Apple of ashes to the longing lip!Brine to the burning throat and thirsting soul!Phantom, delusion, misty ghost of fame!Voidest and vainest of all vanities!
Whitney's intended meaning is clear -- fame is false food and false drink, which cannot satisfy -- but the sync fairies will commandeer these things for their own purposes. The phrase "apple of ashes" made me think of some recent comments by Bill on "Gardens of pomegranates" (June 29) about an "ash tree" that bore red fruit. His first comment there begins:
Pomegranates are known for their red berries, and would seem to have a not-so-traditional link to the White Tree
I thought that was an odd word to use for a pomegranate, but maybe technically accurate. All kinds of things, including bananas, are technically considered to be berries. Googling are pomegranates berries, I got as the highlighted result this, which also compares them to apples.
The idea of the White Tree producing red berries is, as Bill says, "not-so-traditional." I am not aware that Tolkien mentions the color of the fruits of any of his White Trees. In the Book of Mormon, Lehi sees a tree of unspecified color which bears white fruit (1 Ne. 8:11), while Nephi sees a white tree which bears fruit of unspecified color (1 Ne. 11:8; the chapter-and-verse references capture the reversal nicely). Since Nephi's vision comes in response to his "desire to behold the things which my father saw" (1 Ne. 11:3), and since he says the tree he saw "was like unto the tree which my father had seen" (1 Ne. 11:8), it is common to combine the imagery of the two visions and arrive at a White Tree with white fruit.
Bill quotes a reference in Daymon Smith's Words of Them Liberated to "Galathalion, white tree-silver shooted, red berried." Actually, Bill writes Galathilion, which is the correct name of one of Tolkien's White Trees. He is quoting from a draft version of Liberated, so either the typo was introduced into Daymon's manuscript later, or else Bill inadvertently corrected Daymon's typo with one of his own. Or it's possible that Galathalion isn't a typo but a different Elvish name, incorporating thalion "steadfast, strong."
There are lots of White Trees in Tolkien. Galathilion, the White Tree of Tirion, was made by Yavanna in the image of Telperion, the White Tree of Valinor. One of Galathilion's seedlings became Celebron, the White Tree of Tol Eressea, and one of its seedlings became Nimloth, the White Tree of Numenor. From a fruit of Nimloth came a succession of four different White Trees of Gondor. Asusming Daymon's reference is to Galathilion, it implies that all the other White Trees in this list would have red berries as well.
Bill goes on to write:
Nimloth, as a reminder, is the tree that Pharazon burned down (I may have mentioned that once or twice...). As such, in my own symbols it has been referred to as an "Ash Tree", as well, since it was turned to ash.
Thus the White Tree that bears red berries, suggestive of the pomegranate that "looks like a red apple," is called an Ash Tree because it was burned. In Whitney's poem, right after the "apple of ashes" line, we have a reference to burning. Since burn can be either transitive or intransitive, burning can describe either something that undergoes burning or something that burns something else. Although Pharazon, who burned the White Tree, is supposed to have ended up in the Caves of the Forgotten, in a more general sense the Numenoreans burned the White Tree, and the Numenoreans were overwhelmed by the salty sea. "Brine to the burning."
"Throat" in this synchronistic context made me think of Vico's comment, repeated several times in The New Science, that "Cerberus was called three-throated as having an enormous gullet." Daymon's version of the story of the Numenorean assault on Eressea involves ravenous wolves who seem close kin to Vico's interpretation of Cerberus.
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