many of his techniques and concerns. In fact, this poem appears as the first item in each of his collections (exceptCollected Poems, 1919-1976, which is arranged in order of first publication); it is considered to be one of the best of his shorter pieces. The poem begins with a Latin motto, which, as usual, Tate neither identifies nor translates. The motto comes from the first book of the Aeneid (c. 29-19 b.c.e.; English translation, 1553) and in the original reads “Quem das finem, rex magne, laborum?” (“What limit, great king, do you place on their labors?”) Tate changes “laborum” to “dolorum” (pain, either physical or mental, but here probably mental). This motto should indicate to the reader that a knowledge of the Aeneid is necessary to an understanding of the poem. Indeed, a reader without a great deal of knowledge of the Aeneid would probably overlook or not understand many of Tate’s allusions to it. The poem is, first of all, dramatic; it can be read simply as a description of the dramatic setting. Beneath this surface, however, is the reference, maintained throughout the poem, to the events in the Aeneid, as well as a commentary on the modern human condition by contrast with the past.

The dramatic situation of the poem is simple: a group of people is on a boat trip, a sort of party. The speaker is a member of that group. The voyage of Aeneas is recalled by the speaker, setting up what seems to be an unlikely parallel, although many a weekend sailor may imagine himself to be a Columbus, a Magellan—or even an Aeneas.

In the first stanza, the setting is described. It is a long bay surrounded by a cliff, similar to the bay on which Aeneas landed in Italy. The cliff, called the “peaked margin of antiquity’s delay,” serves as a symbol of the border between the past and present. Time is an important element here, and the first image illustrates Tate’s belief that a difficult barrier exists between the past and present. This idea is developed throughout the poem by means of a contrast between the mythical past, represented by the heroic Aeneas, and the monotonous present, represented by the modern sailors who are attempting to retreat into antiquity. They themselves, however, as symbols of modern humanity, have made that return impossible.

The third stanza contains an important allusion to the Aeneid which continues to develop the contrast between the past and present. The speaker says that the party “made feast and in our secret need/ Devoured the very plates Aeneas bore.” The reference is to the third book of the Aeneid, in which the harpies place a curse on Aeneas and his men: Aeneas will not find the land he is searching for until he and his men have become desperate enough to eat the plates they are carrying. The terms of the curse are fulfilled when the men eat wheat cakes on which they have placed food, thus signaling that they have arrived at their destination. The modern sailors parody this fulfillment of the curse on Aeneas; they too are “cursed” and are seeking another land. The image is repeated in the fourth and fifth stanzas, emphasizing the idea of the removal of a curse.

The curse is explored in the last four stanzas; a question indicates what the curse is: “What prophecy of eaten plates could landless/ Wanderers fulfill by the ancient sea?” By sailing on the “ancient sea” and recalling Aeneas, the wanderers have established some contact with the past, but the contact is incomplete and ephemeral. Tate tells the reader why this is so in stanza 6: It is modern people’s “lust for power” that has been their undoing. His final, strong image is that of a land of plenty in which what should be a bountiful harvest is left to “rot on the vine.” This is the land, he reminds the reader, where he was born; one needs not seek a foreign land to regain the qualities of a great culture.

“Ode to the Confederate Dead”

A somewhat similar theme is treated in Tate’s best-known poem, “Ode to the Confederate Dead.” The title of the poem is somewhat misleading, since the poem is not an ode, or public celebration, to the dead Confederate soldiers. The speaker is a modern man who must face the fact of his isolation, which becomes evident to him through his reflection on the various symbols in the poem, most significant of which is the cemetery where he stands. The speaker is not characterized; in fact, his lack of individuality is an important element in the poem.

Like many of Tate’s other poems, “Ode to the Confederate Dead” contains striking diction. He makes use of unusual adjectives, oxymorons, and other techniques and figures, letting the reader know immediately that the poem is not a conventional glorification of the men who fought and died for the Confederacy. Tate’s vision is broader than that, and his theme is more universal.

The first section contains a great deal of nature imagery, the speaker personifying nature in an almost Romantic fashion. It is interesting to note, however, that he describes the wind as whirring, a sound associated with machinery rather than nature. This section also contains an extended image of piles of fallen leaves; the month is, as is made explicit in the next section, November. The deadness of the leaves is emphasized, drawing a parallel between the leaves and the soldiers.

In the second section, the speaker focuses his attention on the graves. The graves, like the men who lie in them, have been unable to withstand the effects of time. The stone angels on the graves have been stained, chipped, and even broken. This section also reveals that the speaker sees the dead soldiers as having lost their individual identities; they have become merely the “Confederate dead,” a group of people from whom time has removed all sense of individuality. The speaker sympathizes with such a loss, for he feels that he has been similarly imposed on by modern culture.

The third and fourth sections emphasize this sense of loss. The speaker feels that modern humanity is ineffectual; people have “waited for the angry resolution/ Of those desires that should be yours tomorrow.” Modern people have praise for the dead Confederate soldiers, he says, but does not see that the dead soldiers were “hurried beyond decision” to their deaths.

The last sections of the poem contain a question. How, the speaker asks, should people commemorate the dead soldiers? He refers again to their anonymity and uses the word “chivalry,” an idea he has merely suggested before. “Chivalry” connotes high ideals and historical tradition, but the tradition died because its followers failed to put its ideals into practice. The speaker has no desire to recapture the past of the dead soldiers; it seems to him no better than the present, which, by the end of the poem, he has come to accept.

The speaker in “Ode to the Confederate Dead” is a philosopher, but he is also a solipsist, believing that the self is the only reality. This flaw, the belief only in self, is a failing that Tate seems to feel is typical of modern humanity. Thus the theme is similar to that of “The Mediterranean,” as well as others of Tate’s poems. The concerns of modern humanity, he suggests, are petty, somehow not human. There is, however, no resolution to the problem; the tone is despairing. Several critics have pointed out that “Ode to the Confederate Dead” is “dark,” containing none of the images of light of which Tate was so fond. The speaker seems truly doomed by his inability to see beyond himself.

“Seasons of the Soul”

The problems and failings of modern humanity also dominate “Seasons of the Soul,” considered by many critics to be the best of Tate’s later poetry. The poem is dedicated to John Peale Bishop, Tate’s friend and a poet for whom he had great respect. The two men occasionally wrote companion poems and frequently criticized each other’s work. Following the dedication in the poem, there is an epigraph, which, like the motto in “The Mediterranean,” is neither identified nor translated (it is from Dante’s Inferno, in La divina commedia, c. 1320; The Divine Comedy, 1802). In the lines quoted, the speaker says that he reached up and broke a branch from a thorn tree, which cried out asking, “Why have you torn me apart?” Imprisoned inside the tree is the soul of a man, presumably a man who has died by suicide. The punishment fits the crime; the soul which denied its human form has been given a nonhuman exterior in which to spend eternity. The epigraph is significant in three ways. First, Dante in this part (canto 13) of the Inferno is describing the punishment of the violent, and Tate feels that violence is another of modern humanity’s great flaws. Second, there is the suggestion that modern people, in denying their humanity, have damned themselves to a fate similar to that of suicide. Finally, the epigraph alerts the reader to the presence of allusions to Dante in the poem.

“Seasons of the Soul” is divided into four sections named for each of the seasons, and critics disagree on their significance in the poem. Some have seen a correspondence between the seasons and the elements, while others argue that the seasons represent the recurring obsessions of humankind. The idea of the unending rotation of the seasons is emphasized in several places. Three of the sections, “Summer,” “Winter,” and “Spring,” begin similarly with an invocation, a technique associated with the epic tradition. The epic poets asked in their invocations for help in treating their subjects adequately, for they wrote of great deeds far beyond their own capabilities. They sought to go beyond their own limitations through the aid of the muse, who represented the epic tradition. In “Seasons of the Soul,” Tate’s use of the invocation is ironic, since a major element in the poem is humankind’s search for salvation through some source outside itself, a search that is futile. The one section without an invocation is “Autumn.” The most likely explanation for this omission, according to George Hemphill in Allen Tate (1964), is that this section is devoted to the obsessions of humankind as solipsist. Since solipsistic humans are unable to accept anything but themselves as reality (and, by extension, as significant), they would not feel the need to invoke the aid of any muse or god.

The seasons are presented in sequence, beginning with summer. By choosing thus to begin the poem, Tate indicates that he is not using the four seasons in the traditional manner to represent the four ages of humanity; using the seasons in that manner would necessitate beginning with spring. In fact, most critics have noticed a logical progression in the poem from season to season and have pointed out that much of its meaning is lost if the reader attempts to begin reading the sequence at some section other than “Summer.” The sequence is representative of humankind’s development; to return to Hemphill’s interpretation of the poem’s sections, “Summer” concerns humans as activists or politicians, “Autumn” concerns them as solipsists, “Winter” concerns them as sexual beings, and “Spring” concerns them as religious beings. These concerns are similar to the seasons in their unrelenting reoccurrence.

In “Summer,” Tate is concerned with the effects of political activity, especially war, on people’s humanity, and he once again denounces whatever leads to dehumanization. The poem refers to World War II and the occupation of “Green France,” a basically agrarian culture, by the “caterpillar feet” of Germany’s technical culture. Here Tate’s view of war is that of a true conscientious objector; he seems to feel that no war is justified, since the effect of violence on people’s souls is so devastating as to render every victory Pyrrhic.

The season of the second part of the poem is autumn, the season of “Ode to the Confederate Dead.” The speaker, often identified as the poet, relates a dream he had of falling down a well into a house. He tries to leave the house, but what appears to be the front door is a false door. His parents are in the house, but they do not recognize him. The speaker seems to have wandered (or, more accurately, fallen) into a hell especially designed for him since it fulfills his worst fear, that of the loss of his own identity. In losing his identity, the solipsist loses all. He has been damned by his inability to transcend himself, like the speaker in “Ode to the Confederate Dead.” Once again Tate warns of the dangers of modern humanity’s egocentricity.

While a logical link exists between the first and second sections of the poem, some critics have been unable to see such a transition between the second and third sections. Since the third is about sex, apparently that is the retreat of the speaker from his personal hell. He looks for comfort and perhaps even salvation in sex, for he begins with an invocation to Venus, goddess of love. He asks her to return to the sea, from which she came; this impossible act, the speaker feels, is preferable to modern religion in which God is seen as dried up, no longer bearing the wounds of Christ, which represent humanity’s salvation. God is as dead to modern humans as the sea gods such as Neptune are. Unlike these gods, Venus is still alive as far as modern humans are concerned. Tate, however, uses images of coldness and violence to describe modern humans’ sexual feelings. The shark is a symbol of sexual “perversion.” This section ends with a return to the section of the Inferno from which the epigraph comes. The speaker breaks a branch from a tree and hears the blood of a suicide speak to him as it drips on him from the tree. The blood tells him that it is the blood of men who have killed themselves because of love’s deceit. The reference to blood is reminiscent of all the water imagery used throughout this section. The blood imagery further reminds the reader that this section deals with the heart, whereas the previous section deals with the mind and the first section with the tension between the mind and heart. There clearly is no salvation through sex for modern humans.

The final section deals with religion; humans, having found no help elsewhere, turn to Christianity. The invocation is to spring, described as “irritable”—reminiscent of T. S. Eliot’s description of April as “the cruelest month” in The Waste Land (1922). Spring is irritable because it is unable to stay and settle down. In the second stanza, the speaker recalls his childhood innocence, which refused to acknowledge the reality of death but was amused, rather, by the “ancient pun” that equated death and orgasm.

In the fourth stanza, Tate suggests that humans can find peace only when they accept the idea of death. Although this concept is Christian, the imagery is pagan, with references to Plato’s cave and Sisyphus’s rock. Tate moves from this thought into the specific mother imagery of the last two stanzas. The first mother has been identified as Saint Monica, mother of Saint Augustine of Hippo. According to legend, Saint Monica was a difficult mother, insisting that her son become a Christian. The early images of death as a gentle, loving “mother of silences” are continued through the reference to Saint Monica, a stern mother who led her son to the salvation of Christianity, and the nameless mother of the last stanza. In this final stanza, Tate raises a question that he does not answer: Is death a “kindness”? Certainly the orthodox view of Christianity insists that humans turn their eyes toward heaven where a “better life” awaits them. Tate, however, is a rather unorthodox Christian and in this poem is still trying to come to terms with religious questions.