Eclogue
Eclogue - meaning Summary
Yearning and Pastoral Estrangement
Ashbery's 'Eclogue' uses a pastoral dialogue to depict longing and dislocation. Two speakers, fatherly Cuddie and son Colin, trade images of water, wind, and a partly descended woman, shifting between counsel, erotic desire, and bewilderment. The poem registers emotional confusion and a split self—Colin’s heart both ruptures and re-forms—while ritual actions (dipping, planting) suggest attempts to process grief or desire. It closes with a tentative departure that leaves feelings unresolved.
Read Complete AnalysesCuddie: Slowly all your secret is had In the empty day. People and sticks go down to the water. How can we be so silent? Only shivers Are bred in this land of whistling goats. Colin: Father, I have long dreamed of your whitened Face and sides to accost me in dull play. If you in your bush indeed know her Where shall my heart’s vagrant tides place her? Cuddie: A wish is induced by a sudden change In the wind’s decay. Shall we to the water’s edge, O prince? The peons rant in a light fume. Madness will gaze at its reflection. Colin: What is this pain come near me? Now I thought my heart would burst, And there, spiked like some cadenza’s head, A tiny crippled heart was born. Cuddie: I tell you good will imitate this. Now we must dip in raw water These few thoughts and fleshy members. So evil may refresh our days. Colin: She has descended part way! Now father cut me down with tears. Plant me far in my mother’s image To do cold work of books and stones. Cuddie: I need not raise my hand Colin: She burns the flying peoples Cuddie: To hear its old advice Colin: And spears my heart’s two beasts Cuddie: Or cover with its mauves. Colin: And I depart unhurt.
from Some Trees (1956)
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