I hear leaves drinking rain;
I hear rich leaves on top
Giving the poor beneath
Drop after drop:
Tis a sweet noise to hear
These green leaves drinking near.
The Rain by William H. Davies
It has been written that Davies uses rain as a symbol to show the different classes of society. The upper leaves benefit from the rain first and then hand down the rest to the lower leaves. The same way rich people pass on the leftover benefits to poorer people.
Interesting interpretation of his poem. Is it correct? I would have to ask Mr. Davies what he meant by his poem. At least one person believes this rain and these leaves are that symbol.
William Shakespeare’s monologue in As You Like It has been interpreted symbolically by some over time as follows; “men and women, in the course of their lives, perform different roles. “A stage” here symbolizes the world, and “players” is a symbol for human beings.
All the worlds a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
they have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code is a story that weaves a suspense thriller mystery around and through the art and writings of Da Vinci himself. One symbol, among many that Brown highlights, is phi commonly know as the golden ratio or the Divine proportion. In mathematics it represents 1.618, an irrational number. I recommend that if you have read Brown’s novel, take a moment to open up to page 94 and reacquaint yourself with Professor Langdon’s, (the main character of The Da Vinci Code), explanation of how he highlighted natures lack of randomness and chaos by using examples of the number of female bees being 1.618 greater to male bees in all the hives around the world , or the distance of the lines of the shell of a nautilus as being exactly 1.618 apart from each other. He goes on to explain to his students how artists use the divine or golden number 1.618 for the proportion of a perfect women’s figure in their art and also apply it to the width vs the height of the perfect picture frame. Nature and art in Divine proportion.
Great authors, philosophers, and others use symbols in their writings to produce images that imply more than their obvious meaning(s).
Carl G. Jung’s essay entitled Approaching the unconscious highlights the following; What we call a symbol is a term, a name,or even a picture that may be familiar in daily life, yet possesses specific connotations in addition to its conventional and obvious meaning.”
This month, as I settle against my symbolic lighthouse to contemplate and share with you my personal journey of self awareness, I have reached a place where I do not think in thoughts and ideas to understand myself better. ( Of course many of you might be thinking that “Mark, you left thought and reason behind a long time ago.” ) All kidding aside… No seriously I was kidding! In any case Carl Jung gives me support by writing; Symbols, contemplated, take us on a journey to thoughts and ideas that are just beyond ” the grasp of reason”. We also produce symbols spontaneously in the form of dreams. ”
Hmmm, building blocks that help me bridge the gap between my conscious self and my unconscious self just might be built by learning the importance, personally, of images remembered each day/night I sleep. Jung goes on to state that dream life is the soil from which most symbols originally grow. A dream is quite unlike a story told by the conscious mind.
My symbols are better understood by intuition, not sensation. Into my eighth decade of this life, I still have to mature further to understand and intuit my personal pictures/symbols without stepping into any manure along the way.
Thank you for reading.
Mark