“Tiger” by A.D.Hope.
notes by Poetry Editor, Ira Maine
If you care to troll through the history of Alec Derwent Hope, poet and academic, (1907- 2000) you will discover a highly educated critical intelligence who did not suffer fools gladly. Born in Cooma, NSW he went to Oxford Uni. on a scholarship, returning to Australia in 1931, He worked in various academic disciplines throughout his professional life from whence he would sally forth savagely, railing against what he saw as Australia’s habit of pursuing mediocrity relentlessly. Through the 1940’s and 50’s he probably alienated everybody who was anybody in the local literary world by his demands for the highest possible creative standards.
As an example of the prevailing Philistinism of the period, Hope was once asked the following question by some local troglodyte:
‘What do poets do for Australia?’
Gloriously, Hope is said to have replied;
‘They justify it’s existence.’
Now to our poem ‘TIGER’,
This poem is not difficult. Hope simply asks of you that you do not mistake the forest for the trees.
Paper tigers are the ephemeral, the tempter, the bait the world offers you in an attempt to win you to it’s side. On all sides we are daily battered by the paper tigers of politics, advertising, religion etc whose avowed aim is to prevent you arriving at your own independent conclusions. Their conclusions are the only ones that matter. All else is heresy and must be expunged.
It is hard in these circumstances to resist these blandishments. But resist we must in order to properly understand who we are and what our ‘three score and ten’ function might be.
We must exorcise the lies we tell ourselves and look at ourselves truthfully and critically, even if it kills us. Otherwise, in Socrates’ words; ‘… the unexamined life is not worth living…’.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius farewells Laertes with the following advice;
Tiger
The sun is hot, the sun is high.
They roar in chorus, not in tune,
Their plaintive, savage hunting cry.
O, when you hear them, stop your ears
And clench your lids and bite your tongue.
The harmless paper tiger bears
Strong fascination for the young.
His forest is the busy street;
His dens the forum and the mart;
He drinks no blood, he tastes no meat:
He riddles and corrupts the heart.
But when the dusk begins to creep
From tree to tree, from door to door,
The jungle tiger wakes from sleep
And utters his authentic roar.
It bursts the night and shakes the stars
Till one breaks blazing from the sky;
Then listen! If to meet it soars
Your heart’s reverberating cry,
My child, then put aside your fear:
Unbar the door and walk outside!
The real tiger waits you there;
His golden eyes shall be your guide.
And, should he spare you in his wrath,
The world and all the worlds are yours;
And should he leap the jungle path
And clasp you with his bloody jaws,
Then say, as his divine embrace
Destroys the mortal parts of you:
I too am of that royal race
Who do what we are born to do.