Acrostics in Joyce’s Poetry

Joyce’s interest in puzzles, as displayed in Ulysses, is well known. We may point, for example, to the acrostic POLDY, which runs alongside the verses that Bloom sent to Molly for Valentine’s Day before they were married:

Poets oft have sung in rhymeOf music sweet their praise divine.Let them hymn it nine times nine.Dearer far than song or wine.You are mine. The world is mine.

(U 17.412-16)¹

The emphases are original: Joyce himself acknowledged this acrostic when he wrote to his Paris printer that the initial letters, which he marked on the proofs, should be placed in bold type: “Imprimez ces lettres en itals avec les types plus foncés” (JJA 27:151). Another acrostic in Ulysses may be found in the word LOSS, which is spelled through the four broken-up words from the title of Molly’s song (“Love’s Old Sweet Song”) for her concert:

Love’s.Old.Sweet.Song.Comes lo-ove’s old …

(U 5.157-61)

Arline R. Thorn has made a convincing case for the importance of loss as a theme that not only connects this recurring musical allusion to several others in Ulysses, such as “[c]o-ome thou lost one” (U 7.59), “[a]ll is lost now” (u 11.22), and “[l]ast rose … of summer” (U 11.54), but also contrasts with the last line of Bloom’s acrostic (“[y]ou are mine”).² The acrostic’s likelihood can be further supported by its appropriateness to the song “Love’s Old Sweet Song” itself, which begins with a lyric about lost time: “Once in the dear dead days beyond recall.”³ The song also ends on a similar note: “So till the end, when life’s dim shadows fall” (246). Notably, a partial quotation by Joyce of the song’s title maintains the acrostic through the word that follows it: “Love’s old sweet sonnez la gold” (U 11.682). These points make the acrostic LOSS a practical certainty, especially in light of the fact that Bloom’s highlighted acrostic above may signal the reader to look for another in the book’s earlier verses.⁴

Readers have been less attuned to such puzzles in Joyce’s poems outside of Ulysses, but I believe there are four acrostics there that have never been identified. The first appears in the 1907 collection Chamber Music at the end of Poem XXVII, “Though I thy Mithridates were”:

For elegant and antique phrase,  Dearest, my lips wax all too wise;Nor have I known a love whose praise  Our piping poets solemnize,Neither a love where may not beEver so little falsity.

(CP 35, my emphases)

The word NONE in the last four lines provides a fitting punctuation to the poem’s end, since the lover knows no such love as he describes (“Nor have I known a love … Neither a love …”). This consonance with the meaning of the poem supports the acrostic’s probability, and we have a direct (and literal) parallel in the adjacent Poem XXVIII, “Gentle lady, do not sing,” which similarly closes with an appropriate four-line acrostic:

Sing about the long deep sleep  Of lovers that are dead, and howIn the grave all love shall sleep:  Love is aweary now.

(CP 36, my emphases)

The appearance of the acrostic SOIL within lines that mention “the grave” can hardly be a coincidence, especially since the preceding poem also constructs the same type of wordplay in its final stanza.⁵ The two acrostics thus reinforce each other by their equal length, symmetrical position, and close proximity.

There is even evidence that the first acrostic was an alteration by Joyce, who appears to have manipulated his material so as to achieve the word NONE. In the original version of “Though I thy Mithridates were” written in 1904, the last stanza was different:

For elegant and antique phraseDearest, my lips are all too wiseNor have I known the love whose praiseThe...