The Garden: The Decemberists' "June Hymn" As Lyric

It's incredibly interesting to me how music functions artistically. Somehow the meaning is contained in both the text and the music simultaneously, and the forms of each complement each other as a result. I have a theory that if a piece or song is musically beautiful, it must also be so poetically. That is to say, if a song touches my heart and mind with its music and fails to do so with its lyrics, it's likely due to my own lack of poetic sensibility and not the song's lack of poetry.

Take "June Hymn" from The Decemberists' most recent album The King is Dead. As usual, here's the direct link to the music video in case the embedded audio below doesn't work.

Here's a hymn to welcome in the day

Heralding a summer's early sway

And all the bulbs all coming in

To begin

The thrushes bleating battle with the wrens

Disrupts my reverie again

Pegging clothing on the line

Training jasmine how to vine

Up the arbor to your door

And more

You're standing on the landing with the war

You shouldered all the night before

Chorus:

And once upon it

The yellow bonnets

Garland all the lawn

You were waking

Day was breaking

A panoply of song

And summer comes to Springville Hill

A barony of ivy in the trees

Expanding out its empire by degrees

And all the branches burst to bloom

In the boom

Heaven sent this cardinal maroon

To decorate our living room

[Chorus]

And years from now when this old light

Isn't ambling anymore

Will I bring myself to write

"I give my best to Springville Hill!"

[Chorus]

Lyric poetry is the most basic, most fundamental form of Literature; as such, it is the most difficult to understand. I think the reason it so easily frustrates so many is that it seems like the meaning should be self-evident, it's staring us right in the face, and yet we often can't see it. It's analogous to the way in which Metaphysics (i.e., the study of being in itself) is the most basic and fundamental branch of Philosophy, and yet, the hardest to grasp...at first. Once understood it contains the simplest, most obvious principles. In fact, it contains those very principles upon which the rest of Philosophy is founded. All of this is to say that, like Metaphysics in Philosophy, in Literature Lyric is last chronologically but first ontologically.

Unlike Tragedy, Comedy, or Epic, then, Lyric isn't saddled with the baggage of plots and characters. In many ways, Lyric simply is. Tragedy, the form of Literature closest to us (in our very hearts, in fact), overflows with exciting and dramatic events and over-the-top characters who do things like murder people and gouge their own eyes out. It's good stuff, and no less good or beautiful than Lyric. It is simply the earthy, gritty, concrete way in which Tragedy goes about incarnating those larger realities which all art does.

Lyric, on the other hand, largely steers clear of such complicated and individual concerns. A poem doesn't incarnate the life of one man as Tragedy does, but of all men simultaneously. Or perhaps we should say that Lyric doesn't incarnate the life of one man, but the life of Mankind himself. This is why every poem retells the story of Adam (who is Man) and Eve (who is Woman) and whose union together constitutes Mankind (and produces life). The usual way to speak about this phenomenon is to use the image of the Lover and his Beloved, the quintessential example of which we find in Biblical Wisdom Literature. All Lyric poetry deals with the Lover and his Beloved, and their union together. Always, too, this union occurs in the fertile Lyric Garden of Paradise.

"June Hymn" tells the uncomplicated story of a man and his wife and their prosaic life together. The vast majority of the song is spent describing the garden which surrounds their home. This garden that they have created isn't just a facade, however, they bring it into their very life, allowing it to penetrate every intimate facet of their being: "Heaven sent this cardinal maroon / To decorate our living room."

Theirs is a love which cannot be contained, like the "barony of ivy in the trees / Expanding out its empire by degrees / And all the branches burst to bloom." The garden is not a romantic ideal, though. It is never a dream, never ethereal: "The thrushes bleating battle with the wrens / Disrupts my reverie again." The garden is never a place to escape the world. It is the world, the world to which their loving union, so infectious, brings beauty and life. Their life together, in harmony with that of the world and their garden, produces beautiful music: "You were waking / Day was breaking / A panoply of song."

Though beautified, the world which they inhabit is still imperfect. We are not told exactly what "the war / you shouldered all the night before," but it is unimportant. All that matters is that these are lovers doing their best to  live a good life faithful to each other and the world, working through the pain and toil of everyday life. Like their life together, the garden too must be tended carefully and dutifully, lest it wither. They must sweat through the work day in and day out, making sure their life together bears fruit in themselves and in the world around them: "Training jasmine how to vine / Up the arbor to your door / And more."

This is Lyric. Life, Love, Beauty, "Heaven," the Garden, Paradise, the Divine, encountered in everyday life, in the smallest, most insignificant things you can imagine. Things like one's spouse, a home, plants and flowers in a garden, for that matter, a baby born in a stable, water, and bread and wine.