The Sunlight on the Garden by Louis MacNeice
"The Sunlight on the Garden" by Louis MacNeice is a notable poem that explores themes of time, memory, and loss. Composed of four six-line stanzas, the poem employs a distinctive rhyme scheme and rhythm, reflecting MacNeice's mastery of poetic form. It begins with a reflection on the transient nature of joy, suggesting that the passage of time erases both happy moments and the possibility of atonement for past misdeeds. The poem poignantly lists various ephemeral aspects of life, such as freedom, nature, and artistic expressions, indicating their inevitable decline.
As it progresses, the poem evokes a sense of impending war and destruction, referencing the decline of the British Empire through allusions to historical figures and events. The final stanza offers a shift in tone, with the poet embracing acceptance rather than longing for the unattainable. This acceptance brings a sense of gratitude for the shared experiences of life, even amidst loss. Ultimately, MacNeice’s poem illustrates how the act of creating art allows the poet to capture and preserve fleeting moments, while also reflecting on the inevitability of change and mortality.
The Sunlight on the Garden by Louis MacNeice
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1937 (collected in Poems, 1937)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
“The Sunlight on the Garden,” published in the collection Poems, is one of MacNeice’s earlier works and is probably the most anthologized of all his short poems. It is a four stanza poem, each stanza having six lines rhyming abcbba. All the lines are loose three-beat lines except line 5, which has two beats.
The poem begins with an almost commonplace statement about the inability to keep any moment; the habit of time is to run on, taking with it each moment of joy. The sixth line makes the statement that “we cannot beg for pardon.” The logical connection, perhaps, being that time’s passage prevents one from atoning for one’s sins as well as from cherishing one’s happy moments.
The second stanza lists freedom itself as one of those moments and foretells its end, with a pun on the word “lances.” The poet adds to the list of disappearing things, birds, sonnets, and dances. Stanza three brings war to mind. The joy of using the sky for flying will also end. Having defied the church bells’ moral imperative, now there will be sirens to deal with, and the airplanes will come, bringing bombs, fire, and death. The stanza ends with an allusion to the final words of Marc Antony in William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (pr. c. 1606-1607, pb. 1623), “We are dying, Egypt.” As Antony represented the Roman world, so the poet represents the British empire, which is also dying.
The last stanza reverses the rhyming pattern of the first; line 1 of stanza 1 ends in “pardon,” and line 5 ends in “garden.” In the last stanza the reverse is true. Since the rhyming words are reversed, perhaps the meaning and feelings of the poem are also reversed. The poet begins the last stanza not expecting pardon. He accepts the passage of time and refuses to wish for something he cannot have. The word “hardened” which in stanza 1 modified “sunlight,” in effect freezing it in place, here modifies “heart” with paradoxical results: accepting this “hardening of heart,” refusing to ask for “pardon,” brings on gladness. The moment in the garden gone, the poet says that he can be thankful to an unspecified “you.” Not for sunlight, but for having “sat under Thunder and rain with you.” Finally, the poem ends on an affirmative note with the poet grateful for the sunlight on the garden.
The underlying suggestion is that by using his formal skills, the poet is capable of reversing, in his own way, the passing of time by preserving time in a formal structure. It also suggests that the poet’s skill can reverse the doom hurrying toward everyone.
Bibliography
Brown, Terence. Louis MacNeice: Skeptical Vision. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1975.
Brown, Terence, and Alec Reid, eds. Time Was Away: The World of Louis MacNeice. Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1974.
Devine, Kathleen, and Alan J. Peacock, eds. Louis MacNeice and His Influence. Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, England: C. Smythe, 1998.
Kiberd, Declan. Irish Classics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001.
McDonald, Peter. “Louis MacNeice: Irony and Responsibility.” In The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry, edited by Matthew Campbell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
McDonald, Peter. Louis MacNeice: The Poet in His Contexts. Oxford English Monographs. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1991.
McKinnon, William T. Apollo’s Blended Dream: A Study of the Poetry of Louis MacNeice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.
Marsack, Robyn. The Cave of Making: The Poetry of Louis MacNeice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Moore, Donald B. The Poetry of Louis MacNeice. Leicester, England: Leicester University Press, 1972.
Smith, Stan. Irish Poetry and the Construction of Modern Identity: Ireland Between Fantasy and History. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2005.