The Invigorating Spirit of "A Moment"

Robert E. Howard's striving for brightness amidst his troubled life

Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash

In a completely different vein of mood poetry from last week's post[insert link], this week's poem of choice is Robert E. Howard’s “A Moment.” Rather than coming across this one as organically as I did with “Amorgen’s Song” and “A Garden”, I deliberately sought out this one by Howard to discuss for this week’s post. When it comes to Howard’s poetry, a lot of attention is given to his heroic verse, horror poetry, and especially “Cimmeria”,¹ so I wanted to find one, or a theme of poetry he dabbled in, that I haven’t seen talked about much. After searching through the collection A Word from the Outer Dark, I landed on “A Moment” for its evocative imagery and appreciation for life observed by a man who lived a short yet vibrant one.

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As I don’t have much history with this poem as the others, I’ll simply lay this one out up front:²

"Let me forget all men a space,
All dole and death and dearth;
Let me clutch the world in my hungry arms—
The paramour of the earth.

The hills are gowned in emerald trees
And the sea-green tides of grain,
And the joy, oh God, of the tingling sod,
Oh, it rends my heart in twain.

My feet are bare to the burning dew,
My breast to the stinging breeze;
And I watch the sun in the flaming blue
Like a worshipper on his knees.

With the joys of the sun and love and growth
All things of the earth are rife
And the soul that is deep in the breast of me
Sings with the pulse of Life."

What stuck out to me about this poem was its similarities to morning verses I grew up reciting in school. From fourth grade up into my senior year of high school, I attended a Waldorf (or Steiner) school. The ethos for these types of schools is very holistic and based on the philosophy of theosophy (however it is never taught to students at any grade level) and involves encouraging human ability to learn and work. While morning verses recited in Waldorf schools may have religious references (with some more recently being tailored to sound more secular or agnostic), the focus is primarily on acknowledging the world itself as a living thing ripe with opportunities for educating and growing one’s self.

Each level of Waldorf education has different morning verses, which become meditations or riddles for students as they grow up and come to understand what each one means. “A Moment” to me feels like a variation on the morning verse for my adult life. I say “adult life” not in the sense that there’s anything inappropriate for kids in Howard’s verse, but for the fact this feels more like a culmination of years experiencing the world condensed into a single moment that only someone old enough would be able to speak on. Moreover, it feels incredibly liberated, which makes sense for Howard’s poetry—and his writing in general—where the emphasis is on individualism and self-reliance. I can’t speak for every “Waldorf kid” but reciting the morning verse, to me, felt like a community effort as it was usually spoken by the entire class or school. It makes sense for an educational system that runs from pre-school all the way up to high school to provide something that gives students a sense of “one-ness” with the world by following the communal activity of group recitals. It creates security and familiarity that can be recognized across time and space by others who partook in it.

Howard, however, has no such connection to the institution of Waldorf education—but did dabble in similar mystic research as the system’s founder, Rudolf Steiner, and had a profound interest in the true spirit of humanity roused in solitude by the natural world. Another part of what I mean when I say “A Moment” feels like the morning verse for adults is that it does not have the same communal context as Waldorf morning verses; it was written by a man who focused heavily on finding truth in one’s own being and a connection with the unspoiled, natural world. Throughout Waldorf education, there is a strong sense of community, but I found once I graduated that I was left greatly to my own devices. At the start of each year in college and graduate school, I recited the morning verse in English and German, but each year found myself forgetting some of the words. Moreover, they didn’t have the same weight as when I came around to understand their meanings during my final years in high school. It’s not like I came to dislike them or anything, but I think I had grown out of them in some ways.

Now, years later and in my first job following higher education, “A Moment” feels more appropriate to invoke at the start of each day. “Let me forget all men a space…” reminds me that even with a plethora of family, friends, and coworkers, at the start of each day I’m going to be the one who has to make major choices for myself. The rest of the poem reminds me further that the world is warm and full of life, and can be overwhelmingly so as expounded in the third stanza. The final stanza is what really made me think of the morning verses I had recited for almost a decade, which acknowledged both the human spirit and the spirit of the wider world or governing force over existence; “A Moment” and the morning verses conclude with a stirring statement of how Life itself connects a person with the world.

Those who grew up with Waldorf education may have found their own “morning verses” to bring with them into their adult lives, or they may even still hold fast to the familiar words we grew up speaking. Whatever the case may be, every person is going to find their own truth by looking into the world, and artistic mediums like poetry help immensely with finding that truth. It doesn’t have to be anything related to a career, or hobby, or even someone’s current path through life, but even just a single phrase that opens their eyes to the things that make them part of this world.

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Thanks for reading this week’s post! Is there a poem, verse, or prayer you often invoke at the start of each day? If you feel comfortable sharing, using the button below to leave it in the comments!

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1. In homage to Robert E. Howard’s 118th birthday this year, I recorded a Scottish Gaelic translation of “Cimmeria” which can be found at the link below:

2. “A Moment” by Robert E. Howard in A Word from the Outer Dark.