Splendid ambiguities in the peacock's tail

This week's poem is a seventeenth century anonymous verse, I saw a peacock.  Learned men argue about whether the commas are best in or should be omitted entirely - I have left them in, but you will judge for yourself.  Every line is ambiguous, one meaning being rather staggering (a cloud circled round with ivy), the other much more normal (with ivy circled round I saw an oak), so have fun.  Ambiguity is richness, although - pace William Empson's famous book, Seven Types Of Ambiguity - it is much more complex than I could ever have imagined.  In this poem, I just love the flood of images, and the challenge of holding the rival pairs in your imagination at the same time; (a pismire is an ant).

Let me know if you enjoy it; I had no comments on To EmcC, and it worries me a bit when that happens .. did nobody like it?

I Saw a Peacock, with a fiery tail,
    I saw a Blazing Comet, drop down hail,
    I saw a Cloud, with Ivy circled round,
    I saw a sturdy Oak, creep on the ground,
    I saw a Pismire, swallow up a Whale,
    I saw a raging Sea, brim full of Ale,
    I saw a Venice Glass, Sixteen foot deep,
    I saw a well, full of mens tears that weep,
    I saw their eyes, all in a flame of fire,
    I saw a House, as big as the Moon and higher,
    I saw the Sun, even in the midst of night,
    I saw the man, that saw this wondrous sight.

Comments

[glo]

Brilliantly brilliant and lovely ! It has a taste of surrealism and a touch of mystery.
It seems confusingly easy to write such a poem but I think it must be rather difficult to do so. I too look forward to read Mrs Cornflower's version - but why not?
I guess it is the typical poem that English schoolboys and girls learn at school and sing all together with the class.

I prefer it with the commas because they help understanding it, they indicate where to stop and breathe and also because it is an old poem (punctuation marks are usually removed in modern poetry).

Re To EmcC
To aid and abet the lovely Cat... Dark Puss and I belong to Team A and we were off duty that precise week. Ask Team B why they didn't do the job.
Well, a very feline excuse, I know, but feline excuses are the best and I guess Dark Puss is proud of me! I train with him to be a cat in my next life.
To tell you the truth, Mr Bagshaw, I just can't concentrate on Pound's poem, I don't know why. Maybe I'll try again later.

[Harriet]

Fascinating poem. I would prefer it without the commas, though.

[lindsay]

We look forward to reading your version in due course, Cornflower!

[Cornflower]

Enthusiastic applause for this one! So neat is the dovetailing there that I've been trying to copy the form and write my own feeble version.

[Peter the flautist]

I only comment (well mostly) when I have something to add. I did read the To EmcC and I am not sure whether I liked it or not, but I had nothing that I thought would be interesting to add to your weblog.

I think in the poem above some of the lines can have a third interpretation; for example the first could be a good description of a moderately large (few kg) meteoroid breaking up in our atmosphere. The second last line is easy since virtually every object we can see in the night sky are suns, just not our own Sol.

Dark Puss