Taken In Faith

Poems

Helen Pinkerton

• Publisher: Swallow Press
• Year: 2002
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780804040082
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

In 1967, Yvor Winters wrote of Helen Pinkerton, "she is a master of poetic style and of her material. No poet in English writes with more authority." Unfortunately, in 1967 mastery of poetic style was not, by and large, considered a virtue, and Pinkerton's finely crafted poems were neglected in favor of more improvisational and flashier talents. Though her work won the attention and praise of serious readers, who tracked her poems as they appeared in such journals as The Paris Review, The Sewanee Review, and The Southern Review, her verse has never been available in a trade book. Taken in Faith remedies that situation, bringing Pinkerton's remarkable poems to a general audience for the first time.

Even her very earliest works embody a rare depth and seriousness. Primarily lyrical and devotional, they always touch on larger issues of human struggle and conduct. More recent poems, concerned in part with history, exhibit a stylistic as well as a thematic shift, moving away from the rhymed forms of her devotional works into a blank verse marked by a quiet flexibility and contemplative grace.

Like Virginia Adair, another poet who waited long for proper recognition, Pinkerton speaks as a woman who has lived fully and observed acutely and who has set the life and observations down in memorable verse. Taken in Faith represents a half-century of her poetic efforts.

Crossing the Pedregal

P A R T II

Lemuel Shaw’s Meditation

“Who’s to doom, when the judge himself is dragged
to the bar?” (Melville’s Ahab)

Boston, January 1861

Through this sad winter as our crisis deepens,

And war so long resisted now seems certain,

When I, more ill than old, have given up

At last the Commonwealth’s chief-justiceship,

I have gone back in mind—not reminiscent

But searching—remembering what was said and done

For better or for worse by men like me,

Who, mindful of the welfare of the whole,

Have sought to keep the Union from disaster,

Believing—whether we prove wrong or right—

That its survival is man’s dearest hope;

Remembering also what was said and done

By other men, who were, I felt, too partial

To special causes, private moralities.

Yet it is he I most remember now,

My son-in-law, a poet in his soul,

Though our prose age rewards the pleasant tale,

The South Sea narrative, or boy’s adventure,

Most volatile of men and yet most earnest,

Who listened, quiet, to my recondite,

Because so rarely spoken, considerations.

Twelve years ago he came and we discussed

What then preoccupied all thinking men,

Which we had touched on only casually

At earlier meetings, discreetly, as men did

Who feared the fear the topic slavery

Aroused and still arouses; though now, long past

The needs of politesse, all speak of war.

Led by some words of mine about the case,

Seven years earlier, of Latimer,

Which was my first concerning a fugitive,

He asked me in his candid, eager way:

“I wonder, sir, how you, having the power,

Knowing the scourge you would return him to,

Could not find means, legal or otherwise,

To let him stay on Massachusetts soil,

A man like others, standing in the sun?”

Quick to respond to his frank earnestness,

I answered by recalling his own youth:

“To see the case as I saw Latimer’s,

Posit a legal case that might be drawn

From your experience, your years at sea,

Your time aboard a U.S. Navy ship.

For states, you know, and nations are like ships;

In stress their laws resemble those of ships.

Suppose a British sailor in time of war

During the years the British fought the French,

Was forced—impressed—into the Royal Navy,

And he, though loyal, unresentful, were

Trapped by the malice of a lesser man,

Accused of stirring mutiny; and he

Struck out and killed the man, an officer,

Defensive of his honor—murder not meant.

Say, then, the Captain, caught by circumstance,

Was called to judge, knowing the sailor’s aim

Neither rebellious nor homicidal,

But manly in its self-defensive posture,

Seeing the inward honesty and pride

(Sharing, perhaps, that honesty and pride)

Reasoned that he must take the penalty

Which naval law prescribes in time of war,

More needed, even, in time of mutinous

And unpredictable unrest at sea.

Suppose his reasoning was that equity—

The means our human law allows sometimes

For its adjustment to the special case,

Or for appeal to timeless principles,

Granting a precedence to natural law—

Could not apply, when what was here at stake

Was ship and crew, the fleet, perhaps the nation—

Beyond the nation, values that it stood for

Against the French Directory’s tyranny.

Suppose he saw, but could not change the case:

Conflict of rights, ancient as human law,

The individual’s claim to justice locked

In mortal strife with welfare of the whole.

Evil begets itself and traps the good,

Forcing the lesser’s sacrifice to greater.

“So I, aware of our ship’s tenuous union,

Our federation on one fragile keel

(Because still weak the bonds between the states—

Weak through injustice to the African)

Yet loyal to the Union’s hopes, its vision,

Its possibilities, in time, for all,

I reasoned (and all we have against our fate

Is reason’s ranging gaze) that my response

Must take account of welfare of the whole,

Holding in mind its destined hope for all,

For him, his children, and his children’s children—

Must for the Union’s sake deny his plea.

For if the Union fail because the South

Could not depend on Northern loyalty

To oaths and laws, made at our sacred union,

Then there fail also all our hopes for freedom—

Freedom, I mean, for all, when time might alter

The Europeans’ fear of Africans.

And if the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• I. Promontory Hills
• II. Crossing the Pedregal
• III. Bright Fictions
• Notes
• Afterword