Episode 8 Season 4

Maiya: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Beyond the Verse, a poetry podcast, brought to you by PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+. I'm Maiya. I'm here today with my co-host, Joe to bring you a very exciting episode all about the ballad form. Now we'll be talking about the evolution of the form, its enduring appeal and picking out a few key examples but before we really dive into that, I would love it Joe, if you can give us a brief rundown of kind of the history of the Ballad form, where it came from and how it's developed over the years. 

Joe: Thanks, Maiya. I'd love to. So, regular listeners will remember that we did a form episode last year on the ode form. So we're gonna be exploring how the actual type of poetry itself evolves. As Maiya said in the intro, and it's gonna be really interesting, I, I can't wait to get into this with you, Maiya, a brief historical overview of what we mean by the ballad form.

'cause some of our listeners will probably be aware of that word often in a musical context. And that musical context is there right from the beginning. So when we're talking about ballads, we're [00:01:00] talking about narrative poems, poems that tell a consistent, coherent story normally with a recognizable beginning, middle, and end.

That of course makes 'em very, very popular and is part of that enduring appeal that Maiya mentioned in the beginning. When we're thinking about the ballad form, we tend in the English language to look back to between the sort of 12th and 15th centuries. and that's where kind of some of the characteristics of the ballad form begin to emerge. So these are often anonymous. We don't know the original author, and there are often many, many versions of the same ballad because they were remembered through the oral tradition, which of course means it is ripe for interpretation, for edits, for changes.

as the centuries progressed, as I mentioned, they were narrative poems and they were often set to music. So that musicality that remains to this day in the ballad form was there right from the beginning. As we kind of move through the centuries, and again, we're talking about the English language here, we get to the 16th and 17th centuries.

And of course, the advent of the printing press becomes a really, really important development here. growing literacy rates and growing access to written materials meant, there was a growth in what we call broadside ballads, which were ballads [00:02:00] printed in newspapers and publications. They were often kind of sensational.

They dealt with crimes or scandals of the day, but that kind of brought this ballad form out of the rural oral tradition Into a different readership or a different kind of audience. The next major development I'd like to focus on, relates to a group of poets that Maiya and I have spoken about many times on beyond the verse, which is the romantic poets.

Because around the change from the 18th into 19th century, we see the ballad become adopted by really serious poets of the day. So obviously we're moving away from from

anonymity here towards named individuals choosing to engage with the ballad form. and really see an elevation of the form here from popular. Rural song into major literary art form. of course, , There's a key date, which is 1798, the publication of 'Lyrical Ballads', the co-publication with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge that Maiya and I have discussed in the previous episode of Beyond the Verse, and that elevation has remained ever since, ever since this period, ballads have been regarded as one of the premier forms of poetic expression. As we move forward again into the Victorian era, we see the ballad [00:03:00] become a kind of vehicle for moral exploration and for chronicling great men, great events, great moments in history.

We've done a previous episode on 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', for example, which is a ballad as we move into the 20th century again. Musicality comes to the core, and a lot of the most iconic 20th century ballads are actually written as song rather than published as poetry.

So I suppose Bob Dylan will be regarded as one of the great ballad writers of our time, despite the fact he's much better known as a recording artist than he's as a written artist, although of course he has won the Nobel Prize in literature. So in terms of the formal structure of what makes a ballad, there is no. Exact structural requirements, in order for a poem to be regarded as a ballad.

As I mentioned, it's a narrative poem. It often has a kind of musicality, whether that's explicitly set to music or simply the musicality of the written word, where there are formal kind of conventions, I suppose we tend to think about meter and about rhyme scheme in particular, something that's become known as the ballad stanza, which is a four line stanza, a quatrain with an A, B, C, B [00:04:00] rhyme scheme that follows alternating lines of iambic tetrameter followed by iambic trimeter.

And now that might seem kind of complicated, but actually what you'll realize is there are loads and loads of songs that you probably know, or poems that you're aware of, that follow this very simple meter because again, it's very easy to put to music, very easy to sing. The rhyme affords easy recognition and the four line stanzas obviously makes it ideal for verse in songs or in poetry.

So Maiya. I've given a brief overview of the ballad form and the way it's evolved over the centuries, and I'm sure we'll discuss some of those evolutions as we go, but where are we gonna look to, in terms of our first poetic example?

Maiya: Thank you for that, Joe. . I think where I'd like to direct listeners to first is actually seeing this ballad form in practice.

A really great example of this is 'As I Walked Out One Evening' by W. H. Auden. Now as Joe mentioned earlier, it can sound really complicated when you're saying, okay, we've got Iam Teter, we've got rhyme schemes. But actually in practice, it's a really, really lovely and lyrical form to follow.

So this is how the poem [00:05:00] opens. As I walked out one evening walking down Bristol Street, the crowds upon the pavement were fields of harvest wheat, and down by the brimming river. I heard a lover sing under an arch of the railway. Love has no ending. love I'll love you, dear. A love you till China and Africa meet, and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the streets. Now, there's a few things that I would like to pick out from these first three stanzas. One is that evident musicality, the way that the poem flows, the way that the stanzas kind of weave into one another. I think this is a really beautiful way to open a ballad, primarily due to the fact that this ballad specifically is talking about love. It's talking about the endurance of love and the sufferings that you go through to achieve that and to hold that close to you. So that musicality and the continuity of it really plays into a sense of eternity that we start to, gather from this poem. but really I want to draw listeners attention to something [00:06:00] that you know we'll see time and time again in the ballads that we'll touch on today and other ballads that I would absolutely urge listeners to explore is that we so often have a narrator or a speaker of these poems who is somewhat unaffiliated with the topic that they're talking about. And I say unaffiliated quite loosely in the sense that they will have an emotional charge behind what they're talking about, But they are not the subject of this poem. We will see it here in the Auden poem. We'll see it in a Whitman poem that we're gonna touch on later.

But the speaker of the poem is so often narrating an experience that they're witnessing as opposed to something that they're experiencing themselves. And I really wonder, Joe, you know, before we jump into the meaning of this poem, what impact do you think that has on the ballad form itself?

Joe: It was a really, really good question. And for me, I wonder whether it kind of, we can trace the roots of that back to the origin of the form itself. Thinking about minstrels, the kind of wandering bards, the poet that moves from place to place, who's remembered these oral songs and is trying to make their living [00:07:00] by performing these poems and that sense of, as I walked out one morning, that the poem begins with a, a scene of transition, a scene of movement, a scene of full immersion.

We don't know who this speaker is. We simply arrive at a midpoint of their life with what's come before them, a mystery. And that's of course, very reminiscent of the wandering medieval poet stereotype, somebody who arrives in a new nation or a new court to perform. And we don't know where they came from, but they simply bring this catalog of songs and experiences.

And I think it's a really wonderful way in which Auden kind of pays homage to that tradition by focusing in on the voice that is, as you mentioned, observer rather than participant in the narrative that they're going to tell. And I mean, I'd love to get your thoughts on this, but I wonder whether it's meant to be an evocation of the kind of history of the minstrel and their relationship to the ballad form. 

Maiya: Absolutely, and I, I think there's also a security in it as well, because of course, you. If you as the poet also inhabit the voice of the speaker of your poem, there's a real attachment there that [00:08:00] makes it quite individual, quite selfish in a sense, because you are the one writing through these experiences.

I think one of the words that will probably come up quite a lot today in our discussion is the fact that these are meant to be mass appeal poems, mass appeal songs, and what's an easier way to appeal to the masses than to not talk about your individual self, but position the voice of your poem or your song as someone who is simply observing someone else.

That's the easiest way to enter a poem, and I find that that ability allows you as a reader or as a listener to transcend those more limiting boundaries. You know, when you read a poem that. Maybe doesn't share the experiences that you've shared in your lifetime.

It can be a little bit tougher to find yourself a place within that poem here. I don't think there's a single struggle at all. And there are absolutely, tie-ins with, you know, we have, the river is a key component of this poem and that kind of flowing nature. I think the idea is that you are meant to be swept up in [00:09:00] the current of this.

And again, I want to keep reminding listeners that the musicality of this as well is so important. It is something that will actually physically grab your attention and pull you along with it. The nature of this poem and the meter is to keep moving, to keep pushing forward. So there's a real sense that. As much as I think Yes, absolutely. it's an homage to the way that medieval minstrels used to perform. I think it's absolutely rooted in necessity too. I think it can become quite difficult when you are looking at traditional ballad forms to separate that sort of omniscient or separate the separate speaker, and the necessity of the form itself. Whereas actually as we move through and look at more modern ballads, I think it gets easier and easier.

And that will be an interesting topic, I think, to take further down the line. But I really want to focus in on this poem because it is just so rich in imagery, in musicality, in form. So Joe, is there anything you want to focus on to start with?

Joe: Yeah, I mean, there's so much [00:10:00] to get into, as you mentioned. I think the thing that I would draw listeners attention to is the sense of tension that I feel in this poem between the traditional elements and the elements of modernism. Because obviously, W. H. Auden is writing in the middle of the 20th century, at a period of time after the rise of the modernist movement where free verse has become the dominant form of poetry.

It's quite a bold act to write a ballad in that tradition. Especially a ballad that conforms so strictly to ballad meter like this one does in, I think we get a sense of that tension between tradition and modernity through the imagery as well.

And we take that first stanza that you read as I walked out one evening walking down Bristol Street. The crowds upon the pavement were fields of harvest wheat right there in those opening four lines. We have a sense of the urban and the rural as somehow conflated, and yet I think slightly ill at ease with one another.

And this sense of blending urban imagery, obviously right in the middle of the 20th century after the rise of, the city and the kind of pre predominance of urban [00:11:00] spaces over rural ones, particularly in, Britain and America. Auden is playing with that tension between the historic world of Britain, America, which is rural and agrarian, and the new world that is urban.

And I find that tension is metaphorically contained within his decision to write a ballad at all, given the dominance of this new modern form of poetry in the form of free verse that, like I said, was the dominant form of poetry in his era. But I'd just love to touch as well, you mentioned the musicality.

I'd love to touch on the significance. I think of that A, B, C, B rhyme scheme that he's using, which as I mentioned, is a traditional but not requisite part of ballads throughout the centuries. Because what that R does is it just creates a sense of recognition, a sense of. Echo, but it's not fully formed because obviously two of the lines don't rhyme.

The A and the C are unrhymed liness. So there's a really interesting sense of kind of fleeting recognition. You almost have the sense that you've been here before that echoing rhyme, flirts with the idea of something familiar while [00:12:00] telling you something different. And I think that's so wonderful when we're looking at a poetic tradition of ballads.

Because once ballads cease to be anonymous and become an elevated form, which means of course, that poets put their names to them. Every poet who subsequently writes a ballad is in some way toying with their place in that canon. They are in dialogue with the ballads that came before them. And I love the way in which that A, B, C, B rhyme scheme flirts with that idea of recognition, with that sense of familiarity from the ballads that people would've heard and seen before.

But Maiya, I've talked about tension between the rural and the urban. I've talked about archaic rhyme schemes. Where would you like to look?

Maiya: You know, as you were speaking then, Joe, I was thinking about, those callbacks to those medieval poets, and one of the things that's always struck me about this poem is that there's a real tension between time and nature. Now, as you flagged rightfully so earlier, we have this interaction between romantic poets who had really latched onto this ballad form and developed it in such a way. But Auden is very much [00:13:00] considered a modernist, and that is a rejection of so many romantic notions.

And I find it really skillful how in this poem, we are not just looking at a simple love ballad. There is also an exploration of symbols of eternity, symbols of time, symbols of passing. we have the presence of a clock, including it's chimes, it's ticking the fact that it is a measure of time passing. We also have this image of the river, which I mentioned earlier, and the river here is both a positive and a negative force in many ways. I think it really has a kind of war within itself because on the one hand the river represents something that is free, flowing, enduring, it continues forever.

We have this really wonderful stanza Auden writes, oh, plunge your hands in water, plunge them in up to the wrist, stare, stare in the basin and wonder what you've missed. So again, there is a sort of reversal here where there is a recognition of the enduring [00:14:00] nature of this river, and the memories that it carries 

but also there's a speed to it that you are never going to collect all of the memories you want to collect if you are so inherently focused on moving towards the future. Which is why I think, you know, the setting of this poem is so wonderful. We get the impression that we are by the riverside, and you are drawn as the listener, as the reader between that singing voice of the woman, which absolutely cements you in the present moment and a focus on this river which is ever flowing and trying to pull you away from this.

so as a ballad in that sense. The tension that is created in the relationship between the present and the future. The present and the past is really, really symptomatic of what I would consider a traditional ballad. The exploration of where you have come from, where you are currently and where you are going.

I think of, you know, anyone who's gonna be performing in front of a king in a court, and they are talking about journeys. So this is not just a simple journey of one man who has left his house and walked along a river. It is [00:15:00] tying in all of these wonderfully separate moments in time and asking the reader that very important question, which is what is the most important. And I don't know whether we are left with an answer in this poem or not. 

Joe: No, I love that point, Maiya. And actually I think it brings us quite nicely to the end of the poem. I'll just read the final four lines, which read. It was late, late in the evening, the lovers, they were gone, the clocks had ceased, their chiming and the deep river ran on. And that sense of a love that is. Evaded, the love that is not quite achieved, and yet the imperative to continue the river runs on there is a sense of continuity. Even if individuals and individual love stories might fall by the wayside, I love that as a metaphor for the ballad form. Generally, that sense of individual voices come and go, but the overall kind of flow of narrative, the flow and the, imperative to tell stories and to create characters, which defines the ballad genre in [00:16:00] many ways never ceases to flow.

It continues into the future as a kind of promise of human endeavor. I mean, the ballad form is so enduring in part because as human beings, we love characters. We love people upon which we can project our hopes and fears and our, desires. There are so many amazing characters that have come out of Ballad poems and what we've done in the past.

an episode solely on ridge's, 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', which is one of the kind of great defining ballads of the romantic era. And I mean, there are so many kind of iconic lines and characters that have come out of ballads like that one.

So continuing with the theme of water, we're gonna be moving on to our next, poem today, which is gonna be Walt Whitman's.

'O Captain! My Captain!', one of the all time great poems. But Maiya, would you like to read the poem for listeners?

Maiya: So this is, 'O Captain! My Captain!' by Walt Whitman. 'O Captain! My Captain!'. Our fearful trip is done. The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won. The port is near the bells. I hear the people all exalting while follow [00:17:00] eyes. The steady keel, the vessel. Grim and daring, but oh, heart, heart, heart.

Oh, the bleeding drops of red. Where On the deck. My cap lies fallen cold and dead. 'O Captain! My Captain!' rise up and hear the bells rise up for you. The flag is flung for you. The bugle trills for you bouquets and ribboned wreaths for you. The shores are crowding for you.

They call the swaying mass. Their eager faces turning here, captain. Dear father, this arm beneath your head. It is some dream that on the deck you've fallen cold and dead. My captain does not answer. His lips are pale and still my father does not feel my arm. He has no pulse nor will the ship is anchored, safe and sound.

Its voyage closed and done from Fearful trip. The victor ship comes in the object won Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!. But I with mournful tread walk the deck, my captain lies [00:18:00] fallen cold and dead. Now this poem, I think is no doubt one of Whitman's most famous poems. And I think it really is a testament to how diverse the Ballad form can be because it's so incredibly different to the Auden poem that we just touched on. Instead of focusing on this enduring sense of love here we are very firmly in what I would almost consider the early stages of elegy. We don't quite have a grasp on who this captain was outside of their success in managing to dock this ship back home. So the reason I say the early stages of an elegy is that it's inordinate focus on death and the captain being the driving force of this poem is one that's makes this a poem that, for me, has always had quite a unique perspective because you are really offsetting an image of success and victory against a personal devastating loss.

But Joe, where do you want to start with this poem? Because I'm conscious there's a lot that we could dive into here. I.

Joe: Yeah, I mean, we could spend a whole episode just talking about this poem, so [00:19:00] we'll try to be as concise as we can. I think the place I'd like to start is the relationship between anonymity and identity in this per, because as you mentioned, ostensibly, we have an unnamed captain, but we know that this poem was written to commemorate the death of President Abraham Lincoln.

So why the decision to write a poem about a named individual, a real individual, an individual known to everybody in America, but obscure the identity? And I think this speaks to so much of what's going on in the ballad tradition more generally, which is that the ballad tradition thrives on archetypes on character types rather than named individuals.

You have the scorned lover of the ballad tradition. You have the, impassioned lover driven to murder. I mean, murder ballads is a whole other tradition we could go into, but what anonymity affords characters is universality, is a kind of a power that projects longer than any individual life. I feel very, very confident that even if this poem was very similar but named Lincoln, it would be [00:20:00] less well known today.

I mean, there were other, elegiac poems of this era, and we were speaking in a recent episode about the poem commemorating. The Death of Wellington by Alfred Lord Tennyson, and again, it's not particularly well known today. And that sense of anonymity, which as I mentioned, is such a key part of the early ballad tradition, the anonymity of both characters within the poem and writers of the poem.

Whitman, of course, isn't a named poet, but he is retaining the sense of anonymity within the poem, which allows it to retain its potency even long after. The death of Lincoln has kind of faded into a historical event, and I think this is in part some way of explaining why apoemlike this is so popular today.

So many listeners are probably thinking, oh, I know that from somewhere. And they might well be thinking of the film Dead Poet Society, in which this poem features very prominently, not as a historical artifact, but as a really empowered way of expressing faith in their leader, which is their teacher in the film.

And there's something brilliant about the way in which the decision to obscure the identity of the person that we know this poem was written about actually means that the poem [00:21:00] becomes a greater testament to their legacy because it remains popular for much longer because it's not tied to any specific historical event.

And I love that relationship between anonymity and specificity because it explains so much about how this form has evolved and how much of the authentic roots of the ballad form that Whitman is trying to retain.

Maiya: For sure. I mean, there is such a focus here on the fact that this could be in essence on a first read, any leader, it could be any person who has done a great deed. Of course we know that this is about Lincoln. So when we can read it with the context, some of the motifs that crop up in this poem make it really, really obvious.

I mean, just to raise a few, you have the bouquets and the ribbons, the swaying mass with eager faces, the impression that this is someone who had the ability to command crowds of people who demanded the attention of the masses. And I wonder with this Whitman poem, if part of the reason he chooses [00:22:00] deliberately to obscure the name is in order to make this poem something that lives on well past.

because as you say, if we'd have had Lincoln as the title, it stands as a tombstone. You know, it's a poem for a horrible occasion, and it remains that. But here, people can pick and choose even in the very formal layout of the poem on the page for any listeners who aren't looking at this on the page, as Joe and I talk through, I would strongly recommend you to, so for anyone who, who doesn't have it in front of them, the way that this poem is formally structured is almost a ballad.

Within a ballad. you can absolutely take each stanza and sort of split it in half. So the first four lines of each stanza are relatively long. That will align to the same side of the page, but the next four lines of the standards, so that's the final four lines are actually indented. So they sit very separately from the rest of the poem on the page. And I think part of the reason that this is so impactful is because you can take just the first four lines of each stanza, [00:23:00] and this is where we're looking at celebration.

You have, 'O Captain! My Captain!', our fearful trip is done. Rise up and hear the bells. These are the ones that bring in that more celebratory feel, excluding the final stanza. And yet we are offset by this idea that these shorter lines, this shorter second half of each stanza. Is a personal sense of mourning. I think this is where Whitman really shows a skill in the sense of collective joy, an individual sorrow, because these are very much set against one another within the bounds of the poem. You have this idea that as you enter the poem, you have that sense of the masses of the crowd, this huge weight of elation. And then when you're pulled out of the poem by these indented lines, it's a singular voice. I think it's a singular voice that has a lot of power and a lot of weight, But echoes against the encroaching nature of the masses because of course, one individual loss against a much greater win or progress in the grand scheme of things doesn't [00:24:00] seem like that much.

But let's not forget, you know, Lincoln was the leader of the free world at this point. this Is not just a huge individual loss, it is a loss for a nation. So using an individual voice to explore that as threaded through the wider kind of social alignment of this poem, I suppose the political message is so, so skillful. I think it's so clever.

Joe: No, I couldn't agree more. And I love that tension between each half of each stanza and was trying to kind of wrestle with why I thought he does it, and I, I think your point's a really, really good one. There is a sense that the, the ballad within this poem is kind of struggling to be born outta these longer, more epic lines. And what I really like about that is the way in which Whitman is contending that the way to remember a person is by telling the story of their life, rather than just announcing why the life mattered.

That sense of relying on the ballad meter’s association with narrative rather than a single moment of a life, you have to tell the whole story. But I think [00:25:00] also we touched on this earlier on the Ballad form is popular. And I don't just mean well liked, I mean, when I use that word popular, I'm using it in a slightly different way to mean.

Something that was experienced by the masses, not just by, individuals and institutions. And that sense to which the decision to use the ballad form in a poem that is about commemorating an individual life is, I think, Whitman's way of saying that this life ought to be celebrated by the masses. This is not a poem only to be in carved on a tombstone or read in academic institutions. This is a life that can be celebrated by everyone in much the same way as the ballad form was, belonging to the people. I mean, it came from anonymous sources. It didn't arrive, from great poet laureates. the form itself is upwardly mobile, I suppose, in the literary world. Now, Maiya, before we move on to our next poem, I, I'd love to touch on water in this poem, but also going back to the Auden poem, the Auden poem, we talked about the importance of the river, and here of course.

The entire kind of setup of the poem is Lincoln rendered as the captain of a vessel at sea. And I mean, I've got [00:26:00] some thoughts on why water plays such a prominent part. I think there is definitely something about the metaphorical promise of the ocean and how it represents the unknown and adventure.

But I'm curious as to what you think about why these poems, but perhaps the ballad form more generally. What is it about water, whether rivers or seas, that is such an enduring symbol for the ballad form.

Maiya: I do often wonder this. I think there's, you know, frustratingly quite different answers depending on the poem you're looking at. You know, I know we touched on the idea of the river in the last poem as being something that is more representative of enduring time. You know, the, the process of love and how love will continue to exist. But here I actually think water is so often used to reflect political tempest. If anything, the idea of Lincoln or the central character of this poem, however you would like to read it. Being a captain of a ship that is at sea, you are not just exploring this idea of journey and exploration.

You are also looking at [00:27:00] the, the very literal mechanics of the sea, whether it is, a stormy night, whether it's a calm sea. And I think this is a visual that really clearly is brought into this poem because at first when we're introduced to the ship, you have a steady keel, but the vessel is grim and daring. So you have the impression that this ship is cutting through an ocean that is really challenging. It's something that is bringing trouble. But the thing that is being kept on the straight and narrow is the ship by the captain. So I think these lines are reflective is probably the word I would use. Not only does the idea of being able to steer a ship through a storm without fail. Reflect on how successful and skillful the captain is. But it also speaks to the greater impression of the nation. Because if in this instance we're using Lincoln as the captain, America as the nation, and perhaps a complicated political landscape as the sea, you are immediately reflecting back on one another.

How leadership and [00:28:00] skillful choice and ambition is something that is going to steady that keel of the ship. But as we move through the poem, we understand that we are heading towards quieter seas. I mean in that final stanza you have, the ship is anchored, safe and sound. It's voyage closed and done from Fearful trip.

The Victor ship comes in the object won. Now, I'm sure I don't need to touch on the rhyme scheme and how this kind of completes that stanza, but there is an impression that not only has the captain broached these dangerous seas, but has actually managed to calm them somehow.

Any sailor knows that they are unable to control the tides of the sea and what that storm might look like. But you have an even further sort of celebration of this captain by the fact that not only has he been able to keep his ship straight, but, the success of his voyage has actually reflected back on the sea itself.

So I think there is a lot of kind of political language that could have been brought in here that hasn't, and think the ocean and the sea in this poem are, directly [00:29:00] representative perhaps of the political and social conversations that were happening at the time.

These ideas of anxiety and fear. Whereas, of course, in Auden poem, I think it represents something quite different. You know, it's a really interesting motif because it's so changeable, and I think that's why, right, that's why we have this idea of the sea being brought in because the sea is one of the most mutable, elemental aspects that we can use.

It can be used when it's still, it can be used when it's stormy, and it can represent entirely different things and a whole spectrum in between.

Joe: No, I couldn't agree more. I particularly on that last point about the sea as a kind of thing upon which we can project anything the lines from, Zora Neale Hurston's incredible novel. 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' come to mind. One of the great opening lines of literature ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.

There is that sense that we can look out on the ocean on a distant ship and it can mean whatever it needs to mean to us. There is a sense of promise. A sense of possibility, and Whitman’s poem is, in dialogue with both what comes before it in the [00:30:00] ballad tradition and what comes after it.

I mean, I mentioned 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', this incredibly iconic ballad, which is entirely concerned with the sea voyage and the, darkness, the mystery that we associate with going out at sea and so many of the folk ballads from history relate to, you know, a lover that leaves on a ship, or the promise that one day somebody will arrive on a ship to take you away.

The sea is such a contested symbol, but what I love about this poem is how. Actually, as you mentioned, Maiya, this is about someone who is able to bring a ship into harbor. This is someone who is able to safely traverse the mystery and the danger of the open seas, which I guess we can view as a kind of metaphor for the danger and mystery of being alive.

I mean, we don't know what tomorrow is going to throw up, just as a captain doesn't know, what storm is going to arrive to disrupt their voyage. But I love the way that Whitman is, using that symbol of the sea, but kind of reversing what we often associate with the ballad tradition, which is that the sea is somewhere where you go out into, because this poem’s focus is on the return to harbor.

I mean, again, if I was to [00:31:00] place it in that tradition and look forward to a, a more modern musical ballad, I mean, I'm a big Bob Dylan fan, as regular listeners will know. I'm comes to mind of the song Boots of Spanish Leather, which very much uses the ballad stereotype of one lover getting aboard a ship to take them away.

And as that ship gets further outta the harbor, it becomes clear that this is a, a symbolic break as well as a kind of geographical shift. And I would always encourage listeners, whether it's these ballads or other ballads that you go on to read or listen to, just to bear that in mind about how whenever you are listening to, a song or reading a poem that pertains to separation to the sea, to the changeability of the voyage, remember that these songs and poems are all in dialogue with one another.

They are part of a wider tradition than themselves, i'm Sure we, you know, Maiya and I could talk about this poem for a whole episode, as I mentioned. But we do need to move on, and we're gonna get on to the 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' by the wonderful Irish poet Oscar Wilde. It's wonderful to have Oscar Wilde on the show because we didn't get a chance to talk about him in our Irish poetry episode, which if you haven't heard it yet, go back and [00:32:00] listen to it.

so it's wonderful to get, Wilde on the program because he's such an incredible poet. And this is such an enduringly powerful poem. It's a very long poem, so we're not gonna read the whole thing, but I'm gonna read a few stanzas now.

I never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye upon that little tent of blue, which prisoners called the Sky, and every drifting cloud that went with sails of silver by I walked with other souls in pain within another ring and was wondering if the man had done a great or little thing. When a voice behind me whispered low, that fellows got to swing.

Dear Christ, the very prison walls suddenly seemed to reel. And the sky above my head became like a cask of scorching steel. And though I was a soul in pain, my pain, I could not feel. I only knew what hunted thought, quickened his step, and why he looked upon the garish day with such a wistful eye. The man had killed the thing he loved, and so he had to die.

So there's [00:33:00] so much in those lines, but Maiya, where would you like to take us first? 

Maiya: I think what would be useful for this poem is a little bit of context first before jumping into the analysis. So for a little bit of background, Wilde wrote this in 1897, and it was shortly after his release from Reading Jail. So he was actually imprisoned at reading jail and served two years of hard labor for gross indecency. So the publication of this poem based on very real events and things that he witnessed. It's specifically about a fellow prisoner called Charles Thomas Wooldridge who was hanged for murdering his wife. So as you'll have heard from Joe's wonderful reading a moment ago, we have a very direct reference to this man who has killed his wife and the consequences of that action. But what Wilde does in this poem is a really unique exploration of. What is considered sin because every single person that he comes across in this poem, every single man that is also, you know, within this space, [00:34:00] within the jail, he considers as having committed some sort of death, some sort of crime that warrants the killing of the thing they love.

, And I think this is such an interesting focus for the poem because instead of focusing on the individual deeds of one man, what Wilde does really is hold up a mirror to the nature of the justice system and how it operates within this jail.

I mean, there's a stanza I love a little bit later that says Some kill their love when they are young and some when they are old. Some strangle with the hands of lust, some with the hands of gold. The kindest use a knife because the dead so soon grow cold. and I think given, you know, the, the knowledge we have about what Wilde had been accused of and how he was serving labor for that as set against this significantly more violent crime. You have a sense of familiarity. You have a sense of community that is born out of the, the struggle that all of the men in this jail are going through. I think the fact that Wilde chose to use a ballad form for this poem, I think is incredibly [00:35:00] rebellious, because we've touched on the fact that throughout history, ballads it could be used to elevate great heroes and icons and figures who were really historically important. But here we we're using it for a man who has evidently committed a crime. At no point does Wilde say that was guilty of this, and yet the focus being on someone who. Arguably does not deserve to be elevated is a really fascinating choice. And I'm wondering, Joe, what do you think the purpose of using this man as a mirror is? Do you think it speaks more to Wilde's experience or do you think it's his chance to rebel a little against the system that did imprison him and speak to a wider sense of injustice within the society at the time

Joe: It's a really, I mean, it's a fascinating question, Maiya, I think there's so much of what has changed about the Ballad form in your question, I'll just explain what that means. The Ballad has always had an affiliation with the outlaw, an affiliation with the Rogue. I mean, so many of the early medieval ballads were based on the stories of Robin [00:36:00] Hood, the sense of somebody who lives outside of society, but perhaps has that degree of heroism that you were, talking about now, obviously where you're gonna find rogues and outcasts and outlaws better than a prison, I think. What Wilde is doing is adding a kind of introspection, a kind of philosophical moral interrogation that those early ballads don't have. Even while looking at very similar types of people, rogues, outlaws, criminals. this is so indicative of the way that the Victorian ballad has shifted away from that abstract, anonymous, uncomplicated exploration of characters like Robin Hood towards what Wilde is doing, which is ostensibly something similar, the outcast, the outlaw. But looking at it with a much more kind of complicated lens. And I mean, for any listeners who aren't aware, Oscar Wilde was in this prison because he'd been found guilty of quote gross indecency, which is of course, because he had a homosexual relationship. So we look back at this imprisonment as a great historical injustice, and I can't help but feel that the decision to focus on.

The [00:37:00] man who has murdered his wife, which is of course a crime that we would still regard as abhorrent today in contrast to, Wilde's crime, which obviously we don't regard as a crime at all. Speaking in 2026, I think is forcing the reader to contend with why. And again, it's worth remembering of course to anyone who read this poem, after Oscar Wilde released from prison, knew exactly who Oscar Wilde was.

He was one of the first great celebrities and everyone knew why he was in prison. So there is definitely a sense to which he's encouraging the reader to question the nature of sin, the nature of crime, the nature of punishment, and whether or not punishment's fair does the man deserve to be hung?

Does Oscar Wilde deserve to be in prison for his crime?

So there's definitely a sense of introspection here and a sense, as you mentioned, that he is looking to hold a mirror up not only to the people within the jail, but also to the society that is reading this poem after his release.

Maiya: I mean, I'm, I'm keen to not move on too quickly from that original imagery that really drew us to choosing this poem in the first place, which was the sails of silver that you mentioned in your reading. Again, this imagery of the [00:38:00] sea, the imagery of the ship here representing something akin to freedom. I just want to repeat that first stanza that you read, Joe, which is, I never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye upon that little tent of blue, which prisoners called the sky, and every drifting cloud that went with sail of silver by I walked with other souls in pain. firstly, I think what we can address here is the separation between that man and Oscar Wilde as the speaker.

I think Joe, you've done a brilliant job of actually. Kind of pulling in those specifics because of course, what we're looking at here is a violent crime against someone who is meant to be loved. And we're setting it against Oscar Wilde's, quote unquote crime of being in love, of conducting a relationship that, you know, by virtue of the nature of love versus murder, were poles and poles apart.

So absolutely, were right to interrogate injustice of that. but I think there's a, a subtle. Inclination here [00:39:00] to the religious, and the reason I say this is that focus on the blue of the sky and the sail of silver representing some sort of freedom.

What I think Wilde is actually subtly bringing in here is an indication of the religious Now Wilde as Christian. So it's very easy to kind of subtly weave in what I would consider indications of heaven. And in this poem, the blue of the sky, the sails of silver, the drifting clouds, I think create this impression of a world separate from the walls of the prison.

And again, Wilde as a speaker evidently tells us that the prison walls suddenly started to close in on him. There is a focus at first on this sky, this impression of freedom that is reflected in the sails of this ship. I say ship here because of course they are clouds, but when we are looking at the symbolism of sails being attached to a ship, it's the notion of journey.

It's the notion of freedom For those to belong [00:40:00] exclusively to a man who has committed such a horrendous crime and not to the souls in pain, who by virtue of their kind of relationship with Wilde you might consider to have not committed a crime at all is so fascinating to me. I think the idea that Wilde is not just interrogating what justice looks like socially, but also in a religious aspect, talking about specific judgments, because of course he's not just talking about judgment in a social sense, but he's talking about judgment in a religious sense. So the ownership of that sky, the ownership of that journey towards freedom and the distance that Wilde as a speaker and his fellow prisoners feel from that, excluding this man is so incredibly nuanced because it weaves in a further level of complexity, a further questioning of what is right and what is wrong. And I think when we talk about ballads, can very easy to say, well, you know, we start at point A, we finish at [00:41:00] point B, and there's a journey somewhere in between there. It can be rendered quite simplistic, but here we have 109 stanzas of an incredibly complex story that weaves in the pain of, you know, hundreds of other prisoners. And yet we are left with the idea that justice will never quite be fair. We are left with the impression of unfairness. You do not leave this poem with the impression that we have gone from point A to point B successfully because you are still left with questions.

You are left with a feeling of unsettlement. But Joe, is there anything else you want to pick up on in this poem? You know, really weighing in on that sense of injustice.

Joe: 100%. Because I think this is right at the core of that question about how the form has evolved over the centuries, because as I mentioned earlier, form has always been interested in issues of moral complexity like murders and like abandoning lovers and like outlaws. But it. Originally was, like I said, it was popular.

It wasn't about deep introspection, it was about narrative. It was about characters. The way it's evolved is it's retained its interest [00:42:00] in complex moments and complex characters, but it's now lent into that complexity and it's now asking questions of who is right, who is wrong, what is fair, what is unfair, and that I think is the kernel of what happens to the ballad form in the 20th century, which is that it returns to, or perhaps, transitions into its final form, which is of.

music, which is a song most ballads written in the last 50 to a hundred years, are better known as songs than they are as written poems. And in particular, the protest song, the protest song of the middle of the Century. I mentioned Dylan and others, you know, the likes of Sam Cook as well, and that the way in which. Which

the story of the oppressed, the story of those who have been treated unfairly, becomes rendered in the ballad form set to music and actually becomes ways in which society can have those complex conversations about. Women's rights about nuclear disarmament, about the civil rights movement. I mean, all of these things are rendered in ballad form in some way or another in songs.

And I think we can trace that continuity of right and [00:43:00] wrong, right the way back to characters like Robinhood and the earliest ballads when they're portrayed as just exciting characters. But actually as we go through, we retain an interest in the same types of people, but the way in which the ballads express that interest is less about, pure pleasure or pure narrative and more about, well, what does this person represent?

What does this moment tell us about our contemporary society? And I think it's really important for listeners to remember that sense of transition. And, you know, if I may just quickly on thepoembefore we move on, this question of evolution and why the form remains so, so enduring. This sense of the ordinary is so.

At the heart of the ballad form, even in the case of, 'O Captain! My Captain!', Where we have someone who is not ordinary at all in the form of Abraham Lincoln. He's rendered as a much more ordinary man, just a ship's captain, one of many a nameless individual In that poem, in this poem, we have the prisoner and that sense of incarceration, that sense of, looking at the outlaws and the downcast in society is a real reflection of where these poems come from.

[00:44:00] These are about ordinary people and ordinary lives. You know, that sense of going from Robinhood all the way to Oscar Wilde all the way forwards to, I mean, one of the great singers of ballads in the 20th century, I'm thinking about Johnny Cash. And Johnny Cash deliberately went to Folsom Prison to sing his record to prisoners about the lives of prisoners.

I mean, loads of his songs and songs that he covered were about prisoners waiting to be executed, or people who are waiting to be released from prison. We look forward to again, and obviously this poem is about someone who murders their wife. We look forward to the nineties where Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds release murder ballads again, that sense of interrogating acts of violence through the lens of outcasts, kind of malignant forces and bad people.

But what does interrogating bad people, outcast and outlaws tell us about ourselves? We're not all murderers. We're not all prisoners, but we all have the capacity to act well and to act badly and. You know, I've mentioned Bob Dylan and Nick Cave and Johnny Cash. These guys are not often referred to in the same sentences as the likes of Oscar Wilde, perhaps Dylan is.

[00:45:00] But that sense that the modern singer songwriter of ballad is kind of the latest incarnation of a tradition that goes right the way back through or, and through Wilde, through Whitman, you know, back further to Wordsworth and Coleridge and back further still to the nameless poets of the medieval era, I mean, it's such a rich literary tradition and we're so lucky to be able to dip our toe in it in today's episode.

Well, I'm sure Maiya like me. You could have gone on for hours on this topic and we've barely scratched the surface of the ballad form. So again, I would encourage listeners to go to PoemAnalysis.com. There are well over a hundred ballads on the site.

and of course there are many more, in song forms I've mentioned. And go and think about some of these questions of inheritance and the cultural tradition and why poets and writers and songwriters are so drawn to these types of questions and these types of characters. But I had a brilliant time recording this episode.

Can you tell us, Maiya, what we're gonna be looking at next week in our very special episode?

Maiya: Well, Joe, you are absolutely right. It is our 50th episode of Beyond the Verse, and I can't quite believe I'm saying it, but what a way to see it in. We will be [00:46:00] talking about the wonderful American poet Louise Glück. Next time. I am very, very excited to get into that, but for now, it's goodbye from me.

Joe: And goodbye for me and the whole team@poemanalysis.com and Poetry+. See you next time.