Bearded Oaks (1942). Content and Description

“Bearded Oaks” first appeared in the collection Eleven Poems on the Same Theme. One of Warren’s most often anthologized poems, “Bearded Oaks” bears many of the characteristics of his early poetry, including a preoccupation with metaphysical poetry techniques known as conceits—a literary term that refers to elaborate, fanciful devices that often incorporate metaphor, simile, hyperbole, or oxymoron.

In “Bearded Oaks” Warren uses many such conceits, including paradox and extended metaphor, and employs strict meter and rhyme schemes. The poem unfolds on both a literal and a metaphorical level. Literally, two lovers lie on the ground beneath oak trees watching light filter through the leaves; metaphorically, they lie on the bottom of the ocean, watching themes of human history unfold through a storm on the ocean’s surface.

The poem’s first stanza sets its literal scene, describing how “layered light . . . swims” above the oaks (lines 2-3). The first part of the opening sentence with its unorthodox inversions recalls the poetry of John Donne: Its syntax demands that the reader pay close attention to the rhythms and content of Warren’s dense poetic language. The second stanza introduces the two individuals, who “now lie / Beneath the languorous tread of light” (2.1-2). The third stanza further extends the metaphor by comparing the absence of light at the bottom of the sea with a sense of lying outside history’s confines.

In the next three stanzas the pair watch from their vantage point outside time as a storm on the sea’s surface rages. The storm’s descriptions express the pain, violence, and meaningless slaughter found in human history. Even though they have withdrawn to the floor of the ocean, the lovers still feel the effects of the storm in the world above. The last half of the seventh stanza reveals their motives. By withdrawing to a silent space, the lovers have rendered concepts such as hope and fear meaningless, freeing them from the burden of history and individual responsibility.

The poem’s final three stanzas break from the extended argument of the previous five. In the eighth stanza the lovers almost hit a deer, a symbol of oneness with the natural world, while in the next stanza one lover directly addresses the other, proclaiming that their love remains meaningful despite their withdrawal from the world of sense and time. The final stanza focuses on the inevitability of our mortality and the brief span of our lives in comparison with eternity. While eternity makes our earthly struggle seem futile, it also inspires us to make the most of the limited hours we are given.

From a cosmic perspective the moss-shagged oaks are also mythic, an Eden-like image recalling our painful fall from innocence into experience and the way love and language, though imperfect, grant us moments of understanding. Yet, despite their transience, these moments and brief glimpses form our connection to what lies the beyond to which the poet gestures.

For Discussion or Writing:
1. The speaker in Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress” uses a method of persuasion often referred to as carpe diem (seize the day) to seduce a woman. Compare and contrast the argument in “Bearded Oaks” with that found in Marvell’s poem. How does the ending of “Bearded Oaks” subvert the carpe diem form?

2. At this stage of his career Warren’s poetry was heavily influenced by T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece of modernist poetry The Waste Land (1922). Compare and contrast the imagery, themes, and content of “Bearded Oaks” with the “Death by Water” sequence from The Waste Land.

3. What is the significance of the memory recalled in the poem’s eighth stanza?