Where Lies the Land?

Arthur Hugh Clough Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, Far, far behind, is all that they can say. On sunny noons upon the decks smooth face, 5 Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace! Or, oer the stern reclining, watch below The foaming wake far widening as we go. On stormy nights when wild north-westers rave, How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave! 10 The dripping sailor on the reeling mast Exults to bear and scorns to wish it past. Where lies the land to which the ship would go?13 Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, 15 Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

Passage Analysis: Explore how a poets skill with words and form influenced your understanding of some aspect of the past or the future. A poem title that asks a question it will not even attempt answer? But Cloughs direction is not towards explanation or stating ideas. Developing a positive mood, through buoyant, jaunty meter and easy, musical rhymes fit more with his purpose. This poem brings to mind the singing of sea-shanties, work songs designed to raise the spirits. Clough will keep where we come from and where we are going a mystery; we will be given no certainties. The only certainty of the text is its celebration of those who rejoice in the physical immediacy of their lives in the natural world. The opening line has two interesting conditional words: Where and would. Given that the whole opening line is a question, this directs the reader to the poems focus: optimistic uncertainty. The repetition in the phrase Far, far ahead puts any conventional stability or defined destination beyond immediate experience; and the use of all limits knowledge of the future. And what is suggested here is that these seamen can journey without certainty. They are in the world but not fixed, stable, anchored. There is a question and reply link between lines 1 and 2; and 3 and 4. The land left behind is not named; it is as vague as the future. There is a relaxed parallelism in the syntax of the final phrases of lines 2 and 3. The seamen generate no anguish; behind and ahead locate them in a sailors contained world. But it is mainly the easy song-like rhythm, the assured sea-shanty mood that builds

that essential optimism and assurance. Clough makes you wonder why you worry when all is uncertain. The sun is up, the deck is clear; the reader joints the sailors in their instinctive physical world. Clough is done with any dark pondering, brooding or preoccupation, and we are into the immediacy of being aboard ship. It is pleasant; we can recline as the ship, the small free world, races along. The musical aabb rhyme lines 5-8 keep the poem jaunty and cheerful. But there are storms, where north-westers rave. Line 10 is an exclamation, an affirmation of pride in adversity that has its optimism echoed in the soft alliterated consonants and easy open vowels of wind and wave. The sailor is undaunted: he is proud of his tenacity, he exults in all the sea, the ship, the weather, the experiences of his world. Structurally, the poem repeats at start and end, with two equal 4 line sections in the middle; four line on sunny noons and four lines on stormy nights. The equal division suggests that there is a balance, an equanimity of experience, mood, atmosphere. Cloughs skill with rhythm and rhymes of the stormy nights lines defeats its literal content. The storm is accepted, transformed by the tone of the language into something equal to, emotionally one and the same with sunny noons. There is no bad weather. The diction choices of sunny smooth linked, pleasant, and reclining, stand in contrast to storm, wild, fight, dripping, and reeling. The meter and mood, and the heroic verb Exults ride over the connotations of the more negative words, and optimism is evoked and maintained by Cloughs crafting of sounds. The repeated last four lines now read differently. Initially the reader may have sensed the possibility of anxiety. The repeated lines now read as affirmation. What Clough has achieved is to make the same words do a different job. That the future is far, far ahead and that the past is far,far behind does not matter. That he has shown us that being in the present, not disappearing with regret or anticipation into past or future, is how to travel well in the world. The mood, the rhythm of the text is where Clough has delivered his message. He has provided an answer to Where Lies the land? and the answer is that asking about the future should not distract us from what is before us. The poems success with sound and mood foregrounds the immediate present. We exult in present; we should scorn to wish it past.

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