; but I at times behold,
In doubtful glimpses, on some reefy shelf,
The gleam of irrecoverable gold.
(Liza Voronin/The Epoch Times)
Lee-Hamilton’s sonnet plunges us into this melancholy atmosphere… He takes us into the “dim green depths” of the sea and down to the very bottom where ships lie wrecked and forgotten. (Impossible to read these lines today and not think of that ‘ship of dreams,’ the Titanic, sitting all alone under the Atlantic in palatial desolation.)
The color green initially suggests life and fertility, but at the sound of “rot” our perception changes. This is green in its most deathly hue. It is the color of decay, of gangrene, of scraps of skeleton-clinging flesh. Squinting, we discern the ships’ booty, their ingots (bars) of silver and gold. Much good they do now.
Lee-Hamilton paints a nightmarish fantasia where civilization is reabsorbed by nature. “Gold doubloons” (coins) nestle in undersea flower heads, alongside “gemmed” rings and “wrought-gold” cups. The coins, the rings and the cup seem to represent the ways we measure success: wealth, marriage and the company of friends. All of our hopes are slowly swallowed up.
In the “lost pearls,” we hear a faint echo of Ariel’s song from Shakespeare’s last play The Tempest: “Full fathom five thy father lies… those were pearls that were his eyes!” Yet here Ariel’s imagined transformation of Ferdinand’s drowned father into something “rich and strange” is reversed… The valuable becomes worthless. The “countless tips” of the sea grass gesture toward the sun but never reach it – a symbol of futility.
In the second part of the sonnet, Lee-Hamilton makes explicit what up to now has only been implicit. In the same way as these sparkling, lost treasures lie beneath the waves, so our “wasted gifts” and “long-lost” hopes are abandoned.
The sonnet turns biographical, as Lee-Hamilton describes the “the now hushed surface” of himself. Is this the perspective of age or tormented self-alienation? To my ear, he sounds more quelled than wisely quiescent. He speaks as a chronic invalid, who wavered between delirium and brilliant lucidity, but his imagery touches on the universal. This ocean is our mind and our past – the loneliest, the deepest and the most unfathomable of all.
Suddenly there is a shine, a wild glitter... Is this the return of hope? No. It is the last twist of the knife. It is the “gleam of irrecoverable gold” —a tantalizing reminder of all we could have been and weren’t. We speak of “our gold” as our potential, our talent, which we use or fritter away depending on the choices we make.
The poem offers no sentimental escape from failure, no false comfort. But it takes one of life’s most humiliating experiences and, rather than dismissing or mocking it, grants it a somber, even majestic dignity. This is a wonderful gift to us whenever we feel vulnerable to ridicule. The iambic pentameter has a formal, ritualistic quality that transforms self-pity into visionary sorrow.
The twist in Lee-Hamilton’s story, however, runs counter to his sonnet. Ten years after he wrote “Sunken Gold,” he recovered from twenty years of ill-health in which he had never stirred from bed, forced to dictate his poems in great physical pain. At the age of 50, he found he could walk again. More than that, he travelled—to America and Italy—and among the ruins of Rome fell in love and married. While disappointment is an essential feature of life, so is renewal.
Eugene Lee-Hamilton (1845-1907) was a late Victorian English poet. His collections include Apollo and Marsyas and Sonnets of the Wingless Hours. Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.
