On the page the poem is not menacingly lengthy or formally experimental. The poem exists as three concise quatrains in iambic pentameter. The reader is presented with a poem that looks immediately accessible. Additionally, the poem rhymes ABAB, CDCD, EFEF. The rhyme is quaintly contained within the meter to create a wonderful flow and melodic presence. Despite the aforementioned attributes the poem does not skim across a surface rather it dives to the depths of humanity and the essence of free thinking wells up.
Seriously Humorous
In the first stanza the voice is whimsical beginning with the first line where it ironically pokes fun at its own devices.
Mind in its purest play is like some bat
That beats about in caverns all alone,
Contriving by a kind of senseless wit
Not to conclude against a wall of stone. (1-4)
The voice exerts a self-mocking tone in the first line by toying with the word “play”: like a child, like a drama, like a sporting event? The answer is uncertain. Additionally, the poetic vehicle for the poem is set in motion because the simile comparing a “Mind” to a “bat” is presented. What kind of bat? A baseball bat? A Vampire Bat? The irony is uproarious, the ambiguity is glorious. In line two of the poem, it is apparent that the voice is speaking about a flying mammal because it is moving “about in caverns all alone”. The bat is “senseless”, yet able to remain in the air. Our minds are suspended in liquid and comparisons between flying and floating come to mind. Without sensory details the mind in its “purest play” never falters or stops even though it is confined by barriers.
Answers in the Dark
The second stanza has the mind flying around with “no need to falter or explore” (5). The mind has the answers to every question right where it is. The answers to questions of knowledge are therefore self-contained within the sphere of the skull. “Darkly” begins the first line of the second stanza which is again a whimsical use of wordplay because with the “caverns” (2) of the mind it is certainly dark, but also maybe the voice is hinting at an inherent evil: the evil of never hesitating or reaching beyond its own habitat.
Playfully, the voice speaks of the mind and its batty behavior when it begins to “weave and flitter, dip and soar” (7). The voice carefully chooses the word “perfect” in line 8 to describe the flight patterns of the mind when it “courses through the blackest air”. The juxtaposition of the playful movement of the mind and perfection of the movement further emphasizes the ironic nature of the poem.
Cracking the Cave
The final stanza of the poem sheds direct light on the whimsical irony of its own anti-perfection (which slaps itself metapoetically in the face regarding the rhyme and meter [both appearing flawless]) because the voice critically analyzes its own comparison asking, “has this simile a like perfection?” (9).
It is within the final paragraph that the reader must enter the cave. Stepping into the cave bears a resemblance to Plato’s classic Allegory of the Cave. The philosopher must step out of the cave to conceive the “very happiest intellection” (11), an intellection that is created out of its own reality and recognition of the reality, not as shadows on a wall, but as concrete conceptualizations of truth. With the “happiest intellection” it becomes understood that it takes “A graceful error [to] correct the cave” (12). Despite all that can be realized within oneself no method of finding answers is perfect and the search is inexhaustible.
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