Smoke
Light-winged smoke, Icarian bird,
Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight,
Lark without song, and messenger of dawn,
Circling above the hamlets as thy nest;
Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form
Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts;
By night star-veiling, and by day
Darkening the light blotting out the sun;
Go thou my incense upward from this hearth,
And ask the Gods to pardon this clear flame.
A boy with wings, a magic veil, a purifying cathedral smell: a single lick of smoke is many things. Like a cloudy form drifting overhead, it transforms itself into the whole of creation in the blink of an eye—and then casually disperses.
(Liza Voronin/The Epoch Times)
The opening line takes us immediately from direct observation to Greek myth. “Light-winged” the smoke is footloose and fancy-free, lit by the angelic radiance of the flames, and thinning out into space. We leap to the image of Icarus, the boy whose waxy “pinions” or wings melted when he flew too close to the sun; doomed to plunge down into the sea and drown. Yet here there is no plunge, no tragedy—only flight.
Why the comparison plucked from classical sources? Thoreau has this to say about “the heroic books” of authors such as Homer and Aeschylus: “What are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?”
He adds, “A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art more nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only read but actually breathed from all human lips; not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man’s thought becomes a modern man’s speech.” The thoughts of the past return, through us, to dignify the mundane sights of the world around us.
The smoke transforms from Icarus into a “lark without a song”: a watchful bird “circling” over the fragile “hamlets” below, upending the evolutionary order by blithely treating it as its “nest.” The lark is the “messenger of dawn,” yet this description blurs its outline once more.
We’re reminded of Native American smoke signals, for instance. It’s as if, by retreating to the forest, Thoreau is opening up to its history and spirituality. The “messenger” also suggests the morning star: the piercing wonder of Venus hanging far above clear water, “circling” in its planetary orbit and yet luminously still.
As the poem continues the mood deepens and darkens. A “departing dream” evokes a sense of disillusionment. Is the rural idyll coming to an end? The “shadowy form” of “midnight vision” conjures up an eerie scene, where shadows speak to the soul but terrify the heart.
The reference to “skirts” unexpectedly introduces a female presence. Before our eyes, Icarus seems to turn into Hecate—the goddess of witchcraft, ghosts, and crossroads mentioned in Macbeth. Her metaphysical smoke covers the stars and by day blots out the sun, screening us from light and truth. Is this an intimation of damnation? Or is it a sinking into sorrow?
In the final lines, the smoke becomes “incense.” Thoreau’s “hearth” becomes a sacred, perhaps even sacrificial, altar. But what kind of worship is he practicing? The mind reverts to dread and awe in the face of an elemental panorama ruled over by ambiguous pagan gods. As readers, we are both exalted and disturbed.
These “gods” stand for the forces in the universe we do not understand: the mystery of chance or the machinery of fate. In his quiet prayer, Thoreau implies these forces that rule over us are prone to punish anyone that burns a little too brightly. Are we looking at the fire of life itself—threatened by a strange outer darkness?
Thoreau’s poem shows how a moment of contemplation transforms something ordinary into something extraordinary. In a trail of smoke, classical myths jostle with the spirit of the American landscape and the practical here and now. Turning to nature we find an intensity lacking from civilization: but this vision reveals perhaps a little too much to bear. For a moment, the “clear flame” of the self is glimpsed, before we return to the sanctuary of home.
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American author and poet of American Transcendentalism, celebrating simple living, the power of the imagination, and personal freedom. Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.
