Paying Homage To Those Magnificently Talented But Lesser Known Poets

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

I have been thinking of starting this thread- to pay homage to those, Magnificently Talented But Lesser Known Poets...
Now after a 11 month delay, I finally start building the foundation, despite my very limited time available to venture into this.
So this thread will likely not be getting a daily contribution from me..--Tyr



Paying Homage To Those Magnificently Talented But Lesser Known Poets



http://www.poemhunter.com/frank-lebby-stanton/biography/

Biography of Frank Lebby Stanton

Frank Lebby Stanton—born 1857 February 22 in Charleston, South Carolina, died 1927 January 7 in Atlanta, Georgia, and frequently credited as Frank L. Stanton, Frank Stanton or F. L. Stanton—was an American lyricist.

He was also the initial columnist for the Atlanta Constitution and became the first poet laureate of the State of Georgia, a post to which he was appointed by Governor Clifford Walker in 1925 and which Stanton held until his death.

Stanton has been frequently compared with Indiana's James Whitcomb Riley or called "the James Whitcomb Riley of the South"; Stanton and Riley were close friends who frequently traded poetic ideas. Although Stanton frequently wrote in the dialect of black southerners and poor whites, he was an opponent of the less-admirable aspects (such as lynching) of the culture in which he lived, and he tended to be compatible in philosophy with the southern progressivism of his employer, the Atlanta Constitution, for which he wrote editorials. He collaborated with African American composer Harry Thacker Burleigh in the sheet music for Stanton's poem "Jean" (Burleigh composed and harmonized the tune). These and other characteristics of Stanton are well elaborated in the scholarly essays on him by Francis J. Bosha and Bruce M. Swain.

Multi-voice-ranges 1901 cover of Ethelbert Nevin's tune for "Mighty Lak' a Rose" for which Stanton wrote the lyrics. The dialect title means (approximately) "very much like a rose" and is supposedly sung by a mother to her young son. The first line, by which the opus is occasionally known, is "Sweetest li'l feller" (sweetest little fellow).

Shortly after his death Stanton was commemorated in the naming of the Frank Lebby Stanton Elementary School, which, after the redesignation of a street name for its eponym still unborn at the time of Stanton's death, is at 1625 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Atlanta.

Poems by Frank Lebby Stanton

1. A Hopeful Brother 9/22/2010
2. A Little Thankful Song 9/22/2010
3. A Plantation Ditty 9/22/2010
4. A Poor Unfortunate 9/22/2010
5. Fellow Who Had Done His Best 9/22/2010
6. He Whistled 9/22/2010
7. Here's Hopin' 9/22/2010
8. One Country 9/22/2010
9. So Many! 9/22/2010
10. The Famous Mulligan Ball 9/22/2010
11. The Mocking-Bird 9/22/2010
12. We'Re Marchin' With The Country 9/22/2010
13. An Old Battle-Field 9/22/2010
14. This World 9/22/2010
15. Jest A-Wearyin' Fer You 9/22/2010
16. A Little Way 9/22/2010
17. Hoe Your Row 9/22/2010
18. A Song Of To-Morrow 9/22/2010
19. The Graveyard Rabbit 9/22/2010
20. Just Whistle 9/22/2010
21. Keep A-Goin'! 9/22/2010



Poems by Frank Lebby Stanton


The Mocking-Bird - Poem by Frank Lebby Stanton


He did n’t know much music
When first he come along;
An’ all the birds went wonderin’
Why he did n’t sing a song.

They primped their feathers in the sun,
An’ sung their sweetest notes;
An’ music jest come on the run
From all their purty throats!

But still that bird was silent
In summer time an’ fall;
He jest set still an’ listened,
An’ he would n’t sing at all!

But one night when them songsters
Was tired out an’ still,
An’ the wind sighed down the valley
An’ went creepin’ up the hill;

When the stars was all a-tremble
In the dreamin’ fields o’ blue,
An’ the daisy in the darkness
Felt the fallin’ o’ the dew,—

There come a sound o’ melody
No mortal ever heard,
An’ all the birds seemed singin’
From the throat o’ one sweet bird!

Then the other birds went Mayin’
In a land too fur to call;
Fer there warn ’t no use in stayin’
When one bird could sing fer all!

----------------------------------------

Here's Hopin' - Poem by Frank Lebby Stanton

Year ain't been the very best;-
Purty hard by trouble pressed;
But the rough way leads to rest,-
Here's hopin'!

Maybe craps way short; the rills
Couldn't turn the silent mills;
But the light's behind the hills,-
Here's hopin'!

Where we planted roses sweet
Thorns come up an' pricked the feet;
But this old world's hard to beat,-
Here's hopin'!

P'r'aps the buildin' that we planned
'Gainst the cyclone couldn't stand;
But, thank God we've got the
land
,-
Here's hopin'!

Maybe flowers we hoped to save
Have been scattered on a grave;
But the heart's still beatin' brave,-
Here's hopin'!

That we'll see the mornin' light-
That the very darkest night
Can't hide heaven from our sight,-
Here's hopin'!
Frank Lebby Stanton

---------------------------------------

Jest A-Wearyin' Fer You - Poem by Frank Lebby Stanton


JEST a-wearyin' fer you
All the time a-feelin' blue;
Wishin' fer you wonderin' when
You'll be comin' home again ;
Restless don't know what to do
Jest a-wearyin' fer you I

Keep a-mopin' day by day :
Dull in everybody's way;
Folks they smile an' pass along
Wonderin' what on earth is wrong;
'Twouldn't help 'em if they knew
Jest a-wearyin' fer you.

Room's so lonesome, with your chair
Empty by the fireplace there,
Jest can't stand the sight o' it!
Go outdoors an' roam a bit:
But the woods is lonesome, too,
Jest a-wearyin' fer you.

Comes the wind with sounds that' jes
Like the rustlin' o' your dress ;
An' the dew on flower an' tree
Tinkles like your step to me!
Violets, like your eyes so blue
Jest a-wearyin' fer you !

Mornin' comes, the birds awake
(Them that sung so fer your sake!),
But there's sadness in the notes
That come thrillin' from their throats!
Seem to feel your absence, too
Jest a-wearyin' fer you.

Evenin' comes: I miss you more
When the dark glooms in the door ;
'Pears jest like you orter be
There to open it fer me!
Latch goes tinklin' thrills me through,
Sets me wearyin' fer you!

Jest a-wearyin' fer you
All the time a-f eelin' blue !
Wishin' fer you wonderin' when
You'll be comin' home again;
Restless don't know 'what to do
Jest a-wearyin' fer you!


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The Graveyard Rabbit - Poem by Frank Lebby Stanton

In the white moonlight, where the willow waves,
He halfway gallops among the graves—
A tiny ghost in the gloom and gleam,
Content to dwell where the dead men dream,

But wary still!
For they plot him ill;
For the graveyard rabbit hath a charm
(May God defend us!) to shield from harm.

Over the shimmering slabs he goes—
Every grave in the dark he knows;
But his nest is hidden from human eye
Where headstones broken on old graves lie.

Wary still!
For they plot him ill;
For the graveyard rabbit, though sceptics scoff,
Charmeth the witch and the wizard off!

The black man creeps, when the night is dim,
Fearful, still, on the track of him;
Or fleetly follows the way he runs,
For he heals the hurts of the conjured ones.

Wary still!
For they plot him ill;
The soul’s bewitched that would find release,—
To the graveyard rabbit go for peace!

He holds their secret—he brings a boon
Where winds moan wild in the dark o’ the moon;
And gold shall glitter and love smile sweet
To whoever shall sever his furry feet!

Wary still!
For they plot him ill;
For the graveyard rabbit hath a charm
(May God defend us!) to shield from harm.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

John Donne
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other people named John Donne, see John Donne (disambiguation).
John Donne
JohnDonne.jpg
John Donne
Born 22 January 1573[1]
London, England
Died 31 March 1631 (aged 58)[2]
London, England
Occupation Poet, priest, lawyer
Nationality English
Alma mater Oxford University
Genre Satire, love poetry, elegy, sermons
Subject Love, sexuality, religion, death
Literary movement Metaphysical poetry

John Donne (/ˈdʌn/ DUN) (22 January 1573[1] – 31 March 1631)[2] was an English poet and a cleric in the Church of England. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially compared to that of his contemporaries. Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. These features, along with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax and his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques. His early career was marked by poetry that bore immense knowledge of English society and he met that knowledge with sharp criticism. Another important theme in Donne's poetry is the idea of true religion, something that he spent much time considering and about which he often theorized. He wrote secular poems as well as erotic and love poems. He is particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits.[3]

Despite his great education and poetic talents, Donne lived in poverty for several years, relying heavily on wealthy friends. He spent much of the money he inherited during and after his education on womanising, literature, pastimes, and travel. In 1601, Donne secretly married Anne More, with whom he had twelve children.[4] In 1615, he became an Anglican priest, although he did not want to take Anglican orders. He did so because King James I persistently ordered it. In 1621, he was appointed the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London. He also served as a member of Parliament in 1601 and in 1614.

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John Donne Biography
Poet (c. 1572–1631)
Quick Facts

Name
John Donne

Occupation
Poet

Birth Date
c. 1572

Death Date
March 31, 1631

Education
University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Lincoln’s Inn

Place of Birth
London, England

Place of Death
London, England

Full Name
John Donne

John Donne, leading English poet of the Metaphysical school, is often considered the greatest loved poet in the English language.

1 of 4
quotes
“Art is the most passionate orgy within man’s grasp.”
—John Donne
Synopsis

The first two editions of John Donne's poems were published posthumously, in 1633 and 1635, after having circulated widely in manuscript copies. Readers continue to find stimulus in his fusion of witty argument with passion, his dramatic rendering of complex states of mind, and his ability to make common words yield up rich poetic meaning. Donne also wrote songs, sonnets and prose.
Profile

John Donne was born into a Catholic family in 1572, during a strong anti-Catholic period in England. Donne’s father, also named John, was a prosperous London merchant. His mother, Elizabeth Heywood, was the grand-niece of Catholic martyr Thomas More. Religion would play a tumultuous and passionate role in John’s life.

Donne’s father died in 1576, and his mother remarried a wealthy widower. He entered Oxford University at age 11 and later the University of Cambridge, but never received degrees, due to his Catholicism. At age 20, Donne began studying law at Lincoln’s Inn and seemed destined for a legal or diplomatic career. During the 1590s, he spent much of his inheritance on women, books and travel. He wrote most of his love lyrics and erotic poems during this time. His first books of poems, “Satires” and “Songs and Sonnets,” were highly prized among a small group of admirers.

In 1593, John Donne’s brother, Henry, was convicted of Catholic sympathies and died in prison soon after. The incident led John to question his Catholic faith and inspired some of his best writing on religion. At age 25, Donne was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England. He held his position with Egerton for several years and it's likely that around this period Donne converted to Anglicanism.

On his way to a promising career, John Donne became a Member of Parliament in 1601. That same year, he married 16-year-old Anne More, the niece of Sir Egerton. Both Lord Egerton and Anne’s father, George More, strongly disapproved of the marriage, and, as punishment, More did not provide a dowry. Lord Egerton fired Donne and had him imprisoned for a short time. The eight years following Donne’s release would be a struggle for the married couple until Anne’s father finally paid her dowry.

In 1610, John Donne published his anti-Catholic polemic “Pseudo-Martyr,” renouncing his faith. In it, he proposed the argument that Roman Catholics could support James I without compromising their religious loyalty to the pope. This won him the king’s favor and patronage from members of the House of Lords. In 1615, Donne was ordained soon thereafter was appointed Royal Chaplain. His elaborate metaphors, religious symbolism and flair for drama soon established him as a great preacher.

In 1617, John Donne’s wife died shortly after giving birth to their 12th child. The time for writing love poems was over, and Donne devoted his energies to more religious subjects. In 1621, Donne became dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral. During a period of severe illness, he wrote “Devotions upon Emergent Occasions,” published in 1624. This work contains the immortal lines “No man is an island” and “never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” That same year, Donne was appointed Vicar of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West and became known for his eloquent sermons.

As John Donne’s health continued to fail him, he became obsessed with death. Shortly before he died, he delivered a pre-funeral sermon, “Death’s Duel.” His writing was charismatic and inventive. His compelling examination of the mortal paradox influenced English poets for generations. Donne’s work fell out of favor for a time, but was revived in the 20th century by high-profile admirers such as T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats.


1. Psalme Cxxxvii. 10/21/2014
2. The Soule 10/21/2014
3. Good Friday 10/21/2014
4. To Sir Henry Wotton 4/9/2010
5. To The Earl Of Doncaster 4/9/2010
6. Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus 4/9/2010
7. Raderus 4/9/2010
8. Klockius 4/9/2010
9. Holy Sonnet Xi: Spit In My Face You Jews, And Pierce My Side 4/9/2010
10. To Mr. Tilman After He Had Taken Orders 4/9/2010
11. Translated Out Of Gazaeus, 4/9/2010
12. To Sir Henry Wotton Ii 4/9/2010
13. To Sir Henry Goodyere 4/9/2010
14. Ralphius 4/9/2010
15. To The Countess Of Bedford Ii 4/9/2010
16. Nativity 4/9/2010
17. La Corona 4/9/2010
18. Satire Ii 4/9/2010
19. To Mr. Rowland Woodward 4/9/2010
20. To Mr. Samuel Brooke 4/9/2010
21. To Mr.I.L. 4/9/2010
22. Temple 4/9/2010
23. Upon The Translation Of The Psalms By Sir Philip Sidney And The Countess Of Pembroke, His Sister 4/9/2010
24. Epithalamion Made At Lincoln's Inn 4/9/2010
25. To Mr. I. P. 4/9/2010
26. To Sir Henry Wotton At His Going Ambassador To Venice 4/9/2010
27. To The Countess Of Bedford I 4/9/2010
28. Elegy Xii 4/9/2010
29. Niobe 4/9/2010
30. To The Praise Of The Dead And The Anatomy 4/9/2010
31. Satire V 4/9/2010
32. Holy Sonnet Xix: Oh, To Vex Me, Contraries Meet In One 4/9/2010
33. To Mr.T.W. 4/9/2010
34. Holy Sonnet Viii: If Faithful Souls Be Alike Glorified 4/9/2010
35. Crucifying 4/9/2010
36. Elegy Xi: The Bracelet 4/9/2010
37. The Annunciation And Passion 4/9/2010
38. Elegy:The End Of Funeral Elegies 4/9/2010
39. Valediction To His Book 4/9/2010
40. To The Lady Magdalen Herbert, Of St. Mary Magdalen




The Soule - Poem by John Donne

Thee, eye of heaven, this great soule envies not;
By thy male force is all wee have begot;
In the first East thou now begins to shine;
Suck'st early balme, and island spices there;
And wilt anon, in thy loose-rein'd careere
At Tagus, Po, Sene, Thames, and Danon dine,
And see at night thy Westerne land of Myne :
Yet hast thou not more nations seene than shee,
That before thee one day beganne to bee,
And, thy fraill light being quenched, shall long, long outlive thee.

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No Man Is An Island - Poem by John Donne


No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

----------------------------------------------------------------------



Ode - Poem by John Donne


I. VENGEANCE will sit above our faults ; but till
She there do sit,
We see her not, nor them. Thus blind, yet still
We lead her way ; and thus, whilst we do ill,
We suffer it.

2. Unhappy he whom youth makes not beware
Of doing ill.
Enough we labour under age, and care ;
In number, th' errors of the last place are
The greatest still.

3. Yet we, that should the ill we now begin
As soon repent,
Strange thing ! perceive not ; our faults are not seen,
But past us ; neither felt, but only in
The punishment.

4. But we know ourselves least ; mere outward shows
Our minds so store,
That our souls no more than our eyes disclose
But form and colour. Only he who knows
Himself, knows more.

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Oh My Blacke Soule! Now Thou Art Summoned - Poem by John Donne

Oh my black Soule! Now thou art summoned
By sicknesse, deaths herald, and champion;
Thou art like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done
Treason, and durst not turne to whence hee is fled,
Or like a thiefe, which till deaths doome be read,
Wisheth himselfe deliverd from prison;
But damn'd and hal'd to execution,
Wisheth that sill he might be imprisioned;
Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lacke;
But who shall give thee that grace to beginne?
Oh make thy selfe with holy mourning blacke;
And red with blushing, as thou art with sinne;
Or wash thee in Christ's blood, which hath this might
That being red, it dyes red soules to white.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Bogan

Louise Bogan (August 11, 1897 – February 4, 1970) was an American poet. She was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945.

As poetry editor of The New Yorker magazine for nearly 40 years, Bogan played a major role in shaping mainstream poetic sensibilities of the mid-20th Century.

The Poetry Foundation notes that Bogan has been called by some critics the most accomplished woman poet of the twentieth century. It further notes that, "Some critics have placed her in a category of brilliant minor poets described as the "reactionary generation." This group eschewed the prevailing Modernist forms that would come to dominate the literary landscape of the era in favor of more traditional techniques.

Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Brett C. Millier named Bogan "one of the finest lyric poets America has produced," and added that "the fact that she was a woman and that she defended formal, lyric poetry in an age of expansive experimentation made evaluation of her work, until quite recently, somewhat condescending."


Biography
Early years

Bogan was born in Livermore Falls, Maine, where her father, Daniel Bogan, worked for various paper mills and bottling factories. She spent most of her childhood years with her parents and brother growing up in mill towns in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, where she and her family lived in working-class hotels and boardinghouses until 1904.

With the help of a female benefactor, Bogan was able to attend the Girls' Latin School for five years, which eventually gave her the opportunity to attend Boston University. In 1916, after only completing her freshman year and giving up a fellowship to Radcliffe, she left the university to marry Curt Alexander, a corporal in the U.S. Army, but their marriage ended in 1918. Bogan moved to New York to pursue a career in writing, and their only daughter, Maidie Alexander, was left in the care of Bogan's parents. After her first husband's death in 1920, she left and spent a few years in Vienna, where she explored her loneliness and her new identity in verse. She returned to New York City and published her first book of poetry, Body of This Death: Poems, in 1923, meeting that year the poet and novelist Raymond Holden. They were married by 1925. Four years later, she published her second book of poetry, Dark Summer: Poems, and shortly after was hired as a poetry editor for The New Yorker. She was divorced from Holden in 1937.
Career

Bogan's poetic style was unlike that of Ezra Pound or T. S. Eliot. Suzanne Clark, an English professor from the University of Oregon, stated that Bogan often refers to her female speakers as "the locus of intemperate, dangerous, antisocial desires." This coincides with the notion that Bogan brought a different perspective to the traditional viewpoint of women.

Not only was it difficult being a female poet in the 1930s and 1940s, but her lower-middle-class Irish background and limited education also brought on much ambivalence and contradiction for Louise Bogan. She even refused to review women poets in her early career and stated, "I have found from bitter experience that one woman poet is at a disadvantage in reviewing another, if the review be not laudatory." Bogan did not discuss intimate details of her life (and disdained such confessional poets as Robert Lowell and John Berryman).

Most of her work was published before 1938. This includes Body of This Death (1923), Dark Summer (1929), and The Sleeping Fury (1937). She also translated works by Ernst Jünger, Goethe, and Jules Renard. Later in Bogan's life, a volume of her collected works, The Blue Estuaries: Poems 1923–1968, was published with such poems as "The Dream" and "Women."

In late 1969, shortly before her death, she ended her 38-year career as a reviewer for The New Yorker, stating: "No more pronouncements on lousy verse. No more hidden competition. No more struggling not to be a square."

One of her admirers was W. H. Auden.[citation needed]

Her poetry was published in The New Republic, The Nation, Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Scribner's, and Atlantic Monthly. Her Collected Poems: 1923–1953 won her the Bollingen award in 1955 as well as an award from the Academy of American Poets in 1959, and she was the poetry reviewer of The New Yorker from 1931 until 1969, when she retired. She was a strong supporter, as well as a friend, of the poet Theodore Roethke.

In a letter to Edmund Wilson, she detailed a raucous affair that she and the yet-unpublished Roethke carried on in 1935, during the time between his expulsion from Lafayette College and his return to Michigan. At the time she seemed little impressed by what she called his "very, very small lyrics"; she seems to have viewed the affair as, at most, a possible source for her own work (see What the Woman Lived: Collected letters of Louise Bogan).

On February 4, 1970, Louise Bogan died of a heart attack in New York City. The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds some of her papers.

A number of autobiographical pieces were published posthumously in Journey around My Room (1980). Elizabeth Frank's biography of Louise Bogan, Louise Bogan: A Portrait, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986. Ruth Anderson's sound poem I Come Out of Your Sleep (revised and recorded on Sinopah 1997 XI) is constructed from speech sounds in Bogan's poem "Little Lobelia."

"I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!" – Louise Bogan

In 1923, Louise Bogan released her first volume of poetry, Body of this Death, containing her poem "Medusa". Though open to interpretation, "Medusa" is a poem that revolves around the petrification of the speaker who contemplates the concept of time. In the poem, after the speaker bears witness to the apparition of the Gorgon Medusa, the speaker ponders on how nature and life will continue, as "the water will always fall, and will not fall" and "the grass will always be growing for hay" while "I shall stand here like a shadow" and "nothing will ever stir". While many interpretations of the poem exist, one possible explanation for the bleakness of this poem may revolve around Bogan’s depression and solitude after divorcing from her first husband and living in poverty with a daughter in hand.[1] The idea that one would become petrified and lost in time by Medusa is similar to a feeling of loss and despair as one feels helpless and stuck in a situation where one feels their situation is unchangeable. Brett C. Millier, a Professor of Literature at Middlebury College, describes Bogan’s poetry as one where "Betrayal, particularly sexual betrayal, is a constant theme."[2] At a time where she most likely felt betrayed by her husband and society, Bogan feels like the speaker in "Medusa", stuck in a dead scene where her eyes could no longer drift away to a better life.
Personal life

Bogan married twice. In 1916 she married a soldier, Curt Alexander, and had one daughter, but the couple separated before Alexander's death in 1920. She was married to poet Raymond Holden from July 10, 1925 to 1937.

Despite the hardships Bogan encountered during the 1920s and '30s, she was able to experience the fascinations of Renaissance painting, sculpture, and ornament.


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http://www.poemhunter.com/louise-bogan/poems/

Louise Bogan Poems
1. Zone 4/15/2010
2. To Be Sung On The Water 10/24/2013
3. Statue And Birds 4/15/2010
4. Cassandra 4/15/2010
5. Words For Departure 1/13/2003
6. Leave-Taking 4/15/2010
7. Solitary Observation Brought Back From A Sojourn In Hell 1/3/2003
8. Chanson Un Peu Naïve 1/13/2003
9. Portrait 1/3/2003
10. A Tale 1/3/2003
11. Betrothed 1/13/2003
12. Sonnet 1/13/2003
13. Juan's Song 1/13/2003
14. The Frightened Man 1/13/2003
15. Women 1/3/2003
16. Epitaph For A Romantic Woman 1/3/2003
17. Man Alone 1/13/2003
18. Men Loved Wholly Beyond Wisdom 1/3/2003
19. Knowledge 1/13/2003
20. Tears In Sleep 1/3/2003
21. The Alchemist 1/3/2003
22. Last Hill In A Vista 1/3/2003
23. To A Dead Lover 4/15/2010
24. Medusa 1/3/2003
25. The Crossed Apple 1/3/2003
26. Roman Fountain 1/13/2003
27. Song For The Last Act 1/13/2003
28. The Dream 1/3/2003

Sonnet

Since you would claim the sources of my thought
Recall the meshes whence it sprang unlimed,
The reedy traps which other hands have times
To close upon it. Conjure up the hot
Blaze that it cleared so cleanly, or the snow
Devised to strike it down. It will be free.
Whatever nets draw in to prison me
At length your eyes must turn to watch it go.

My mouth, perhaps, may learn one thing too well,
My body hear no echo save its own,
Yet will the desperate mind, maddened and proud,
Seek out the storm, escape the bitter spell
That we obey, strain to the wind, be thrown
Straight to its freedom in the thunderous cloud
Louise Bogan

Men Loved Wholly Beyond Wisdom

Men loved wholly beyond wisdom
Have the staff without the banner.
Like a fire in a dry thicket
Rising within women's eyes
Is the love men must return.
Heart, so subtle now, and trembling,
What a marvel to be wise.,
To love never in this manner!
To be quiet in the fern
Like a thing gone dead and still,
Listening to the prisoned cricket
Shake its terrible dissembling
Music in the granite hill.

To A Dead Lover

The dark is thrown
Back from the brightness, like hair
Cast over a shoulder.
I am alone,

Four years older;
Like the chairs and the walls
Which I once watched brighten
With you beside me. I was to waken
Never like this, whatever came or was taken.

The stalk grows, the year beats on the wind.
Apples come, and the month for their fall.
The bark spreads, the roots tighten.
Though today be the last
Or tomorrow all,
You will not mind.

That I may not remember
Does not matter.
I shall not be with you again.
What we knew, even now
Must scatter
And be ruined, and blow
Like dust in the rain.

You have been dead a long season
And have less than desire
Who were lover with lover;
And I have life—that old reason
To wait for what comes,
To leave what is over.



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http://www.thehypertexts.com/Best%20Poems%20Ever%20Greatest%20Poetry%20of%20All %20Time.htm


Louise Bogan is one of the best unknown or under-known poets of all time. Her best poems make her a major poet, in my opinion. She's a poet who deserves to be read and studied. In particular, her "After the Persian," "Juan's Song" and "Song for the Last Act" are "must reads."

Song For The Last Act
by Louise Bogan

Now that I have your face by heart, I look
Less at its features than its darkening frame
Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,
Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook.
Beyond, a garden. There, in insolent ease
The lead and marble figures watch the show
Of yet another summer loath to go
Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.

Now that I have your face by heart, I look.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read
In the black chords upon a dulling page
Music that is not meant for music's cage,
Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.
The staves are shuttled over with a stark
Unprinted silence. In a double dream
I must spell out the storm, the running stream.
The beat's too swift. The notes shift in the dark.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see
The wharves with their great ships and architraves;
The rigging and the cargo and the slaves
On a strange beach under a broken sky.
O not departure, but a voyage done!
The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps
Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps
Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.

*************************************

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

poet Edwin Arlington Robinson


Biography of Edwin Arlington Robinson
Edwin Arlington Robinson poet

Edwin Arlington Robinson was an American poet who won three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.

Biography

Robinson was born in Head Tide, Lincoln County, Maine, but his family moved to Gardiner, Maine, in 1870. He described his childhood in Maine as "stark and unhappy": his parents, having wanted a girl, did not name him until he was six months old, when they visited a holiday resort; other vacationers decided that he should have a name, and selected a man from Arlington, Massachusetts to draw a name out of a hat.

Robinson's early difficulties led many of his poems to have a dark pessimism and his stories to deal with "an American dream gone awry". His brother Dean died of a drug overdose. His other brother, Herman, a handsome and charismatic man, married the woman Edwin himself loved, but Herman suffered business failures, became an alcoholic, and ended up estranged from his wife and children, dying impoverished in a charity hospital in 1901. Robinson's poem "Richard Cory" is thought to refer to this brother.

In late 1891, at the age of 21, Edwin entered Harvard University as a special student. He took classes in English, French, and Shakespeare, as well as one on Anglo-Saxon that he later dropped. His mission was not to get all A's, as he wrote his friend Harry Smith, "B, and in that vicinity, is a very comfortable and safe place to hang".

His real desire was to get published in one of the Harvard literary journals. Within the first fortnight of being there, The Harvard Advocate published Robinson's "Ballade of a Ship". He was even invited to meet with the editors, but when he returned he complained to his friend Mowry Saben, "I sat there among them, unable to say a word". Robinson's literary career had false-started.

Edwin's father, Edward, died after Edwin's first year at Harvard. Edwin returned to Harvard for a second year, but it was to be his last one as a student there. Though short, his stay in Cambridge included some of his most cherished experiences, and there he made his most lasting friendships. He wrote his friend Harry Smith on June 21, 1893:

I suppose this is the last letter I shall ever write you from Harvard. The thought seems a little queer, but it cannot be otherwise. Sometimes I try to imagine the state my mind would be in had I never come here, but I cannot. I feel that I have got comparatively little from my two years, but still, more than I could get in Gardiner if I lived a century.

Robinson had returned to Gardiner by mid-1893. He had plans to start writing seriously. In October he wrote his friend Gledhill:

Writing has been my dream ever since I was old enough to lay a plan for an air castle. Now for the first time I seem to have something like a favorable opportunity and this winter I shall make a beginning.

With his father gone, Edwin became the man of the household. He tried farming and developed a close relationship with his brother's wife Emma Robinson, who after her husband Herman's death moved back to Gardiner with her children. She twice rejected marriage proposals from Edwin, after which he permanently left Gardiner. He moved to New York, where he led a precarious existence as an impoverished poet while cultivating friendships with other writers, artists, and would-be intellectuals. In 1896 he self-published his first book, The Torrent and the Night Before, paying 100 dollars for 500 copies. Robinson meant it as a surprise for his mother. Days before the copies arrived, Mary Palmer Robinson died of diphtheria.

His second volume, The Children of the Night, had a somewhat wider circulation. Its readers included President Theodore Roosevelt's son Kermit, who recommended it to his father. Impressed by the poems and aware of Robinson's straits, Roosevelt in 1905 secured the writer a job at the New York Customs Office. Robinson remained in the job until Roosevelt left office.

Gradually his literary successes began to mount. He won the Pulitzer Prize three times in the 1920s. During the last twenty years of his life he became a regular summer resident at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, where several women made him the object of their devoted attention, but he maintained a solitary life and never married. Robinson died of cancer on April 6, 1935 in the New York Hospital (now New York Cornell Hospital) in New York City.

Recognition

Edwin Arlington Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry three times: in 1922 for his first Collected Poems, in 1925 for The Man Who Died Twice, and in 1928 for Tristram.

Edwin Arlington Robinson's Works:

Poetry

The Torrent and the Night Before (1896)
Luke Havergal (1897)
The Children of the Night (1897)
Richard Cory (1897)
Captain Craig and Other Poems (1902)
The Town Down the River (1910)
Miniver Cheevy (1910)
The Man Against the Sky (1916)
Merlin (1917)
Ben Trovato (1920)
The Three Taverns (1920)
Avon's Harvest (1921)
Collected Poems (1921)
Haunted House (1921)
Roman Bartholomew (1923)
The Man Who Died Twice (1924)
Dionysus in Doubt (1925)
Tristram (1927)
Fortunatus (1928)
Sonnets, 1889-1917 (1928)
Cavender's House (1929)
Modred (1929)
The Glory of the Nightingales (1930)
Matthias at the Door (1931)
Selected Poems (1931)
Talifer (1933)
Amaranth (1934)
King Jasper (1935)
Collected Poems (1937)

Plays

Van Zorn (1914)
The Porcupine (1915)

Letters

Selected Letters (1940)

Untriangulated Stars: Letters to Harry de Forest Smith 1890-1905 (1947)
Edwin Arlington Robinson's Letters to Edith Brower (1968)

Miscellany

Uncollected Poems and Prose (1975)

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Edwin Arlington Robinson
Edwin Arlington Robinson (22 December 1869 – 6 April 1935 / Maine / United States)

poet Edwin Arlington Robinson

Edwin Arlington Robinson Poems
Search in the poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson :

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1. Haunted House 4/19/2016
2. Why He Was There 11/26/2014
3. Horace To Leuconoë 1/3/2003
4. Tasker Norcross 1/3/2003
5. Momus 1/3/2003
6. The Return Of Morgan And Fingal 1/3/2003
7. Erasmus 1/3/2003
8. Fragment 1/3/2003
9. Job The Rejected 1/3/2003
10. The Old King's New Jester 1/3/2003
11. Lazarus 1/3/2003
12. Demos 1/3/2003
13. Nimmo 1/3/2003
14. Inferential 1/3/2003
15. Leffingwell 1/3/2003
16. Lingard And The Stars 1/3/2003
17. Llewellyn And The Tree 1/3/2003
18. Isaac And Archibald 1/3/2003
19. Lisette And Eileen 1/3/2003
20. Rahel To Varnhagen 1/3/2003
21. Theophilus 1/3/2003
22. The Sunken Crown 1/3/2003
23. L'Envoy 1/3/2003
24. Discovery 1/3/2003
25. The New Tenants 1/3/2003
26. Lost Anchors 1/3/2003
27. The Whip 1/3/2003
28. The Altar 1/3/2003
29. The Revealer 1/3/2003
30. Recalled 1/3/2003
31. For Some Poems By Matthew Arnold 1/3/2003
32. The Chorus Of Old Men In Aegus 1/3/2003
33. The Klondike 1/3/2003
34. Clavering 1/3/2003
35. Two Octaves 1/3/2003
36. The Book Of Annandale 1/3/2003
37. The Pilot 1/3/2003
38. The Corridor 1/3/2003
39. But For The Grace Of God 1/3/2003
40. The Gift Of God 1/3/2003
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poet Edwin Arlington Robinson


A Happy Man - Poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson


When these graven lines you see,
Traveller, do not pity me;
Though I be among the dead,
Let no mournful word be said.

Children that I leave behind,
And their children, all were kind;
Near to them and to my wife,
I was happy all my life.

My three sons I married right,
And their sons I rocked at night;
Death nor sorrow never brought
Cause for one unhappy thought.

Now, and with no need of tears,
Here they leave me, full of years,--
Leave me to my quiet rest
In the region of the blest.
Edwin Arlington Robinson

---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------

An Old Story - Poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Strange that I did not know him then.
That friend of mine!
I did not even show him then
One friendly sign;

But cursed him for the ways he had
To make me see
My envy of the praise he had
For praising me.

I would have rid the earth of him
Once, in my pride...
I never knew the worth of him
Until he died.

----------------------------------------------------------
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Miniver Cheevy - Poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of the warrior bold
Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam's neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.

Mininver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the medieval grace
Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.
Edwin Arlington Robinson

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Wulf and Eadwacer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Wulf and Eadwacer is an Old English poem of famously difficult interpretation. It has been variously characterised, (modernly) as an elegy, (historically) as a riddle, and (in speculation on the poem's pre-history) as a song or ballad with refrain. The poem's complexities are, however, often asserted simply to defy genre classification, especially with regard to its narrative content. The poem's only extant text is found within the 10th century Exeter Book, along with certain other texts to which it possesses qualitative similarities.

Contents

1 Genre
2 Manuscript evidence
2.1 Characters
2.2 Synopsis
3 Differing arguments
4 Text and translation
5 References
5.1 Sources
6 External links

Genre

The characterisation of the poem as a riddle is the oldest of its various treatments, the argument for which characterisation is based largely upon the obscurity of its subject and the placement of the poem within the Exeter Book, preceding the texts of the extant riddles themselves. However, its length and its various textual problems not characteristic of the riddles have led few scholars to pursue a simple riddle interpretation in modern textual study, and few such explanations have garnered serious attention in the recent history of its scholarship. Rather, the thematic similarity of the poem to The Wife's Lament, also found in the Exeter Book, has caused most modern scholars to place it, along with the Wife's Lament, solidly within the genre of the frauenlied, or woman's song and, more broadly, in that of the Old English elegy. Its adjacency to the riddles has, however, continued to inform commentary and interpretation. The short lines and refrains of Wulf and Eadwacer, along with the stream of consciousness narration have made it a popular feminist reading. These features aided by the rhythm and syntax, cause the emotional buildup of the poem.
Manuscript evidence

For lack of any historical evidence or attestation outside the Exeter Book's text, historical criticism is limited to study of the Exeter Book itself and, particularly, to comparative study of its various contained works. Though it is generally held that the poem's composition occurred at a date significantly earlier than the date of the Exeter Book's own compilation, the degree of the poem's age relative to the codex is difficult if not impossible to ascertain. The dating of the poem in criticism is thus generally limited to what can be ascertained from the known history of the Exeter Book, for which suggested dates of compilation range from 960CE to 990CE. Though the folios on which the poem is recorded are not subject to any significant damage necessitating reconstruction, its textual problems and, particularly, the grammatical confusion of the first lines of the text, have resulted in widespread postulation that the initial lines of the poem may have been lost prior to its inclusion in the Exeter Book but subsequent to an earlier transcription. There is no manuscript evidence to directly support this theory, however.

Proposals regarding its heritage prior to inscription in the Exeter codex are consequently many and various. The inclusion of a refrain in the text of the poem may support an originally non-English origin, as the refrain is not conventional to the Old English elegy or to any other known Old English poetical form. Among proposed explanations for this anomaly, a Scandinavian inspiration for the Anglo-Saxon text offers one possible solution to this problem, and has similarly been considered as an explanation for its difficult language, but this theory, as with most others on the poem's prehistory, can only be regarded as hypothetical given lack of substantive corroborating evidence. The suggestion is that the poem derives from some interpretation of the Wayland story; that the woman is Beadohilde, Wulf is Wayland, and Eadwacer her angry father. This episode is also discussed in the poem Deor.
Characters

The most conventional interpretation of the poem is as a lament spoken in the first person by an unnamed woman who is or has in the past been involved with two men whose names are Wulf and Eadwacer respectively. Both of these are attested Anglo-Saxon names, and this interpretation is the basis for the common titling of the poem (which is not based on any other manuscript evidence). However, even this point proves controversial. Some interpretations favour a single male character, and virtually all commentaries acknowledge the possibility, though this is the less orthodox of the two views. In recognition of this fact, for example, preeminent Old English scholar Michael Alexander has chosen the title "Wulf" for his own reproduction of it in The Earliest English Poems (Penguin, 1973). It has also been known to be titled simply as Eadwacer. The title Wulf and Eadwacer, however, though apocryphal, has gained such widespread acceptance over time that in the majority of texts it is accepted regardless of the treatment of the titular name(s) and character(s).
Synopsis

The speaker of the poem is evidently separated from her lover and/or husband, Wulf, both symbolically and materially (Wulf is on iege, | ic on oþerre), and this separation is seemingly maintained by threat of violence (willað hy hine aþecgan, | gif he on þreat cymeð), possibly by her own people (Leodum is minum | swylce him mon lac gife). Crying out in her sorrow for her lover, she longs for him to take her in his arms (þonne mec se beaducafa bogum bilegde). She finds comfort in his coming, but it is also bittersweet (wæs me wyn to þon, wæs me hwæþre eac lað). She then addresses 'Eadwacer', who may be her husband or her captor, and she appears to identify their 'whelp' (Uncerne earne hwelp), generally understood to metaphorically imply 'child' and possibly a reference to the child's being the 'whelp' of a man named 'Wulf'. She describes this child as being taken off 'to the woods' (to wuda).
Differing arguments

Even though the poem is a mere nineteen lines there are many differing interpretations. The before-mentioned is the most popular interpretation. One of the others is that the word Eadwacer in the poem is not a proper noun, but a simple common noun which means "property watcher". This brings the characters in the poem from three to two, the speaker and her lover, Wulf. If one adopts this interpretation then her exclamation ("Do you hear me, Eadwacer?") could be meant to be sarcastic or a calling out of his manhood. She is saying that his long absences have made him anything but a protector to her and their child who she worries about. Using this interpretation, the speaker's use of irony when speaking of her lover makes the last two lines make sense. The speaker may be saying that Wulf has been her lover and her child's father, but has never treated her as or actually been her husband. Therefore, the complications of their relationship is easily unbound. However, this seems to be more easily done by Wulf than the speaker herself (Adams).

Though this argument is debatable among scholars, there is the thought that the character of Wulf is actually the speaker's child and not her lover. In this case she would be lamenting and pining after her son, hoping that he was okay, and not her lover. One scholar says: "In Wulf and Eadwacer a woman finds herself in a situation typical of Old English poetry, torn between conflicting loyalties. Many commentators see this particular situation as a sexual triangle, with Wulf the woman’s lover and Eadwacer her husband. If so, then Wulf and Eadwacer is not typical, because most Old English loyalty crises occur within the family group…It is…true that romantic or sexual love was not the literary commonplace before the twelfth century it has been since; other loves took precedence…The situation in Wulf and Eadwacer is far more typically Anglo-Saxon than as usually interpreted, if the speaker is understood to be the mother of the person she addresses as Wulf, as well as of the ‘whelp’ of line 16."[1] This argument that Wulf is actually the narrator’s son gives a different depth to the elegy—it becomes a poem of mourning for her son that seems to be exiled from her and their people. This idea has credibility when put in context that she was peace-weaved to Eadwacer, making Wulf their son.
Text and translation

Leodum is minum swylce him mon lac gife;
willað hy hine aþecgan, gif he on þreat cymeð.
Ungelic is us.
Wulf is on iege, ic on oþerre.

Fæst is þæt eglond, fenne biworpen.
Sindon wælreowe weras þær on ige;
willað hy hine aþecgan, gif he on þreat cymeð.
Ungelice is us.
Wulfes ic mines widlastum wenum dogode;

þonne hit wæs renig weder ond ic reotugu sæt,
þonne mec se beaducafa bogum bilegde,
wæs me wyn to þon, wæs me hwæþre eac lað.
Wulf, min Wulf, wena me þine
seoce gedydon, þine seldcymas,

murnende mod, nales meteliste.
Gehyrest þu, Eadwacer? Uncerne earne hwelp
bireð Wulf to wuda.
þæt mon eaþe tosliteð þætte næfre gesomnad wæs,
uncer giedd geador.


It is to my people as if someone gave them a gift.
They want to kill him, if he comes with a troop.
It is different for us.
Wulf is on one island I on another.

That island, surrounded by fens, is secure.
There on the island are bloodthirsty men.
They want to kill him, if he comes with a troop.
It is different for us.
I thought of my Wulf with far-wandering hopes,

Whenever it was rainy weather, and I sat tearfully,
Whenever the warrior bold in battle encompassed me with his arms.
To me it was pleasure in that, it was also painful.
Wulf, my Wulf, my hopes for you have caused
My sickness, your infrequent visits,

A mourning spirit, not at all a lack of food.
Do you hear, Eadwacer? A wolf is carrying
our wretched whelp to the forest,
that one easily sunders which was never united:
our song together.[2]

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

http://www.poemhunter.com/lucy-maud-montgomery/

Lucy Maud Montgomery Poems

A Summer Day I The dawn laughs out on orient hills And ...
A Winter Dawn Above the marge of night a star still shines, ...
A Winter Day I The air is silent save where stirs A ...
As The Heart Hopes It is a year dear one, since you ...
Down Home Down home to-night the moonshine falls Across a ...
The Truce Of Night Lo, it is dark, Save for the crystal ...
Come, Rest Awhile Come, rest awhile, and let us idly stray ...

More poems of Lucy Maud Montgomery »

When The Dark Comes Down

When the dark comes down, oh, the wind is on the sea
With lisping laugh and whimper to the red reef's threnody,
The boats are sailing homeward now across the harbor bar
With many a jest and many a shout from fishing grounds afar.
So furl your sails and take your rest, ye fisher folk so brown,
For task and quest are ended when the dark comes down.

When the dark comes down, oh, the landward valleys fill
Like brimming cups of purple, and on every landward hill
There shines a star of twilight that is watching evermore
The low, dim lighted meadows by the long, dim-lighted shore,
For there, where vagrant daisies weave the grass a silver crown,
The lads and lassies wander when the dark comes down.

When the dark comes down, oh, the children fall asleep,
And mothers in the fisher huts their happy vigils keep;
There's music in the song they sing and music on the sea,
The loving, lingering echoes of the twilight's litany,
For toil has folded hands to dream, and care has ceased to frown,
And every wave's a lyric when the dark comes down.
Lucy Maud Montgomery
**************************************

The Seeker

I sought for my happiness over the world,
Oh, eager and far was my quest;
I sought it on mountain and desert and sea,
I asked it of east and of west.
I sought it in beautiful cities of men,
On shores that were sunny and blue,
And laughter and lyric and pleasure were mine
In palaces wondrous to view;
Oh, the world gave me much to my plea and my prayer
But never I found aught of happiness there!

Then I took my way back to a valley of old
And a little brown house by a rill,
Where the winds piped all day in the sentinel firs
That guarded the crest of the hill;
I went by the path that my childhood had known
Through the bracken and up by the glen,
And I paused at the gate of the garden to drink
The scent of sweet-briar again;
The homelight shone out through the dusk as of yore
And happiness waited for me at the door!
Lucy Maud Montgomery
**********************************

The Old Man's Grave

Make it where the winds may sweep
Through the pine boughs soft and deep,
And the murmur of the sea
Come across the orient lea,
And the falling raindrops sing
Gently to his slumbering.

Make it where the meadows wide
Greenly lie on every side,
Harvest fields he reaped and trod,
Westering slopes of clover sod,
Orchard lands where bloom and blow
Trees he planted long ago.

Make it where the starshine dim
May be always close to him,
And the sunrise glory spread
Lavishly around his bed.
And the dewy grasses creep
Tenderly above his sleep.

Since these things to him were dear
Through full many a well-spent year,
It is surely meet their grace
Should be on his resting-place,
And the murmur of the sea
Be his dirge eternally.
Lucy Maud Montgomery

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Maud_Montgomery

Lucy Maud Montgomery
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lucy Maud Montgomery
L. M. Montgomery
L. M. Montgomery c. 1920s
Born November 30, 1874
Clifton, Prince Edward Island
Died April 24, 1942 (aged 67)
Toronto, Ontario
Occupation Fiction writer
Nationality Canadian
Education Prince of Wales College, Dalhousie University
Period 1896–1940
Genre Canadian literature, children's novels
Notable works

Anne of Green Gables
Rilla of Ingleside
Emily of New Moon

Spouse Ewen ("Ewan") Macdonald
Children Chester (1912–1963)
Hugh (1914–1914)
Stuart (1915–1982)

L.M. Montgomery OBE (November 30, 1874 – April 24, 1942), was the pen name of Lucy Maud Montgomery, a Canadian author best known for a series of novels beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables. The book was an immediate success. The central character, Anne Shirley, an orphaned girl, made Montgomery famous in her lifetime and gave her an international following.[1] The first novel was followed by a series of sequels with Anne as the central character. Montgomery went on to publish 20 novels as well as 530 short stories, 500 poems, and 30 essays. Most of the novels were set in Prince Edward Island, and locations within Canada's smallest province became a literary landmark and popular tourist site—namely Green Gables farm, the genesis of Prince Edward Island National Park. She was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1935.

Montgomery's work, diaries and letters have been read and studied by scholars and readers worldwide.[2]

Contents

1 Early life
2 Writing career, romantic interests, and family life
2.1 Published books and suitors
2.2 Marriage and family
2.3 Later life
3 Death
4 Legacy
4.1 Collections
4.2 Landmarked places
4.3 Honours and awards
5 Works
5.1 Novels
5.1.1 Anne of Green Gables series
5.1.2 Emily trilogy
5.1.3 Pat of Silver Bush
5.1.4 The Story Girl
5.1.5 Miscellaneous
5.2 Short story collection
5.2.1 Short stories by chronological order
5.3 Poetry
5.4 Non-fiction
5.5 Autobiography
6 Notes and references
6.1 Notes
6.2 References
6.3 Bibliography
7 External links
7.1 Texts, images and collections
7.2 Audio
7.3 Organizations

Early life
Lucy Maud Montgomery, 1884 (age 10)

Lucy Maud Montgomery was born in Clifton (now New London) in Prince Edward Island on November 30, 1874. Her mother Clara Woolner Macneill Montgomery died of tuberculosis when Maud was 21 months old. Stricken with grief over his wife's death, Hugh John Montgomery gave custody to Montgomery's maternal grandparents.[3] Later he moved to Prince Albert, North-West Territories (now Prince Albert, Saskatchewan) when Montgomery was seven.[4] She went to live with her maternal grandparents, Alexander Marquis Macneill and Lucy Woolner Macneill, in the nearby community of Cavendish and was raised by them in a strict and unforgiving manner. Montgomery's early life in Cavendish was very lonely.[5] Despite having relatives nearby, much of her childhood was spent alone. Montgomery credits this time of her life, in which she created many imaginary friends and worlds to cope with her loneliness, with developing her creativity.[6]

Montgomery completed her early education in Cavendish with the exception of one year (1890–1891) during which time she was in Prince Albert with her father and her stepmother, Mary Ann McRae.[4] In November 1890, while in Prince Albert, Montgomery's first work, a poem entitled "On Cape LeForce,"[4][6] was published in the Charlottetown paper, The Daily Patriot. She was as excited about this as she was about her return to her beloved Prince Edward Island in 1891.[6] The return to Cavendish was a great relief to her. Her time in Prince Albert was unhappy,for she did not get along with her stepmother[7] and because by, "... Maud’s account, her father's marriage was not a happy one."[8] In 1893, following the completion of her grade school education in Cavendish, she attended Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, and obtained a teacher's license. She completed the two-year program in one year.[4] In 1895 and 1896, she studied literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Writing career, romantic interests, and family life
Published books and suitors
Birthplace of Lucy Maud Montgomery

Upon leaving Dalhousie, Montgomery worked as a teacher in various Prince Edward Island schools. Though she did not enjoy teaching, it afforded her time to write. Beginning in 1897, she began to have her short stories published in magazines and newspapers. Montgomery was prolific and had over 100 stories published from 1897 to 1907.

During her teaching years, Montgomery had numerous love interests. As a highly fashionable young woman, she enjoyed "slim, good looks"[6] and won the attention of several young men. In 1889, at 14, Montgomery began a relationship with a Cavendish boy named Nate Lockhart. To Montgomery, the relationship was merely a humorous and witty friendship. It ended abruptly when Montgomery refused his marriage proposal.[9]

The early 1890s brought unwelcome advances from John A. Mustard and Will Pritchard.[10] Mustard, her teacher, quickly became her suitor; he tried to impress her with his knowledge of religious matters. His best topics of conversation were his thoughts on Predestination and "other dry points of theology",[11] which held little appeal for Montgomery. During the period when Mustard's interest became more pronounced, Montgomery found a new interest in Will Pritchard, the brother of her friend Laura Pritchard. This friendship was more amiable but, again, he felt more for Montgomery than she did for him.[12] When Pritchard sought to take their friendship further, Montgomery resisted. Montgomery refused both marriage proposals; the former was too narrow-minded,[13] and the latter was merely a good chum.[5] She ended the period of flirtation when she moved to Prince Edward Island. However, she and Pritchard did continue to correspond for over six years, until Pritchard caught influenza and died in 1897.[14]

In 1897, Montgomery accepted the proposal of Edwin Simpson,[4] who was a student in French River near Cavendish.[15][16] Montgomery wrote that she accepted his proposal out of a desire for "love and protection" and because she felt her prospects were rather low.[5] While teaching in Lower Bedeque, she had a brief but passionate romantic attachment to Herman Leard, a member of the family with which she boarded.[17] In 1898, after much unhappiness and disillusionment, Montgomery broke off her engagement to Simpson.[18] Montgomery no longer sought romantic love.[6]

In 1898, Montgomery moved back to Cavendish to live with her widowed grandmother. For a nine-month period between 1901 and 1902, she worked in Halifax as a substitute proofreader for the newspapers Morning Chronicle and The Daily Echo.[4][19] Montgomery was inspired to write her first books during this time on Prince Edward Island. Until her grandmother's death in March 1911, Montgomery stayed in Cavendish to take care of her. This coincided with a period of considerable income from her publications.[6] Although she enjoyed this income, she was aware that “marriage was a necessary choice for women in Canada.”[7]
Marriage and family

In 1908, Montgomery published her first book, Anne of Green Gables. An immediate success, it established Montgomery's career, and she would write and publish material (Including numerous sequels to Anne) continuously for the rest of her life. Shortly after her grandmother's death in 1911, she married Ewen (spelled in her notes and letters as "Ewan"[20]) Macdonald (1870–1943), a Presbyterian minister,[4] and they moved to Ontario where he had taken the position of minister of St. Paul's Presbyterian Church, Leaskdale in present-day Uxbridge Township, also affiliated with the congregation in nearby Zephyr. Montgomery wrote her next eleven books from the Leaskdale manse. The structure was subsequently sold by the congregation and is now the Lucy Maud Montgomery Leaskdale Manse Museum.

The Macdonalds had three sons; the second was stillborn. The great increase of Montgomery's writings in Leaskdale is the result of her need to escape the hardships of real life.[21] Montgomery underwent several periods of depression while trying to cope with the duties of motherhood and church life and with her husband’s attacks of religious melancholia (endogenous major depressive disorder) and deteriorating health: "For a woman who had given the world so much joy, [life] was mostly an unhappy one."[7] For much of her life, writing was her one great solace.[11] Also, during this time, Montgomery was engaged in a series of "acrimonious, expensive, and trying lawsuits with the publisher L.C. Page, that dragged on until she finally won in 1929."[22]

Montgomery stopped writing about Anne in about 1920, writing in her journal that she had tired of the character. She preferred instead to create books about other young, female characters, feeling that her strength was writing about characters who were either very young or very old. Other series written by Montgomery include the "Emily" and "Pat" books, which, while successful, did not reach the same level of public acceptance as the "Anne" volumes. She also wrote a number of stand-alone novels, which were also generally successful, if not as successful as her Anne books.
Later life
Leaskdale manse, home of Lucy Maud Montgomery from 1911 to 1926

In 1926, the family moved into the Norval Presbyterian Charge, in present-day Halton Hills, Ontario, where today the Lucy Maud Montgomery Memorial Garden can be seen from Highway 7.

In 1935, upon her husband's retirement, Montgomery moved to Swansea, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, buying a house which she named Journey's End, situated on Riverside Drive along the east bank of the Humber River. Montgomery continued to write, and (in addition to writing other material) returned to writing about Anne after a 15-year hiatus, filling in previously unexplored gaps in the chronology she had developed for the character. She published Anne of Windy Poplars in 1936 and Anne of Ingleside in 1939. Jane of Lantern Hill, a non-Anne novel, was also composed around this time and published in 1937.

In the last year of her life, Montgomery completed what she intended to be a ninth book featuring Anne, titled The Blythes Are Quoted. It included fifteen short stories (many of which were previously published) that she revised to include Anne and her family as mainly peripheral characters; forty-one poems (most of which were previously published) that she attributed to Anne and to her son Walter, who died as a soldier in the Great War; and vignettes featuring the Blythe family members discussing the poems. The book was delivered to Montgomery's publisher on the day of her death, but for reasons unexplained, the publisher declined to issue the book at the time. Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre speculates that the book's dark tone and anti-war message (Anne speaks very bitterly of WWI in one passage) may have made the volume unsuitable to publish in the midst of the second world war.

An abridged version of this book, which shortened and reorganized the stories and omitted all the vignettes and all but one of the poems, was published as a collection of short stories called The Road to Yesterday in 1974, more than 30 years after the original work had been submitted. A complete edition of The Blythes Are Quoted, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre, was finally published in its entirety by Viking Canada in October 2009, more than 67 years after it was composed.
Death
The gravestone of Montgomery, in a grassy cemetery. The text on the gravestone says, "Lucy Maud Montgomery Macdonald/wife of/Ewan Macdonald/1874–1942.
Gravestone

Montgomery died on April 24, 1942. A note was found beside her bed, reading, in part, "I have lost my mind by spells and I do not dare think what I may do in those spells. May God forgive me and I hope everyone else will forgive me even if they cannot understand. My position is too awful to endure and nobody realizes it. What an end to a life in which I tried always to do my best."[23] Montgomery died from coronary thrombosis in Toronto.[24][a] However, it was revealed by her granddaughter, Kate Macdonald Butler, in September 2008 that Montgomery suffered from depression – possibly as a result of caring for her mentally ill husband for decades – and may have taken her own life via a drug overdose.[25] But, there is another point of view.[23][26] According to Mary Rubio, who wrote a biography of Montgomery, Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings (2008), the message may have been intended to be a journal entry as part of a journal that can no longer be found, rather than a simple suicide note.[26]

During her lifetime, Montgomery published 20 novels, over 500 short stories, an autobiography, and a book of poetry. Aware of her fame, by 1920 Montgomery began editing and recopying her journals, presenting her life as she wanted it remembered. In doing so certain episodes were changed or omitted.[27]

She was buried at the Cavendish Community Cemetery in Cavendish following her wake in the Green Gables farmhouse and funeral in the local Presbyterian church.
Legacy
Collections

The L. M. Montgomery Institute, founded in 1993, at the University of Prince Edward Island, promotes scholarly inquiry into the life, works, culture, and influence of L. M. Montgomery and coordinates most of the research and conferences surrounding her work. The Montgomery Institute collection consists of novels, manuscripts, texts, letters, photographs, sound recordings and artifacts and other Montgomery ephemera.[28]

Her major collections are archived at the University of Guelph.

The first biography of Montgomery was The Wheel of Things: A Biography of L. M. Montgomery (1975), written by Mollie Gillen. Dr. Gillen also discovered over 40 of Montgomery's letters to her pen-friend George Boyd MacMillan in Scotland and used them as the basis for her work. Beginning in the 1980s, her complete journals, edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, were published by the Oxford University Press. From 1988–95, editor Rea Wilmshurst collected and published numerous short stories by Montgomery. Most of her essays, along with interviews with Montgomery, commentary on her work, and coverage of her death and funeral, appear in Benjamin Lefebvre's The L. M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 1: A Life in Print (2013).[29]

Despite the fact that Montgomery published over twenty books, "she never felt she achieved her one 'great' book".[6] Her readership, however, has always found her characters and stories to be among the best in fiction. Mark Twain said Montgomery’s Anne was “the dearest and most moving and delightful child since the immortal Alice". Montgomery was honoured by being the first female in Canada to be named a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in England and by being invested in the Order of the British Empire in 1935.[30] However, her fame was not limited to Canadian audiences. Anne of Green Gables became a success worldwide. For example, every year, thousands of Japanese tourists "make a pilgrimage to a green-gabled Victorian farmhouse in the town of Cavendish on Prince Edward Island".[31] In 2012, the original novel Anne of Green Gables was ranked number nine among all-time best children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with primarily U.S. audience.[32] The British public ranked it number 41 among all novels in The Big Read, a 2003 BBC survey to determine the "nation's best-loved novel".[33]
Landmarked places

Montgomery's home of Leaskdale Manse in Ontario, and the area surrounding Green Gables and her Cavendish home in Prince Edward Island, have both been designated National Historic Sites.[34][35] Montgomery herself was designated a Person of National Historic Significance by the Government of Canada in 1943.[36]

Bala's Museum in Bala, Ontario, is a house museum established in 1992. Officially it is "Bala's Museum with Memories of Lucy Maud Montgomery", for Montgomery and her family stayed in the boarding house during a July 1922 holiday that inspired her novel The Blue Castle (1926). The museum hosts some events pertaining to Montgomery or her fiction, including re-enactment of the holiday visit.[37]
Honours and awards

Montgomery was honoured by Britain's King George V as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), as there were no Canadian orders, decorations or medals for civilians until the 1970s.

Montgomery was named a National Historic Person in 1943 by the Canadian federal government. Her Ontario residence was designated a National Historic Site (NHS) in 1997 (Leaskdale Manse NHS), while the place that inspired her famous novels, Green Gables, was designated "L. M. Montgomery's Cavendish NHS" in 2004.

On May 15, 1975, the Post Office Department issued a stamp to "Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables" designed by Peter Swan and typographed by Bernard N. J. Reilander. The 8¢ stamps are perforated 13 and were printed by Ashton-Potter Limited.[38]

A pair of stamps was issued in 2008 by Canada Post, marking the centennial of the publication of Montgomery's classic first novel.[39]

The City of Toronto named a park for her (Lucy Maud Montgomery Park) and in 1983 placed a historical marker there near the house where she lived from 1935 until her death in 1942.[40]

On November 30, 2015 (her 141st birthday), Google honoured Lucy Maud Montgomery with a Google Doodle published in twelve countries.[41]
Works
Novels
Anne of Green Gables series
First page of "Anne of Green Gables", published in 1908

Anne of Green Gables (1908)
Anne of Avonlea (1909)
Anne of the Island (1915)
Anne of Windy Poplars (1936)
Anne's House of Dreams (1917)
Anne of Ingleside (1939)
Rainbow Valley (1919)
Rilla of Ingleside (1921)
The Blythes Are Quoted (2009) — was given to publisher the day before her death and lost. Finally found in mid–2000s.

Emily trilogy

Emily of New Moon (1923)
Emily Climbs (1925)
Emily's Quest (1927)

Pat of Silver Bush

Pat of Silver Bush (1933)
Mistress Pat (1935)

The Story Girl

The Story Girl (1911)
The Golden Road (1913)

Miscellaneous

Kilmeny of the Orchard (1910)
The Blue Castle (1926)
Magic for Marigold (1929)
A Tangled Web (1931)
Jane of Lantern Hill (1937)

Short story collection

Chronicles of Avonlea (1912)
"The Hurrying of Ludovic"
"Old Lady Lloyd"
"Each In His Own Tongue"
"Little Joscelyn"
"The Winning of Lucinda"
"Old Man Shaw's Girl"
"Aunt Olivia's Beau"
"Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's"
"Pa Sloane's Purchase"
"The Courting of Prissy Strong"
"The Miracle at Carmody"
"The End of a Quarrel"
Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920)
"Aunt Cynthia's Persian Cat"
"The Materializing of Cecil"
"Her Father's Daughter"
"Jane's Baby"
"The Dream-Child"
"The Brother Who Failed"
"The Return of Hester"
"The Little Brown Book of Miss Emily"
"Sara's Way"
"The Son of his Mother"
"The Education of Betty"
"In Her Selfless Mood"
"The Conscience Case of David Bell"
"Only a Common Fellow"
"Tannis of the Flats"



The Road to Yesterday (1974)
"An Afternoon With Mr. Jenkins"
"Retribution"
"The Twins Pretend"
"Fancy's Fool"
"A Dream Come True"
"Penelope Struts Her Theories"
"The Reconciliation"
"The Cheated Child"
"Fool's Errand"
"The Pot and the Kettle"
"Here Comes the Bride"
"Brother Beware"
"The Road to Yesterday"
"A Commonplace Woman"
The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories, selected by Catherine McLay (1979)
Akin to Anne: Tales of Other Orphans, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (1988)
Along the Shore: Tales by the Sea, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (1989)
Among the Shadows: Tales from the Darker Side, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (1990)
After Many Days: Tales of Time Passed, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (1991)
Against the Odds: Tales of Achievement, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (1993)
At the Altar: Matrimonial Tales, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (1994)
Across the Miles: Tales of Correspondence, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (1995)
Christmas with Anne and Other Holiday Stories, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (1995)
The Blythes Are Quoted, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre (2009) (companion book to Rilla of Ingleside)

Short stories by chronological order

Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories: 1896 to 1901 (2008)
"A Case of Trespass" (1897)
"A Christmas Inspiration" (1901)
"A Christmas Mistake" (1899)
"A Strayed Allegiance" (1897)
"An Invitation Given on Impulse" (1900)
"Detected by the Camera" (1897)
"In Spite of Myself" (1896)
"Kismet" (1899)
"Lillian's Business Venture" (1900)
"Miriam's Lover" (1901)
"Miss Calista's Peppermint Bottle" (1900)
"The Jest that Failed" (1901)
"The Pennington's Girl" (1900)
"The Red Room" (1898)
"The Setness of Theodosia" (1901)
"The Story of An Invitation" (1901)
"The Touch of Fate" (1899)
"The Waking of Helen" (1901)
"The Way of Winning Anne" (1899)
"Young Si" (1901)
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories: 1902 to 1903 (2008)
"A Patent Medicine Testimonial" (1903)
"A Sandshore Wooing" (1903)
"After Many Days" (1903)
"An Unconventional Confidence" (1903)
"Aunt Cyrilla's Christmas Basket" (1903)
"Davenport's Story" (1902)
"Emily's Husband" (1903)
"Min" (1903)
"Miss Cordelia's Accommodation" (1903)
"Ned's Stroke of Business" (1903)
"Our Runaway Kite" (1903)
"The Bride Roses" (1903)
"The Josephs' Christmas" (1902)
"The Magical Bond of the Sea" (1903)
"The Martyrdom of Estella" (1902)
"The Old Chest at Wyther Grange" (1903)
"The Osborne's Christmas" (1903)
"The Romance of Aunt Beatrice" (1902)
"The Running Away of Chester" (1903)
"The Strike at Putney" (1903)
"The Unhappiness of Miss Farquhar" (1903)
"Why Mr. Cropper Changed His Mind" (1903)
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories: 1904 (2008)
"A Fortunate Mistake" (1904)
"An Unpremeditated Ceremony" (1904)
"At the Bay Shore Farm" (1904)
"Elizabeth's Child" (1904)
"Freda's Adopted Grave" (1904)
"How Don Was Saved" (1904)
"Miss Madeline's Proposal" (1904)
"Miss Sally's Company" (1904)
"Mrs. March's Revenge" (1904)
"Nan" (1904)
"Natty of Blue Point" (1904)
"Penelope's Party Waist" (1904)
"The Girl and The Wild Race" (1904)
"The Promise of Lucy Ellen" (1904)
"The Pursuit of the Ideal" (1904)
"The Softening of Miss Cynthia" (1904)
"Them Notorious Pigs" (1904)
"Why Not Ask Miss Price?" (1904)
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories: 1905 to 1906 (2008)
"A Correspondence and a Climax" (1905)
"An Adventure on Island Rock" (1906)
"At Five O'Clock in the Morning" (1905)
"Aunt Susanna's Birthday Celebration" (1905)
"Bertie's New Year" (1905)
"Between the Hill and the Valley" (1905)
"Clorinda's Gifts" (1906)
"Cyrilla's Inspiration" (1905)
"Dorinda's Desperate Deed" (1906)
"Her Own People" (1905)



[1905 to 1906, continued]
"Ida's New Year Cake" (1905)
"In the Old Valley" (1906)
"Jane Lavinia" (1906)
"Mackereling Out in the Gulf" (1905)
"Millicent's Double " (1905)
"The Blue North Room" (1906)
"The Christmas Surprise At Enderly Road" (1905)
"The Dissipation of Miss Ponsonby" (1906)
"The Falsoms' Christmas Dinner" (1906)
"The Fraser Scholarship" (1905)
"The Girl at the Gate" (1906)
"The Light on the Big Dipper" (1906)
"The Prodigal Brother" (1906)
"The Redemption of John Churchill" (1906)
"The Schoolmaster's Letter" (1905)
"The Story of Uncle Dick" (1906)
"The Understanding of Sister Sara" (1905)
"The Unforgotten One" (1906)
"The Wooing of Bessy" (1906)
"Their Girl Josie " (1906)
"When Jack and Jill Took a Hand" (1905)
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories: 1907 to 1908 (2008)
"A Millionaire's Proposal" (1907)
"A Substitute Journalist" (1907)
"Anna's Love Letters" (1908)
"Aunt Caroline's Silk Dress" (1907)
"Aunt Susanna's Thanksgiving Dinner" (1907)
"By Grace of Julius Caesar" (1908)
"By the Rule of Contrary" (1908)
"Fair Exchange and No Robbery " (1907)
"Four Winds" (1908)
"Marcella's Reward" (1907)
"Margaret's Patient" (1908)
"Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves" (1908)
"Missy's Room" (1907)
"Ted's Afternoon Off" (1907)
"The Girl Who Drove the Cows" (1908)
"The Doctor's Sweetheart" (1908)
"The End of the Young Family Feud" (1907)
"The Genesis of the Doughnut Club" (1907)
"The Growing Up of Cornelia" (1908)
"The Old Fellow's Letter " (1907)
"The Parting of the Ways" (1907)
"The Promissory Note" (1907)
"The Revolt of Mary Isabel" (1908)
"The Twins and a Wedding" (1908)
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories: 1909 to 1922 (2008)
"A Golden Wedding" (1909)
"A Redeeming Sacrifice" (1909)
"A Soul that Was Not At Home" (1915)
"Abel And His Great Adventure" (1917)
"Akin to Love" (1909)
"Aunt Philippa and the Men" (1915)
"Bessie's Doll" (1914)
"Charlotte's Ladies" (1911)
"Christmas at Red Butte " (1909)
"How We Went to the Wedding" (1913)
"Jessamine" (1909)
"Miss Sally's Letter" (1910)
"My Lady Jane" (1915)
"Robert Turner's Revenge" (1909)
"The Fillmore Elderberries" 1909)
"The Finished Story" (1912)
"The Garden of Spices" (1918)
"The Girl and the Photograph" (1915)
"The Gossip of Valley View" (1910)
"The Letters" (1910)
"The Life-Book of Uncle Jesse" (1909)
"The Little Black Doll" (1909)
"The Man on the Train" (1914)
"The Romance of Jedediah" (1912)
"The Tryst of the White Lady" (1922)
"Uncle Richard's New Year Dinner" (1910)
"White Magic" (1921)

Poetry

The Watchman & Other Poems (1916)
The Poetry of Lucy Maud Montgomery, selected by John Ferns and Kevin McCabe (1987)

Non-fiction

Courageous Women (1934) (with Marian Keith and Mabel Burns McKinley)

Autobiography

The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career (1974; originally published in Everywoman's World in 1917)
The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery (5 vols.), edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston (1985–2004)
The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery: The PEI Years 1889–1911 (2 vols.), edited by Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth Hillman Waterston (2012–2014)

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/four-lesser-known-poets-you-should-know

Robert Creely (1926-2005)

The author of more than 60 books — including novels and short story collections — Robert Creely is perhaps the most well-credentialed poet you’ve never heard of. An early member of the Black Mountain poets — a short-lived school of formless poetry originating in the late '40s and early '50s at Black Mountain College — Creely's breakthrough collection didn’t come until 1962’s For Love. Following For Love’s publication, Creely went on to advocate for teaching children about poetry, an agenda he pushed during his two-year tenure as the New York Poet Laureate from 1989-1991.

A lifelong world traveler, Creely spent a number of his early years as a writer living on islands off the coast of Spain — some of his early long-form narrative works were composed during that time — and he briefly moved to San Francisco after the closure of Black Mountain College in 1957. There, he become friends with a number of prominent Beat poets like Kerouac, Ginsberg and the aforementioned Gary Synder.

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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/robert-creeley



Once known primarily for his association with the group called the “Black Mountain Poets,” at the time of his death in 2005, Robert Creeley was widely recognized as one of the most important and influential American poets of the twentieth century. His poetry is noted for both its concision and emotional power. Albert Mobilio, writing in the Voice Literary Supplement, observed: “Creeley has shaped his own audience. The much imitated, often diluted minimalism, the compression of emotion into verse in which scarcely a syllable is wasted, has decisively marked a generation of poets.”

Creeley was born in Arlington, Massachusetts in 1926. When his father died in 1930, he was raised by his mother and sister in Acton. An accident when he was four left him blind in one eye. He attended Holderness School in Plymouth, New Hampshire, on a scholarship, and his articles and stories appeared regularly in the school’s literary magazine. Creeley was admitted to Harvard in 1943, but admitted later that he had felt discouraged by “the sardonic stance of my elders.” He left Harvard to serve in the American Field Service in 1944 and 1945, and drove an ambulance in India and South-East Asia. Creeley returned to Harvard after the war, though he never graduated. He later received an MA from the University of New Mexico. He began corresponding with William Carlos Williams, who seems to have put him in touch with Charles Olson, a poet who was to have a substantial influence on the direction of his future work. Excited especially by Olson’s ideas about literature, Creeley began to develop a distinctive and unique poetic style.

Throughout the 1950s, Creeley was associated with the “Black Mountain Poets,” a group of writers including Denise Levertov, Ed Dorn, Fielding Dawson, and others who had some connection with Black Mountain College, an experimental, communal college in North Carolina that was a haven for many innovative writers and artists of the period. Creeley edited the Black Mountain Review and developed a close and lasting relationship with Olson, who was the rector of the college. The two engaged in a lengthy, intensive correspondence about literary matters that has been collected and published in ten volumes as Charles Olson and Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence (Volume 1, 1980). Olson and Creeley together developed the concept of “projective verse,” a kind of poetry that abandoned traditional forms in favor of a freely constructed verse that took shape as the process of composing it was underway. Olson called this process “composition by field,” and his famous essay on the subject, “Projective Verse,” was as important for the poets of the emerging generation as T. S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent” was to the poets of the previous generation. Olson credited Creeley with formulating one of the basic principles of this new poetry: the idea that “form is never more than an extension of content.”

Creeley was a leader in the generational shift that veered away from history and tradition as primary poetic sources and gave new prominence to the ongoing experiences of an individual’s life. Because of this emphasis, the major events of his life loom large in his literary work. Creeley’s marriage to Ann MacKinnon ended in divorce in 1955. The breakup of that relationship is chronicled in fictional form in his only novel, The Island (1963), which drew upon his experiences on the island of Mallorca, off the coast of Spain, where he lived with MacKinnon and their three children in 1953 and 1954. After the divorce Creeley returned to Black Mountain College for a brief time before moving west. He was in San Francisco during the flowering of the “San Francisco Poetry Renaissance” and became associated for a time with the writers of the Beat Generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Michael McClure, and others. His work appeared in the influential anthology The New American Poetry: 1945-1960 (1960), edited by Donald Allen.

In 1956 Creeley accepted a teaching position at a boys’ school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he met his second wife, Bobbie Louise Hall. Though Creeley published poetry and fiction throughout the 1950s and 1960s and had even established his own imprint, the Divers Press, in 1952, his work did not receive important national recognition until Scribner published his first major collection, For Love: Poems 1950-1960, in 1962. This book collected work that he had been issuing in small editions and magazines during the previous decade. When For Love debuted, Mobilio wrote, “it was recognized at once as a pivotal contribution to the alternative poetics reshaping the American tradition. . . . The muted, delicately contrived lyrics . . . were personal and self-contained; while they drew their life from the everyday, their techniques of dislocation sprang from the mind’s naturally stumbled syntax.”

The very first poem in For Love, “Hart Crane,” with its unorthodox, Williams-like line breaks, its nearly hidden internal rhymes, and its subtle assonance and sibilance, announces the Creeley style—a style defined by an intense concentration on the sounds and rhythms of language as well as the placement of the words on the page. In a piece for the London Review of Books, Stephen Burt wrote that “We recognise Creeley’s poems first by what they leave out: he uses few long or rare words, no regular metres and almost no metaphors,” and, noting how little that style changed, “Creeley kept for five decades a way of writing whose markers include parsimonious diction, strong enjambment, two to four-line stanzas and occasional rhyme. What changed over his career was not his language but the use he made of it, the attitudes and goals around which the small, clear crystals of his verse might form.”

Though For Love and Words (1967) both received critical acclaim, by the late ‘60s Creeley was already abandoning the spare style which had made him famous. In Pieces, A Day Book, Thirty Things, and Hello: A Journal, February 29-May 3, 1976, all published between 1968 and 1978, Creeley attempts to break down the concept of a “single poem” by offering his readers sequential, associated fragments of poems with indeterminate beginnings and endings. All of these works are energized by the same heightened attention to the present that characterizes Creeley’s earlier work, and many of the poems in Hello (1976) refer to the last days of Creeley’s relationship with his second wife, Bobbie. That marriage ended in divorce in 1976, the same year he met Penelope Highton, his third wife, while traveling in New Zealand. For all of Creeley’s experimentation, he has always been in some ways an exceedingly domestic poet; his mother, children, wives, and close friends are the subjects of his best work. Because Creeley’s second marriage lasted nearly twenty years, the sense of a major chunk of his life drifting away from him is very strong in Hello. Creeley here conveys the traumatic emotional state that almost always accompanies the breakup of long-term relationships.

Creeley’s next major collection, Later (1979), is characterized by a greater emphasis on memory, a new sense of life’s discrete phases, and an intense preoccupation with aging. In “Myself,” the first poem in Later, he writes: “I want, if older, / still to know / why, human, men / and women are / so torn, so lost / why hopes cannot / find a better world / than this.” This futile but deeply human quest captures the spirit of Creeley’s later work. It embodies a commonly shared realization: one becomes older but still knows very little about essential aspects of life, particularly the mysteries of human relationships. The ten-part title poem was written over a period of ten days in September of 1977. The poem begins by evoking lost youth—youth, in later life, can only become a palpable part of the present through the power of memory—and presents a kaleidoscopic view of Creeley’s life, both past and present: a lost childhood dog and memories of his mother, friends and neighbors are all mapped onto the poetry he is composing in an attic room in Buffalo, September, 1977.

The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975 was published in 1982. The poems Creeley wrote in the last decades of his life increasingly remember and reflect on memory and the past. As Stephen Burt described them: “The later poems are more traditional than their predecessors, in their sounds and in their goals. They rhyme more often. They have recognisable closure. Few are so short as to pose conceptual puzzles about what a poem is. When they are bad they are prosy or repetitive, not insubstantial or nonsensical. They never sound like Olson (much less like Ginsberg), and at their best they recall Thomas Hardy: they are, in the end, mostly poems of old age.” Life and Death (1998) examines the poet’s increasing age and mortality. Reviewing the book, Forrest Gander acknowledged Creeley’s lasting importance to American poetry: “Robert Creeley has forged a signature style in American poetry, an idiosyncratic, highly elliptical, syntactical compression by which the character of his mind’s concentrated and stumbling proposals might be expressed . . . Reading his poems, we experience the gnash of arriving through feeling at thought and word.”

Creeley was a prolific poet, even late in life: the volumes after Life and Death came in regular succession, including Loops: Ten Poems (1995); Ligeia: A Libretto (1996); So There: Poems 1976-83 (1998); En Famille: A Poem by Robert Creeley (1999); Thinking(2000); Just In Time: Poems, 1984-1994 (2001); and If I Were Writing This (2003). R. D. Pohl in the Buffalo News, praised If I Were Writing This, declaring that it “contains some of the starkest and most memorable poems Creeley has written.” Pohl and a Publishers Weekly reviewer both saw If I Were Writing This as a companion volume to Life and Death, each of them “composed primarily of poems dedicated to family and friends (dead and living), collaborative verses, and such poems as ‘For You’ in which intimacy of tone coincides with cryptic, lyrical abstraction.” Pohl noted that If I Were Writing This is the first major volume to appear since Creeley joined the ranks of such poetic giants as Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens and John Ashbery by winning the prestigious Yale University Bollingen Prize in 1999. He continued: “The fragility of our common experience in language and the world resonates through every line of Creeley’s recent work.”

Creeley also wrote a considerable amount of prose and was editor of a number of volumes, including Best American Poetry 2002. Creeley’s prose includes a novel, essays, and short stories, as well as a play, collected letters, and an autobiography, published in 1990. Creeley taught for over 30 years at the State University of New York-Buffalo, helping to turn its English and Poetics program into one of the most famous havens for avant-garde writing in the world. In 2003 he was appointed distinguished professor of English at Brown University. In an appreciation of Creeley written for the Poetry Project Newsletter, Peter Gizzi said, “He was a devoted teacher, undeterred by the persistent critique of the role of poets in universities. Conversely, on the Black Mountain model, he was more interested in bending institutions to support poetry. That was one of his labors.” Also noted for his enthusiastic support of other poets, Robert Creeley served as a mentor and friend to many, many poets. Charles Bernstein, a colleague of Creeley’s at SUNY-Buffalo wrote in the Brooklyn Rail: “So many poets had an intimate relation with Creeley; he had a way of connecting with each of us in particular and, through that connection with him, to a company of poets in the U.S. and around the world.”Creeley died in 2005 in Odessa, Texas, of complications resulting from lung disease. He had been completing a residency for the Lannan Foundation in Marfa, Texas.

Don Byrd quoted him in Contemporary Poets: “I write to realize the world as one has come to live in it, thus to give testament. I write to move in words, a human delight. I write when no other act is possible.” Asked about “good” poems, Creeley, who had written in the introduction to Best American Poetry 2002 that the poem is “that place we are finally safe in” where “understanding is not a requirement. You don’t have to know why. Being there is the one requirement,” responded, “If one only wrote ‘good’ poems, what a dreary world it would be.”



(Biography updated by the Poetry Foundation, 2009)
Bibliography

POETRY

Le Fou, Golden Goose Press, 1952.
The Kind of Act Of, Divers Press (Mallorca, Spain), 1953.
The Immoral Proposition, Jonathan Williams, 1953.
A Snarling Garland of Xmas Verse (published anonymously), Divers Press (Mallorca, Spain), 1954.
All That Is Lovely in Men, Jonathan Williams (Asheville, NC), 1955.
(With others) Ferrin and Others, Gerhardt (Germany), 1955.
If You, Porpoise Bookshop (San Francisco, CA), 1956.
The Whip, Migrant Books, 1957.
A Form of Women, Jargon Books (New York, NY), 1959.
For Love: Poems, 1950-1960, Scribner (New York, NY), 1962.
Distance, Terrence Williams, 1964.
Mister Blue, Insel-Verlag, 1964.
Two Poems, Oyez, 1964.
Hi There!, Finial Press, 1965.
Words (eight poems), Perishable Press, 1965.
Poems, 1950-1965, Calder & Boyars (London, England), 1966.
About Women, Gemini, 1966.
For Joel, Perishable Press, 1966.
A Sight, Cape Coliard Press, 1967.
Words (eighty-four poems), Scribner (New York, NY), 1967.
Robert Creeley Reads (with recording), Turret Books, 1967.
The Finger, Black Sparrow Press (Santa Rosa, CA), 1968, enlarged edition published as The Finger Poems, 1966-1969, Calder & Boyars (London, England), 1970.
5 Numbers (five poems), Poets Press (New York, NY), 1968, published as Numbers (text in English and German), translation by Klaus Reichert, Galerie Schmela (Dusseldorf, Germany), 1968.
The Charm: Early and Collected Poems, Perishable Press, 1968, expanded edition published as The Charm, Four Seasons Foundation (San Francisco, CA), 1969.
Divisions and Other Early Poems, Perishable Press, 1968.
Pieces (fourteen poems), Black Sparrow Press (Santa Rosa, CA), 1968.
The Boy (poem poster), Gallery Upstairs Press, 1968.
Mazatlan: Sea, Poets Press (New York, NY), 1969.
Pieces (seventy-two poems), Scribner (New York, NY), 1969.
Hero, Indianakatz (New York, NY), 1969.
A Wall, Bouwerie Editions (New York, NY), 1969.
For Betsy and Tom, Alternative Press, 1970.
For Benny and Sabrina, Samuel Charters, 1970.
America, Press of the Black Flag, 1970.
In London, Angel Hair Books, 1970.
Christmas: May 10, 1970, Lockwood Memorial Library, State University of New York at Buffalo (Buffalo, NY), 1970.
St. Martin's, Black Sparrow Press (Santa Rosa, CA), 1971.
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0, drawings by Arthur Okamura, Shambhala (New York, NY), 1971.
Sea, Cranium Press, 1971.
For the Graduation, Cranium Press, 1971.
Change, Hermes Free Press, 1972.
One Day after Another, Alternative Press, 1972.
For My Mother: Genevieve Jules Creeley, 8 April 1887-7 October 1972 (limited edition), Sceptre Press (London, England), 1973.
His Idea, Coach House Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1973.
The Class of '47, Bouwerie Editions (New York, NY), 1973.
Kitchen, Wine Press, 1973.
Sitting Here, University of Connecticut Library, 1974.
Thirty Things, Black Sparrow Press (Santa Rosa, CA), 1974.
Backwards, Sceptre Press (London, England), 1975.
Hello, Hawk Press (Christchurch, New Zealand), 1976, expanded edition published as Hello: A Journal, February 29-May 3, 1976, New Directions (New York, NY), 1978.
Away, Black Sparrow Press (Santa Rosa, CA), 1976.
Presences (also see below), Scribner (New York, NY), 1976.
Selected Poems, Scribner (New York, NY), 1976, revised edition, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1991.
Myself, Sceptre Press (London, England), 1977.
Later, Toothpaste (West Branch, IA), 1978, expanded edition, New Directions (New York, NY), 1979.
Desultory Days, Sceptre Press (London, England), 1979.
Corn Close, Sceptre Press (London, England), 1980.
Mother As Voice, Am Here Books/Immediate Editions, 1981.
The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1982.
Echoes, Toothpaste (West Branch, IA), 1982, New Directions (New York, NY), 1994.
Going On: Selected Poems, 1958-1980, Dutton (New York, NY), 1983.
Mirrors, New Directions (New York, NY), 1983.
A Calendar: Twelve Poems, Coffee House Press (West Branch, IA), 1984.
The Collected Prose of Robert Creeley, Scribner (New York, NY), 1984.
Memories, Pig Press, 1984.
Memory Gardens, New Directions (New York, NY), 1986.
The Company, Burning Deck, 1988.
Window, edited by Richard Blevins, State University of New York at Buffalo (Buffalo, NY), 1988.
(With Libby Larsen) A Creeley Collection: For Mixed Voices, Solo Tenor, Flute, Percussion, and Piano, E. C. Schirmer, 1989.
(With Francesco Clemente) 64 Pastels, Bruno Bischofberger, 1989.
Places, Shuffaloff Press, 1990.
Windows, New Directions (New York, NY), 1990.
Have a Heart, Limberlost Press, 1990.
Selected Poems, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1991.
The Old Days, Ambrosia Press, 1991.
Gnomic Verses, Zasterle Press, 1991.
A Poetry Anthology, Edmundson Art Foundation, 1992.
Life and Death, Grenfell Press, 1993, New Directions (New York, NY), 1998.
Loops: Ten Poems, Nadja, 1995.
Ligeia: A Libretto, Granary Books, 1996.
So There: Poems 1976-83, New Directions (New York, NY), 1998.
En Famille: A Poem by Robert Creeley, Granary Books, 1999.
(With Alex Katz) Edges, Peter Blum, 1999.
(With Max Gimblett and Alan Loney) The Dogs of Auckland, Holloway Press, 1998.
(With John Millei) Personal: Poems, Peter Koch, 1998.
(With Daisy DeCapite) Cambridge, Mass 1944, Boog Literature, 2000.
Thinking, Z Press, 2000.
Clemente's Images, Backwoods Broadsides, 2000.
For Friends, Drive He Sd Books, 2000.
(With Archie Rand, illustrations) Drawn and Quartered, Distributed Art Publishers, 2001.
Just In Time: Poems, 1984-1994, New Directions (New York, NY), 2001.
Collected Poems of Robert Creeley 1975-2005, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2006.
Selected Poems 1945-2005, edited by Benjamin Friedlander, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2008.

EDITOR

Charles Olson, Mayan Letters, Divers Press (Mallorca, Spain), 1953.
(With Donald M. Allen, and contributor) New American Story, Grove (New York, NY), 1965, reprinted 2001.
(And author of introduction) Charles Olson, Selected Writings, New Directions (New York, NY), 1966.
(With Donald Allen, and contributor) The New Writing in the U.S.A., Penguin (New York, NY), 1967.
Whitman: Selected Poems, Penguin (New York, NY), 1973.
(And contributor) The Essential Burns, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 1989.
Tim Prythero, Peters Corporation, 1990.
Olson, Selected Poems, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1993.
(With David Lehman) The Best American Poetry 2002, Scribner (New York, NY), 2002.

PROSE

The Gold Diggers (short stories), Divers Press (Mallorca, Spain), 1954, expanded edition published as The Gold Diggers and Other Stories, J. Calder, 1965.
The Island (novel), Scribner (New York, NY), 1963.
A Day Book (poems and prose), Scribner (New York, NY), 1972.
Mabel: A Story, and Other Prose (includes A Day Book and Presences), Calder & Boyars (London, England), 1976.
Collected Prose, Marion Boyars (New York, NY), 1984, corrected edition, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1988, Dalkey Archive Press (Chicago, IL), 2001.

NONFICTION

An American Sense (essay), Sigma Press, 1965.
A Quick Graph: Collected Notes and Essays, edited by Donald M. Allen, Four Seasons Foundation (San Francisco, CA), 1970.
Notebook, Bouwerie Editions (New York, NY), 1972.
A Sense of Measure (essays), Calder & Boyars (London, England), 1972.
Inside Out (lecture), Black Sparrow Press (Santa Rosa, CA), 1973.
The Creative (lecture), Black Sparrow Press (Santa Rosa, CA), 1973.
Was That a Real Poem and Other Essays, Four Seasons Foundation (San Francisco, CA), 1979.
Collected Essays, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1989.
Autobiography, Hanuman Books, 1990.
Day Book of a Virtual Poet (essays), Spuyten Duyvil (New York, NY), 1998.

OTHER

Listen (play; produced in London, 1972), Black Sparrow Press (Santa Rosa, CA), 1972.
Contexts of Poetry: Interviews, 1961-1971, Four Seasons Foundation (San Francisco, CA), 1973.
Charles Olson and Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence, ten volumes, edited by George F. Butterick, Black Sparrow Press (Santa Rosa, CA), 1980-96.
Jane Hammond, Exit Art, 1989.
Irving Layton and Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence, edited by Ekbert Faas and Sabrina Reed, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1990.
Tales out of School: Selected Interviews, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1993.
Robert Creeley, reading with jazz musicians David Cast, Chris Massey, Steve Swallow, and David Torn accompanying, Cuneiform Records, 1998.
(Author of foreword) The Turning, Hilda Morley, Asphodel Press, 1998.
(With Elizabeth Licata and Amy Cappellazzo) In Company: Robert Creeley's Collaborations (from a traveling art show), University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 1999.
(Contributor; with others) Susan Rothenberg: Paintings from the Nineties, Rizzoli International (New York, NY), 2000.

Work represented in numerous anthologies, including The New American Poetry: 1945-1960, edited by Donald Allen, Grove (New York, NY), 1960; A Controversy of Poets, edited by Paris Leary and Robert Kelly, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1965; Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, edited by Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, Norton (New York, NY), 1973; The New Oxford Book of American Verse, edited by Richard Ellmann, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1976; and Poets' Encyclopedia, edited by Michael Andre, Unmuzzled Ox Press, 1980. Contributor to literary periodicals, including Paris Review, Nation, Black Mountain Review, Origin, Yugen, and Big Table. Founder and editor, Black Mountain Review, 1954-57; advisory editor, Sagetrieb, 1983—; advisory editor, American Book Review, 1983—; contributing editor, Formations, 1984—; and advisory editor, New York Quarterly, 1984—. The major collection of Creeley's manuscripts and correspondence is housed in Special Collections, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. Other collections include the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the Yale University Library, New Haven, CT (correspondence with William Carlos Williams), Humanities Research Center, University of Texas Libraries, Austin (correspondence with Ezra Pound), John M. Olin Library, Washington University, St. Louis, MO (manuscripts and correspondence predating 1965), Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington (manuscripts and correspondence with Cid Corman), Simon Fraser University Library, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada (correspondence with Richard Emerson), and University of Connecticut Library, Storrs (correspondence with Charles Olson).
Further Readings

BOOKS

Allen, Donald M., editor, Robert Creeley, Contexts of Poetry: Interviews, 1961-1971, Four Seasons Foundation (San Francisco, CA), 1973.
Altieri, Charles, Self and Sensibility in Contemporary American Poetry, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1984.
Butterick, George F., editor, Charles Olson and Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence, Black Sparrow Press (Santa Rosa, CA), 1980.
Clark, Tom, Robert Creeley and the Genius of the American Common Place: Together with the Poet's Own Autobiography, New Directions (New York, NY), 1993.
Conniff, Brian, The Lyric and Modern Poetry: Olson, Creeley, Bunting, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1988.
Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Volume 10, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1989.
Contemporary Literary Criticism, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 1, 1973, Volume 2, 1974, Volume 4, 1975, Volume 8, 1978, Volume 11, 1979, Volume 15, 1980, Volume 36, 1986.
Contemporary Poets, 5th edition, edited by Tracy Chevalier, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1991.
Corman, Cid, editor, The Gist of Origin, Viking (New York, NY), 1975.
Creeley, Robert, Hello, Hawk Press (Christchurch, New Zealand), 1978.
Creeley, Robert, Later, Toothpaste (West Branch, IA), 1978.
Creeley, Robert, If I Were Writing This, New Directions (New York, NY), 2003.
Edelberg, Cynthia Dubin, Robert Creeley's Poetry: A Critical Introduction, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 1978.
Faas, Ekbert, and Sabrina Reed, editors, Irving Layton and Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence, 1953-1978, McGill-Queen's University Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1990.
Faas, Ekbert, and Maria Trombaco, Robert Creeley: A Biography, University Press of New England (Hanover, NH), 2001.
Ford, Arthur L., Robert Creeley, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1978.
Foster, Edward Halsey, Understanding the Black Mountain Poets, University of South Carolina Press (Columbia, SC), 1995.
Fox, Willard, Robert Creeley, Edward Dorn, and Robert Duncan: A Reference Guide. G. K. Hall (Boston, MA), 1989.
Fredman, Stephen, Poet's Prose: The Crisis in American Verse, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1983.
Giger, Esther, and Agnieszka Salska, editors, Freedom and Form: Essays in Contemporary American Poetry. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Lódzkiego (Lódz, Poland), 1998.
Gwynn, R. S., editor, New Expansive Poetry: Theory, Criticism, History, Story Line (Ashland, OR), 1999.
Novik, Mary, Robert Creeley: An Inventory, 1945-1970, Kent State University Press (Kent, OH), 1973.
Oberg, Arthur, Modern American Lyric: Lowell, Berryman, Creeley, and Plath, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 1977.
Paul, Sherman, The Lost America of Love: Rereading Robert Creeley, Edward Dorn, and Robert Duncan, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1981.
Rifkin, Libbie, Career Moves: Olson, Creeley, Zukofsky, Berrigan, and the American Avant-Garde, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 2000.
Roberts, Neil, editor, A Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry, Blackwell (Oxford, England), 2001.
Sheffler, Ronald Anthony, The Development of Robert Creeley's Poetry, University of Massachusetts (Amherst, MA), 1971.
Tallman, Allen and Warren, editors, The Poetics of the New American Poetry, Grove (New York, NY), 1973.
Tallman, Warren, Three Essays on Creeley, Coach House Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1973.
Terrell, Carroll F., Robert Creeley: The Poet's Workshop, University of Maine Press (Orono, ME), 1984.
Von Hallberg, Robert, American Poetry and Culture, 1945-80, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1985.
Wilson, John, editor, Robert Creeley's Life and Work: A Sense of Increment, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1987.

PERIODICALS

American Book Review, May-June, 1984.
American Poetry Review, November-December, 1976; May-June, 1997, p. 9; September-October, 1999, p. 17.
Atlantic Monthly, November, 1962; February, 1968; October, 1977.
Books Abroad, autumn, 1967.
Boundary 2, spring, 1975; spring and fall (special two-volume issue on Creeley), 1978.
Buffalo News, February 25, 1996, p. E1; February 7, 1999, p. E6; March 24, 2000, p. G18; September 7, 2003, p. G5.
Cambridge Quarterly, 1998, p. 87.
Christian Science Monitor, October 9, 1969.
Chronicle of Higher Education, November 1, 1996, p. B10.
Contemporary Literature, spring, 1972; fall, 1995, p. 79.
Cortland Review, April, 1998.
Critique, spring, 1964.
Denver Quarterly, winter 1997, p. 82.
ebr: The Alt-X Web Review, spring, 1999.
Encounter, February, 1969.
English: The Journal of the English Association, summer, 2001, p. 127.
Gentleman's Quarterly, June, 1996, p. 74.
Harper's, August, 1967; September, 1983.
Hudson Review, summer, 1963; summer, 1967; spring, 1970; summer, 1977.
Iowa Review, spring, 1982.
Journal News (Westchester, NY), August 31, 2003, p. 4E.
Journal of American Studies, August 1998, p. 263.
Kenyon Review, spring, 1970.
Library Journal, September 1, 1979; April 15, 1994, p. 81; April 1, 1997, p. 94; April 1, 1999, p, 95.
Listener, March 23, 1967.
London Magazine, June-July, 1973.
Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 17, 1983; October 30, 1983; March 4, 1984; June 24, 1984; June 23, 1991, p. 8.
Modern Language Quarterly, December, 1982, p. 369.
Modern Poetry Studies, winter, 1977.
Nation, August 25, 1962.
National Observer, October 30, 1967.
National Review, November 19, 1960.
New Leader, October 27, 1969.
New Orleans Review, spring, 1992, p. 14.
New Republic, October 11, 1969; December 18, 1976.
New Statesman, August 6, 1965; March 10, 1987.
New York Review of Books, January 20, 1966; August 1, 1968.
New York Times, June 27, 1967.
New York Times Book Review, November 4, 1962; September 22, 1963; November 19, 1967; October 27, 1968; January 7, 1973; May 1, 1977; March 9, 1980; August 7, 1983; June 24, 1984; September 23, 1984; November 3, 1991, p. 14.
North Dakota Quarterly, fall, 1987, p. 89.
Northwest Review, 2000, p. 102.
Observer (London, England), September 6, 1970.
Paris Review, fall, 1968.
Parnassus, fall-winter, 1984.
Partisan Review, summer, 1968.
Plain Dealer, September 29, 2002, p. J9.
Poetry, March, 1954; May, 1958; September, 1958; March, 1963; April, 1964; August, 1966; January, 1968; March, 1968; August, 1968; May, 1970; December, 1970; September, 1984.
Publishers Weekly, March 18, 1968; March 28, 1994; March 30, 1998, p. 77; September 24, 2001, p. 91; July 22, 2002, p. 170; September 1, 2003.
Review of Contemporary Fiction, fall, 1995, pp. 79, 82, 97, 107, 110, 116, 120, 127, 137, 141.
Sagetrieb: A Journal Devoted to Poets in the Imagist/Objectivist Tradition, winter, 1982 (special issue); fall, 1988, p. 53; spring-fall, 1991, p. 209 (bibliog.); spring, 1999, pp. 131, 149.
San Francisco Chronicle, April 12, 1998, p. 12.
Saturday Review, August 4, 1962; December 11, 1965; June 3, 1967.
Seattle Times, October 6, 2002, p. L9.
Sewanee Review, winter, 1961.
Southwest Review, winter, 1964.
Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, 2001-2002, p. 49.
Time, July 12, 1971.
Times Literary Supplement, March 16, 1967; August 7, 1970; November 12, 1970; December 11, 1970; May 20, 1977; May 30, 1980; February 20, 1981; November 4, 1983; May 10, 1991, p. 22.
Village Voice, October 22, 1958; December 10, 1979; November 25, 1981.
Virginia Quarterly Review, summer, 1968; winter, 1972; spring, 1973.
Voice Literary Supplement, September, 1991, p. 14.
Washington Post Book World, August 11, 1991, p. 13.
Western Humanities Review, spring, 1970.
Winstom-Salem Journal, March 5, 2000, p. E1.
World Literature Today, autumn, 1984; summer, 1992; spring, 1995.
Yale Review, October, 1962; December, 1969; spring, 1970; April, 1999, p. 175.

ONLINE

Academy of American Poets: Poetry Exhibit, http://www.poets.org/ (March 8, 2004).
Cortland Review, http://www.cortlandreview.com/ (April, 1998), interview with Creeley.
Levity, http://www.levity.com/ (March 8, 2004).
Providence Phoenix Book Reviews, http://www.providencephoenix.com/ (March 26-April 2, 1998), interview with Creeley.
Robert Creeley Home Page, http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/creeley/ (April 26, 2000).
University of Illinois, Department of English, http://www.english.uiuc.edu/ (March 8, 2004).

BOOKS

Creeley, Robert, Autobiography, Hanuman Books, 1990.

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, April 1, 2005, p. B9.
New York Times, April 1, 2005, p. C13.
Times (London, England), April 1, 2005, p. 62.
Washington Post, April 1, 2005, p. B6.

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Poems, Articles & More
Discover this poet's context and related poetry, articles, and media.
Poems by Robert Creeley
After Frost
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America
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Throughout the 1950s, Creeley was associated with the “Black Mountain Poets,” a group of writers including Denise Levertov, Ed Dorn, Fielding Dawson, and others who had some connection with Black Mountain College, an experimental, communal college in North Carolina that was a haven for many innovative writers and artists of the period. Creeley edited the Black Mountain Review and developed a close and lasting relationship with Olson, who was the rector of the college. The two engaged in a lengthy, intensive correspondence about literary matters that has been collected and published in ten volumes as Charles Olson and Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence (Volume 1, 1980). Olson and Creeley together developed the concept of “projective verse,” a kind of poetry that abandoned traditional forms in favor of a freely constructed verse that took shape as the process of composing it was underway. Olson called this process “composition by field,” and his famous essay on the subject, “Projective Verse,” was as important for the poets of the emerging generation as T. S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent” was to the poets of the previous generation. Olson credited Creeley with formulating one of the basic principles of this new poetry: the idea that “form is never more than an extension of content.”

Creeley was a leader in the generational shift that veered away from history and tradition as primary poetic sources and gave new prominence to the ongoing experiences of an individual’s life. Because of this emphasis, the major events of his life loom large in his literary work. Creeley’s marriage to Ann MacKinnon ended in divorce in 1955. The breakup of that relationship is chronicled in fictional form in his only novel, The Island (1963), which drew upon his experiences on the island of Mallorca, off the coast of Spain, where he lived with MacKinnon and their three children in 1953 and 1954. After the divorce Creeley returned to Black Mountain College for a brief time before moving west. He was in San Francisco during the flowering of the “San Francisco Poetry Renaissance” and became associated for a time with the writers of the Beat Generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Michael McClure, and others. His work appeared in the influential anthology The New American Poetry: 1945-1960 (1960), edited by Donald Allen.

I was greatly influenced by this decades ago. Not one to solely travel the all too well worn path myself in regards to poetry form, restrictions and elitism, etc.. . Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

https://www.oxford-royale.co.uk/articles/lesser-known-poets-first-world-war.html

Edmund Blunden


Blunden’s poetry focused on the First World War long after he left the trenches for good.

Edmund Blunden joined up in August 1915 when he was 19, and still at school. He was a student at Christ’s Hospital school, and had a place at Oxford to study Classics – but he deferred his place to serve as a lieutenant in France. Even before he arrived at the front, he’d begun to write poetry in earnest: during his training, he had three volumes privately published. His pre-war poetry was pastoral and Romantic in tone: he was inspired by the English countryside, and one of his poems opened ‘I sing of the rivers and hamlets and woodlands of Sussex and Kent’. He left for France in 1916 and remained at the front for two years, until February 1919. During this time he wrote a number of poems – but the majority of his poetic output came after the war, as the writer contemplated the fighting, the suffering of his comrades and the destruction of nature in retrospect. Blunden’s friend Siegfried Sassoon called him ‘the poet of the war most lastingly obsessed by it’: and indeed, much of Blunden’s poetry is concerned with the lasting trauma of the experience of fighting. In one of his most famous poems, ‘Concert Party: Busseboom’, an evening’s entertainment is interrupted and ruined by the memory of a battle in the trenches:

The stage was set, the house was packed,
The famous troop began;
Our laughter thundered, act by act,
Time light as sunbeams ran.

Dance sprained and spun and neared and fled,
Jest chirped at gayest pitch,
Rhythm dazzled, action sped
Most comically rich.

With generals and lame privates both
Such charms worked wonders, till
The show was over: lagging loth
We faced the sunset chill;

And standing on the sandy way
With the cracked church peering past,
We heard another matinee,
We heard the maniac blast

Of barrage south by Saint Eloi,
And the red lights flaming there
Called madness: Come, my bonny boy,
And dance to the latest air.

To this new concert, white we stood,
Cold certainty held our breath;
While men in the tunnels below Larch Wood
Were kicking men to death.
Image shows a huge, fully-packed concert hall.

Blunden shows the trauma of war invading the most pleasant of settings.

Blunden evokes the lasting psychological trauma of the experience of fighting by allowing the past to intrude into the present: in the space of a single line the dancing colours of the show the narrator is watching blur, and resolve into a scene of battle. The war has an irresistible, magnetic pull, always dragging the narrator away from what is in front of him and back into a prison of remembering. And Blunden’s language, too, everywhere works to muddy the distinction between past and present: the entertainment is described in military language as a ‘troop’, and laughter almost violently ‘thunders’; the poet uses an army metaphor to convey the diversity of the audience, from ‘generals’ to ‘lame privates’. Later, battle is described in the language of the stage: it is ‘another matinee’, a ‘new concert’, an ‘air’ (a song).

Elsewhere, Blunden’s poetry uses juxtaposition to different effect, in a manner similar to that of Wilfred Owen in his famous, scathing attack upon the propaganda that encouraged young men to go to war, ‘Dulce et Decorum est’. Owen’s poem describes in horrific detail the gruesome death of a soldier who has breathed in chlorine gas, and ends with the declaration that if his addressee, too, could watch the soldier die:

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory
The Old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.


Owen and Blunden both made their readers confront the effects of war.

Elsewhere, and perhaps most famously in his poem ‘Mental Cases’, Owen forces his reader to confront the gruesome and the monstrous effects of battle upon men once full of grace and beauty: and Blunden’s poetry displays much the same impulse, playing on the distance between the glorified image of soldierly heroism, bravery and beauty, and the often revolting reality. In ‘Can you remember?’ for example, the speaker describes the images that constitute his memory of the war and will not allow him to escape:

New-old shapes for ever
Intensely recur

And some are sparkling, laughing, singing,
Young, heroic, mild;
And some incurable, twisted,
Shrieking, dumb, defiled.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Blunden

Edmund Blunden
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edmund Blunden
Edmundblundencirca1914.jpg
Born 1 November 1896
London, England
Died 20 January 1974 (aged 77)
Long Melford, Suffolk, England
Resting place Holy Trinity Church, Long Melford
Occupation Poet, author
Nationality British
Education Christ's Hospital; The Queen's College, Oxford
Notable works Poems 1913 and 1914; An Elegy and Other Poems; Cricket Country; Poems on Japan
Notable awards Military Cross; C.B.E.; the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry
Spouse Mary Daines
Sylva Norman
Claire Margaret Poynting
Partner Aki Hayashi
Children seven

Edmund Charles Blunden, CBE, MC (1 November 1896 – 20 January 1974) was an English poet, author and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was also a reviewer for English publications and an academic in Tokyo and later Hong Kong. He ended his career as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford.

Contents

1 Biography
1.1 Early years and World War I
1.2 Career as a writer
1.3 Personal life
1.4 Honours
1.5 Works
2 Notes
3 References
4 External links

Biography
Early years and World War I

Born in London, Blunden was the eldest of the nine children of Charles Edmund Blunden (1871–1951) and his wife, Georgina Margaret née Tyler, who were joint-headteachers of Yalding school.[1] Blunden was educated at Christ's Hospital and The Queen's College, Oxford.[2]

In August 1915, during the First World War (1914–1918), Blunden was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the British Army's Royal Sussex Regiment[1] and served with the 11th (Southdowns) Battalion on the Western Front right up to the end of the war, taking part in the actions at Ypres and the Somme, and receiving the Military Cross in the process. Unusually for a junior infantry officer, Blunden survived nearly two years in the front line without physical injury, but for the rest of his life bore mental scars from his experiences.[1] With characteristic self-deprecation he attributed his survival to his diminutive size: he made "an inconspicuous target".[3] His own account of his frequently traumatic experiences was published in 1928 under the title Undertones of War.
Career as a writer

Blunden left the army in 1919 and took up the scholarship at Oxford that he had won while still at school.[1] On the same English Literature course was Robert Graves, and the two were close friends during their time at Oxford together, but Blunden found university life unsatisfactory and left in 1920 to take up a literary career, at first acting as assistant to Middleton Murry on the Athenaeum. An early supporter was Siegfried Sassoon, who became a lifelong friend. In 1920 Blunden published a collection of poems, The Waggoner, and with Alan Porter edited the poems of John Clare (mostly from Clare's manuscript).[1]

Blunden's next book of poems, The Shepherd, published in 1922 won the Hawthornden Prize, but his poetry, though well reviewed, did not provide enough to live on, and in 1924 he accepted the post of Professor of English at the University of Tokyo. He returned to England in 1927, and was literary editor of the Nation for a year. In 1927 he published a short book, On the Poems of Henry Vaughan, Characteristics and Intimations, with his principal Latin poems carefully translated into English verse (London: H. Cobden-Sanderson, 1927), expanding and revising an essay that he had published in November 1926 in the London Mercury. In 1931 he returned to Oxford as a Fellow of Merton College, where he was highly regarded as a tutor.[1] During his years in Oxford, Blunden published extensively: several collections of poetry including Choice or Chance (1934) and Shells by a Stream (1944), prose works on Charles Lamb; Edward Gibbon; Keats's publisher; Percy Bysshe Shelley (Shelley: A Life Story); John Taylor; and Thomas Hardy; and a book about a game he loved, Cricket Country (1944). He returned to full-time writing in 1944, becoming assistant editor of The Times Literary Supplement. In 1947 he returned to Japan as a member of the British liaison mission in Tokyo. In 1953, after three years back in England he accepted the post of Professor of English Literature at the University of Hong Kong.[1]

Blunden retired in 1964 and settled in Suffolk. In 1966 he was nominated for the Oxford Professorship of Poetry in succession to Robert Graves; with some misgivings he agreed to stand and was elected by a large majority over the other candidate, Robert Lowell. However, he now found the strain of public lecturing too much for him, and after two years he resigned.[1]

He died of a heart attack at his home at Long Melford, Suffolk, on 20 January 1974, and is buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, Long Melford.
Personal life

Blunden was married three times. While still in the army he met and married Mary Daines in 1918. They had three children, the first of whom died in infancy. They divorced in 1931, and in 1933 Blunden married Sylva Norman, a young novelist and critic. That marriage, which was childless, was dissolved in 1945, and in the same year he married Claire Margaret Poynting (1918-2000), a former pupil of his; they had four daughters. While in Japan in the summer of 1925, he met Aki Hayashi, with whom he began a relationship.[4] When Blunden returned to England in 1927, Aki accompanied him and would become his secretary.[5] The relationship later changed from a romantic one to a platonic friendship, and they remained in contact for the rest of her life.[1]

Blunden's love of cricket, celebrated in his book Cricket Country, is described by the biographer Philip Ziegler as fanatical. Blunden and his friend Rupert Hart-Davis regularly opened the batting for a publisher's eleven in the 1930s (Blunden insisted on batting without gloves).[6] An affectionate obituary tribute in The Guardian commented, "He loved cricket ... and played it ardently and very badly",[3] while in a review of Cricket Country, George Orwell described him as "the true cricketer":

The test of a true cricketer is that he shall prefer village cricket to 'good' cricket [.... Blunden's] friendliest memories are of the informal village game, where everyone plays in braces, where the blacksmith is liable to be called away in mid-innings on an urgent job, and sometimes, about the time when the light begins to fail, a ball driven for four kills a rabbit on the boundary.[7]

In a 2009 appreciation of the book and its author, Bangalore writer Suresh Menon writes,

Any cricket book that talks easily of Henry James and Siegfried Sassoon and Ranji and Grace and Richard Burton (the writer, not the actor) and Coleridge is bound to have a special charm of its own. As Blunden says, "The game which made me write at all, is not terminated at the boundary, but is reflected beyond, is echoed and varied out there among the gardens and the barns, the dells and the thickets, and belongs to some wider field."

Perhaps that is what all books on cricket are trying to say.[8]

Blunden had a robust sense of humour. In Hong Kong he relished linguistic misunderstandings such as those of the restaurant that offered "fried prawn's balls" and the schoolboy who wrote, "In Hong Kong there is a queer at every bus-stop."[9]

His fellow poets' regard for Blunden was illustrated by the contributions to a dinner in his honour for which poems were specially written by Cecil Day-Lewis and William Plomer; T. S. Eliot and Walter de la Mare were guests; and Siegfried Sassoon provided the Burgundy.[10]
Honours

Blunden's public honours included the C.B.E., 1951; the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, 1956; The Royal Society of Literature's Benson Medal; the Order of the Rising Sun, 3rd Class (Japan), 1963; and Honorary Membership of the Japan Academy.[2] On 11 November 1985, Blunden was among 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey[11] The inscription on the stone was written by fellow Great War poet, Wilfred Owen. It reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."[12]
Works

Blunden's output was prolific. To those who thought he published too much he quoted Walter de la Mare's observation that time was the poet's best editor.[13] His books of poetry include Poems 1913 and 1914 (1914); Poems Translated from the French (1914); Three Poems (1916); The Barn (1916); The Silver Bird of Herndyke Mill; Stane Street; The Gods of the World Beneath, (1916); The Harbingers (1916); Pastorals (1916); The Waggoner and Other Poems (1920); The Shepherd, and Other Poems of Peace and War (1922); Old Homes (1922); To Nature: New Poems (1923); Dead Letters (1923); Masks of Time: A New Collection of Poems Principally Meditative (1925); Japanese Garland (1928); Retreat (1928); Winter Nights: A Reminiscence (1928); Near and Far: New Poems (1929); A Summer's Fancy (1930); To Themis: Poems on Famous Trials (1931); Constantia and Francis: An Autumn Evening, (1931); Halfway House: A Miscellany of New Poems, (1932); Choice or Chance: New Poems (1934); Verses: To H. R. H. The Duke of Windsor, (1936); An Elegy and Other Poems (1937); On Several Occasions (1938); Poems, 1930–1940 (1940); Shells by a Stream (1944); After the Bombing, and Other Short Poems (1949); Eastward: A Selection of Verses Original and Translated (1950); Records of Friendship (1950); A Hong Kong House (1959); Shelley, A Life Story (1965) by Oxford University Press, with strong evidence on pp. 278 and 290 that Percy Bysshe Shelley was murdered; Poems on Japan (1967).[2]

Artists Rifles, an audiobook CD published in 2004, includes a reading of Concert Party, Busseboom by Blunden himself, recorded in 1964 by the British Council. Other Great War poets heard on the CD include Siegfried Sassoon, Edgell Rickword, Robert Graves, David Jones and Lawrence Binyon. Blunden can also be heard on Memorial Tablet, an audiobook of readings by Sassoon issued in 2003.[14]
Notes

Bergonzi, Bernard, "Blunden, Edmund Charles (1896–1974)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 28 Nov 2008
"Blunden, Edmund Charles", Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2007; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007 accessed 28 Nov 2008
The Guardian obituary
Barry Webb, Edmund Blunden: A Biography, p. 151.
Webb, p. 156.
Ziegler, pp. pp and 116–17
Quoted in Menon 2009.
Menon 2009.
Hart-Davis, Volume 5, Letter of 5 June 1960
Ziegler, p. 150
http://net.lib.byu.edu/english/wwi/poets/poets.html
http://net.lib.byu.edu/english/wwi/poets/Preface.html
The Times obituary

http://www.ltmrecordings.com/artistsriflesaudioCD.html

References

Hart-Davis, Rupert (ed), Lyttelton/Hart-Davis Letters Vol 5, John Murray, London 1983. ISBN 0-7195-3999-4
Menon, Suresh. "The passionate poet." Cricinfo, 5 April 2009.
The Guardian obituary, 22 January 1974, p. 12
The Times obituary, 21 January 1974, p. 14
Ziegler, Philip, Rupert Hart-Davis: Man of Letters Chatto and Windus, London, 2004. ISBN 0-7011-7320-3
John Greening (Ed.): Edmund Blunden's Undertones of war, Oxford : Oxford Univ. Press, 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-871661-7


I remember his name from my reading some of his truly great poetry decades go.--Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Isaac Rosenberg

Isaac Rosenberg was born in 1890 in Bristol, the son of Lithuanian Jews who had moved to Britain a few years earlier. As a child, his teachers noticed his talent for drawing and writing poetry, but his parents couldn’t afford to keep him at school, and so he was apprenticed to an engraver’s company in 1905. In spite of this, Rosenberg attending evening classes in painting and drawing, and in the early 1910s a wealthy Jewish woman offered to pay his fees to attend art school. Before the war started he published two volumes of poems, one called Night and Day, and another Youth. Despite being resolutely pacifist, he enlisted for the war in 1915 – and wrote many poems while he was in the fighting until his death in 1918.
Image shows a lark sitting on a mossy branch.

Rosenberg contrasts the innocent song of birdsong with the horror of war.

In perhaps his best-known poem, ‘Returning, we hear the larks’, Rosenberg plays with the idea that the dread, foreboding and ultimate violent destruction of war has poisoned all of nature. The innocent song of larks in the dark is a pure, beautiful and strange comfort – but it is everywhere underlain with the threat that bullets, gas, and death might rain out of the night and onto the soldiers. The images of weightlessness and insubstantiality that pervade the final stanza: ‘a blind man’s dreams’ dropped on the sand by a violent sea, or the hair of a girl, are ultimately reversed, replaced in the final line by an image of a kiss that seems soft and light but conceals the poison of a snake:

Sombre the night is.
And though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lurks there.

Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
This poison-blasted track opens on our camp—
On a little safe sleep.

But hark! joy—joy—strange joy.
Lo! heights of night ringing with unseen larks.
Music showering on our upturned list’ning faces.

Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song—
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man’s dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides,
Like a girl’s dark hair for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.
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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/isaac-rosenberg


Isaac Rosenberg
Poet Details
1890–1918

Isaac Rosenberg may be remembered as a Jewish-English poet, or a poet of war, but his poetry stretches beyond those narrow categories. Since Rosenberg was only twenty-eight when he died, most critics have tended to treat his corpus as a promising but flawed start, and they wonder if he would have become a great poet had he lived. Rosenberg's status as an English poet is thus still debated: he was a Jewish poet, he was an English poet; he was a war poet, he was a painter-poet; he was a young poet; he was a great poet and a minor poet. In his brief career, Rosenberg created a small selection of poems and a great many questions.

Rosenberg was born on November 25, 1890 in Bristol. His parents, Dovber "Barnett" Rosenberg and Hacha "Hannah" Davidov Rosenberg, were Jewish immigrants from Russia. During Rosenberg's childhood, they moved into the squalid streets of London's Jewish ghetto, and there set up a butcher's shop. The shop was soon confiscated, however, and Rosenberg's parents were forced to work as itinerants during the rest of his life. Rosenberg himself was only able to attend school briefly; at age fourteen, he began to work as an engraver's apprentice, spending his spare time practicing painting. He eventually showed so much promise in the visual arts that he was granted funds to attend the Slade Art School, a significant center of aesthetic theory. The school—which trained artists of various stripes, including Rosenberg's friend Mark Gertler—prized originality above all, and rewarded students with vision above those with labored skill.

Rosenberg ultimately developed "infinity of suggestion," particularly in his poetry. But his early works seem too deeply influenced by the romantics to reveal much of Rosenberg's own voice. In Night and Day (1912), for example, Rosenberg's poems tend to ring with "poetical" sounding words, lending the verse a self-conscious, antique air. As Thomas Staley remarked in Dictionary of Literary Biography: "The poems in this thin volume are much like his early paintings in that they lacked originality, a distinctive voice. The influence of Shelley and Keats, especially Keats's 'Endymion,' is clear, and even the imagery is suffused with Keatsian diction. But the subject matter seems to probe beyond this influence to go backward in search of a more comprehensive vision of the world." Rosenberg produced one more volume of poetry, Youth (1915), before enlisting in a battalion to fight in World War I. Francine Ringold, writing for the Encyclopedia of World Literature, noted that Youth follows the general pattern of Night and Day: "all of these self-published works [Rosenberg's first volumes of poetry] demonstrate the moral earnestness and predilection for sonorous language that give R[osenberg]'s work its richness yet, when in excess, detract from its effectiveness." Irving Howe comments, similarly: "The early Rosenberg is always driving himself to say more than he has to say, because he thinks poets must speak to large matters. Later he learns that in a poppy in the trenches or a louse in a soldier's shirt, there is enough matter for poetry."

Rosenberg fought in World War I between 1915 and 1918, dying in the battle of Arras on April 1. During this period, his work reached a kind of early maturity; in this period he found a truly distinctive voice, one particularly indebted to the Old Testament and his sidelined Jewish identity. Many critics see Rosenberg strictly through his war poems. Others, however, insist that the war was only a subject for Rosenberg, or perhaps a challenge for which he was eminently suited. In many ways, Rosenberg's vision of the human relationship with God depends on his Jewish heritage—it depends on the metaphors of the Old Testament, at least. Rosenberg's Judaism is perhaps most apparent in his dramatic fragments, Moses and The Unicorn. "Had Rosenberg lived to develop further along the lines on which he had already moved," wrote David Daiches in Commentary, "he might have changed the course of modern English poetry, producing side by side with the poetry of Eliot and his school a richer and more monumental kind of verse, opposing a new romantic poetry to the new metaphysical brand."

Ultimately, critics tend to dismiss Rosenberg based on his brief career and his thin contribution to English letters. But in his final poems, Rosenberg offers something more than war poetry or Jewish English poetry. "The tragedy of war gave [his] affinities full expression in his later poems," Staley concluded, "and as war became the universe of his poetry, the power of his Jewish roots and the classical themes became the sources of his moral vision as well as his poetic achievement."
Bibliography

Night and Day, privately printed (London), 1912.
Youth, privately printed (London), 1915.
Moses: A Play, privately printed (London), 1916, facsimile edition, Imperial War Museum, Department of Printed Books (London), 1990.
Poems, edited by Gordon Bottomley, Heinemann (London), 1922.
The Collected Works of Isaac Rosenberg, edited by Bottomley and Denys Harding, Chatto & Windus (London), 1937.
Collected Poems, edited by Bottomley and Harding, Chatto & Windus, 1949, Schocken, 1949, 1974.
The Collected Works of Isaac Rosenberg: Poetry, Prose, Letters, Paintings, and Drawings, edited by Ian Parsons, Chatto & Windus, 1979.
The Poems and Plays of Isaac Rosenberg, edited by Vivien Noakes, Oxford University Press, 2005.

Further Readings

BOOKS

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 20: British Poets, 1914-1945, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1983, pp. 318-21.
Encyclopedia of World Literature in the Twentieth Century, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999, pp. 707-08.
Reference Guide to English Literature, 2nd edition, 3 volumes, St. James Press, 1991, pp. 1159-60.
Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Volume 12, Gale, 1984, pp. 285-314.

PERIODICALS

American Scholar, autumn, 1980, Dan Jacobson, "The Burning of the Temple," pp. 564-67.
Commentary, July, 1950, David Daiches, "Isaac Rosenberg: Poet," pp. 91-93.
Critical Survey, Volume 2, number 2, 1990, Matt Simpson, "Only a Living Thing," pp. 128-36, Jennifer Breen, "Representations of the 'Feminine' in First World War Poetry," pp. 169-75; Volume 4, number 1, 1992, Diana Hendry, "Up with the Lark(s)," pp. 67-69.
English Literature in Transition 1880-1920, Volume 39, number 2, 1996, Beth Ellen Roberts, "The Female God of Isaac Rosenberg," pp. 319-32.
New York Times, February 26, 1950, p. 5.*
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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/13535

Dead Man’s Dump
----- By Isaac Rosenberg
The plunging limbers over the shattered track
Racketed with their rusty freight,
Stuck out like many crowns of thorns,
And the rusty stakes like sceptres old
To stay the flood of brutish men
Upon our brothers dear.

The wheels lurched over sprawled dead
But pained them not, though their bones crunched,
Their shut mouths made no moan.
They lie there huddled, friend and foeman,
Man born of man, and born of woman,
And shells go crying over them
From night till night and now.

Earth has waited for them,
All the time of their growth
Fretting for their decay:
Now she has them at last!
In the strength of their strength
Suspended—stopped and held.

What fierce imaginings their dark souls lit?
Earth! have they gone into you!
Somewhere they must have gone,
And flung on your hard back
Is their soul’s sack
Emptied of God-ancestralled essences.
Who hurled them out? Who hurled?

None saw their spirits’ shadow shake the grass,
Or stood aside for the half used life to pass
Out of those doomed nostrils and the doomed mouth,
When the swift iron burning bee
Drained the wild honey of their youth.

What of us who, flung on the shrieking pyre,
Walk, our usual thoughts untouched,
Our lucky limbs as on ichor fed,
Immortal seeming ever?
Perhaps when the flames beat loud on us,
A fear may choke in our veins
And the startled blood may stop.

The air is loud with death,
The dark air spurts with fire,
The explosions ceaseless are.
Timelessly now, some minutes past,
Those dead strode time with vigorous life,
Till the shrapnel called ‘An end!’
But not to all. In bleeding pangs
Some borne on stretchers dreamed of home,
Dear things, war-blotted from their hearts.

Maniac Earth! howling and flying, your bowel
Seared by the jagged fire, the iron love,
The impetuous storm of savage love.
Dark Earth! dark Heavens! swinging in chemic smoke,
What dead are born when you kiss each soundless soul
With lightning and thunder from your mined heart,
Which man’s self dug, and his blind fingers loosed?

A man’s brains splattered on
A stretcher-bearer’s face;
His shook shoulders slipped their load,
But when they bent to look again
The drowning soul was sunk too deep
For human tenderness.

They left this dead with the older dead,
Stretched at the cross roads.

Burnt black by strange decay
Their sinister faces lie,
The lid over each eye,
The grass and coloured clay
More motion have than they,
Joined to the great sunk silences.

Here is one not long dead;
His dark hearing caught our far wheels,
And the choked soul stretched weak hands
To reach the living word the far wheels said,
The blood-dazed intelligence beating for light,
Crying through the suspense of the far torturing wheels
Swift for the end to break
Or the wheels to break,
Cried as the tide of the world broke over his sight.

Will they come? Will they ever come?
Even as the mixed hoofs of the mules,
The quivering-bellied mules,
And the rushing wheels all mixed
With his tortured upturned sight.
So we crashed round the bend,
We heard his weak scream,
We heard his very last sound,
And our wheels grazed his dead face.



Break of Day in the Trenches
------------By Isaac Rosenberg


The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver—what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe—
Just a little white with the dust.

Source: The Norton Anthology of Poetry Third Edition (1983)

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

They Flee from Me
------------- by Sir Thomas Wyatt

They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle tame and meek
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range
Busily seeking with a continual change.


Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small;
And therewithal sweetly did me kiss,
And softly said, Dear heart, how like you this?

It was no dream, I lay broad waking.

But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness
And she also to use newfangleness.

But since that I so kindely am served,
I would fain know what she hath deserved

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Granted he is not truly in the same class as true- lesser known poets -but I wanted to post this poem after reading it today.-Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

http://www.poemhunter.com/adelaide-anne-procter-2/biography/

Adelaide Anne Procter (30 October 1825 – 2 February 1864 / London)


Biography of Adelaide Anne Procter
Adelaide Anne Procter poet

She was the eldest daughter of the poet Bryan Waller Procter ("Barry Cornwall") and Anne Benson Skepper. As a child Adelaide showed precocious intelligence. She attained considerable proficiency in French, German, and Italian, as well as in music and drawing, and she was a great reader. Brought up in surroundings favourable to the development of literary leanings, she began to write verses at an early age, and at eighteen contributed to the "Book of Beauty".

In 1851, she and two of her sisters became Catholics without, apparently, any disturbance of the harmonious relations of the domestic circle. In 1853, under the pseudonym of "Mary Berwick", she sent to "Household Words" a short poem, which so pleased the editor, Charles Dickens that he not only accepted it but also invited further contributions. It was not till late in the following year that Dickens learned that his unknown correspondent was the daughter of his old friend, Barry Cornwall. To "Household Words" and "All the Year Round" nearly all her poetry was in the first instance contributed. In 1858-60 her poems were collected and published in two series under the title of "Legends and Lyrics". They had a great success, reaching the tenth edition in 1866. In that year a new issue, with introduction by Dickens, was printed, and there have been several reprints since.

Miss Procter was of a charitable disposition: she visited the sick, befriended the destitute and home- less, taught the ignorant, and endeavored to raise up the fallen ones of her own sex. She was generous yet practical with the income derived from her works. In 1859 she served on a committee to consider fresh ways and means of providing employment for women; in 1861 she edited a miscellany, entitled "Victoria Regis", which had some of the leading litterateurs of the time as contributors and which was set up in type by women compositors; and in 1862 she published a slender volume of her own poems, "A Chaplet of Verses", mostly of a religious turn, for the benefit of the Providence Row night refuge for homeless women and children, which, as the first Catholic Refuge in the United Kingdom, had been opened on 7 October, 1860, and placed under the care of the Sisters of Mercy. In her charitable zeal she appears to have unduly taxed her strength, and her health, never robust, gave way under the strain. The cure at Malvern was tried in vain; and, after an illness of fifteen months, she died calmly, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.

Adelaide Anne Procter's Works:

A House to Let, co-written with Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Wilkie Collins (1858)
Legends and Lyrics, first series (1858)
Legends and Lyrics, second series (1861)
A Chaplet of Verses (1862)
The Haunted House, co-written with Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, George Sala and Hesba Stretton (1859)

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia Adelaide Anne Procter; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA.



************************************

A Lost Chord

SEATED one day at the Organ,
I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.

I do not know what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then ;
But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen.

It flooded the crimson twilight,
Like the close of an Angel's Psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife ;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.

It linked all perplexéd meanings
Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence
As if it were loth to cease.

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
Which came from the soul of the Organ,
And entered into mine.

It may be that Death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again,
It may be that only in Heaven
I shall hear that grand Amen.
Adelaide Anne Procter



**************************************

One By One The Sands Are Flowing

One by one the sands are flowing,
One by one the moments fall:
Some are coming, some are going;
Do not strive to grasp them all.

One by one thy duties wait thee;
Let thy whole strength go to each;
Let no future dreams elate thee;
Learn thou first what these can teach.

One by one,-bright gifts of heaven,-
Joys are sent thee here below;
Take them readily when given;
Ready be to let them go.

One by one thy griefs shall meet thee;
Do not fear an armed band;
One will fade as others greet thee,-
Shadows passing through the land.

Every hour that fleets so slowly
Has its task to do our bear:
Luminous the crown and holy,
When each gem is set with care.

Hours are golden links, God's token
Reaching heaven; but one by one
Take them, lest the chain be broken
Ere the pilgrimage be done.

Adelaide Anne Procter


**********************************8
Per Pacem Ad Lucem

I DO not ask, O Lord, that life may be
A pleasant road;
I do not ask that Thou wouldst take from me
Aught of its load;

I do not ask that flowers should always spring
Beneath my feet;
I know too well the poison and the sting
Of things too sweet.

For one thing only, Lord, dear Lord, I plead,
Lead me aright—
Though strength should falter, and though heart should bleed—
Through Peace to Light.

I do not ask, O Lord, that thou shouldst shed
Full radiance here;
Give but a ray of peace, that I may tread
Without a fear.

I do not ask my cross to understand,
My way to see;
Better in darkness just to feel Thy hand
And follow Thee.

Joy is like restless day; but peace divine
Like quiet night:
Lead me, O Lord,—till perfect Day shall shine,
Through Peace to Light.
Adelaide Anne Procter

A truly wonderful and deep poetess.
No trivial subjects written about nor engaging in the writing of bubble gum, cotton candy , rainbow verses so foolishly and highly praised today by the idiots that call themselves - poetry critics/experts. -Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Lazarus



Emma Lazarus---
Emma Lazarus, 1849 - 1887

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Emma Lazarus
Emma Lazarus.jpg
Emma Lazarus, c. 1872
Born July 22, 1849
New York City, New York
Died November 19, 1887 (aged 38)
New York City, New York
Genre Poetry
Notable works The New Colossus

Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887) was an American poet born in New York City.

She is best known for "The New Colossus", a sonnet written in 1883; its lines appear inscribed on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty[1] installed in 1903, a decade and a half after Lazarus's death.[2]

Contents

1 Background
2 Works
3 References
4 Further reading
5 External links

Background

Lazarus was born into a large Sephardic-Ashkenazi Jewish family, the fourth of seven children of Moses Lazarus and Esther Nathan. [3] The Lazarus family was from Germany,[4] and the Nathan family was originally from Portugal and residents in New York long before the American Revolution. Lazarus's great-great grandmother on her mother's side, Grace Seixas Nathan (born in New York in 1752) was also a poet.[5] Lazarus was also related through her mother to Benjamin N. Cardozo, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court.

From an early age, she studied American and British literature, as well as several languages, including German, French, and Italian. Her writings attracted the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

She was also an early admirer of Henry George, and was a part of his Single Tax movement for a number of years.[6]

Lazarus wrote her own important poems and edited many adaptations of German poems, notably those of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Heinrich Heine.[7] She also wrote a novel and two plays in five acts, The Spagnoletto, a tragic verse drama about the titular figure and The Dance to Death, a dramatization of a German short story about the burning of Jews in Nordhausen during the Black Death.[8]

"The New Colossus"

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Emma Lazarus, 1883

Lazarus began to be more interested in her Jewish ancestry after reading the George Eliot novel Daniel Deronda, and as she heard of the Russian pogroms that followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. As a result of this anti-Semitic violence, thousands of destitute Ashkenazi Jews emigrated from the Russian Pale of Settlement to New York, leading Lazarus to write articles on the subject, as well as the book Songs of a Semite (1882). Lazarus began at this point to advocate on behalf of indigent Jewish refugees. She helped establish the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York to provide vocational training to assist destitute Jewish immigrants to become self-supporting.

She is best known for the sonnet "The New Colossus"; its lines appear on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty placed in 1903.[1][2] The sonnet was written in 1883 and donated to an auction, conducted by the "Art Loan Fund Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund for the Statue of Liberty" in order to raise funds to build the pedestal.[9][10] Lazarus' close friend Rose Hawthorne Lathrop was inspired by "The New Colossus" to found the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne.[11] Lazarus is also known for her sixteen-part cycle poem "Epochs".[12]

She traveled twice to Europe, first in 1883 and again from 1885 to 1887.[13] On one of those trips, Georgiana Burne-Jones, the wife of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, introduced her to William Morris at her home.[14] She returned to New York City seriously ill after her second trip and died two months later on November 19, 1887, most likely from Hodgkin's lymphoma.

She is an important forerunner of the Zionist movement. She argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland thirteen years before Theodor Herzl began to use the term Zionism.[15] Lazarus is buried in Beth-Olom Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Emma Lazarus was honored by the Office of the Manhattan Borough President in March, 2008, and her home on West 10th Street was included in a map of Women's Rights Historic Sites.[16] In 2009, she was honored by induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[17] The Museum of Jewish Heritage featured an exhibition about Emma Lazarus in 2012.
Works

Lazarus, Emma (1888). The Poems of Emma Lazarus. Houghton, Mifflin and Company. Retrieved 2008-12-12.
"In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport"
"In Exile"
"The New Colossus"
"By the Waters of Babylon"
"1492"
"The New Year"
"The South"
"Venus of the Louvre"

References

Watts, Emily Stipes. The Poetry of American Women from 1632 to 1945. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977: 123. ISBN 0-292-76450-2
Young, Bette Roth (1997). Emma Lazarus in Her World: Life and Letters. The Jewish Publication Society. ISBN 0-8276-0618-4. p. 3:
"Jewish Women's Archive: Emma Lazarus". Retrieved 2008-01-10.
"Four Founders: Emma Lazarus". Jewish Virtual Library.
Schor, Esther. Emma Lazarus. Schocken, 2008.
"Progress and Poverty". The New York Times. Jewish Women's Archive. 2 October 1881. p. 3. Retrieved 21 May 2013.
The Poems of Emma Lazarus in Two Volumes, kindle ebooks ASIN B0082RVVJ2 & ASIN B0082RDHSA
Sugarman, Yerra (2003). "Emma Lazarus". In Parini, Jay. The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Oxford University Press. p. 413. ISBN 978-0-19-515653-9.
Young, Bette Roth (1997). Emma Lazarus in Her World: Life and Letters. The Jewish Publication Society. ISBN 0-8276-0618-4. p. 3: Auction event named as "Lowell says poem gave the statue "a raison e'tre;" fell into obscurity; not mentioned at statue opening; Georgina Schuyler's campaign for the plaque
Felder, Deborah G.; Diana L Rosen (2003). Fifty Jewish Women Who Changed the World. Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8065-2443-X. p. 45: Solicited by "William Maxwell Evert" [sic; presumably William Maxwell Evarts] Lazarus refused initially; convinced by Constance Cary Harrison
"Exhibit highlights connection between Jewish poet, Catholic nun". The Tidings. Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Catholic News Service. 17 September 2010. p. 16. Archived from the original on 21 September 2010. Retrieved 20 September 2010.
Obituary in Century Magazine The Poems of Emma Lazarus in Two Volumes, kindle ebooks ASIN B0082RVVJ2 & ASIN B0082RDHSA
Esther Schor, Emma Lazarus (2006)
Judith Flanders, A Circle of Sisters (2001) page 186.
Simon, Briana. "Zion in the Sources: Yearning for Zion". World Zionist Organization.
"Manhattan Borough President - Home".

"Lazarus, Emma". National Women's Hall of Fame. Retrieved 1 November 2016.

Further reading

Cavitch, Max. "Emma Lazarus and the Golem of Liberty," American Literary History 18.1 (2006), 1–28
Eiselein, Gregory. Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings. USA: Broadview Press, 2002. ISBN 1-55111-285-X.
Jacob, H. E. The World of Emma Lazarus. New York: Schocken, 1949; New York: Kessing Publishers, 2007, ISBN 1-4325-1416-4.
Lazarus, Emma. Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems. USA: Library of America, 2005. ISBN 1-931082-77-4.
Moore, H. S. Liberty's Poet: Emma Lazarus. USA: TurnKey Press, 2004. ISBN 0-9754803-4-0.
Schor, Esther. Emma Lazurus. New York: Schocken, 2006. ISBN 0-8052-4216-3. Randomhouse.com
Young, B. R. Emma Lazarus in Her World: Life and Letters. USA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1997. ISBN 0-8276-0618-4.
Vogel, Dan (1980). Emma Lazarus. Boston: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0805772332.

PD-icon.svg This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Thurston, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Lazarus, Emma". New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.

************************************************** ******************





The New Colossus
-------------By Emma Lazarus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”


Source: Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings (2002)

----------------------------------------

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/jewish-synagogue-newport

By the Waters of Babylon [V. Currents]
Emma Lazarus, 1849 - 1887

Vast oceanic movements, the flux and reflux of immeasurable tides, oversweep our continent.
From the far Caucasian steppes, from the squalid Ghettos of Europe,
From Odessa and Bucharest, from Kief and Ekaterinoslav,
Hark to the cry of the exiles of Babylon, the voice of Rachel mourning for her children, of Israel lamenting for Zion.
And lo, like a turbid stream, the long-pent flood bursts the dykes of oppression and rushes hitherward.
Unto her ample breast, the generous mother of nations welcomes them.
The herdsman of Canaan and the seed of Jerusalem’s royal shepherd renew their youth
amid the pastoral plains of Texas and the golden valleys of the Sierras.


------------------------------------------

In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport
Emma Lazarus, 1849 - 1887

Here, where the noises of the busy town,
The ocean’s plunge and roar can enter not,
We stand and gaze around with tearful awe,
And muse upon the consecrated spot.

No signs of life are here: the very prayers
Inscribed around are in a language dead;
The light of the “perpetual lamp” is spent
That an undying radiance was to shed.

What prayers were in this temple offered up,
Wrung from sad hearts that knew no joy on earth,
By these lone exiles of a thousand years,
From the fair sunrise land that gave them birth!

How as we gaze, in this new world of light,
Upon this relic of the days of old,
The present vanishes, and tropic bloom
And Eastern towns and temples we behold.

Again we see the patriarch with his flocks,
The purple seas, the hot blue sky o’erhead,
The slaves of Egypt, -- omens, mysteries, --
Dark fleeing hosts by flaming angels led.

A wondrous light upon a sky-kissed mount,
A man who reads Jehovah’s written law,
‘Midst blinding glory and effulgence rare,
Unto a people prone with reverent awe.

The pride of luxury’s barbaric pomp,
In the rich court of royal Solomon --
Alas! we wake: one scene alone remains, --
The exiles by the streams of Babylon.

Our softened voices send us back again
But mournful echoes through the empty hall:
Our footsteps have a strange unnatural sound,
And with unwonted gentleness they fall.

The weary ones, the sad, the suffering,
All found their comfort in the holy place,
And children’s gladness and men’s gratitude
‘Took voice and mingled in the chant of praise.

The funeral and the marriage, now, alas!
We know not which is sadder to recall;
For youth and happiness have followed age,
And green grass lieth gently over all.

Nathless the sacred shrine is holy yet,
With its lone floors where reverent feet once trod.
Take off your shoes as by the burning bush,
Before the mystery of death and God.

----------------------------------
----------------------------------

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poems/45937

year
sort ascending
title author
1888 Age and Death Emma Lazarus
1888 Chopin Emma Lazarus
1888 1492 Emma Lazarus
1888 Long Island Sound Emma Lazarus
1888 Echoes Emma Lazarus
1888 Critic and Poet Emma Lazarus
1887 By the Waters of Babylon [V. Currents] Emma Lazarus
1887 By the Waters of Babylon Emma Lazarus
1885 Venus of the Louvre Emma Lazarus
1884 To R.W.E. Emma Lazarus

1883 The New Colossus Emma Lazarus
1882 The Feast of Lights Emma Lazarus
1882 The New Year Emma Lazarus
1882 In Exile Emma Lazarus
1878 The South Emma Lazarus
1871 Work Emma Lazarus
1867 In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport Emma Lazarus

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_Ridge

Lola Ridge
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lola Ridge
Lola Ridge.jpg
Born Rose Emily Ridge
12 December 1873
Dublin
Died 19 May 1941 (aged 67)
Nationality American
Ethnicity Irish
Genre Poetry
Literary movement Greenwich Village
Notable awards Guggenheim Fellowship,
Shelley Memorial Award

Lola Ridge, born Rose Emily Ridge (12 December 1873 Dublin – 19 May 1941 Brooklyn) was an Irish-American anarchist poet and an influential editor of avant-garde, feminist, and Marxist publications. She is best remembered for her long poems and poetic sequences, published in numerous magazines and collected in five books of poetry.[1] Along with other political poets of the early Modernist period, Ridge has received renewed critical attention since the beginning of the 21st century and is praised for making poetry directly from harsh urban life.[2] A new selection of her poetry was published in 2007 and a biography in 2016.[3]

Contents

1 Early life and marriages
2 Literary career
3 Political activities
4 Quotation
5 Works
6 Legacy and honours
7 21st-century Appreciation
8 References
9 Further reading
10 External links

Early life and marriages

She was born Rose Emily Ridge in 1873 in Dublin, Ireland to Joseph Henry and Emma (Reilly) Ridge and was their only surviving child. When Rose was 13, her mother emigrated with her to New Zealand, where Emma later married a Scottish miner. Rose Ridge became politically active there. In 1895, while living in New Zealand, Rose Ridge married the manager of a gold mine. After they divorced, she moved to Sydney, attending Trinity College and also studying painting at Académie Julienne with Rossi Ashton.[4]

Ridge emigrated to the United States after her mother died, settling first in San Francisco in 1907. There she identified as Lola Ridge, a poet and painter. She had her first poem published in the US in 1908 in Overland Monthly.

She later moved to New York, settling in Greenwich Village. After supporting herself writing ad copy, she left that to focus on her poetry. Working as a model and in a factory, she became involved in working class politics and protests.[4] Peter Quartermain described her in the Dictionary of Literary Biography described her as "the nearest prototype in her time of the proletarian poet of class conflict, voicing social protest or revolutionary idealism."[4]

Lola Ridge's first book of poetry was published in 1918. On 22 October 1919, she married David Lawson, a fellow radical.[4]
Literary career

After living for some time in New York, Ridge gained considerable notice with her long poem, The Ghetto, first published in 1918 in The New Republic. It was included in her first book, The Ghetto and Other Poems, published that year. The title poem portrays the Jewish immigrant community of Hester Street in the Lower East Side of New York. It explores the effects of capitalism, gender and generational conflict in ways that bear comparison to the works of Charles Reznikoff. But she also expressed the individuality of numerous immigrants, to show they were as various as other Americans and shared many human qualities.[1] The book was a critical success.

This recognition led to opportunities for Ridge; she became involved with and edited new avant-garde magazines such as Others in 1919, and Broom, founded in 1921 by Harold Loeb, for which she was the American editor from 1922–1923, while he published in Rome. While working with Loeb, she had an apartment next to the basement office of Broom in the townhouse of his estranged wife Marjorie Content.[4]

Ridge published 61 poems from 1908 to 1937 in such leading magazines as Poetry, New Republic, and The Saturday Review of Literature.[1] She was a contributing editor to The New Masses.[4]

She wrote and published four more books of poetry through 1935, and single poems into 1937. Her work was also collected in anthologies. Her third book, Red Flag (1927) collected much of her political poetry.[1]

In 1929, Ridge was accepted for a residency at the writers colony of Yaddo. That year she published Firehead, a long poem that was a radical retelling of Jesus' crucifixion. It and her last book, published in 1935 were more philosophical compared to her earlier work.[1]

She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935. She received the Shelley Memorial Award by the Poetry Society of America for the years 1934 and 1935. Publishing until 1937, she died in 1941 of pulmonary tuberculosis.[4]
Political activities

Ridge did not join any political party, but was active in radical causes. She protested against the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, and was among those arrested that day. In the 1930s, she supported the defence of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, who had been framed for a 1916 bombing at the Preparedness Day Parade in San Francisco.
Quotation

My doll Janie has no waist
and her body is like a tub with feet on it.
Sometimes I beat her
but I always kiss her afterwards.
When I have kissed all the paint off her body
I shall tie a ribbon about it
so she shan't look shabby.
But it must be blue –
it mustn't be pink –
pink shows the dirt on her face
that won't wash off.

I beat Janie
and beat her...
but still she smiled...
so I scratched her between the eyes with a pin.
Now she doesn't love me any more...
she scowls... and scowls...
though I've begged her to forgive me
and poured sugar in the hole at the back of her head.

-- from Sun-Up and Other Poems

Works

The Ghetto, and Other Poems, Huebsch, 1918.
Sun-Up, and Other Poems, Huebsch, 1920
Red Flag, Viking, 1927.
Firehead, Payson & Clarke, 1929.
Dance of Fire, Smith & Haas, 1935.
Daniel Tobin, ed. (2007). Light in Hand: Selected Early Poems. Quale Press. ISBN 978-0-9792999-1-9.

Legacy and honours

1934 and 1935, Ridge won the Shelley Memorial Award, given by the Poetry Society of America
Her papers are held at Smith College.[5]

21st-century Appreciation

With renewed scholarly interest in her work since the late 20th century, a selection of her first three books of poetry was published posthumously as Light in Hand: Selected Early Poems (2007), edited and with an introduction by Daniel Tobin. He notes that she is "part of the confluence of politics, culture and the burgeoning of women's voices at the advent of modernism to the start of World War II."[6]

Robert Pinsky, former Poet Laureate of the United States, wrote that contemporary readers needed "to appreciate the magnitude and freshness of her enterprise: to make poetry out of the actual city."[2] He likens her to 18th-century British poet William Blake in her ability to express the perspective of children, evoking "innocence and experience in a way that blurs the ambiguous boundary between them."[2] Pinsky also notes that Ridge preceded American Hart Crane, known for his long poem The Bridge about the Brooklyn Bridge, in her assigning "ecstatic, high language of the past, especially of the Elizabethans, to the squalid and the sublime realities of the actual, 20th-century American city."[2]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-dream-9/

The Dream - Poem by Lola Ridge

I have a dream
to fill the golden sheath
of a remembered day....
(Air
heavy and massed and blue
as the vapor of opium...
domes
fired in sulphurous mist...
sea
quiescent as a gray seal...
and the emerging sun
spurting up gold
over Sydney, smoke-pale, rising out of the bay....)
But the day is an up-turned cup
and its sun a junk of red iron
guttering in sluggish-green water--
where shall I pour my dream?
Lola Ridge

---------------------------------------
---------------------------------------


Dispossessed - Poem by Lola Ridge

Tender and tremulous green of leaves
Turned up by the wind,
Twanging among the vines -
Wind in the grass
Blowing a clear path
For the new-stripped soul to pass…

The naked soul in the sunlight…
Like a wisp of smoke in the sunlight
On the hill-side shimmering.

Dance light on the wind, little soul,
Like a thistle-down floating
Over the butterflies
And the lumbering bees…

Come away from that tree
And its shadow grey as a stone…

Bathe in the pools of light
On the hillside shimmering -
Shining and wetted and warm in the sun-spray falling like golden rain -

But do not linger and look
At that bleak thing under the tree.
Lola Ridge
----------------------------------
----------------------------------

A Memory - Poem by Lola Ridge

I remember
The crackle of the palm trees
Over the mooned white roofs of the town…
The shining town…
And the tender fumbling of the surf
On the sulphur-yellow beaches
As we sat… a little apart… in the close-pressing night.

The moon hung above us like a golden mango,
And the moist air clung to our faces,
Warm and fragrant as the open mouth of a child
And we watched the out-flung sea
Rolling to the purple edge of the world,
Yet ever back upon itself…
As we…

Inadequate night…
And mooned white memory
Of a tropic sea…
How softly it comes up
Like an ungathered lily.

********************

A PARTIAL LIST OF LOLA RIDGE POEMS

1. In Harness 2/8/2012
2. Jaguar 2/8/2012
3. The Everlasting Return 4/21/2010
4. The Fiddler 4/21/2010
5. Reveille 2/8/2012
6. Potpourri 2/8/2012
7. Thaw 2/8/2012
8. To Larkin 2/8/2012
9. The Legion Of Iron 4/21/2010
10. The Song 4/21/2010
11. The Alley 2/8/2012
12. Wild Duck 2/8/2012
13. Windows 2/8/2012
14. Wall Street At Night 2/8/2012
15. The Fire 4/21/2010
16. The Fog 4/21/2010
17. The Foundling 4/21/2010
18. The Spilling Of The Wine 4/21/2010
19. The White Bird 4/21/2010
20. Submerged 4/21/2010
21. Under-Song 4/21/2010
22. The Song Of Iron 4/21/2010
23. To Alexander Berkman 2/8/2012
24. Wind Rising In The Alleys 2/8/2012
25. Train Window 2/8/2012
26. The Tidings 4/21/2010
27. Sun-Up 2/8/2012
28. The Destroyer 4/21/2010
29. The Woman With Jewels 4/21/2010
30. The Garden 4/21/2010
31. Jude 2/8/2012
32. To The American People 2/8/2012
33. To The Others 4/21/2010
34. The Edge 4/21/2010
35. Skyscrapers 2/8/2012
36. Sons Of Belial 2/8/2012
37. Iron Wine 4/21/2010
38. Portraits 2/8/2012
39. Interim 2/8/2012
40. Secrets

THIS IMMENSELY TALENTED POETESS WAS NEW TO ME UNTIL A FEW DAYS AGO WHEN A POET FRIEND SUGGESTED THAT I CHECK OUT HER WORK.
His appraisal of her work was spot on..
She wrote a lot and all of it was top level poetry IMHO.-TYR

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/vera-mary-brittain


Vera Mary Brittain
Poet Details
1893–1970



Vera Brittain’s reputation centers on her achievements as an influential British feminist and pacifist and on her famous memoir of World War I, Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900-1925. That work has never been out of print since first published in 1933, and its influence has been strengthened by a 1979 BBC television adaptation and new paperback editions. During her lifetime Brittain was also known internationally as a successful journalist, poet, public speaker, biographer, autobiographer, and novelist. Interest in her writings, personality, and relationships (notably her close friendship with Winifred Holtby) has grown steadily, especially among feminist critics, and the publication in 1995 of a noteworthy biography by her friend and literary executor Paul Berry with Mark Bostridge has now provided scholarship with an authoritative account of her life and achievements.

Vera Mary Brittain was born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire in the Midlands, on 29 December 1893. After a childhood in nearby Macclesfield she grew into what she later called “provincial young ladyhood” in Buxton, a fashionable health resort in the Peak District of Derbyshire. She was the elder child of Thomas Arthur Brittain, a prosperous businessman and partner in Brittains Limited, a paper-manufacturing company based on the paper mill established by his grandfather. He had married Edith Bervon, daughter of a Welsh-born organist and choirmaster, in 1891. The second of their two children, Edward Harold Brittain, was almost two years younger than Vera. During childhood the siblings formed a close relationship, protectively isolated as they were in their wealthy middle-class home, where they were tended by servants and a governess.

In “A Writer’s Life,” an article originally published in Parents’ Review in June 1961 and later collected in Testament of a Generation: The Journalism of Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby (1985), Brittain commented that “An inclination to write shows itself very early in a few fortunate individuals, who are never in doubt what their work in life is to be.” She was one of those individuals: “As soon as I could hold a pen I started to write, and before that I told stories to my brother. I had written five `novels,’ illustrated with melodramatic drawings, before I was 11.” Strongly influenced by her reading of such books as the sensational romances of Mrs. Henry Wood (which were among the few books in the Brittain household), her juvenile fiction has qualities that point to the five novels of her maturity: idealistic and moralistic, they are infused with references to religion and death and focus on noble, independent, self-sacrificing heroines.

By the time she came to write the five mature novels published between 1923 and 1948, Brittain’s ambition was to succeed as both a critically respected and a popular writer; she consciously set out to write bestsellers. She was therefore generally content to utilize traditional forms and modes—the experimentation of Modernist contemporaries made little impression on her literary technique. She also, even more than in her juvenilia, based characters and events firmly on her own life and experience so that autobiographical elements tend to predominate over imaginative. Both tendencies were reinforced by her desire to promote, in all her writings, values associated with her social and political activism. Therefore, her novels tend to be somewhat didactic.

Brittain wrote in 1925 that her “literary and political work” were entwined: “The first . . . is simply a popular interpretation of the second; a means of presenting my theories before people who would not understand or be interested in them if they were explained seriously.” Toward the end of her life she restated that position, maintaining that a writer’s highest reward comes from “the power of ideas to change the shape of the world and even help to eliminate its evils. ... Contemporary writers have the important task of interpreting for their readers this present revolutionary and complex age which has no parallel in history.” For this purpose above all, Brittain always championed the novel as the preeminent genre. For instance, in a 1929 review (“New Fiction: Pessimists and Optimists”), she insisted that

no one can preach the gospel of optimism more successfully than the novelist who, between the sober covers of the book, creeps unobtrusively into those households where the politician, the ecclesiastic or the teacher would hesitate to intrude.

So even when writing Testament of Youth, Brittain deliberately set out to exploit novelistic qualities: “I wanted to make my story as truthful as history,” she wrote, “but as readable as fiction.”

Her education endorsed such tendencies—and especially the moral earnestness that marks all her writing. As a young girl she was taught to value conventional “correct” essaylike style and novelists such as George Eliot and Arnold Bennett, whose books became lifelong major influences. St. Monica’s, the girls’ boarding school her parents sent her to (while Edward was sent to a public school, Uppingham) was run by one of her mother’s sisters, Florence Bervon, together with Louise Heath-Jones. The latter was an inspiring teacher who stressed current affairs and social commitment and was sympathetic to feminism and the work of the suffragettes. She introduced Brittain to Woman and Labour (1911), a feminist polemic by the South African writer Olive Schreiner—another lifelong influence which intensified when Brittain was given a copy of Schreiner’s novel The Story of an African Farm (1883) as a gift from Roland Leighton, a school friend of Edward’s with whom she fell in love.

That relationship, cemented in a brief engagement, began shortly before World War I. Brittain admired Leighton’s intellectual and poetic abilities and his literary family: both parents were successful popular novelists. Determined to go to university when this was still unusual for a young woman (both Roland and Edward were expected to go as a matter of course), Brittain persuaded her parents to allow her to prepare for the entrance examination of Somerville College, a women’s college in Oxford, and in the summer of 1914 she learned that she had won a scholarship to study English literature there.

World War I began just weeks before she went up to Oxford. Edward and Roland—and two of Edward’s friends, Victor Richardson and Geoffrey Thurlow, whom she was beginning to know well—volunteered as officers, and within a year Brittain decided to leave Oxford for war service as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (V.A.D.) nurse. Roland was killed near the end of 1915; Richardson and Thurlow in 1917, when Brittain was serving in Malta; and Edward only months before the war ended.

While at St. Monica’s, Brittain had begun to keep a diary, and from 1913 she regularly wrote long entries until her return to England in 1917. That diary, recording private and public events and the anguish she suffered during the war, was published in 1981 in edited and abridged form under her title: Chronicle of Youth: The War Diary, 1913-1917. A second extensive diary, kept between 1932 and 1945, has also been published, in two volumes: Chronicle of Friendship: Diary of the Thirties, 1932-1939 (1986) and Wartime Chronicle: Diary, 1939-1945 (1989). Brittain’s literary achievement as a diarist is now firmly established, and critical attention is likely to increase. Her many fluent, trenchant letters during the first war, so far unpublished, similarly show the nature of her strongest literary talent: straightforward unmediated expression of observation and opinion.

The only other genre in which she wrote during the war was lyric poetry, and her first major publication was Verses of a V.A.D. (1918). Here her achievement is debatable, drawing some praise but a more frequent judgment that her poems are at best conventional and competent—a recording of intense response to events such as the death of Leighton, but in style and form so indebted to Victorian models and to Rupert Brooke‘s 1914 and Other Poems (1915) that their emotional force is severely diminished.

After the war, close to a breakdown after years of strain and loss, Brittain returned to Oxford, now electing to study modern history rather than English literature. She found she was sharing her modern European history tutorials, taught by C.R.M.F. Cruttwell (dean of Hertford College), with a fellow undergraduate at Somerville: Winifred Holtby. After a sharp quarrel over Brittain’s belief that Holtby had set out to humiliate her in a college debate, they went on to establish a close and fruitful friendship. They were both feminists, politically leftist (both later became members of the Labour Party), fervently committed to the cause of world peace, and ambitious to achieve success as journalists, novelists, public speakers, and social activists.

Leaving Oxford in 1921 with second-class degrees, the two young women set up a flat together in London where, until Brittain’s marriage in 1925, they worked at establishing their careers. The lasting excellence of their journalism is obvious in the selection Testament of a Generation. Much of it is feminist in orientation; both women were members of the Six Point Group founded in 1921 by Lady Margaret Rhondda, who was also founder and editor of the influential feminist journal Time and Tide, in which much of their journalism was published. “I Denounce Domesticity!,” first published in Quiver in August 1932 and collected in Testament of a Generation, indicates the fervor and range of Brittain’s convictions:


I suppose there has never been a time when the talent of women was so greatly needed as it is at the present day. Whether great talent or small, whether political, literary, practical, academic or mechanical, its use is a social duty. . .. Even her children should not be permitted to destroy [a woman’s] social effectiveness, and it is no more to their advantage than to hers that they should do so. Babies and toddlers are far happier when they can enjoy the society of their contemporaries in properly equipped day nurseries and nursery schools, than living, lonely and constantly thwarted, in houses primarily adapted—in so far as they are adapted to anything—to the needs of adults.

Brittain and Holtby also wrote on a variety of topics other than feminism, including international politics; for this reason they traveled during 1922 in war-ravaged Europe and observed League of Nations activities in Geneva. They were committed members of the League of Nations Union, valuing its promise as a peacekeeping organization, and they quickly became popular speakers at its public meetings.

In the midst of all this activity, Brittain and Holtby completed their first two novels, helping each other with advice and criticism. Brittain’s The Dark Tide was rejected by several publishers before Grant Richards brought it out in 1923; but, as she noted in “A Writer’s Life,” it attracted “seventy-three reviews, including a long and favourable criticism in the Times Literary Supplement. This result put me `on the map,’ and led to many more freelance articles.” The Dark Tide also attracted a threat of prosecution for libel (over an incautious statement implying that Manchester Guardian reporters could be bribed), a shock of anger in Oxford, and a husband. The latter was George Catlin, a young political scientist and later assistant professor at Cornell who had been Brittain’s unknown contemporary at Oxford; his admiration for the novel moved him to correspond with its author, and two years later he persuaded her to marry him.

The anger in Oxford and especially in Somerville College had been earned by the unflattering depiction in the novel of life in a women’s college easily identified as Somerville and of many characters whose originals were just as obvious to those who knew them. Brittain had indeed made notes for the novel while at Oxford after the war. Since the plot directly exploited events of that period, such as the incident of the Somerville debate with Holtby and was centered on the relationship of two characters who were clearly if superficially fictional representatives of Holtby and Brittain (Daphne Lethbridge and Virginia Dennison, respectively), the melodramatic characters and plot seemed all the more outrageous. For instance, the outrageously villainous don Raymond Sylvester, whom Daphne agrees, disastrously, to marry just after Virginia has rejected him, could hardly escape being seen as a malicious portrait of Cruttwell, the history tutor.

Yet despite its flaws (when it was reprinted in 1935, its author acknowledged “the crude violence of its methods”), Brittain’s “Oxford novel” remains interesting and enjoyable and is now something of a period piece. Its feminist main theme—women’s right to independence and self-fulfillment—is, however, damaged by her failure to disentangle it from the contradictory theme of self-sacrifice in the cause of duty. As the novel ends, Virginia’s long, idealistic speech eulogizing self-sacrifice exposes a confusion which Brittain herself was later to recognize and attack.

Those two themes are again prominent in Brittain’s second novel, Not Without Honour (1924), but separated to some extent since they are now related respectively to the protagonist Christine Merivale (again a representative of Brittain herself) and the Reverend Albert Clark, whose values are submitted to severe criticism. In this novel Brittain drew even more directly on her own life, cannibalizing her diary not only for characters and incidents but also for long passages incorporated in the novel with little or no change.

The main action of Not Without Honour is set in 1913-1914, the period leading up to the outbreak of World War I, and its setting is Buxton—thinly disguised under the name Torborough. Recalling some years later, in Testament of Youth, her angry rejection of Buxton’s vapidity and “social snobbery,” Brittain wrote: “None of my books have had large sales and the least successful of them all was my second novel, Not Without Honour, but I have never enjoyed any experience more than the process of decanting my hatred into that story of the social life of a small provincial town.” The plot, echoing Brittain’s diary, describes the infatuation of an intelligent, ambitious girl for a charismatic Anglican curate whose unorthodox views and socialist activities bring him into conflict with the local hierarchy. Brittain’s father had been witheringly hostile toward Clark’s original, the Reverend Joseph Ward, who preached social change and whose church services attracted the poor. The two central characters are both highly imaginative, with “a mutual aspiration after martyrdom.” Clark achieves that aspiration, killed, like Leighton, on the western front; Christine learns of his death at Oxford, where she is finding her way to independence, self-fulfillment, and the maturity that both have lacked.

This novel brings together, although still sketchily, the feminist, socialist, and pacifist themes that dominated Brittain’s next novel and that she defined in her polemical writings as intrinsically connected. If Not Without Honour is a more coherent novel than its predecessor, it is also less vigorous. But it earned a set of largely positive reviews.

Then ensued, as far as novels are concerned, a long silence. Some of the reasons are obvious: marriage and a year of exile (as Brittain felt it to be) in the United States. She so much disliked her situation as a faculty wife at Cornell, and felt so strongly that her writing career was being destroyed by her absence from England, that she and Catlin agreed to attempt a “semi-detached marriage.” She was back in London by August 1926 and almost immediately set off with Holtby for Geneva, with a commission to write articles about the League of Nations Assembly. From then until Holtby’s death in 1935 they shared a home in Chelsea to which, when he was back from Cornell during vacations, Catlin was intermittently added: an arrangement that raised some eyebrows but seems to have worked extremely well for both women and for Brittain and Catlin’s two children, John (born in 1927) and Shirley (born in 1930).

All through that decade Brittain was a prolific and increasingly successful freelance journalist, but she still aspired, even in her much busier daily life, to write a best-selling novel that would establish a high literary reputation. Late in the 1920s the “War Books Boom” began, and with increased fervor after seeing R.C. Sherriff’s play Journey’s End in 1929, Brittain set out to use her diary of World War I as the foundation of a novel, following the model of Not Without Honour. However, she found that fictionalizing this material was unsatisfactory. Avidly she had read the many recently published war memoirs, reviewing some of them for Time and Tide; Robert Graves’s Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography (1929), in particular, showed her that autobiography was a genre appropriate to her material and talent. Recognizing that no book of comparable stature had yet presented a woman’s experience of the war, she threw herself into writing her “Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900-1925,” which was titled Testament of Youth.

Its publication in 1933 and quick achievement of best-seller status changed Brittain’s life: as an international celebrity she was now in constant demand for public appearances, lectures, articles, and new books. In 1934 she went on the first of three successful but grueling American lecture tours; all through it she was working, whenever she had the time and energy, on a new novel. But in 1935 disaster struck: first her father, then Winifred Holtby, died. Recovering from the double blow, she found her work as Holtby’s literary executor quite demanding, especially in arranging the publication of Holtby’s last novel, South Riding (1937); but even while correcting the proofs of Holtby’s book she resumed work on her own.


Honourable Estate: A Novel of Transition, published in 1936, is Brittain’s longest and most ambitious novel. It originated as two novels almost a decade before Holtby’s death and is to some extent a companion to South Riding: recapturing, in different circumstances, something of the professional partnership that had supported the writing of their first novels a decade earlier. It is also a companion to Testament of Youth, rendering in fictional terms the same historical period and—with a different emphasis—similar central themes.

Although increasingly judged to be Brittain’s best and most important novel, Honourable Estate has not been republished in recent years and is not easy to obtain. The main reason is that Brittain’s husband, George Catlin, resented the representation of his parents as Janet and Thomas Rutherston, judging the latter characterization “grossly libellous.” For, apart from fictionalizing her own experiences, as in her first two novels, Brittain had now cast her net wider to exploit the recent history of both the Brittain and Catlin families—most importantly, the marital relations of George Catlin’s parents as revealed in his mother’s diaries.

Edith Catlin was, Brittain wrote later in Testament of Experience: An Autobiographical Story of the Years 1925-1950 (1957), “a turbulent, thwarted, politically-unconscious woman who died prematurely in 1917.” Desperately unhappy in her marriage to a dogmatic, domineering Congregational minister, she had run away from him, abandoning her young son in 1915, and until her death two years later had worked for woman suffrage. Brittain admired Edith Catlin deeply, seeing her as a sister spirit. Soon after meeting George Catlin and learning his mother’s story, she made Edith “the heroine of a projected novel called The Springing Thorn.” Before her marriage Brittain had also made notes for a novel to be called “Kindred and Affinity,” “inspired by my father’s semi-apocryphal tales of his Staffordshire family. By 1925 the characters were already coming to life; the fictitious Alleyndenes bore a likeness to my forebears.” Both projected novels foundered, however, until, after the publication of Testament of Youth, Brittain had the inspiration that eventually produced Honourable Estate: “Why not marry Kindred and Affinity to The Springing Thorn, make the book a story of two contrasting provincial families calamitously thrown together by chance, and then, in the next generation, join the son of one household with the daughter of the other?” Denis Rutherston, the son, is of course a depiction of George Catlin; Ruth Alleyndene, the daughter, a depiction of Brittain; and many other characters have obvious originals among Brittain’s family and friends.

Apart from the Alleyndene and Rutherston family histories, with emphasis on the defective marriages of both her and Catlin’s parents, Brittain drew again on her experiences in World War I. Characteristically, she also fictionalized three recent traumatic experiences: the discovery that her brother Edward had been a homosexual and had probably invited his 1918 death in battle so as to avoid disgrace; her passionate affair in the mid 1930s, while she was writing Honourable Estate, with her American publisher George Brett; and her quarrel in 1932 with the prolific Yorkshire novelist Phyllis Bentley (whose Inheritance was a best-seller that year), after a brief, intense friendship. The first two situations are worked out in the fate of Ruth Alleyndene’s brother Richard and in her doomed affair with the glamorous American officer Eugene Meury (Brett is superimposed, as it were, on Leighton). But the creation of the character based on Bentley—the successful and influential playwright Gertrude Ellison Campbell, with her broken friendship with Janet Rutherston, profound spiritual connection with Ruth Alleyndene, and posthumous apotheosis at the conclusion of the novel—proved especially significant and enriching:

Beneath the grey vaulted roof, women of every rank and profession had gathered to do honour to Ellison Campbell who had once been an arch-opponent of the women’s movement. Because, by her life and work, she had indirectly conferred prestige upon them all, the women’s organizations had sent their representatives.

Not only is Ellison Campbell arguably Brittain’s finest characterization, but her role in the theme and the rather schematic structure of the novel complicates and strengthens both. She links the generations credibly, and as an unmarried woman and antifeminist who is powerfully creative, she deepens the central ideas. Here Brittain also successfully integrates a theme characteristic of Holtby’s novels, and it seems likely that the characterization of Ellison Campbell, although primarily drawn from Bentley, gains force and complexity from Holtby associations.

In her careful foreword to the novel Brittain states that Honourable Estate “purports to show how the women’s revolution—one of the greatest in all history—united with the struggle for other democratic ideals and the cataclysm of the war to alter the private destinies of individuals.” The qualities of the three marriages that compose the main plot—extreme failure of the Rutherstons’, partial failure of the Alleyndenes’, and qualified success of Denis and Ruth’s—filter to the reader the changing social position of women from the Victorian era to the 1930s. The title of the novel, Brittain comments in her foreword, does not refer only to the marriage service; “it also stands for that position and respect for which the world’s women and the world’s workers have striven” and for “that maturity of the spirit which comes through suffering and experience.” Despite its burdens of wordiness, overemphasis, and earnestness, Honourable Estate is an impressive success in achieving Brittain’s intentions; it gained wide critical approval and was a bestseller in both Britain and the United States.

After the publication of this ambitious book Brittain found herself deeply disturbed by the portents of a second world war and felt compelled to give as much time and energy as possible to writing articles and making speeches in the cause of maintaining peace. She met the Anglican priest and pacifist Dick Sheppard at a peace rally where they both spoke, and she decided in 1937 to abandon the foundering League of Nations Union and join his vigorous new Peace Pledge Union. Contributing that year to the pamphlet Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War, she proclaimed that, as “an uncompromising pacifist, I hold war to be a crime against humanity, whoever fights it and against whomever it is fought.” From then to the end of her life she never wavered in her commitment, devoting extensive time and energy to committee work, speeches, and journalism in support of pacifism.

In addition, from 1939 through 1946 Brittain wrote and distributed some 200 issues of a discussion newsletter, Letter to Peace-Lovers; selections were published in 1940 as War-Time Letters to Peace Lovers and in 1988 as Testament of a Peace Lover: Letters from Vera Brittain. She also published several polemical works related to the war and her pacifist beliefs, including England’s Hour: An Autobiography, 1939-1941 (1941) and Humiliation with Honour (1942), and forceful shorter works arguing against the blockade and saturation-bombing: “One of These Little Ones…”: A Plea to Parents and Others for Europe’s Children (1943) and Seed of Chaos: What Mass Bombing Really Means (1944). The first draft of the latter had been published in the United States as “Massacre by Bombing” in the February 1944 edition of Fellowship, the magazine of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, before its British appearance; it provoked a furor, and in later years Brittain saw it as the main cause of her much-reduced popularity with American readers after the war.

Despite the demands of her pacifist activism, in the later stages of World War II and in its immediate aftermath she managed to find time and energy to write her two final novels, Account Rendered (1944) and Born 1925: A Novel of Youth (1948). Again, both were based firmly on personal experience and observation, although now primarily biographical rather than autobiographical: the personalities and lives of two men she knew well and admired deeply provided protagonists who also embody some of her own strongest values. Both novels differ strikingly from their predecessors in being dominated by Brittain’s pacifist convictions, reflecting the shift in her life imposed by World War II; feminism and socialism are at most subsidiary themes. Both novels are notably shorter and less ambitious than Honourable Estate, and, although substantial works, they seem to show effects of Brittain’s exhaustion at the end of the war.

Brittain recalled the genesis of her next novel in Testament of Experience:

In the autumn of 1939, I was summoned to a murder trial as a potential witness for the defense. The prisoner, a sensitive and intelligent professional man, had caused his wife’s death and then attempted suicide, but afterwards claimed that he could remember nothing of the tragedy. A team of psychological specialists traced back this amnesia to a bomb explosion in 1918, and my acquaintance was found “Guilty but Insane.”

Originally titled “Day of Judgment,” Account Rendered fictionalizes this “strange and tragic story which linked the First War with the Second,” allowing Brittain to demonstrate clearly the destructive effect of war on mind and spirit.

While in prison the convicted man—Leonard Lockhart, a Nottingham doctor—readily gave Brittain permission to use his story as the basis of a novel which Brittain began to write in the autumn of 1942. Unfortunately, when the text was submitted to him in April 1943, Lockhart, by then out of prison, withdrew his permission. Typically, Brittain did not give up; she set about rewriting the novel to remove any material that might make the protagonist, Francis Halkin, identifiable as Lockhart. Halkin became a musician instead of a doctor, for instance. In the process of rewriting, Brittain added several new minor characters, including—a felicitous stroke—Ruth Alleyndene, Brittain’s fictional representative in Honourable Estate, who now, as a Labour MP, fulfills Brittain’s role as observer at the trial. Perhaps the least satisfactory elements of the novel are the sentimental romance between Halkin and the self-abnegating, hero-worshiping Enid Clay and Halkin’s climactic opportunity to prove himself a conventional hero through his courage after a bomb falls on the prison while he is still a prisoner. Significantly, both of these episodes are Brittain’s own invention, and both are thematically damaging.

Published first in the United States, Account Rendered received some negative reviews (one termed Brittain an “unapologetic propagandist”); these were fueled, she was convinced, by political hostility. When the novel appeared in England some months later, it was much more successful, selling out its entire first printing of fifty thousand copies before publication and receiving better reviews.

Its successor was Born 1925, Brittain’s “novel about Dick Sheppard.” In Testament of Experience she revealed that the protagonist of the novel, Robert Carbury, and much of the plot were centered on the personality and life of the charismatic priest who had founded the Peace Pledge Union, converted Brittain to full pacifism, and died before World War II began. Carbury, winner of a Victoria Cross in World War I, is a priest dedicated to the preservation of peace. Brittain alters the facts of Sheppard’s life to allow Carbury to live until the war is almost over; then, like Halkin, he is given a climactic moment of moral triumph after enduring his calvary of “war-time execration.” In such respects the novel repeats the pattern of Not Without Honour.

Through much of the novel, however, Carbury is embroiled in private domestic conflict, first with his actress wife Sylvia and then with his son. For, like Honourable Estate, Born 1925 is a generational novel in which, through Carbury’s children Adrian and Josephine—based explicitly on Brittain’s children John and Shirley as she perceived them at the time she was writing the novel—Brittain seeks to demonstrate some of the changes brought about by World War II. The conflict between father and son, echoing that between John Catlin and his parents, is resolved at the end of the novel—but only after Robert is dead.

Like Account Rendered, Born 1925 sold well in England and was respectfully received by critics. But it was not the triumph that Brittain had been hoping for, and she succumbed to depression, telling Catlin, “More and more I become just a `popular’ writer who makes money. . .. the prestige goes to hell.” During the next two decades she attempted no further novels; instead, when not engaged in social action or traveling (among other countries, she visited India and South Africa), she wrote in other genres—notably autobiography, such as Testament of Experience; biography, including In the Steps of John Bunyan: An Excursion into Puritan England (1950), Pethick-Lawrence: A Portrait (1963), and Envoy Extraordinary: A Study of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and Her Contribution to Modern India (1965); feminist history, with Lady into Woman: A History of Women from Victoria to Elizabeth II (1953) and The Women at Oxford: A Fragment of History (1960); and pacifist history, such as The Rebel Passion: A Short History of Some Pioneer Peacemakers (1964). While these are worthy books, they also represent a decline from the high literary ambitions and achievements of the 1930s and through World War II.

Only once, it appears, did she seriously consider writing another novel; but her proposal, in 1960, was politely rejected by Macmillan, so her literary career did not end as she would have preferred, with success in the genre she most respected. Some years earlier she had told her daughter that she “would much rather be a writer of plays and really first-class novels, instead of the biographies and `documentaries’ to which such talent as I have seems best suited.”

That depressed comment surely minimizes her literary achievement. Apart from her incontrovertible successes in other genres, notably journalism and autobiography, at least one of Brittain’s novels, Honourable Estate, is a substantial achievement and deserves to be read widely by a new generation of readers. None of the other four lacks literary competence, interest, and thoughtful comment on central moral issues of our time. All five, revalued according to aesthetic criteria that do not automatically demote non-Modernistic writings, should be accorded a higher critical standing than they hold at present.

Brittain’s novels, more than Holtby’s, open themselves to easy dismissal as merely autobiographical and propagandist, but apart from their attractively straightforward narrative qualities, all of them, even the last two, present unintended complexity that should interest and challenge new readers. In Born 1925, for instance, Brittain’s conception of a satisfactory marriage of equals, the woman maintaining her career, the husband sensitive and supportive, receives a jolt when Sylvia admits to herself that love is a random atavistic force quite beyond rational control: “Occasionally she found herself wishing that there was more unrestrained lust and less tender reverence in Robert’s caresses; she longed for him just sometimes to take her inconsiderately, without asking first.” Here what may be autobiographical in origin seems to interfere with the ostensible movement of the text, stirring qualification and further consideration by the reader of the final meaning of the novel.

Brittain saw herself as representative of her generation, and as she stated in her foreword to Testament of Youth, she constantly endeavored in her writing “to put the life of an ordinary individual into its niche in contemporary history.” Her training as a historian, and her intense concern with social issues, mark all her novels. In these, no less than in Testament of Youth, she avowedly fictionalized her own experiences and opinions, and those of friends and family members; but she did so with a forceful directness that infuses all five novels with moral and historical insight. Since, like all her works, they were written to reach the widest possible audience in the hope of informing and influencing as many of her contemporaries as possible, she paid minimal attention to subtlety or complexity—though, because she was an honest and intelligent analyst, these qualities nevertheless enter her texts. However much she may at times have regretted her failure to impress highbrow critics and gain a secure reputation as one of the best novelists of her day, Brittain’s achievement as a novelist was nevertheless considerable, and her novels are eminently worthy of being read and revalued in our time.
Bibliography

WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:

BOOKS

Verses of a V.A.D. (London: Erskine Macdonald, 1918). 

The Dark Tide (London: Richards, 1923; New York: Macmillan, 1936). 

Not Without Honour (London: Richards, 1924). 

Women’s Work in Modern England (London: Noel Douglas, 1928). 

Halcyon, or the Future of Monogamy (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trübner, 1929; New York: Dutton, 1929). 

Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900-1925 (London: Gollancz, 1933; New York: Macmillan, 1933). 

Poems of the War and After (London: Gollancz, 1934; New York: Macmillan, 1934). 

Honourable Estate: A Novel of Transition (London: Gollancz, 1936; New York: Macmillan, 1936). 

Thrice a Stranger: New Chapters of Autobiography (London: Gollancz, 1938; New York: Macmillan, 1938). 

Testament of Friendship: The Story of Winifred Holtby (London: Macmillan, 1940; New York: Macmillan, 1940). 

War-Time Letters to Peace Lovers (London: Peace Book, 1940). 

England’s Hour: An Autobiography 1939-1941 (London: Macmillan, 1941; New York: Macmillan, 1941). 

Humiliation with Honour (London: Dakers, 1942; New York: Fellowship Publications, 1943). 

“One of These Little Ones. . .” : A Plea to Parents and Others for Europe’s Children (London: Dakers, 1943). 

Seed of Chaos: What Mass Bombing Really Means (London: Published for the Bombing Restriction Committee by New Vision, 1944). 

Account Rendered (New York: Macmillan, 1944; London: Macmillan, 1945). 

On Becoming a Writer (London: Hutchinson, 1947); republished as On Being an Author, with an introduction and notes by George Savage (New York: Macmillan, 1948). 

Born 1925: A Novel of Youth (London: Macdonald, 1948; New York: Macmillan, 1949). 

In the Steps of John Bunyan: An Excursion into Puritan England (London: Rich & Cowan, 1950); republished as Valiant Pilgrim: The Story of John Bunyan and Puritan England (New York: Macmillan, 1950). 

Search After Sunrise (London: Macmillan, 1951). 

The Story of St. Martin’s: An Epic of London (London: Reverend L. M. Charles Edwards, 1951). 

Lady into Woman: A History of Women from Victoria to Elizabeth II (London: Dakers, 1953; New York: Macmillan, 1954). 

Testament of Experience: An Autobiographical Story of the Years 1925-1950 (London: Gollancz, 1957; New York: Macmillan, 1957). 

Long Shadows, by Brittain and George E. W. Sizer (London & Hull: A. Brown, 1958). 

The Women at Oxford: A Fragment of History (London: Harrap, 1960; New York: Macmillan, 1960). 

Pethick-Lawrence: A Portrait (London: Allen & Unwin, 1963). 

The Rebel Passion: A Short History of Some Pioneer Peacemakers (London: Allen & Unwin, 1964; Nyack, N.Y.: Fellowship Publications, 1964). 

Envoy Extraordinary: A Study of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and Her Contribution to Modern India(London: Allen & Unwin, 1965). 

Radclyffe Hall: A Case of Obscenity? (London: Femina, 1968; South Brunswick, N.J.: Barnes, 1969). 

Chronicle of Youth: The War Diary 1913-1917, edited by Alan Bishop and Terry Smart (London: Gollancz, 1981: New York: Morrow, 1982). 

Testament of a Generation: The Journalism of Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby, edited by Paul Berry and Bishop (London: Virago, 1985). 

Chronicle of Friendship: Diary of the Thirties, 1932-1939, edited by Bishop (London: Gollancz, 1986). 

Testament of a Peace Lover: Letters from Vera Brittain, edited by Winifred and Alan Eden-Green (London: Virago, 1988). 

Wartime Chronicle: Diary 1939-1945, edited by Bishop and Y. Aleksandra Bennett (London: Gollancz, 1989).

OTHER

Winifred Holtby, Pavements at Anderby: Tales of “South Riding” and Other Regions, edited by Brittain and H. S. Reid (London: Collins, 1937; New York: Macmillan, 1938). 

Above All Nations: An Anthology, compiled by Brittain, George Catlin, and Sheila Hodges (London: Gollancz, 1945); revised and enlarged by Devere Allen and Gert Spindler (New York: Harper, 1949).

LETTERS

Selected Letters of Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain, 1920-1935, edited by Brittain and Geoffrey Handley-Taylor (London & Hull: A. Brown, 1960).


Further Readings

FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Biographies:

Shirley Williams, “My Mother and Her Friend,” Listener, 114 (21 November 1985): 33-34. 

Hilary Bailey, Vera Brittain (London: Penguin, 1987). 

John Catlin, Family Quartet (London: Hamilton, 1987). 

Williams, “Testament to the Touchstone of My Life,” Independent, 29 December 1993. 

Paul Berry and Mark Bostridge, Vera Brittain: A Life (London: Chatto & Windus, 1995). 

Deborah Gorham, Vera Brittain: A Feminist Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). 


References:

George Catlin, For God’s Sake, Go! (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1972). 

Geoffrey Handley-Taylor and John Malcolm Dockeray, eds., Vera Brittain: Occasional Papers (London: Black Pennell, 1983). 

Jean E. Kennard, Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby: A Working Partnership (Hanover, N.H.: Published for the University of New Hampshire by the University Press of New England, 1989). 

Lynn Layton, “Vera Brittain’s Testament(s),” in Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, edited by Margaret Higonnet and Jane Jenson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 70-83.
---------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------

August, 1914

By Vera Mary Brittain
God said, “Men have forgotten Me:
The souls that sleep shall wake again,
And blinded eyes must learn to see.”

So since redemption comes through pain
He smote the earth with chastening rod,
And brought destruction's lurid reign;

But where His desolation trod
The people in their agony
Despairing cried, “There is no God.”

Source: Verses of a VAD and Other Poems (1918)
----------------------

Epitaph On My Days in Hospital

By Vera Mary Brittain

I found in you a holy place apart,
Sublime endurance, God in man revealed,
Where mending broken bodies slowly healed
My broken heart

-----------------------------

Roundel

By Vera Mary Brittain

(“Died of Wounds”)

Because you died, I shall not rest again,
But wander ever through the lone world wide,
Seeking the shadow of a dream grown vain
Because you died.

I shall spend brief and idle hours beside
The many lesser loves that still remain,
But find in none my triumph and my pride;

And Disillusion's slow corroding stain
Will creep upon each quest but newly tried,
For every striving now shall nothing gain
Because you died.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/sarah-morgan-bryan-piatt


Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt
Poet Details
1836–1919


Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt
Poet Details
1836–1919
Raised on a plantation in antebellum Lexington, Kentucky, poet Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt was educated at Henry Female College and left the South in her 20s. Her poems appeared regularly in the Louisville Journal and the New York Ledger by the time of her 1861 marriage to poet and diplomat John L. Piatt. In 1882, the Piatts moved to Cork, Ireland, where they became friends with the writers Austin Dobson, Edmund Gosse, Alice Meynell, and Katherine Tynan.

Piatt often took an unconventional approach to form, engaging social and domestic themes by layering dialogue, dramatic realism, and irony. Critic Stephen Burt, introducing a Poetry Daily feature on her poem “The Sight of Trouble,” observed that “binocular vision—feminism and tragedy, if you like; harm remediable and irremediable, seen together—makes Piatt stand out.”

Well-known and critically acclaimed during her life, Piatt published more than a dozen collections of poetry, including A Voyage to the Fortunate Isles and Other Poems (1885), Dramatic Persons and Moods (1880), An Irish Garland (1884), and The Witch in the Glass (1888). With her husband, she collaborated on The Nests of Washington and Other Poems (1863) and The Children Out-of-Doors (1885). Her poems are featured in An American Anthology 1787–1900 (1900) and numerous other anthologies. Piatt’s Poems appeared in 1894. She died in Caldwell, New Jersey, in 1919.

Recent scholars, including Larry Michaels, editor of That New World: The Selected Poems of Sarah Piatt 1861–1911 (1999); Paula Bernat Bennett, editor of Palace-Burner: The Selected Poetry of Sarah Piatt (2001); and Jessica Roberts, author of Genealogies of Convention: Reading the Poetry of Sarah Piatt and Herman Melville in the Nineteenth-Century American Culture of Anthologies (2005), have returned Piatt’s poetry to critical and popular audiences.



Poems By Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt
Army of Occupation
Counsel—In the South
Giving Back the Flower
Hearing the Battle.—July 21, 1861
The Old Slave-Music

Poet Categorization
Poet's Region
U.S., Mid-Atlantic
Life Span
1836–1919


------------------------------------


Army of Occupation -
-------Poem by Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt

The summer blew its little drifts of sound—
Tangled with wet leaf-shadows and the light
Small breath of scattered morning buds—around
The yellow path through which our footsteps wound.
Below, the Capitol rose glittering white.

There stretched a sleeping army. One by one,
They took their places until thousands met;
No leader's stars flashed on before, and none
Leaned on his sword or stagger'd with his gun—
I wonder if their feet have rested yet!

They saw the dust, they joined the moving mass,
They answer'd the fierce music's cry for blood,
Then straggled here and lay down in the grass:—
Wear flowers for such, shores whence their feet did pass;
Sing tenderly; O river's haunted flood!

They had been sick, and worn, and weary, when
They stopp'd on this calm hill beneath the trees:
Yet if, in some red-clouded dawn, again
The country should be calling to her men,
Shall the r[e]veill[e] not remember these?

Around them underneath the mid-day skies
The dreadful phantoms of the living walk,
And by low moons and darkness with their cries—
The mothers, sisters, wives with faded eyes,
Who call still names amid their broken talk.

And there is one who comes alone and stands
At his dim fireless hearth—chill'd and oppress'd
By Something he had summon'd to his lands,
While the weird pallor of its many hands
Points to his rusted sword in his own breast!

----------------------------------------------


Giving Back the Flower

By Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt

So, because you chose to follow me into the subtle sadness of night,
And to stand in the half-set moon with the weird fall-light on your glimmering hair,
Till your presence hid all of the earth and all of the sky from my sight,
And to give me a little scarlet bud, that was dying of frost, to wear,

Say, must you taunt me forever, forever? You looked at my hand and you knew
That I was the slave of the Ring, while you were as free as the wind is free.
When I saw your corpse in your coffin, I flung back your flower to you;
It was all of yours that I ever had; you may keep it, and—keep from me.

Ah? so God is your witness. Has God, then, no world to look after but ours?
May He not have been searching for that wild stat, with the trailing plumage, that
flew
Far over a part of our darkness while we were there by the freezing flowers,
Or else brightening some planet’s luminous rings, instead of thinking of you?

Or, if He was near us at all, do you think that He would sit listening there
Because you sang “Hear me, Norma,” to a woman in jewels and lace,
While, so close to us, down in another street, in the wet, unlighted air,
There were children crying for bread and fire, and mothers who questioned His
grace?

Or perhaps He had gone to the ghastly field where the fight had been that day,
To number the bloody stabs that were there, to look at and judge the dead;
Or else to the place full of fever and moans where the wretched wounded lay;
At least I do not believe that He cares to remember a word that you said.

So take back your flowers, I tell you—of its sweetness I now have no need;
Yes; take back your flower down into the stillness and mystery to keep;
When you wake I will take it, and God, then, perhaps will witness indeed,
But go, now, and tell Death he must watch you, and not let you walk in your sleep.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

The Mysterious Visitor
by Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky


Spirit, lovely guest, who are you?
Whence have you flown down to us?
Taciturn and without a sound
Why have you abandoned us?
Where are you? Where is your dwelling?
What are you, where did you go?
Why did you appear,
Heavenly, upon the Earth?

Mayhap you are youthful Hope,
Who arrives from time to time
Cloaked in magic
From a land unknown?
Merciless as Hope,
Sweetest joy you show us
For a moment, then
Take it back and fly away.

Was it Love that you enacted
For us all in mystery? . . .
Days of love, when one beloved
Rendered this world beautiful
Ah! then, sighted through the veil
Earth did seem unearthly...
Now the veil has lifted; Love is gone;
Life is empty, joy - a dream.

Was it Thought, enchanting
You embodied for us here?
Far removed from every worry,
With a dreamy finger pointing
To her lips, she sallies forth
Just like you, from time to time,
Ushers us without a sound
Back to bygone days.

Or within you dwells the sacred spirit
Of Dame Poetry? . . .
Just like you, she came from Heaven
Veiling us twofold:
Using azure for the skies,
And clear white for earth;
What lies near is lovely through her;
All that's distant - known.

Or perhaps 'twas premonition
That descended in your guise
And to us with clarity described
All that's sacred and divine?
Thus it often happens in this life:
Something brilliant flies to meet us,
Raises up the veil
And then beckons us beyond.
*******************************
*******************************


http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Vasily_Zhukovsky

Vasily Zhukovsky


Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky (February 1783 – April 1852) was the foremost Russian poet of the 1800s. He is credited with introducing the Romantic Movement to Russian literature. Romanticism in Russia would produce the likes of Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov among others. The main body of Zhukovsky's literary output consists of free translations covering an impressively wide range of poets from Ferdowsi to Friedrich Schiller. Quite a few of his translations proved to be more competently-written and enduring works than their originals.

Early life

Zhukovsky was the illegitimate son of a Russian landowner, Nikolai Bunin and a Turkish slave. He was given his godfather's surname. In his youth, he lived and studied at the Moscow University Noblemen's Pension, where he was heavily influenced by Freemasonry, English Sentimentalism, and the German Sturm und Drang movement. He also frequented the house of Nikolay Karamzin, the preeminent Russian man of letters and the founding editor of The European Messenger (also known in English as The Herald of Europe). In 1802, Zhukovsky published a free translation of Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard" in The Messenger. The translation introduced Russian readers to his trademark sentimental-melancholy style and instantly made him a household name. Today it is conventionally cited as the starting point of Russian Romanticism.

In 1808, Karamzin asked Zhukovsky to take over the editorship of the Messenger. The young poet used this position to explore Romantic themes, motifs, and genres. He was also among the first Russian writers to cultivate the mystique of the Romantic poet. He dedicated much of his best poetic work to his half-niece Masha Protasova; his unrequited love for her clouded his personal life for years. His passionate but futile affair with Masha became an indelible part of his poetic personality.
Mature works

As Vladimir Nabokov noted, Zhukovsky belonged to the class of poets who incidentally verge on greatness but never quite attain that glory. His main contribution was as a stylistic and formal innovator who borrowed liberally from European literature in order to provide models in Russian that could inspire "original" works. Zhukovsky was particularly admired for his first-rate melodious translations of German and English ballads. Among these, Ludmila (1808) and its companion piece Svetlana (1813) are considered landmarks in the Russian poetic tradition. Both were free translations of Gottfried August Burger's well-known German ballad Lenore—although each interpreted the original in a different way. Zhukovsky characteristically translated Lenore yet a third time as part of his efforts to develop a natural-sounding Russian dactylic hexameter. His many translations of Schiller—including lyrics, ballads, and the drama Jungfrau von Orleans (about Joan of Arc)—became classic works in Russian that many consider to be of equal if not higher quality than their originals. They were remarkable for their psychological depth and greatly impressed and influenced Fyodor Dostoevsky, among many others. Zhukovsky's life's work as an interpreter of European literature probably constitutes the most important body of literary hermeneutics in the Russian language.

When French Emporer Napoleon I invaded Russia in 1812, Zhukovsky joined the Russian general staff under Field Marshal Kutuzov. There he wrote much patriotic verse, including the original poem "A Bard in the Camp of the Russian Warriors," which helped to establish his reputation at the imperial court. He also composed the lyrics for the national anthem of Imperial Russia, "God Save the Tsar!" After the war, he became a courtier in St. Petersburg, where he founded the jocular Arzamas literary society in order to promote Karamzin's European-oriented, anti-classicist aesthetics. Members of the Arzamas included the teenage Alexander Pushkin, who was rapidly emerging as Zhukovsky's heir-apparent. The two became life-long friends, and although Pushkin eventually outgrew the older poet's literary influence, he increasingly relied on his protection and patronage.
Later life and works

In later life, Zhukovsky made a second great contribution to Russian culture as an educator and a patron of the arts. In 1826, he was appointed tutor to the tsarevich, the future Tsar Alexander II. His progressive program of education had such a powerful influence on Alexander that the liberal reforms of the 1860s are sometimes attributed to it. The poet also used his high station at court to take up the cudgels for such free-thinking writers as Mikhail Lermontov, Alexander Herzen, Taras Shevchenko, and the Decembrists. On Pushkin's untimely death in 1837, Zhukovsky stepped in as his literary executor, not only rescuing his work (including several unpublished masterpieces) from a hostile censorship, but also diligently collecting and preparing it for publication. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, he nurtured the genius and promoted the career of the great satirist, Nikolai Gogol, another close personal friend. In this sense, he acted behind-the-scenes as a kind of impresario for the Romantic Movement that he founded.

Following the example of his mentor Karamzin, Zhukovsky travelled extensively in Europe throughout his life, meeting and corresponding with world-class cultural figures like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or the landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich. One of his early acquaintances was the popular German writer Friedrich de LaMotte-Fouquet, whose prose novella Undine was a European best-seller. In the late 1830s, Zhukovsky published a highly-original verse translation of Undine that re-established his place in the poetic avant-garde. Written in a waltzing hexameter, the work became the basis for a classic Russian ballet.

In 1841, Zhukovsky retired from court and settled in Germany, where he married the 18 year old Elizabeth Reitern, the daughter of an artist friend. The couple had two children. He devoted much of his remaining life to a hexameter translation of Homer's Odyssey, which he finally published in 1849. Although the translation was far from accurate, it became a classic in its own right and occupies a notable place in the history of Russian poetry. Some scholars argue that both his Odyssey and Undina—as long narrative works—made an important, though oblique contribution to the development of the Russian novel. Zhukovsky died in Germany in 1852 and is buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, St. Petersburg.
References

Rydel, Christine A., ed. Russian literature in the age of Pushkin and Gogol. Poetry and drama. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. ISBN 0787630993
Semenko, Irina M. Vasily Zhukovsky. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976. ISBN 080572995X
Terras, Victor. A History of Russian Literature. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-300-05934-5

Credits

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Vasily_Zhukovsky history

Just found information on this important and great Russian poet...
Will review and perhaps post more of his fine poetry at a future date..-Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

About- Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Anna Barbauld (nee Aikin) was born in 1743, daughter of a nonconformist minister and schoolmaster, who taught her to read English before she was three and to master French, Italian, Latin and Greek while still a child. Her book of poems, published in 1773, was an astonishing success and established her at the time as a celebrated and widely read poet.

Soon afterwards, she married a French priest, Rochemont Barbauld, and moved to Suffolk where they together founded and ran a school for boys. Without children of their own, they adopted one of her brother’s sons, and it was for him that she first began her innovative works for young people, for the first time treating them as children rather than as small adults.

Unfortunately Barbauld’s marriage was unhappy: Rochemount was mentally unstable, with symptoms including obsessive washing; when Anna tried to intervene or help him, he attacked her. In 1808 he committed suicide.

'The Rights of Women' is a response to Mary Wollstonecraft’s famous work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Barbauld’s poem is not entirely straightforward, seeming both to celebrate and question Wollstonecraft’s views on the need to liberate women from the injustices and restrictions they faced. Similarly, 'To the Poor' at first sight seems to endorse the notion that the poor must wait patiently until they are repaid in heaven for their suffering on earth. This complacency is then overturned by a simmering anger at the way things are but should not be; rewards for the poor in the afterlife are simply not good enough to justify the cruelty of the rich and powerful.

Like her younger contemporaries, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Barbauld responded joyously to events in France and the example they gave of the possibility of violent change through revolution. She was a vigorous critic of the slave trade, and in 1812 wrote 'Eighteen Hundred and Eleven', a violent attack in heroic couplets on the folly of continuing the war against France, and on Britain’s decline. For this she was widely criticised for lack of patriotism in a time of national emergency, and afterwards she wrote little. She died in 1824.

Though sometimes regarded as an early Romantic poet, and an important influence on Wordsworth and Coleridge (on one occasion Coleridge walked forty miles to meet her), her reputation declined after those writers turned against her. She offended Coleridge by criticising The Rime of the Ancient Mariner because it had no moral, and during the years after her death she was mainly remembered for her books for children and her fifty-volume edition of English novelists. However, feminist readers in the late twentieth century rediscovered the power and range of her verse; she is once again recognised as one of the important poets of her time.

Anna Letitia Barbauld: Selected Poetry and Prose (...
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https://www.poemhunter.com/anna-laetitia-barbauld/biography/


Biography of Anna Laetitia Barbauld
Anna Laetitia Barbauld poet

Anna Laetitia Barbauld was a prominent English Romantic poet, essayist, and children's author.

A "woman of letters" who published in multiple genres, Barbauld had a successful writing career at a time when female professional writers were rare. She was a noted teacher at the Palgrave Academy and an innovative children's writer; her primers provided a model for pedagogy for more than a century. Her essays demonstrated that it was possible for a woman to be publicly engaged in politics, and other women authors emulated her.Even more important, her poetry was foundational to the development of Romanticism in England. Barbauld was also a literary critic, and her anthology of 18th-century British novels helped establish the canon as known today.

Barbauld's literary career ended abruptly in 1812 with the publication of her poem Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, which criticized Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars. Vicious reviews shocked Barbauld and she published nothing else during her lifetime. Her reputation was further damaged when many of the Romantic poets she had inspired in the heyday of the French Revolution turned against her in their later, more conservative, years. Barbauld was remembered only as a pedantic children's writer during the 19th century, and largely forgotten during the 20th century, but the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1980s renewed interest in her works and restored her place in literary history.

Sources

Much of what is known about Barbauld's life comes from two memoirs, the first published in 1825 and written by her niece Lucy Aikin, the second published in 1874 and written by her great-niece Anna Letitia Le Breton. Some letters from Barbauld to others also exist. However, a great many Barbauld family documents were lost in a fire that was the result of the London blitz in 1940.

Early life

Barbauld was born on 20 June 1743 at Kibworth Harcourt in Leicestershire to Jane and John Aikin. She was named after her maternal grandmother and referred to as "Nancy" (an 18th-century nickname for Anna). She was baptized by her mother's brother, John Jennings, in Huntingdonshire two weeks after her birth. Barbauld's father was headmaster of the Dissenting academy in Kibworth Harcourt and minister at a nearby Presbyterian church. She spent her childhood in what Barbauld scholar William McCarthy describes as "one of the best houses in Kibworth and in the very middle of the village square"; she was much in the public eye, as the house was also a boys' school. The family had a comfortable standard of living. McCarthy suggests they may have ranked with large freeholders, well-to-do tradesmen, and manufacturers. At his death in 1780, Barbauld's father's estate was valued at more than £2,500.

Barbauld commented to her husband in 1773 that "For the early part of my life I conversed little with my own Sex. In the Village where I was, there was none to converse with." Barbauld was surrounded by boys as a child and adopted their high spirits. Her mother attempted to quash these, which would have been viewed as unseemly in a woman; according to Lucy Aikin's memoir, what resulted was "a double portion of bashfulness and maidenly reserve" in Barbauld's character. Barbauld was never quite comfortable with her identity as a woman and always believed that she failed to live up to the ideal of womanhood; much of her writing would center around issues central to women and her "outsider" perspective allowed her to question many of the traditional assumptions about femininity during the 18th century.

Barbauld demanded that her father teach her the classics and after much pestering, he did. Thus she had the opportunity to learn Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and many other subjects generally deemed unsuitable for women at the time. Barbauld's penchant for study worried her mother, who expected her to end up a spinster because of her intellectualism; the two were never as close as Barbauld and her father. Yet Barbauld's mother was proud of her accomplishments and in later years wrote of her daughter: "I once indeed knew a little girl who was as eager to learn as her instructors could be to teach her, and who at two years old could read sentences and little stories in her wise book, roundly, without spelling; and in half a year more could read as well as most women; but I never knew such another, and I believe never shall."

Barbauld's brother, John Aikin, described their father as "the best parent, the wisest counsellor, the most affectionate friend, every thing that could command love and veneration". Barbauld's father prompted many such tributes, although Lucy Aikin described him as excessively modest and reserved. Barbauld developed a strong bond with her brother during childhood, standing in as a mother figure to him; they eventually became literary partners. In 1817, Joanna Baillie commented of their relationship "How few brothers and sisters have been to one another what they have been through so long a course of years!"

In 1758, the family moved to Warrington Academy, in Warrington, where Barbauld's father had been offered a teaching position. It drew many luminaries of the day, such as the natural philosopher and Unitarian theologian Joseph Priestley, and came to be known as "the Athens of the North" for its stimulating intellectual atmosphere. One other luminary may have been the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat; school records suggest he was a "French master" there in the 1770s. He may also have been a suitor to Barbauld; he allegedly wrote to John Aikin declaring his intention to become an English citizen and to marry her. Archibald Hamilton Rowan also fell in love with Barbauld and described her as, "possessed of great beauty, distinct traces of which she retained to the latest of her life. Her person was slender, her complexion exquisitely fair with the bloom of perfect health; her features regular and elegant, and her dark blue eyes beamed with the light of wit and fancy." Despite her mother's anxiety, Barbauld received many offers of marriage around this time—all of which she declined.

First literary successes and marriage

Joseph Priestley (c. 1763): "Mrs. Barbauld has told me that it was the perusal of some verses of mine that first induced her to write any thing in verse."

In 1773, Barbauld brought out her first book of poems, after her friends had praised them and convinced her to publish. The collection, entitled simply Poems, went through four editions in just one year and surprised Barbauld by its success. Barbauld became a respected literary figure in England on the reputation of Poems alone. The same year she and her brother, John Aikin, jointly published Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, which was also well-received. The essays in it (most of which were by Barbauld) were favorably compared to Samuel Johnson's.

In May 1774, despite some "misgivings", Barbauld married Rochemont Barbauld, the grandson of a French Huguenot and a former pupil at Warrington. According to Barbauld's niece, Lucy Aikin:

[H]er attachment to Mr. Barbauld was the illusion of a romantic fancy—not of a tender heart. Had her true affections been early called forth by a more genial home atmosphere, she would never have allowed herself to be caught by crazy demonstrations of amorous rapture, set off with theatrical French manners, or have conceived of such exaggerated passion as a safe foundation on which to raise the sober structure of domestic happiness. My father ascribed that ill-starred union in great part to the baleful influence of [Jean-Jacques Rousseau's] 'Nouvelle Heloise,' Mr. B. impersonating St. Preux. [Barbauld] was informed by a true friend that he had experienced one attack of insanity, and was urged to break off the engagement on that account.—'Then' answered she, 'if I were now to disappoint him, he would certainly go mad.' To this there could be no reply; and with a kind of desperate generosity she rushed upon her melancholy destiny.

After the wedding, the couple moved to Suffolk, near where Rochemont had been offered a congregation and a school for boys. Barbauld took this time and rewrote some of the psalms, a common pastime in the 18th century, publishing them as Devotional Pieces Compiled from the Psalms and the Book of Job. Attached to this work is her essay "Thoughts on the Devotional Taste, on Sects and on Establishments", which explains her theory of religious feeling and the problems inherent in the institutionalization of religion.

It seems that Barbauld and her husband were concerned that they would never have a child of their own and in 1775, after only a year of marriage, Barbauld suggested to her brother that they adopt one of his children:

I am sensible it is not a small thing we ask; nor can it be easy for a parent to part with a child. This I would say, from a number, one may more easily be spared. Though it makes a very material difference in happiness whether a person has children or no children, it makes, I apprehend, little or none whether he has three, or four; five, or six; because four or five are enow [sic] to exercise all his whole stock of care and affection. We should gain, but you would not lose.

Eventually her brother conceded and the couple adopted Charles; it was for him that Barbauld wrote her most famous books: Lessons for Children (1778–9) and Hymns in Prose for Children (1781).

Palgrave Academy

Barbauld and her husband spent eleven years teaching at Palgrave Academy in Suffolk. Early on, Barbauld was not only responsible for running her own household but also the school's—she was accountant, maid, and housekeeper. The school opened with only eight boys but when the Barbaulds left in 1785, around forty were enrolled, a testament to the excellent reputation the school had acquired. The Barbaulds' educational philosophy attracted Dissenters as well as Anglicans. Palgrave replaced the strict discipline of traditional schools such as Eton, which often used corporal punishment, with a system of "fines and jobations" and even, it seems likely, "juvenile trials," that is, trials run by and for the students themselves. Moreover, instead of the traditional classical studies, the school offered a practical curriculum that stressed science and the modern languages. Barbauld herself taught the foundational subjects of reading and religion to the youngest boys and geography, history, composition and rhetoric, and science to higher grade levels. She was a dedicated teacher, producing a "weekly chronicle" for the school and writing theatrical pieces for the students to perform. Barbauld had a profound effect on many of her students; one who went on to great success, William Taylor, a preeminent scholar of German literature, referred to Barbauld as "the mother of his mind."

Political involvement and Hampstead

In September 1785, the Barbaulds left Palgrave for a tour of France; Rochemont's mental health had been deteriorating and he was no longer able to carry out his teaching duties. In 1787, they moved to Hampstead where Rochemont was asked to head a Presbyterian chapel. It was here that Barbauld became close friends with Joanna Baillie, the playwright. Although no longer in charge of a school, the Barbaulds did not abandon their commitment to education; they often had one or two pupils living with them, who had been recommended by personal friends.

It was during this time, the heyday of the French Revolution, that Barbauld published her most radical political pieces. From 1787 to 1790, Charles James Fox attempted to convince the House of Commons to pass a law granting Dissenters full citizenship rights. When this bill was defeated for the third time, Barbauld wrote one of her most passionate pamphlets, An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts. Readers were shocked to discover that such a well-reasoned argument should come from a woman. In 1791, after William Wilberforce's attempt to outlaw the slave trade failed, Barbauld published her Epistle to William Wilberforce Esq. On the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade, which not only lamented the fate of the slaves but also warned of the cultural and social degeneration the British could expect if they did not abandon slavery. In 1792, she continued this theme of national responsibility in an anti-war sermon entitled Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation which argued that each individual is responsible for the actions of the nation: "We are called upon to repent of national sins, because we can help them, and because we ought to help them."

Stoke Newington and the end of a literary career

In 1802, the Barbaulds moved to Stoke Newington where Rochemont took over the pastoral duties of the Chapel at Newington Green. Barbauld herself was happy to be nearer her brother, John, because her husband's mind was rapidly failing. Rochemont developed a "violent antipathy to his wife and he was liable to fits of insane fury directed against her. One day at dinner he seized a knife and chased her round the table so that she only saved herself by jumping out of the window." Such scenes repeated themselves to Barbauld's great sadness and real danger, but she refused to leave him. Rochemont drowned himself in the nearby New River in 1808 and Barbauld was overcome with grief. When Barbauld returned to writing, she produced the radical poem Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812) that depicted England as a ruin. It was reviewed so viciously that Barbauld never published another work within her lifetime, although it is now often viewed by scholars as her greatest poetic achievement. Barbauld died in 1825, a renowned writer, and was buried in the family vault in St Mary's, Stoke Newington. After Barbauld's death, a marble tablet was erected in the Newington Green Chapel with the following inscription:

In Memory of
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD,
Daughter of John Aikin, D.D.
And Wife of
The Rev. Rochemont Barbauld,
Formerly the Respected Minister of this Congregation.
She was born at Kibworth in Leicestershire, 20th June, 1743,
and died at Stoke Newington, 9th March, 1825.
Endowed by the Giver of all Good
With Wit, Genius, Poetic Talent, and a Vigorous Understanding
She Employed these High Gifts
in Promoting the Cause of Humanity, Peace, and Justice,
of Civil and Religious Liberty,
of Pure, Ardent, and Affectionate Devotion.
Let the Young, Nurtured by her Writings in the Pure Spirit
of Christian Morality;
Let those of Maturer Years, Capable of Appreciating
the Acuteness, the Brilliant Fancy, and Sound Reasoning
of her Literary Compositions;
Let the Surviving few who shared her Delightful
and Instructive Conversation,
Bear Witness
That this Monument Records
No Exaggerated Praise.

Legacy

At her death, Barbauld was lauded in the Newcastle Magazine as "unquestionably the first [i.e., best] of our female poets, and one of the most eloquent and powerful of our prose writers" and the Imperial Magazine declared "so long as letters shall be cultivated in Britain, or wherever the English language shall be known, so long will the name of this lady be respected." She was favorably compared to both Joseph Addison and Samuel Johnson, no mean feat for a woman writer in the 18th century. But by 1925 she was remembered only as a moralizing writer for children, if that. It was not until the advent of feminist literary criticism within the academy in the 1970s and 1980s that Barbauld finally began to be included in literary history.

Barbauld's remarkable disappearance from the literary landscape took place for a number of reasons. One of the most important was the disdain heaped upon her by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, poets who in their youthful, radical days had looked to her poetry for inspiration, but in their later, conservative years dismissed her work. Once these poets had become canonized, their opinions held sway. Moreover, the intellectual ferment that Barbauld was an important part of—particularly at the Dissenting academies—had, by the end of the 19th century, come to be associated with the "philistine" middle class, as Matthew Arnold put it. The reformist 18th-century middle class was later held responsible for the excesses and abuses of the industrial age. Finally, the Victorians viewed Barbauld as "an icon of sentimental saintliness" and "erased her political courage, her tough mindedness, [and] her talent for humor and irony", a literary figure that modernists despised.

As literary studies developed into a discipline at the end of the 19th century, the story of the origins of Romanticism in England emerged along with it; according to this version of literary history, Coleridge and Wordsworth were the dominant poets of the age. This view held sway for almost a century. Even with the advent of feminist criticism in the 1970s, Barbauld still did not receive her due. As Margaret Ezell explains, feminist critics wanted to resurrect a particular kind of woman—one who was angry, one who resisted the gender roles of her time, and one who attempted to create a sisterhood with other women. Barbauld did not easily fit into these categories and it was not until Romanticism and its canon began to be reexamined through a deep reassessment of feminism itself that a picture emerged of the vibrant voice Barbauld had been.

Barbauld's works fell out of print and no full-length scholarly biography of her was written until William McCarthy's Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment in 2009.

Poetry

Barbauld's poetry, which addresses a wide range of topics, has been read primarily by feminist literary critics interested in recovering women writers who were important in their own time but who have been forgotten by literary history. Isobel Armstrong's work represents one way to do such scholarship; she argues that Barbauld, like other Romantic women poets:

"The Mouse's Petition" from Barbauld's Poems (1772)

... neither consented to the idea of a special feminine discourse nor accepted an account of themselves as belonging to the realm of the nonrational. They engaged with two strategies to deal with the problem of affective discourse. First, they used the customary 'feminine' forms and languages, but they turned them to analytical account and used them to think with. Second, they challenged the male philosophical traditions that led to a demeaning discourse of feminine experience and remade those traditions.

In her subsequent analysis of "Inscription for an Ice-House" she points to Barbauld's challenge of Edmund Burke's characterization of the sublime and the beautiful and Adam Smith's economic theories in the Wealth of Nations as evidence for this interpretation.

The work of Marlon Ross and Anne K. Mellor represents a second way to apply the insights of feminist theory to the recovery of women writers. They argue that Barbauld and other Romantic women poets carved out a distinctive feminine voice in the literary sphere. As a woman and a Dissenter, Barbauld had a unique perspective on society, according to Ross, and it was this specific position that "obligated" her to publish social commentary. But, Ross points out, women were in a double bind: "they could choose to speak politics in nonpolitical modes, and thus risk greatly diminishing the clarity and pointedness of their political passion, or they could choose literary modes that were overtly political while trying to infuse them with a recognizable 'feminine' decorum, again risking a softening of their political agenda." Therefore Barbauld and other Romantic women poets often wrote "occasional poems". These poems had traditionally commented, often satirically, on national events, but by the end of the 18th century they were increasingly serious and personal. Women wrote sentimental poems, a style then much in vogue, on personal occasions such as the birth of a child and argued that in commenting on the small occurrences of daily life, they would establish a moral foundation for the nation. Scholars such as Ross and Mellor maintain that this adaptation of existing styles and genres is one way that female poets created a feminine Romanticism.

Political essays and poems

Barbauld's most significant political texts are: An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (1790), Epistle to William Wilberforce on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade (1791), Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation (1793), and Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812). As Harriet Guest explains, "the theme Barbauld's essays of the 1790s repeatedly return to is that of the constitution of the public as a religious, civic, and national body, and she is always concerned to emphasize the continuity between the rights of private individuals and those of the public defined in capaciously inclusive terms."

For three years, from 1787 to 1790, Dissenters had been attempting to convince Parliament to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts which limited the civil rights of Dissenters. After the repeal was voted down for the third time, Barbauld burst onto the public stage after "nine years of silence." Her highly charged pamphlet is written in a biting and sarcastic tone; it opens, "we thank you for the compliment paid the Dissenters, when you suppose that the moment they are eligible to places of power and profit, all such places will at once be filled with them." She argues that Dissenters deserve the same rights as any other men: "We claim it as men, we claim it as citizens, we claim it as good subjects." Moreover, she contends that it is precisely the isolation forced on Dissenters by others that marks them out, not anything inherent in their form of worship. Finally, appealing to British patriotism, she maintains that the French cannot be allowed to outstrip the English in liberty.

In the following year, 1791, after one of William Wilberforce's many efforts to suppress the slave trade failed to pass Parliament, Barbauld wrote her Epistle to William Wilberforce on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade. In it, she calls Britain to account for the sin of slavery; in harsh tones, she condemns the "Avarice" of a country which is content to allow its wealth and prosperity to be supported by the labor of enslaved human beings. Moreover, she draws a picture of the plantation mistress and master that reveals all of the failings of the "colonial enterprise: [an] indolent, voluptuous, monstrous woman" and a "degenerate, enfeebled man."

In 1793, when the British government called on the nation to fast in honor of the war, anti-war Dissenters such as Barbauld were left with a moral quandary: "obey the order and violate their consciences by praying for success in a war they disapproved? observe the Fast, but preach against the war? defy the Proclamation and refuse to take any part in the Fast?" Barbauld took this opportunity to write a sermon, Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation, on the moral responsibility of the individual; for her, each individual is responsible for the actions of the nation because he or she constitutes part of the nation. The essay attempts to determine what the proper role of the individual is in the state and while she argues that "insubordination" can undermine a government, she does admit that there are lines of "conscience" that one cannot cross in obeying a government. The text is a classic consideration of the idea of an "unjust war."

In Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812), written after Britain had been at war with France for a decade and was on the brink of losing the Napoleonic Wars, Barbauld presented her readers with a shocking Juvenalian satire; she argued that the British empire was waning and the American empire was waxing. It is to America that Britain's wealth and fame will now go, she contended, and Britain will become nothing but an empty ruin. She tied this decline directly to Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars:

And think'st thou, Britain, still to sit at ease,
An island Queen amidst thy subject seas,
While the vext billows, in their distant roar,
But soothe thy slumbers, and but kiss thy shore?
To sport in wars, while danger keeps aloof,
Thy grassy turf unbruised by hostile hoof?
So sing thy flatterers; but, Britain, know,
Thou who hast shared the guilt must share the woe.
Nor distant is the hour; low murmurs spread,
And whispered fears, creating what they dread;
Ruin, as with an earthquake shock, is here

This pessimistic view of the future was, not surprisingly, poorly received; "reviews, whether in liberal or conservative magazines, ranged from cautious to patronizingly negative to outrageously abusive." Barbauld, stunned by the reaction, retreated from the public eye. Even when Britain was on the verge of winning the war, Barbauld could not be joyous. She wrote to a friend: "I do not know how to rejoice at this victory, splendid as it is, over Buonaparte, when I consider the horrible waste of life, the mass of misery, which such gigantic combats must occasion."

Children's literature

Barbauld's Lessons for Children and Hymns in Prose for Children were a revolution in children's literature. For the first time, the needs of the child reader were seriously considered. Barbauld demanded that her books be printed in large type with wide margins so that children could easily read them and, even more important, she developed a style of "informal dialogue between parent and child" that would dominate children's literature for a generation. In Lessons for Children, a four-volume, age-adapted reading primer, Barbauld employs the concept of a mother teaching her son. More than likely, many of the events in these stories were inspired by Barbauld's experience of teaching her own son, Charles. But this series is far more than a way to acquire literacy—it also introduces the reader to "elements of society's symbol-systems and conceptual structures, inculcates an ethics, and encourages him to develop a certain kind of sensibility." Moreover, it exposes the child to the principles of "botany, zoology, numbers, change of state in chemistry ... the money system, the calendar, geography, meteorology, agriculture, political economy, geology, [and] astronomy." The series was relatively popular and Maria Edgeworth commented in the educational treatise that she co-authored with her father, Practical Education (1798), that it is "one of the best books for young people from seven to ten years old, that has yet appeared."

Lessons for Children and Hymns in Prose had, for children's books, an unprecedented impact; not only did they influence the poetry of William Blake and William Wordsworth, they were also used to teach several generations of school children. Children's literature scholar William McCarthy states, "Elizabeth Barrett Browning could still quote the opening lines of Lessons for Children at age thirty-nine." Although both Samuel Johnson and Charles James Fox ridiculed Barbauld's children's books and believed that she was wasting her talents, Barbauld herself believed that such writing was noble and she encouraged others to follow in her footsteps. As Betsy Rodgers, her biographer explains, "she gave prestige to the writing of juvenile literature, and by not lowering her standard of writing for children, she inspired others to write on a similar high standard." In fact, because of Barbauld, Sarah Trimmer and Hannah More were inspired to write for poor children as well as organize a large-scale Sunday School movement, Ellenor Fenn wrote and designed a series of readers and games for middle-class children and Richard Lovell Edgeworth began one of the first systematic studies of childhood development which would culminate in not only an educational treatise authored by Maria Edgeworth and himself but also in a large body of children's stories by Maria herself.

Barbauld also collaborated with her brother John Aikin on the six-volume series Evenings at Home (1793). It is a miscellany of stories, fables, dramas, poems, and dialogues. In many ways this series encapsulates the ideals of an Enlightenment education: "curiosity, observation, and reasoning." For example, the stories encourage learning science through hands-on activities; in "A Tea Lecture" the child learns that tea-making is "properly an operation of chemistry" and lessons on evaporation, and condensation follow. The text also emphasizes rationality; in "Things by Their Right Names," a child demands that his father tell him a story about "a bloody murder." The father does so, using some of the fictional tropes of fairy tales such as "once upon a time" but confounding his son with details such as the murderers all "had steel caps on." At the end, the child realizes his father has told him the story of a battle and his father comments "I do not know of any murders half so bloody." Both the tactic of defamiliarizing the world in order to force the reader to think about it rationally and the anti-war message of this tale are prevalent throughout Evenings at Home. In fact, Michelle Levy, a scholar of the period, has argued that the series encouraged readers to "become critical observers of and, where necessary, vocal resisters to authority." This resistance is learned and practiced in the home; according to Levy, "Evenings at Home ... makes the claim that social and political reform must begin in the family." It is families that are responsible for the nation's progress or regress.

According to Lucy Aikin, Barbauld's niece, Barbauld's contributions to Evenings at Home consisted of the following pieces: "The Young Mouse," "The Wasp and Bee," "Alfred, a drama," "Animals and Countries," "Canute's Reproof," "The Masque of Nature," "Things by their right Names," "The Goose and Horse," "On Manufactures," "The Flying-fish," "A Lesson in the Art of Distinguishing," "The Phoenix and Dove," "The Manufacture of Paper," "The Four Sisters," and "Live Dolls."

Editorial work

Barbauld edited several major works towards the end of her life, all of which helped to shape the canon as known today. First, in 1804 she edited Samuel Richardson's correspondence and wrote an extensive biographical introduction of the man who was perhaps the most influential novelist of the 18th century. Her "212-page essay on his life and works [was] the first substantial Richardson biography." The following year she edited Selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder, with a Preliminary Essay, a volume of essays emphasizing "wit," "manners" and "taste." In 1811, she assembled The Female Speaker, an anthology of literature chosen specifically for young girls. Because, according to Barbauld's philosophy, what one reads when one is young is formative, she carefully considered the "delicacy" of her female readers and "direct[ed] her choice to subjects more particularly appropriate to the duties, the employments, and the dispositions of the softer sex." The anthology is subdivided into sections such as "moral and didactic pieces" and "descriptive and pathetic pieces."

But it was Barbauld's fifty-volume series of The British Novelists published in 1810 with her large introductory essay on the history of the novel that allowed her to place her mark on literary history. It was "the first English edition to make comprehensive critical and historical claims" and was in every respect "a canon-making enterprise."In her insightful essay, Barbauld legitimizes the novel, then still a controversial genre, by connecting it to ancient Persian and Greek literature. For her, a good novel is "an epic in prose, with more of character and less (indeed in modern novels nothing) of the supernatural machinery." Barbauld maintains that novel-reading has a multiplicity of benefits; not only is it a "domestic pleasure" but it is also a way to "infus[e] principles and moral feelings" into the population Barbauld also provided introductions to each of the fifty authors included in the series.

Anna Laetitia Barbauld's Works:

Corsica: An Ode (1768)
Poems (1773)
Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose (1773)
Devotional Pieces, Compiled from the Psalms and the Book of the Job (1775)
Lessons for Children of Two to Three Years Old (1778)
Lessons for Children of Three Years Old (1778)
Lessons for Children from Three to Four Years Old (1779)
Hymns in Prose for Children (1781)
Lessons for Children, Part Three (1787)
Lessons for Children, Part Four (1788)
An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (1790)
An Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq. on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade (1791)
Civic Sermons to the People (1792)
Poems. A new edition, corrected. To which is added, An Epistle to William Wilberforce (1792)
Remarks on Mr. Gilbert Wakefield's Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship (1792)
Evenings at Home, or The Juvenile Budget Opened (1792-1796)
Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation (1793)
Reasons for National Penitence Recommended for the Fast Appointed on February 28, 1794 (1794)
Odes, by George Dyer, M. Robinson, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, J. Ogilvie, &c. (1800)
The Arts of Life (with John Aikin, 1802)
Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812)
The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1825)
A Legacy for Young Ladies, Consisting of Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Verse (1826)

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In Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812), written after Britain had been at war with France for a decade and was on the brink of losing the Napoleonic Wars, Barbauld presented her readers with a shocking Juvenalian satire; she argued that the British empire was waning and the American empire was waxing. It is to America that Britain's wealth and fame will now go, she contended, and Britain will become nothing but an empty ruin. She tied this decline directly to Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars:

And think'st thou, Britain, still to sit at ease,
An island Queen amidst thy subject seas,
While the vext billows, in their distant roar,
But soothe thy slumbers, and but kiss thy shore?
To sport in wars, while danger keeps aloof,
Thy grassy turf unbruised by hostile hoof?
So sing thy flatterers; but, Britain, know,
Thou who hast shared the guilt must share the woe.
Nor distant is the hour; low murmurs spread,
And whispered fears, creating what they dread;
Ruin, as with an earthquake shock, is here

This pessimistic view of the future was, not surprisingly, poorly received; "reviews, whether in liberal or conservative magazines, ranged from cautious to patronizingly negative to outrageously abusive." Barbauld, stunned by the reaction, retreated from the public eye. Even when Britain was on the verge of winning the war, Barbauld could not be joyous. She wrote to a friend: "I do not know how to rejoice at this victory, splendid as it is, over Buonaparte, when I consider the horrible waste of life, the mass of misery, which such gigantic combats must occasion.


Simply amazing person. She stood fast at a time when it was a great rarity for any woman--to stand on personal moral principles against the world or any nation that was ruled by a King...
For such either ruined the person financially, got them imprisoned or even executed...Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

The Horses of Achilles The Canon

When they saw Patroklos dead
—so brave and strong, so young—
the horses of Achilles began to weep;
their immortal nature was upset deeply
by this work of death they had to look at.
They reared their heads, tossed their long manes,
beat the ground with their hooves, and mourned
Patroklos, seeing him lifeless, destroyed,
now mere flesh only, his spirit gone,
defenseless, without breath,
turned back from life to the great Nothingness.

Zeus saw the tears of those immortal horses and felt sorry.
“At the wedding of Peleus,” he said,
“I should not have acted so thoughtlessly.
Better if we hadn’t given you as a gift,
my unhappy horses. What business did you have down there,
among pathetic human beings, the toys of fate.
You are free of death, you will not get old,
yet ephemeral disasters torment you.
Men have caught you up in their misery.”
But it was for the eternal disaster of death
that those two gallant horses shed their tears.

Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

(C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992)

- Original Greek Poem

- Translation by John Cavafy

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

I Am!
----------By John Clare
I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/john-clare


John Clare
Poet Details
1793–1864
John Clare was born into a peasant family in Helpston, England. Although he was the son of illiterate parents, Clare received some formal schooling. While earning money through such manual labor as ploughing and threshing, he published several volumes of poetry, including Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery. After suffering from delusions, Clare was admitted to an insane asylum where he spent the final 20 years of his life.



Poems, Articles & More
Discover this poet's context and related poetry, articles, and media.
Poems by John Clare

Autumn
The Dying Child
First Love
I Am!
I Hid my Love

More poems by John Clare

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Song
-------by Christina Rossetti

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:

Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:

And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

----------------------------------------------


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Rossetti


Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Christina Rossetti
Christina Rossetti 3.jpg
Born Christina Georgina Rossetti
5 December 1830
London, England
Died 29 December 1894 (aged 64)
London, England
Occupation Poet
Language English
Nationality British
Literary movement Pre-Raphaelite
Relatives Gaetano Polidori (maternal grandfather), Gabriele Rossetti (father), Frances Polidori (mother), John William Polidori (maternal uncle), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (brother), Maria Francesca Rossetti (sister), William Michael Rossetti (brother)

Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems. She is famous for writing Goblin Market and Remember, and the words of the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter.

Early life and education

Christina Rossetti was born in Charlotte Street (now 105 Hallam Street), London, to Gabriele Rossetti, a poet and a political exile from Vasto, Abruzzo, and Frances Polidori, the sister of Lord Byron's friend and physician, John William Polidori.[1] She had two brothers and a sister: Dante Gabriel became an influential artist and poet, and William Michael and Maria both became writers.[1] Christina, the youngest, was a lively child. She dictated her first story to her mother before she had learned to write.[2]

Rossetti was educated at home by her mother and father, who had her study religious works, classics, fairy tales and novels. Rossetti delighted in the works of Keats, Scott, Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis.[3] The influence of the work of Dante Alighieri, Petrarch and other Italian writers filled the home and would have a deep impact on Rossetti's later writing. Their home was open to visiting Italian scholars, artists and revolutionaries.[4] The family homes in Bloomsbury at 38 and later 50 Charlotte Street were within easy reach of Madam Tussauds, London Zoo and the newly opened Regent's Park, which she visited regularly; in contrast to her parents, Rossetti was very much a London child, and, it seems, a happy one.[3][4]
Portrait of Christina Rossetti, by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti

In the 1840s, her family faced severe financial difficulties due to the deterioration of her father's physical and mental health. In 1843, he was diagnosed with persistent bronchitis, possibly tuberculosis, and faced losing his sight. He gave up his teaching post at King's College and though he lived another 11 years, he suffered from depression and was never physically well again. Rossetti's mother began teaching to keep the family out of poverty and Maria became a live-in governess, a prospect that Christina Rossetti dreaded. At this time her brother William was working for the Excise Office and Gabriel was at art school, leaving Christina's life at home to become one of increasing isolation.[5] When she was 14, Rossetti suffered a nervous breakdown and left school. Bouts of depression and related illness followed. During this period she, her mother, and her sister became deeply interested in the Anglo-Catholic movement that developed in the Church of England. Religious devotion came to play a major role in Rossetti's life.

In her late teens, Rossetti became engaged to the painter James Collinson, the first of three suitors. He was, like her brothers Dante and William, one of the founding members of the avant-garde artistic group, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (founded 1848).[6] The engagement was broken in 1850 when he reverted to Catholicism. Later she became involved with the linguist Charles Cayley, but declined to marry him, also for religious reasons.[6] The third offer came from the painter John Brett, whom she also refused.[4]

Rossetti sat for several of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's most famous paintings. In 1848, she was the model for the Virgin Mary in his first completed oil painting, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, which was the first work to be inscribed with the initials 'PRB', later revealed to signify the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.[7] The following year she modelled again for his depiction of the Annunciation, Ecce Ancilla Domini. A line from her poem "Who shall deliver me?" inspired the famous painting by Fernand Khnopff called "I lock my door upon myself". In 1849 she became seriously ill again, suffering from depression and sometime around 1857 had a major religious crisis.[4]
Career
Illustration for the cover of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Rossetti began writing down and dating her poems from 1842, mostly imitating her favoured poets. From 1847 she began experimenting with verse forms such as sonnets, hymns and ballads; drawing narratives from the Bible, folk tales and the lives of the saints. Her early pieces often feature meditations on death and loss, in the Romantic tradition.[3] She published her first two poems ("Death's Chill Between" and "Heart's Chill Between"), which appeared in the Athenaeum, in 1848 when she was 18.[8][9] Under the pen-name "Ellen Alleyne", she contributed to the literary magazine, The Germ, published by the Pre-Raphaelites from January – April 1850 and edited by her brother William.[1] This marked the beginning of her public career.[10]

Her most famous collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems, appeared in 1862, when she was 31. It received widespread critical praise, establishing her as the foremost female poet of the time. Hopkins, Swinburne and Tennyson lauded her work.[1][10] and with the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1861 Rossetti was hailed as her natural successor.[10] The title poem is one of Rossetti's best known works. Although it is ostensibly about two sisters' misadventures with goblins, critics have interpreted the piece in a variety of ways: seeing it as an allegory about temptation and salvation; a commentary on Victorian gender roles and female agency; and a work about erotic desire and social redemption. Rossetti was a volunteer worker from 1859 to 1870 at the St. Mary Magdalene "house of charity" in Highgate, a refuge for former prostitutes and it is suggested Goblin Market may have been inspired by the "fallen women" she came to know.[11] There are parallels with Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner given both poems' religious themes of temptation, sin and redemption by vicarious suffering.[12] Swinburne in 1883 dedicated his collection A Century of Roundels to Rossetti as she had adopted his roundel form in a number of poems, as exampled by her Wife to Husband.[13] She was ambivalent about women's suffrage, but many scholars have identified feminist themes in her poetry.[14] She was opposed to slavery (in the American South), cruelty to animals (in the prevalent practice of animal experimentation), and the exploitation of girls in under-age prostitution.[15]

Song

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet:
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
“
”
1862[16]

Rossetti maintained a very large circle of friends and correspondents and continued to write and publish for the rest of her life, primarily focusing on devotional writing and children's poetry. In 1892, Rossetti wrote The Face of the Deep, a book of devotional prose, and oversaw the production of a new and enlarged edition of Sing-Song, published in 1893.[17]

In the later decades of her life, Rossetti suffered from Graves' Disease, diagnosed in 1872 suffering a nearly fatal attack in the early 1870s.[1][4] In 1893, she developed breast cancer and though the tumour was removed, she suffered a recurrence in September 1894. She died in Bloomsbury on 29 December 1894 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery.[17] The place where she died, in Torrington Square, is marked with a stone tablet.[18]
Recognition
Christina Rossetti
Feast 27 April[19][20]

Although Rossetti's popularity during her lifetime did not approach that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, her standing remained strong after her death. In the early 20th century Rossetti's popularity faded in the wake of Modernism. Scholars began to explore Freudian themes in her work, such as religious and sexual repression, reaching for personal, biographical interpretations of her poetry.[4] In the 1970s academics began to critique her work again, looking beyond the lyrical Romantic sweetness to her mastery of prosody and versification. Feminists held her as symbol of constrained female genius, placed as a leader of 19th-century poets.[1][4] Her work strongly influenced the work of such writers as Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Elizabeth Jennings, and Philip Larkin. Critic Basil de Selincourt stated that she was "all but our greatest woman poet … incomparably our greatest craftswoman … probably in the first twelve of the masters of English verse".[4][21]

Rossetti's Christmas poem "In the Bleak Midwinter" became widely known after her death when set as a Christmas carol first by Gustav Holst, and then by Harold Darke.[22] Her poem "Love Came Down at Christmas" (1885) has also been widely arranged as a carol.[23] Rossetti is honoured with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Anglican Church on 27 April.[19][20][24]

In 1918, John Ireland set eight of her poems from Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book to music in his song cycle Mother and Child.

The title of J.K. Rowling's novel The Cuckoo's Calling is based on a line in Rossetti's poem A Dirge.[citation needed]

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-fairies-9/


A Gravestone
- Poem by William Allingham


Far from the churchyard dig his grave,
On some green mound beside the wave;
To westward, sea and sky alone,
And sunsets. Put a mossy stone,
With mortal name and date, a harp
And bunch of wild flowers, carven sharp;
Then leave it free to winds that blow,
And patient mosses creeping; slow,
And wandering wings, and footsteps rare
Of human creature pausing there.
William Allingham

--------------------------------------------------------

The Fairies
------------ - Poem by William Allingham


Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather!

Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.

High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and gray
He's nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music
On cold starry nights
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought that she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag-leaves,
Watching till she wake.

By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and there.
If any man so daring
As dig them up in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather!
William Allingham



************************************************** ****************
A Burial-place
---------------William Allingham

WHERE those green mounds o’erlook the mingling Erne

And salt Atlantic, clay that walked as Man

A thousand years ago, Oster or Kerne,

May still repose: and thither, if ye can,

I pray ye, friends, to see my ashes borne

When I have measured out this mortal span;

After so many centuries have rolled,

Adding one brother to the sleepers old.



The silver salmon shooting up the fall,

Itself at once the arrow and the bow;

The shadow of the old quay’s weedy wall

Cast on the shining turbulence below;

The water-voice which ever seemed to call

Far off out of my childhood’s long-ago;

The gentle washing of the harbor wave;—

Be these the sounds and sights around my grave.



Soothed also with thy friendly beck, my town,

And near the square gray tower, within whose shade

I might not with my fathers lay me down:

Whilst, by the wide heavens changefully arrayed,

The purple mountains its horizon crown;

And westward ’tween low hummocks is displayed

In lightsome hours, the level pale blue sea,

With sails upon it, creeping silently:



Or, other time, beyond that tawny sand,

And ocean glooming underneath the shroud

Drawn thick athwart it by tempestuous hand;

When like a mighty fire the bar roars loud,

As though the whole sea came to whelm the land,—

The gull flies white against the stormy cloud,

And in the weather-gleam the breakers mark

A ghastly line upon the waters dark.



A green, unfading quilt above be spread,

And freely round let all the breezes blow;

May children play beside the breathless bed,

Holiday lasses by the cliff-edge go;

And manly sports upon the sward be sped,

And cheerful boats beneath the headland row.

And be the thought, if any rise, of me,

What happy soul might choose that thought to be.





************************************************** ************************************************** *

William Allingham

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Allingham
William Allingham Photo.jpg
Born 19 March 1824
Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland
Died 18 November 1889 (aged 65)
Hampstead, London
Nationality Irish[a]
Occupation poet, scholar
Spouse(s) Helen Paterson Allingham (1874–1889)

William Allingham (19 March 1824 – 18 November 1889) was an Irish poet, diarist and editor. He wrote several volumes of lyric verse, and his poem 'The Faeries' was much anthologised; but he is better known for his posthumously published Diary,[1] in which he records his lively encounters with Tennyson, Carlyle and other writers and artists. His wife, Helen Allingham, was a well-known water-colorist and illustrator.[2]

Contents

1 Biography
2 Assessment and influence
3 See also
4 Notes
5 References
6 Further reading
7 External links

Biography

William Allingham was born on 19 March 1824 in the little port of Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland, United Kingdom, and was the son of the manager of a local bank who was of English descent.[3] His younger brothers and sisters were Catherine (b. 1826), John (b. 1827), Jane (b. 1829), Edward (b. 1831; who lived only a few months) and a still-born brother (b. 1833). During his childhood his parents moved twice within the town, where the boy enjoyed the country sights and gardens, learned to paint and listened to his mother's piano-playing. When he was nine, his mother died.[4]

He obtained a post in the custom-house of his native town, and held several similar posts in Ireland and England until 1870. During this period were published his Poems (1850; which included his well-known poem, 'The Fairies') and Day and Night Songs (1855; illustrated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others). (Rossetti's Letters to Allingham (1854–1870), edited by Dr. Birkbeck Hill, would be published in 1897.) Lawrence Bloomfield in Ireland, his most ambitious, though not his most successful work, a narrative poem illustrative of Irish social questions, appeared in 1864. He also edited The Ballad Book for the Golden Treasury series in 1864, and Fifty Modern Poems in 1865.

In April 1870 Allingham retired from the customs service, moved to London and became sub-editor of Fraser's Magazine, eventually becoming editor in succession to James Froude in June 1874 – a post he would hold till 1879.[5] On 22 August 1874 he married the illustrator, Helen Paterson, who was twenty-four years younger than he. His wife gave up her work as an illustrator and would become well known under her married name as a water-colour painter. At first the couple lived in London, at 12 Trafalgar Square, Chelsea, near Allingham's friend, Thomas Carlyle, and it was there that they had their first two children – Gerald Carlyle (b. 1875 November) and Eva Margaret (b. 1877 February). In 1877 appeared Allingham's Songs, Poems and Ballads. In 1881, after the death of Carlyle, the Allinghams moved to Sandhills near Witley in Surrey, where their third child, Henry William, was born in 1882. At this period Allingham published Evil May Day (1883), Blackberries (1884) and Irish Songs and Poems (1887).

In 1888, because of William's declining health, they moved back to the capital, to the heights of Hampstead village. But in 1889, on 18 November, William died at Hampstead. According to his wishes he was cremated. His ashes are interred at St. Anne's church in his native Ballyshannon.

Posthumously Allingham's Varieties in Prose was published in 1893. William Allingham A Diary, edited by Mrs Helen Allingham and D. Radford, was published in 1907. It contains Allingham's reminiscences of Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle and other writers and artists.
Assessment and influence

Working on an un-ostentatious scale, Allingham produced much lyrical and descriptive poetry, and the best of his pieces are thoroughly national in spirit and local colouring. His verse is clear, fresh, and graceful. His best-known poem remains his early work, "The Faeries".[6]

Allingham had a substantial influence on W. B. Yeats;[7] while the Ulster poet John Hewitt felt Allingham's impact keenly, and attempted to revive his reputation by editing, and writing an introduction to, The Poems of William Allingham (Oxford University Press/ Dolmen Press, 1967). Allingham's wide-ranging anthology of poetry, Nightingale Valley (1862) was to be the inspiration for the 1923 collection Come Hither by Walter de la Mare.[8]

We daren't go a-hunting/For fear of little men... was quoted by the character of The Tinker near the beginning of the movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, as well as in Mike Mignola's comic book short story Hellboy: The Corpse, plus the 1973 horror film Don't Look in the Basement. Several lines of the poem are quoted by Henry Flyte, a character in issue No. 65 of the Supergirl comic book, August 2011. This same poem was quoted in Andre Norton's 1990 science fiction novel Dare To Go A-Hunting (ISBN 0-812-54712-8).

Up the Airy Mountain is the title of a short story by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald; while the working title of Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men was "For Fear of Little Men".

The Allingham Arms Hotel in Bundoran, Co. Donegal is named after him.[9]
See also

Celtic Revival
Leigh Hunt
Thomas Moore

Notes

Ireland, was within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland during his lifespan.

References

William Allingham: a Diary; edited by H. Allingham and D. Radford (1907 and reprints)
I. Ousby ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (1995) p. 18
D. Daiches ed., The Penguin Companion to Literature 1 (1971) p. 19
William Allingham A Diary Edited by H. Allingham and D. Radford (1907)
I. Ousby ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (1995) p. 18
The Fairies, multimedia eBook.
D. Daiches ed., The Penguin Companion to Literature 1 (1971) p. 19
T Whistler, Imagination of the Heart (1993) p. 322

"Allingham Arms Hotel | Bundoran". Allinghamarmshotel.ie. 2013-11-21. Retrieved 2014-04-01.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Allingham, William". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Further reading

M. McClure, 'Biographical Note: the Allinghams of Ballyshannon', in Donegal Annual; 52 (2000), p. 87–89
M. S. Lasner, 'William Allingham. Some Uncollected Authors LVI Part 1 (2)', in Book Collector; 39 (1991 summer, autumn), p. 174–204 and 321–349
S. A. Husni, William Allingham An Annotated Bibliography (1989)
A. Warner, 'William Allingham Bibliographical Survey', in Irish Book Lore; 2 (1976), p. 303–307
P. M. England, 'The Poetry of William Allingham' [M.A. thesis, Birmingham University] (1976)
A. Warner, William Allingham (1975)
H. Shields, 'William Allingham and folk song', in Hermathena; 117 (1974), p. 23–36
A. Warner, William Allingham An Introduction (1971)
W.I.P. McDonough, 'The Life and Work of William Allingham' [PhD thesis, Trinity College, Dublin] (1952)
P.S. O'Hegarty, 'A Bibliography of William Allingham', in Dublin Magazine (1945 Jan–Mar and July–September)
J. L. Donaghy, 'William Allingham', in Dublin Magazine; 20:2 (1945), p. 34–38
H. Knopf, 'William Allingham und seine Dichtung im Lichte der irischen Freheitsbewegung' [Dissertation] (1928. Biel)
Letters to William Allingham, ed. H. Allingham (1911)
William Allingham, William Allingham A Diary, ed. H. Allingham and D. Radford (1907)
D. G. Rossetti, The Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham 1854–1870, ed. G.B.N. Hill (1897)

External links
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
William Allingham
Wikiquote has quotations related to: William Allingham

"Archival material relating to William Allingham". UK National Archives.
Works by William Allingham at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about William Allingham at Internet Archive
Works by William Allingham at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
William Allingham at University of Toronto Libraries
William Allingham at Library of Congress Authorities, with 41 catalogue records

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Song: Go and catch a falling star
-------------------------------By John Donne
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

A Night-Piece On Death
-------------------by Thomas Parnell


By the blue taper's trembling light,
No more I waste the wakeful night,
Intent with endless view to pore
The schoolmen and the sages o'er:
Their books from wisdom widely stray,
Or point at best the longest way.
I'll seek a readier path, and go
Where wisdom's surely taught below.

How deep yon azure dyes the sky!
Where orbs of gold unnumber'd lie,
While through their ranks in silver pride
The nether crescent seems to glide!
The slumb'ring breeze forgets to breathe,
The lake is smooth and clear beneath,
Where once again the spangled show
Descends to meet our eyes below.
The grounds which on the right aspire,
In dimness from the view retire:
The left presents a place of graves,
Whose wall the silent water laves.
That steeple guides thy doubtful sight
Among the livid gleams of night.
There pass with melancholy state,
By all the solemn heaps of fate,
And think, as softly-sad you tread
Above the venerable dead,
"Time was, like thee they life possest,
And time shall be, that thou shalt rest."

Those graves, with bending osier bound,
That nameless heave the crumpled ground,
Quick to the glancing thought disclose,
Where toil and poverty repose.

The flat smooth stones that bear a name,
The chisel's slender help to fame,
(Which ere our set of friends decay
Their frequent steps may wear away,)
A middle race of mortals own,
Men, half ambitious, all unknown.

The marble tombs that rise on high,
Whose dead in vaulted arches lie,
Whose pillars swell with sculptur'd stones,
Arms, angels, epitaphs, and bones,
These (all the poor remains of state)
Adorn the rich, or praise the great;
Who, while on earth in fame they live,
Are senseless of the fame they give.

Ha! while I gaze, pale Cynthia fades,
The bursting earth unveils the shades!
All slow, and wan, and wrapp'd with shrouds
They rise in visionary crowds,
And all with sober accent cry,
"Think, mortal, what it is to die."

Now from yon black and fun'ral yew,
That bathes the charnel-house with dew,
Methinks I hear a voice begin;
(Ye ravens, cease your croaking din;
Ye tolling clocks, no time resound
O'er the long lake and midnight ground)
It sends a peal of hollow groans,
Thus speaking from among the bones.

"When men my scythe and darts supply,
How great a king of fears am I!
They view me like the last of things:
They make, and then they dread, my stings.
Fools! if you less provok'd your fears,
No more my spectre form appears.
Death's but a path that must be trod,
If man would ever pass to God;
A port of calms, a state of ease
From the rough rage of swelling seas.

"Why then thy flowing sable stoles,
Deep pendant cypress, mourning poles,
Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds,
Long palls, drawn hearses, cover'd steeds,
And plumes of black, that, as they tread,
Nod o'er the scutcheons of the dead?

"Nor can the parted body know,
Nor wants the soul, these forms of woe.
As men who long in prison dwell,
With lamps that glimmer round the cell,
Whene'er their suff'ring years are run,
Spring forth to greet the glitt'ring sun:
Such joy though far transcending sense,
Have pious souls at parting hence.
On earth, and in the body plac'd,
A few, and evil years they waste;
But when their chains are cast aside,
See the glad scene unfolding wide,
Clap the glad wing, and tow'r away,
And mingle with the blaze of day."

Thomas Parnell

----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Parnell

Thomas Parnell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the poet. For the scientist, see Thomas Parnell (scientist).
Thomas Parnell

Thomas Parnell (11 September 1679 – 24 October 1718) was an Anglo-Irish poet and clergyman who was a friend of both Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift.

He was the son of Thomas Parnell of Maryborough, Queen's County (now Port Laoise, County Laoise), a prosperous landowner who had been a loyal supporter of Cromwell during the English Civil War and moved to Ireland after the restoration of the monarchy. Thomas was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and collated archdeacon of Clogher in 1705.[1]

He however spent much of his time in London, where he participated with Pope, Swift and others in the Scriblerus Club, contributing to The Spectator and aiding Pope in his translation of The Iliad. He was also one of the so-called "Graveyard poets": his 'A Night-Piece on Death,' widely considered the first "Graveyard School" poem, was published posthumously in Poems on Several Occasions, collected and edited by Alexander Pope and is thought by some scholars to have been published in December 1721 (although dated in 1722 on its title page, the year accepted by The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature;[2] see 1721 in poetry, 1722 in poetry). It is said of his poetry 'it was in keeping with his character, easy and pleasing, enunciating the common places with felicity and grace.[3]

He died in Chester in 1718 on his way home to Ireland. His wife and children having died, his Laoise estate passed to his brother John, a judge and MP in the Irish House of Commons and the ancestor of Charles Stewart Parnell.[1]

Oliver Goldsmith wrote a biography of Parnell [4] which often accompanied later editions of Parnell's works.
Works

Essay on the Different Stiles of Poetry (1713)
Battle of the Frogs and Mice (1717 translation in heroic couplets of a comic epic then attributed to Homer)

An example of his poetry is the opening stanza of his poem The Hermit [1]

Far in the wild, unknown to public view,
From youth to age a revered hermit grew.
The moss his bed, the cave his humble cell,
His food the fruits, his drink the crystal well.
Remote from man with God he passed his days
Prayer all his business, all his pleasure, praise.

References

"Anglo-Irish Families". Irish Midlands Ancestry. Retrieved 10 October 2013.
Cox, Michael, editor, The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature, Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-860634-6
Gilfillan, George , dissertation in The Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray and Smollet 1855, kindle ebook 1855 ASIN B004TQHGGE

Goldsmith, Oliver The Life of Thomas Parnell ISBN 978-1-171-10588-6

R. Woodman, Thomas Parnell (1985). ISBN 978-0-8057-6883-1

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

When I Was Thine

"Ricordati da me quand 'ero teco." Tuscan Rispetto.

THE sullen rain breaks on the convent window,
The distant chanting dies upon mine ears.
—Soon comes the morn for which my soul hath languished,
For which my soul hath yearned these many years;
Forget of me this life which I resign,
Think of me in the days when I was thine.

Forget the paths my weary feet have travelled,
The thorns and stones that pierced them as I went;
These later days of prayer and scourge and penance,
These hours of anguish now so nearly spent.
Forget I left thy life for life divine,
Think of me in the days when I was thine.

Forget the rigid brow as thou wilt see it,
The folded eyelids, and the quiet mouth.
Think how my eyes grew brighter at thy coming,
Think of those fervid noontides in the South.
Think when my kisses made life half divine,
Think of me in the days when I was thine.

Forget this nearer past, I do adjure thee,
Remember only what was long ago.
Think when our love was fire unquenched by ashes,
Think of our Spring, and not this Winter's snow.
Forget me as I lie, past speech or sign.
Think of me in the days when I was thine

Anne Reeve Aldrich (1866-1892)

-------------------------------------
-------------------------------------


http://www.thehypertexts.com/Anne%20Reeve%20Aldrich%20American%20Sappho%20Poet% 20Poetry%20Picture%20Bio.htm

Anne Reeve Aldrich: American Sappho

Anne Reeve Aldrich was an American poet and novelist. She was born April 25, 1866, in New York and died June 22, 1892, also in New York. Her books include The Rose of Flame (1889), The Feet of Love (1890), Nadine and Other Poems (1893), A Village Ophelia and Other Stories (1899) and Songs about Life, Love, and Death (1892). She wrote a number of poems in which she seemed to prophesy an early death for herself, then died at the tender age of 26. According to the preface of Songs about Life, Love, and Death, which was published posthumously, at the time of her death she was so weak that she couldn’t lift her pen, and thus had to dictate her last poem, “Death at Daybreak.” Her grand-uncle was the poet James Aldrich. She published her first volume of poetry, The Rose of Flame in 1889; it was not well received (critics cited its "unrestrained expression"). She was also said to have written “erotic” poems. But she persevered, publishing a novel, The Feet of Love, in 1890, and it seems she was working on her final volume of poems even on her deathbed.

SONGS ABOUT LIFE, LOVE, AND DEATH: “Passion and agony, the one because of the other, are the keys of Anne Reeve Aldric

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

I have now found a rival to the magnificent talent of Emily Dickinson...
Anne Reeve Aldrich, simply floors me with her magnificence imagry, flow and depth in her beautiful poems.. ...-Tyr



http://www.thehypertexts.com/Anne%20Reeve%20Aldrich%20American%20Sappho%20Poet% 20Poetry%20Picture%20Bio.htm

Anne Reeve Aldrich: American Sappho

Anne Reeve Aldrich was an American poet and novelist. She was born April 25, 1866, in New York and died June 22, 1892, also in New York. Her books include The Rose of Flame (1889), The Feet of Love (1890), Nadine and Other Poems (1893), A Village Ophelia and Other Stories (1899) and Songs about Life, Love, and Death (1892). She wrote a number of poems in which she seemed to prophesy an early death for herself, then died at the tender age of 26. According to the preface of Songs about Life, Love, and Death, which was published posthumously, at the time of her death she was so weak that she couldn’t lift her pen, and thus had to dictate her last poem, “Death at Daybreak.” Her grand-uncle was the poet James Aldrich. She published her first volume of poetry, The Rose of Flame in 1889; it was not well received (critics cited its "unrestrained expression"). She was also said to have written “erotic” poems. But she persevered, publishing a novel, The Feet of Love, in 1890, and it seems she was working on her final volume of poems even on her deathbed.

SONGS ABOUT LIFE, LOVE, AND DEATH: “Passion and agony, the one because of the other, are the keys of Anne Reeve Aldrich's nature and verse. This woman is of the few who nearest share the moods of Sappho and her talents.”—Springfield Republican, circa 1892, as quoted in The Book Buyer, volume X, no. 3, April, 1893





Souvenirs

Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

Where is the glove that I gave to him,
Perfumed and warm from my arm that night?
And where is the rose that another stole
When the land was flooded with June moonlight,
And the satin slipper I wore?—Alack,
Some one had that—it was wrong, I fear.
Where are these souvenirs today?
But where are the snows of yesteryear?

The glove was burned at his next love's prayer,
And the rose was lost in the mire of the street;
And the satin slipper he tossed away,
For his jealous bride had not fairy feet.
Give what you will, but know, mesdames,
For a day alone are your favors dear.
Be sure for the next fair woman's sake
They will go—like the snows of yesteryear.



A Little Parable

I made the cross myself whose weight
Was later laid on me.
This thought is torture as I toil
Up life’s steep Calvary.

To think mine own hands drove the nails!
I sang a merry song,
And chose the heaviest wood I had
To build it firm and strong.

If I had guessed—if I had dreamed
Its weight was meant for me,
I should have made a lighter cross
To bear up Calvary!



My Guerdon

I stood where gifts were showered on men from Heaven,
And some had honors and the joy thereof;
And some received with solemn, radiant faces
The gift of love.

The green I saw of bay-leaves, and of laurel,
Of gold the gleam.
A voice spoke to me, standing empty-handed,
"For thee a dream."

Forbear to pity, ye who richly laden
Forth from the place of Heaven s bounty went;
Who marvel that I smile, my hands still empty
I am content.

Ye cannot guess how dowered beyond the measure
Of your receiving to myself I seem.
Lonely and cold, I yet pass on enraptured—
I have my dream.



The Prayer of Dolores

Madrid, 1888

Beneath the grass, I hear them say,
Live loathsome things that hate the day,—
Strange crawling shapes with blinded eyes,
Whose very image terrifies.
I dread not these: make deep my bed
With good black mold round heart and head.
But oh! the fear a Thought may creep
Down from the world to where I sleep,
Pierce through the earth to heart and brain
And coil there, in its home again!
Father, thou hast the good God’s ear, —
And when priests speak He bends to hear,—
Say, " Lord, this woman of Madrid
Begs, when herself in earth is hid,
Her soul s guilt paid for, grain by grain,
In throes of purgatorial pain,
That Thou her soul wouldst clean destroy;
She hath no wish for heavenly joy,

But just to be dissolved to Naught,
Beyond the reach of any thought.
Some sinners dare to beg for bliss,
I know my place, and ask but this:
That He, who made will then unmake
My soul, for His sweet mercy s sake!"



Fraternity

I ask not how thy suffering came,
Or if by sin, or if by shame,
Or if by Fate’s capricious rulings:
To my large pity all’s the same.

Come close and lean against a heart
Eaten by pain and stung by smart;
It is enough if thou hast suffered,—
Brother or sister then thou art.

We will not speak of what we know,
Rehearse the pang, nor count the throe,
Nor ask what agony admitted
Thee to the Brotherhood of Woe.

But in our anguish-darkened land
Let us draw close, and clasp the hand;
Our whispered password holds assuagement,—
The solemn “Yea, I understand!”



Separation

If it were land, oh, weary feet could travel,
If it were sea, a ship might cleave the wave,
If it were Death, sad Love could look to heaven.
And see through tears the sunlight on the grave.
Not land, or sea. or death keeps us apart
But only thou, oh unforgiving Heart.

If it were land, through piercing thorns I'd travel.
If it were sea, I'd cross to thee, or die.
If it were Death, I'd tear Life's veil asunder
That I might see thee with a clearer eye.
Ah none of these could keep our souls apart —
Forget, forgive, oh unforgiving Heart.



The End

Do you recall that little room
Close blinded from the searching sun,
So dim, my blossoms dreamed of dusk?
And shut their petals one by one.
And then a certain crimson eve,
The death of day upon the tide;
How all its blood spread on the waves,
And stained the waters far and wide.
Ah, you forget;
But I remember yet.

When I awake in middle night,
And stretch warm hands to touch your face,
There is no chance that I shall find
Aught but your chill and empty place.
I have no bitter word to say,
The Past is worth this anguish sore,
—But mouth to mouth, and heart to heart,
No more on earth, O God, no more!
For Love is dead;
Would 't were I, instead.



In Extremis

The sacred tapers flickered fair,
The priest has gone with Host and prayer;
I heard the "Nunc Dimittis" said,
Not with the heart, but with the head.

Though I, the while, lay dying near,
This was all my heart could hear:
"I love thee, lay thy lips on mine,
Thy kisses turn my head like wine."

And this was all my heart could see,
Instead of the cross held out to me,
That well-known small and scented room,
Made sweetly dusk by curtain's gloom.

And this was all my heart could feel,
Spite of these pains like stabbing steel,
The throbbing pulses of thy breast,
Where, weary, I was wont to rest.

O what shall come to me, alas!
Whose soul so soon in death must pass
The soul too wholly thine to dwell
On hope of heaven, or dread of hell.

If heaven, that awful glassy sea,
May still reflect some memory.
If hell, not all eternal fire,
Can quite burn out the old desire.

Instead of name of pitying saint
Breathed as the passing soul's last plaint,
Thy name will be my latest breath.
Who wast my life, who art my death.



Love, the Destroyer

Love is a Fire;
Nor Shame, nor Pride can well withstand Desire.
"For what are they," we cry, "that they should dare
To keep, O Love, the haughty look they wear?
Nay, burn the victims, O thou sacred Fire,
That with their death thou mayst but flame the higher.
Let them feel once the fierceness of thy breath,
And make thee still more beauteous with their death."

Love is a Fire;
But ah, how short-lived is the flame Desire!
Love, having burnt whatever once we cherished,
And blackened all things else, itself hath perished.
And now alone in gathering night we stand,
Ashes and ruin stretch on either hand.
Yet while we mourn, our sad hearts whisper low:
"We served the mightiest God that man can know."



Outer Darkness

Where shall I look for help? Our gracious God
Pities all those who weep for sin ingrain,
And potent is the Kingly Victim's blood
To wash repented guilt, and leave no stain.

But ah, what hope for me in Heaven above,
What consolation left beneath the sun,
In those black hours when my lost soul laments
Because it left that one sweet sin undone?



A Return to the Valley

Behold me at thy feet. Alone I climbed
And wandered through the mountain land of Art
Amid God's awful snows; the keen thin air
Pierced through my brain, and chilled me at the heart.

Behold me at thy feet. A famished heart
Does ill to travel by such paths as these.
Better for me to seek this vale once more,
Better for me to crouch here at thy knees.

Behold me at thy feet. And thou dost stretch
No tender hand to raise me to thy breast.
Ah, 't is a foolish bird that hopes to find
Untouched, in leafless hedge, its last year's nest.

I will depart, and seek again the heights,
Above hot love, or wholesome hate of foes.
But from this day my pilgrim feet must leave
A track of blood across the awful snows.



A Song About Singing

O nightingale, the poet's bird,
A kinsman dear thou art,
Who never sings so well as when
The rose-thorns bruise his heart.

But since thy agony can make
A listening world so blest,
Be sure it cares but little for
Thy wounded, bleeding breast!



April—and Dying

Green blood fresh pulsing through the trees,
Blacks buds, that sun and shower distend;
All other things begin anew,
But I must end.

Warm sunlight on faint-colored sward,
Warm fragrance in the breezes’ breath;
For other things art heat and life,
For me is death.



Death at Daybreak

I shall go out when the light comes in—
There lie my cast-off form and face;
I shall pass Dawn on her way to earth,
As I seek for a path through space.

I shall go out when the light comes in;
Would I might take one ray with me!
It is blackest night between the worlds,
And how is a soul to see?



In Conclusion

O Love, take these my songs, made for thy joy,
And speak one tender word of them to me.
And other praise or blame that word will drown
As voice of brook is drowned by sounding sea.

Like all my joys and woes, my garnered verse
To lay at thy dear feet I haste to bring.
Be gracious. Love, remembering that the mouth
Touched by thine own, could scarcely fail to sing!



A Draught

A bitter cup you offer me,
Though roses hide its brim with red.
Yet since your strong hand proffers it,
I shall not spurn, but drink instead.

And when the draught has done its work.
And I lie low, who now stand high.
You, who encompassed this, will pass
With loathing and averted eye.

Yet none the less I humbly bow.
And drain the cup on bended knee.
That holds within its hollow gold
Your pleasure, and your scorn of me.



Recollection

How can it be that I forget
The way he phrased my doom,
When I recall the arabesques
That carpeted the room?

How can it be that I forget
His look and mein that hour,
When I recall I wore a rose,
And still can smell the flower?

How can it be that I forget
Those words that were his last,
When I recall the tune a man
Was whistling as he passed?

These things are what we keep from life's
Supremest joy or pain;
For memory locks her chaff in bins
And throws away the grain.



Suppose

How sad if, by some strange new law,
All kisses scarred!
For she who is most beautiful
Would be most marred.

And we might be surprised to see
Some lovely wife
Smooth-visaged, while a seeming prude
Was marked for life.



In November

Brown earth-line meets gray heaven,
And all the land looks sad;
But Love’s the little leaven
That works the whole world glad.
Sigh, bitter win; lower, frore clouds of gray:
My Love and I are living now in May!



Love's Change

I went to dig a grave for Love,
But the earth was so stiff and cold
That, though I stove through the bitter night,
I could not break the mould.

And I said: 'Must he lie in my house in state,
And stay in his wonted place?
Must I have him with me another day,
With that awful change in his face?'



Music Of Hungary

My body answers you, my blood
Leaps at your maddening, piercing call
The fierce notes startle, and the veil
Of this dull present seems to fall.
My soul responds to that long cry;
It wants its country, Hungary!
Not mine by birth. Yet have I not
Some strain of that old Magyar race?
Else why the secret stir of sense
At sight of swarthy Tzigane face,
That warns me: 'Lo, thy kinsmen nigh.'
All's dear that tastes of Hungary.

Once more, O let me hear once more
The passion and barbaric rage!
Let me forget my exile here
In this mild land, in this mild age;
Once more that unrestrained wild cry
That takes me to my Hungary!

They listen with approving smile,
But I, O God, I want my home!
I want the Tzigane tongue, the dance,
The nights in tents, the days to roam,
O music, O fierce life and free
God made my soul for Hungary!



The Rose of Flame

Look at this tangled snare of undergrowth,
These low-branched trees that darken all below;
Drink in the hot scent of this noontide air,
And hear, far off, some distant river flow,
Lamenting ever till it finds the sea.
New Life, new World, what's Shame to thee and me ?

Let us slay Shame; we shall forget his grave
Locked in the rapture of our lone embrace.
Yet what if there should rise, as once of old,
New wonder of this new, yet ancient place:
An angel, with a whirling sword of flame,
To drive us forth forever in God's name!



A Wanderer

The snows lie thick around his door,
That door made fast by bar and lock.
He will not heed thee, trembling, chilled;
He will not hear thy piteous knock.

Poor wandering Heart, canst thou not see
There is no welcome here for thee?
The air is numb with frost and night.
O wait no longer in the snow,

For lo, from yonder latticed pane
Faint music and the fire-light's glow;
He hath another guest in state,
And thou, poor Heart, thou art too late!



Lent

Ah, the road is a weary road
That leads one on to God,
And all too swift the eager race
To suit a lagging pace,
And far, far distant looks the goal
To the most patient soul.
So I forsook the sharp set road,
And walked where pleasant herbs were sowed.
I flung the sandals from tired feet,
And strayed where honeyed flowers grew sweet,
Nor strained tense nerves, nor onward pressed,
But made the goal his breast.
His circling arms my Heaven I made,
And, save to him, no more I prayed.
So for my sin I paid the price
Of endless joys of Paradise.
Good fellow-pilgrims, go your way.
For me 't is all in vain to pray.
I weep, when o'er the windy track
Your victors' hymns float echoing back,
But still I know, with eyelids wet,
I could return, but not forget.



Dreams

So still I lay within his arms
He dreamed I was asleep,
Across my lips I felt his breath
Like burning breezes creep.

I felt his watchful, searching gaze
Though closed eyes cannot see;
I felt his warm and tender grasp
More closely prison me.

The waking dream was all too sweet
For me to wish to sleep.
I was too far beyond Earth's woes
To speak, or smile, or weep.

How after this, could I endure
The troublous times of Age and Tears,
To sit and wait for Death to dawn
Across the midnight of my years!

Love will not stay, though we entreat;
Death will not come at call.
Ah, to return to life and grief!
Ah, having risen to fall!

I felt his mouth burn on my own;
I raised my eyes to his eyes' deep.
He thought his kiss had wakened me,
—He dreamed I was asleep!



Under the Rose

He moved with trembling fingers
From my throat, the band of red,
And a band of burning kisses
His lips set there instead.

Then he tied again the ribbon.
"I will hide them, Love," said he,
"And the secret of thy necklace
None shall know, save thee and me."

It was just a foolish fancy,
But from that day to this,
I wore the crimson ribbon
To hide my lover's kiss.

He has gone, and love is over,
But this blade within my hand,
Still shall hide our secret kisses
With another crimson band.



Immolation

Take her, and lay her head upon thy breast,
And be thou blest beyond thy heart's desire;
And as the star that ushers in the dawn
Fades from the sight in morning's glow and fire,

So, having heralded thy break of day,
'T is Nature's law that I no longer stay.
A path was I that led thee to thy goal;
Forget the path, since now the goal is won.

That was its proper place in all the land,
And it was made to set thy feet upon.
Its blessing is that all its course did tend
To bring thee to thy journey's happy end.



Arcadia

Sunlight on us, Love;
Not a shadow comes between.
Midway of the field we stand,
Heart in heart and hand in hand
And all the land is green.

Look around thee, Love,
Naught but meadows shining fair,
Save, as far as eye can see,
Long, low hills, clothed tenderly
By the veils of mist they wear.

But below us, Love,
Hidden by the meadow's rise,
Whispers brokenly a stream
Like a voice heard in a dream;
Clear its current as thine eyes.

Thou must linger, Love,
For a little on this side;
Both its banks are soft with moss.
Grieve not, Dear, that I shall cross,
For but shallow is its tide.

Canst not see it, Love?
Nay, Heart's Dearest, nor can I;
But in pauses to mine ear
Comes the sound thou canst not hear,
Filling silence with a sigh.

Smile again, dear Love,
Brighter day was never seen.
Pull these blossoms for thy hair;
Spring-time's joy is in the air,
And all the land is green.



Two Partings

He said good-bye with laughing eyes,
Too careless of me to be wise
And see I grieved, since he must go.
With weary tears, through night and day,
In thought, I follow on his way,
For he must go, and I must stay.
—I dread the bitter winds that blow.

Now time, at last, brings near a day
When I must go, and he must stay,
And I, like him, shall smile to go.
And when he says good-bye to me,
Although he weep, I shall not see,
But if in thoughts he follow me,
—He need not dread the winds that blow.



Rose Song

Plant, above my lifeless heart
Crimson roses, red as blood.
As if the love, pent there so long
Were pouring forth its flood.

Then, through them, my heart may tell,
Its Past of Love and Grief,
And I shall feel them grow from it,
And know a vague relief.

Through rotting shroud shall feel their roots,
And unto them myself shall grow,
And when I blossom at her feet,
She, on that day, shall know!



A New Year

THY bride is waiting in the kirk,
The wedding wine waits in thy hall.
Adieu.
For me, the stream's cold tide to drink,
Where once we lingered at its brink,
The kirk-yard waits thy Summer's work.
Adieu.

For her, the sweetest flowers that grow,
For me, the faded Autumn grass,
Adieu.
For me, the dead leaves' tarnished gold.
Ah, linger not, for once of old,
Love, thou did'st stay when I said "Go!"
Adieu.

For her, the pearl wrought marriage-dress,
The choir, the Mass, the ring of gold.
Adieu.
For me, the chants that night-birds sing.
My hand in thine, I asked no ring,
Nor blessed by love, the Church to bless.
Adieu.

For her, the wedding sheets are spread,
For her, the cup of Love and Life.
Adieu.
For me, the cup of Love and Death.
Then earth to earth, as the priest saith,
My bed of love, and my last bed.
Adieu.



A Fete-Day

They brought me snowy roses,
A picture of my Saint,
A little dove, whose tender note
Was like a virgin's plaint.

But you? You brought fierce kisses
That caught my heart in snare,
They crushed the snowy roses,
That decked my throat and hair.

The pictured Saint, in anguish,
Gazed down from carven frame,
And prayed, perhaps in heaven,
For her who bears her name.

The frightened dove moaned softly,
With ruffled wing and crest.
And never since will nestle
As once, within my breast!


In Exculpation

You seared both eyes with kisses,
And then bade me, blinded, go.
Nor leave betraying foot-prints
Upon your life's pure snow.

Ah, Love, you should remember
Ere you set blind captives free
They cannot find the by-paths
Who can no longer see!

Ah, Love, 't was your cruel folly
That set me journeying so,
And hoped to find, thereafter,
No foot-prints on the snow.



The Rose of Flame

God-like ignorance have they
Who the voyage dare undertake.
Yet men venture every day
For the mystic Blossom's sake.
Smile and weep for such as they,
If perchance ye know the way.
Smile for foe, and weep for friend,
Strange the journey, sure its end.

Through wide, twilight seas the course.
He may start from any port.
Fate alone stands at the helm,
Be the sailing long or short.
Night or day or weary week,
Still she guides, and does not speak.
No wild gale, or tempest's wrath
Dares to cross his vessel's path.

And what place of dreams is this,
Where the keel slides in the sand?
Never mortal's eyes but once
Gaze on such a magic strand.
The shore is veiled by mists of Shame
Where grows the luring Rose of Flame.
Bare sand, without a shrub or tree,
And vapor white, and whispering sea.

And now Fate holds him by the hand,
And leads him inland, till no more
The mist of Shame cleaves to the sand,
And distant grows the sea and shore.
Out of the desert, stretching bare,
Come dizzy scents that load the air.
Blindly and unfatigued he goes;
He breathes the perfume of the Rose.

Nearer—he feels the burning heat.
Can desert hold a flower like this?
He sees, is blinded by its glow;
The scent is like a clinging kiss.
The perfume deepens to a pang,
And in his brain strange music sang,
Such as lost Spirits sing in Hell.
Then,—days,—or years; he best can tell.

Withered, sere, and scorched at heart,
He must seek the world once more.
Never shall he sail again
Through such seas, to touch such shore,
And the memory of that strand
Makes him loathe all other land,
And no flower seems worth the name,
Since he saw the Rose of Flame.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

https://www.oxford-royale.co.uk/articles/lesser-known-poets-first-world-war.html


Isaac Rosenberg

Isaac Rosenberg was born in 1890 in Bristol, the son of Lithuanian Jews who had moved to Britain a few years earlier. As a child, his teachers noticed his talent for drawing and writing poetry, but his parents couldn’t afford to keep him at school, and so he was apprenticed to an engraver’s company in 1905. In spite of this, Rosenberg attending evening classes in painting and drawing, and in the early 1910s a wealthy Jewish woman offered to pay his fees to attend art school. Before the war started he published two volumes of poems, one called Night and Day, and another Youth. Despite being resolutely pacifist, he enlisted for the war in 1915 – and wrote many poems while he was in the fighting until his death in 1918.


In perhaps his best-known poem, ‘Returning, we hear the larks’, Rosenberg plays with the idea that the dread, foreboding and ultimate violent destruction of war has poisoned all of nature. The innocent song of larks in the dark is a pure, beautiful and strange comfort – but it is everywhere underlain with the threat that bullets, gas, and death might rain out of the night and onto the soldiers. The images of weightlessness and insubstantiality that pervade the final stanza: ‘a blind man’s dreams’ dropped on the sand by a violent sea, or the hair of a girl, are ultimately reversed, replaced in the final line by an image of a kiss that seems soft and light but conceals the poison of a snake:

Returning, We Hear The Larks

Sombre the night is.
And though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lurks there.

Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
This poison-blasted track opens on our camp—
On a little safe sleep.

But hark! joy—joy—strange joy.
Lo! heights of night ringing with unseen larks.
Music showering on our upturned list’ning faces.

Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song—
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man’s dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides,
Like a girl’s dark hair for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

St. Patrick’s Day: With an Irish Shamrock

----------------------By Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
From the region of zephyrs, the Emerald isle,
The land of thy birth, in my freshness I come,
To waken this long-cherished morn with a smile,
And breathe o’er thy spirit the whispers of home.
O welcome the stranger from Erin’s green sod;
I sprang where the bones of thy fathers repose,
I grew where thy free step in infancy trod,
Ere the world threw around thee its wiles and its woes.
But sprightlier themes
Enliven the dreams,
My dew-dropping leaflets unfold to impart:
To loftiest emotion
Of patriot devotion,
I wake the full chord of an Irishman’s heart.

The rose is expanding her petals of pride,
And points to the laurels o’erarching her tree;
And the hardy Bur-thistle stands rooted beside,
And sternly demands;—Who dare meddle wi’ me?
And bright are the garlands they jointly display,
In death-fields of victory gallantly got;
But let the fair sisters their trophies array,
And show us the wreath where the shamrock is not!
By sea and by land,
With bullet and brand,
My sons have directed the stormbolt of war;
The banners ye boast,
Ne’er waved o’er our host,
Unfanned by the accents of Erin-go-bragh!

Erin mavourneen! dark is thy night;
Deep thy forebodings and gloomy thy fears;
And O, there are bosoms with savage delight
Who laugh at thy plainings and scoff at thy tears!
But, Erin mavourneen, bright are the names
Who twine with the heart-vein thy fate in their breast;
And scorned be the lot of the dastard, who shames
To plant, as a trophy, this leaf on his crest!
Thrice trebled disgrace
His honours deface,
Who shrinks from proclaiming the isle of his birth!
Though lowly its stem,
This emerald gem
Mates with the proudest that shadow the earth!

Sandhurst, March 17, 1827

************************************************** *******************************

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/charlotte-elizabeth-tonna#poet

Biography Poems, Articles & More
Discover this author’s context.

Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
Poet Details
1790–1846
Protestant evangelical activist, journalist, editor, novelist, children’s author, and poet Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna was born in Norwich, England. The daughter of an Anglican priest, she lost her hearing permanently at age ten and became a pioneer of deaf education. She married twice, to George Phelan and Lewis Hippolytus Joseph Tonna, taking their names in turn, though she published under the name, Charlotte Elizabeth.

Elizabeth published dozens of books and tracts, including the once-banned children’s book The Simple Flower (1826), the novel Judah’s Lion (1843), Izram: A Mexican Tale; and Other Poems (1826), and Posthumous and other poems (1847); she also penned an autobiography, Personal Recollections (1841). Her nonfiction account of the working conditions English seamstresses faced, The Wrongs of Woman (1844), helped establish worker safety laws. Starting in 1834, she edited the Christian Lady’s Magazine, and from 1841 onward, she also edited The Protestant Magazine.

Tonna died at the age of 55 in Ramsgate, England, where she is buried.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Invictus
---------- by William Ernest Henley


Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

---------------------------
---------------------------

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/william-ernest-henley


Biography

William Ernest Henley
Poet Details
1849–1903

Born in Gloucester, England, poet, editor, and critic William Ernest Henley was educated at Crypt Grammar School, where he studied with the poet T.E. Brown, and the University of St. Andrews. His father was a struggling bookseller who died when Henley was a teenager. At age 12 Henley was diagnosed with tubercular arthritis that necessitated the amputation of one of his legs just below the knee; the other foot was saved only through a radical surgery performed by Joseph Lister. As he healed in the infirmary, Henley began to write poems, including “Invictus,” which concludes with the oft-referenced lines “I am the master of my fate; / I am the captain of my soul.” Henley’s poems often engage themes of inner strength and perseverance. His numerous collections of poetry include A Book of Verses (1888), London Voluntaries (1893), and Hawthorn and Lavender (1899).

Henley edited the Scots Observer (which later became the National Observer), through which he befriended writer Rudyard Kipling, and the Magazine of Art, in which he lauded the work of emerging artists James McNeill Whistler and Auguste Rodin. Henley was a close friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, who reportedly based his Long John Silver character in Treasure Island in part on Henley.

[Gunny]

Not exactly a poem, but this one's for tyr .... Old Man by Neil Young.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Not exactly a poem, but this one's for tyr .... Old Man by Neil Young.

THANKS AMIGO...
I know that song like I know the back of my hand my friend. Neil Young is one of my favorite singers.
That song with me comes in second after his, 1. Heart of Gold song,
WITH HIS SONG, 3. The Needle And The Damage Done ,coming in as third.. :beer::beer::beer::beer:

And true, he is without any doubt a true and great poet..
Songs the way he writes them are actually, lyrical poetry!--Tyr



http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/neilyoung/oldman.html

NEIL YOUNG LYRICS

"Old Man"

Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.

Old man look at my life,
Twenty four
and there's so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two.

Love lost, such a cost,
Give me things
that don't get lost.
Like a coin that won't get tossed
Rolling home to you.

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.

Lullabies, look in your eyes,
Run around the same old town.
Doesn't mean that much to me
To mean that much to you.

I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.
But I'm all alone at last.
Rolling home to you.

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.

Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.

--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------


"Harvest" Album Lyrics

Neil Young
Tracklist
01 Out On The Weekend lyrics
02 Harvest lyrics
03 A Man Needs A Maid lyrics
04
4.9/5
Heart Of Gold lyrics
05 Are You Ready For The Country lyrics
06
4,915 4.9/5
Old Man lyrics
07 There's A World lyrics
08 Alabama lyrics
09
4.7/5
The Needle And The Damage Done lyrics
10 Words lyrics
This album was submitted on September 13th, 2005 and last modified on February 9th, 2013.
Album Details
Released : 1972-00-00
Discs : 1
Genre : Rock, Ethnic/Folk, Christian, Classical
Record label :
Rank : 785 (−673)
Rate :
4.3/5 from 7 users
Charts : − view all »
Referring urls : view all »

--------------------------------------


http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/neilyoung/heartofgold.html

NEIL YOUNG LYRICS
"Heart Of Gold"

I want to live,
I want to give
I've been a miner for a heart of gold.
It's these expressions
I never give
That keep me searching for a heart of gold.

And I'm getting old.
Keep me searching for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.

I've been to Hollywood
I've been to Redwood
I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold.
I've been in my mind,
It's such a fine line
That keeps me searching for a heart of gold.

And I'm getting old.
Keeps me searching for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.

Keep me searching for a heart of gold.
You keep me searching and I'm growing old.
Keep me searching for a heart of gold
I've been a miner for a heart of gold.

------------------------------------


http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/neilyoung/needleandthedamagedone.html

NEIL YOUNG LYRICS
"Needle And The Damage Done"

I caught you knockin'
at my cellar door
I love you, baby,
can I have some more
Ooh, ooh, the damage done.

I hit the city and
I lost my band
I watched the needle
take another man
Gone, gone, the damage done.

I sing the song
because I love the man
I know that some
of you don't understand
Milk-blood
to keep from running out.

I've seen the needle
and the damage done
A little part of it in everyone
But every junkie's
like a settin' sun.

[Gunny]

THANKS AMIGO...
I know that song like I know the back of my hand my friend. Neil Young is one of my favorite singers.
That song with me comes in second after his, 1. Heart of Gold song,
WITH HIS SONG, 3. The Needle And The Damage Done ,coming in as third.. :beer::beer::beer::beer:

And true, he is without any doubt a true and great poet..
Songs the way he writes them are actually, lyrical poetry!--Tyr




NEIL YOUNG LYRICS

"Old Man"

Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.

Old man look at my life,
Twenty four
and there's so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two.

Love lost, such a cost,
Give me things
that don't get lost.
Like a coin that won't get tossed
Rolling home to you.

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.

Lullabies, look in your eyes,
Run around the same old town.
Doesn't mean that much to me
To mean that much to you.

I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.
But I'm all alone at last.
Rolling home to you.

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.

Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.

--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------


"Harvest" Album Lyrics

Neil Young
Tracklist
01 Out On The Weekend lyrics
02 Harvest lyrics
03 A Man Needs A Maid lyrics
04
4.9/5
Heart Of Gold lyrics
05 Are You Ready For The Country lyrics
06
4,915 4.9/5
Old Man lyrics
07 There's A World lyrics
08 Alabama lyrics
09
4.7/5
The Needle And The Damage Done lyrics
10 Words lyrics
This album was submitted on September 13th, 2005 and last modified on February 9th, 2013.
Album Details
Released : 1972-00-00
Discs : 1
Genre : Rock, Ethnic/Folk, Christian, Classical
Record label :
Rank : 785 (−673)
Rate :
4.3/5 from 7 users
Charts : − view all »
Referring urls : view all »

--------------------------------------



NEIL YOUNG LYRICS
"Heart Of Gold"

I want to live,
I want to give
I've been a miner for a heart of gold.
It's these expressions
I never give
That keep me searching for a heart of gold.

And I'm getting old.
Keep me searching for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.

I've been to Hollywood
I've been to Redwood
I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold.
I've been in my mind,
It's such a fine line
That keeps me searching for a heart of gold.

And I'm getting old.
Keeps me searching for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.

Keep me searching for a heart of gold.
You keep me searching and I'm growing old.
Keep me searching for a heart of gold
I've been a miner for a heart of gold.

------------------------------------



NEIL YOUNG LYRICS
"Needle And The Damage Done"

I caught you knockin'
at my cellar door
I love you, baby,
can I have some more
Ooh, ooh, the damage done.

I hit the city and
I lost my band
I watched the needle
take another man
Gone, gone, the damage done.

I sing the song
because I love the man
I know that some
of you don't understand
Milk-blood
to keep from running out.

I've seen the needle
and the damage done
A little part of it in everyone
But every junkie's
like a settin' sun.
People don't read the lyrics. They listen to the tunes. Not the words.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

People don't read the lyrics. They listen to the tunes. Not the words.


They listen to the tunes. Not the words.

That is the greater appeal in music/songs over that of pure poetry.

In Poetry one should/must read the words to get the message, the author's intent and purpose in writing.
ONE MUST ANALYZE DEEPER TO FIND THE ENJOYMENT, THE PURITY AND THE SOUL OF THE ART....
I love music in its many forms((with ffing dumb-ass rap being the prime exception)...
I love even deeper Poetry, as to me, its more pure and often far, far deeper in its message, heart and soul..

Note- I make no criticism of those that care not for Poetry, as I have too older brothers -both very intelligent, that think its junk! - :laugh:-Tyr

[Gunny]

That is the greater appeal in music/songs over that of pure poetry.

In Poetry one should/must read the words to get the message, the author's intent and purpose in writing.
ONE MUST ANALYZE DEEPER TO FINE THE ENJOYMENT, THE PURITY AND THE SOUL OF THE ART....
I love music in its many forms((with ffing dumb-ass rap being the prime the exception)...
I love even deeper Poetry, as to me, its more pure and often far, far deeper in its message, heart and soul..

Note- I make no criticism of those that care not for Poetry, as I have too older brothers -both very intelligent, that think its junk! - :laugh:-Tyr

I listen to to the words. They mean things. Both sides now is one of my favorite songs. The words don't men anything when people don't listen to them. Sound of Silence by S&G comes to mind. Thorough the naked light I saw ... 10000 people who aren't speaking. 10,000 people who aren't listening. But my words like silent raindrops fell ...

And I do know the actual lyrics. Can play it on guitar. Just cutting to the meaning of the chase.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

I listen to to the words. They mean things. Both sides now is one of my favorite songs. The words don't men anything when people don't listen to them. Sound of Silence by S&G comes to mind. Thorough the naked light I saw ... 10000 people who aren't speaking. 10,000 people who aren't listening. But my words like silent raindrops fell ...

And I do know the actual lyrics. Can play it on guitar. Just cutting to the meaning of the chase.

People that have true heart, higher intelligence actually listen to the lyrics(in order to get the message and soul of the song) and not just the music and rhythm accompany the song..
As to playing musical instruments-
Alas, although I can write poetry, I can only play a mean jukebox(ESPECIALLY ONE LOADED WITH SOUTHERN ROCK)..;)--TYR

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morris
William Morris
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other people named William Morris, see William Morris (disambiguation).
William Morris
William Morris age 53.jpg
William Morris by Frederick Hollyer, 1887
Born 24 March 1834
Walthamstow, Essex, England
Died 3 October 1896 (aged 62)
Hammersmith, Middlesex, England
Occupation Artist, designer, writer, socialist
Known for Wallpaper and textile design, fantasy fiction / medievalism, socialism
Notable work News from Nowhere, The Well at the World's End

William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, poet, novelist, translator, and socialist activist. Associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement, he was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts and methods of production. His literary contributions helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, while he played a significant role in propagating the early socialist movement in Britain.

Born in Walthamstow, Essex, to a wealthy middle-class family, Morris came under the strong influence of medievalism while studying Classics at Oxford University, there joining the Birmingham Set. After university he trained as an architect, married Jane Burden, and developed close friendships with the Pre-Raphaelite artists Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and with the Neo-Gothic architect Philip Webb. Webb and Morris designed a family home, Red House, then in Kent, where the latter lived from 1859 to 1865, before moving to Bloomsbury, central London. In 1861, Morris founded a decorative arts firm with Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Webb, and others: the Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. Becoming highly fashionable and much in demand, the firm profoundly influenced interior decoration throughout the Victorian period, with Morris designing tapestries, wallpaper, fabrics, furniture, and stained glass windows. In 1875, Morris assumed total control of the company, which was renamed Morris & Co.

Although retaining a main home in London, from 1871 Morris rented the rural retreat of Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire. Greatly influenced by visits to Iceland, with Eiríkr Magnússon he produced a series of English-language translations of Icelandic Sagas. He also achieved success with the publication of his epic poems and novels, namely The Earthly Paradise (1868–1870), A Dream of John Ball (1888), the utopian News from Nowhere (1890), and the fantasy romance The Well at the World's End (1896). In 1877 he founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings to campaign against the damage caused by architectural restoration. Embracing Marxism and influenced by anarchism, in the 1880s Morris became a committed revolutionary socialist activist; after an involvement in the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), he founded the Socialist League in 1884, but broke with that organization in 1890. In 1891 he founded the Kelmscott Press to publish limited-edition, illuminated-style print books, a cause to which he devoted his final years.

Morris is recognised as one of the most significant cultural figures of Victorian Britain; though best known in his lifetime as a poet, he posthumously became better known for his designs. Founded in 1955, the William Morris Society is devoted to his legacy, while multiple biographies and studies of his work have seen publication. Many of the buildings associated with his life are open to visitors, much of his work can be found in art galleries and museums, and his designs are still in production.

Early life
Youth: 1834–52

Morris was born at Elm House in Walthamstow, Essex, on 24 March 1834.[1] Raised into a wealthy middle-class family, he was named after his father, a financier who worked as a partner in the Sanderson & Co. firm, bill brokers in the City of London.[2] His mother was Emma Morris (née Shelton), who descended from a Woodford, Essex, which was surrounded by 50 acres of land adjacent to Epping Forest.[3] He took an interest in fishing with his brothers as well as gardening in the Hall's grounds,[4] and spent much time exploring the Forest, where he was fascinated both by the Iron Age earthworks at Loughton Camp and Ambresbury Banks and by the Early Modern Hunting Lodge at Chingford.[5] He also took rides through the Essex countryside on his pony,[6] and visited the various churches and cathedrals throughout the country, marveling at their architecture.[7] His father took him on visits outside of the county, for instance to Canterbury Cathedral, the Chiswick Horticultural Gardens, and to the Isle of Wight, where he adored Blackgang Chine.[8] Aged 9, he was then sent to Misses Arundale's Academy for Young Gentlemen, a nearby preparatory school; although initially riding there by pony each day, he later began boarding, intensely disliking the experience.[9]

In 1847, Morris's father died unexpectedly. From this point, the family relied upon continued income from the copper mines at Devon Great Consols, and sold Woodford Hall to move into the smaller Water House.[10] In February 1848 Morris began his studies at Marlborough College in Marlborough, Wiltshire, where he gained a reputation as an eccentric nicknamed "Crab". He despised his time there, being bullied, bored, and homesick.[11] He did use the opportunity to visit many of the prehistoric sites of Wiltshire, such as Avebury and Silbury Hill, which fascinated him.[12] The school was Anglican in faith and in March 1849 Morris was confirmed by the Bishop of Salisbury in the college chapel, developing an enthusiastic attraction towards the Anglo-Catholic movement and its Romanticist aesthetic.[13] At Christmas 1851, Morris was removed from the school and returned to Water House, where he was privately tutored by the Reverend Frederick B. Guy, Assistant Master at the nearby Forest School.[14]
Oxford and the Birmingham Set: 1852–56

In June 1852 Morris entered Oxford University's Exeter College, although since the college was full, he only went into residence in January 1853.[15] He disliked the college and was bored by the manner in which they taught him Classics.[16] Instead he developed a keen interest in Medieval history and Medieval architecture, inspired by the many Medieval buildings in Oxford.[17] This interest was tied to Britain's growing Medievalist movement, a form of Romanticism that rejected many of the values of Victorian industrial capitalism.[18] For Morris, the Middle Ages represented an era with strong chivalric values and an organic, pre-capitalist sense of community, both of which he deemed preferable to his own period.[19] This attitude was compounded by his reading of Thomas Carlyle's book Past and Present (1843), in which Carlyle championed Medieval values as a corrective to the problems of Victorian society.[20] Under this influence, Morris's dislike of contemporary capitalism grew, and he came to be influenced by the work of Christian socialists Charles Kingsley and Frederick Denison Maurice.[21]

At the college, Morris met fellow first-year undergraduate Edward Burne-Jones, who became his lifelong friend and collaborator. Although from very different backgrounds, they found that they had a shared attitude to life, both being keenly interested in Anglo-Catholicism and Arthurianism.[22] Through Burne-Jones, Morris joined a group of undergraduates from Birmingham who were studying at Pembroke College: William Fulford, Richard Watson Dixon, Charles Faulkner, and Cormell Price. They were known among themselves as the "Brotherhood" and to historians as the Birmingham Set.[23] Morris was the most affluent member of the Set, and was generous with his wealth toward the others.[24] Like Morris, the Set were fans of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and would meet together to recite the plays of William Shakespeare.[25]
William Morris self-portrait, 1856; Morris grew his beard that year, after leaving university.[26]

Morris was heavily influenced by the writings of the art critic John Ruskin, being particularly inspired by his chapter "On the Nature of Gothic Architecture" in the second volume of The Stones of Venice; he later described it as "one of the very few necessary and inevitable utterances of the century".[27] Morris adopted Ruskin's philosophy of rejecting the tawdry industrial manufacture of decorative arts and architecture in favour of a return to hand-craftsmanship, raising artisans to the status of artists, creating art that should be affordable and hand-made, with no hierarchy of artistic mediums.[28][29] Ruskin had achieved attention in Victorian society for championing the art of a group of painters who had emerged in London in 1848 calling themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The Pre-Raphaelite style was heavily Medievalist and Romanticist, emphasising abundant detail, intense colours and complex compositions; it greatly impressed Morris and the Set.[30] Influenced both by Ruskin and by John Keats, Morris began to spend more time writing poetry, in a style that was imitative of much of theirs.[31]

Both he and Burne-Jones were influenced by the Romanticist milieu and the Anglo-Catholic movement, and decided to become clergymen in order to found a monastery where they could live a life of chastity and dedication to artistic pursuit, akin to that of the contemporary Nazarene movement. However, as time went on Morris became increasingly critical of Anglican doctrine and the idea faded.[32] In summer 1854, Morris travelled to Belgium to look at Medieval paintings,[33] and in July 1855 went with Burne-Jones and Fulford across northern France, visiting Medieval churches and cathedrals.[34] It was on this trip that he and Burne-Jones committed themselves to "a life of art".[35] For Morris, this decision resulted in a strained relationship with his family, who believed that he should have entered either commerce or the clergy.[36] On a subsequent visit to Birmingham, Morris discovered Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which became a core Arthurian text for him and Burne-Jones.[37] In January 1856, the Set began publication of The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, designed to contain "mainly Tales, Poetry, friendly critiques and social articles". Mainly funded by Morris, who briefly served as editor and heavily contributed to it with his own stories, poems, reviews and articles, the magazine lasted for twelve issues, and garnered praise from Tennyson and Ruskin.[38]
Apprenticeship, the Pre-Raphaelites, and marriage: 1856–59
Morris's painting La belle Iseult, also inaccurately called Queen Guinevere, is his only surviving easel painting, now in the Tate Gallery, 1858.

Having passed his finals and been awarded a BA, Morris began an apprenticeship with the Oxford-based Neo-Gothic architect George Edmund Street in January 1856. His apprenticeship focused on architectural drawing, and there he was placed under the supervision of the young architect Philip Webb, who became a close friend.[39] Morris soon relocated to Street's London office, in August 1856 moving into a flat in Bloomsbury, Central London with Burne-Jones, an area perhaps chosen for its avant-garde associations.[40] Morris was fascinated by London but dismayed at its pollution and rapid expansion into neighbouring countryside, describing it as "the spreading sore".[41]

Morris became increasingly fascinated with the idyllic Medievalist depictions of rural life which appeared in the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, and spent large sums of money purchasing such artworks. Burne-Jones shared this interest, but took it further by becoming an apprentice to one of the foremost Pre-Raphaelite painters, Dante Gabriel Rossetti; the three soon became close friends.[42] Through Rossetti, Morris came to associate with poet Robert Browning, and the artists Arthur Hughes, Thomas Woolner, and Ford Madox Brown.[43] Tired of architecture, Morris abandoned his apprenticeship, with Rossetti persuading him to take up painting instead, which he chose to do in the Pre-Raphaelite style.[44] Morris aided Rossetti and Burne-Jones in painting the Arthurian murals at Oxford Union, although his contributions were widely deemed inferior and unskilled compared to those of the others.[45] At Rossetti's recommendation, Morris and Burne-Jones moved in together to the flat at Bloomsbury's No. 17 Red Lion Square by November 1856. Morris designed and commissioned furniture for the flat in a Medieval style, much of which he painted with Arthurian scenes in a direct rejection of mainstream artistic tastes.[46]

Morris also continued writing poetry and began designing illuminated manuscripts and embroidered hangings.[47] In March 1857, Bell and Dandy published a book of Morris's poems, The Defence of Guenevere, which was largely self-funded by the author himself. It did not sell well and garnered few reviews, most of which were unsympathetic. Disconcerted, Morris would not publish again for a further eight years.[48] In October 1857 Morris met Jane Burden, a woman from a poor working-class background, at a theatre performance and asked her to model for him. Smitten with her, they entered into a relationship and were engaged in spring 1858; Burden would later admit however that she never loved Morris.[49] They were married in a low-key ceremony held at St Michael at the North Gate church in Oxford on 26 April 1859, before honeymooning in Bruges, Belgium, and settling temporarily at 41 Great Ormond Street, London.[50]
Career and fame
Red House and the Firm: 1859–65
Red House in Bexleyheath; it is now owned by The National Trust and open to visitors

Morris desired a new home for himself and his wife, resulting in the construction of the Red House in the Kentish hamlet of Upton near Bexleyheath, ten miles from central London. The building's design was a co-operative effort, with Morris focusing on the interiors and the exterior being designed by Webb, for whom the House represented his first commission as an independent architect.[51] Named after the red bricks and red tiles from which it was constructed, Red House rejected architectural norms by being L-shaped.[52] Influenced by various forms of contemporary Neo-Gothic architecture, the House was nevertheless unique,[53] with Morris describing it as "very mediaeval in spirit".[54] Situated within an orchard, the house and garden were intricately linked in their design.[55] It took a year to construct,[56] and cost Morris £4000 at a time when his fortune was greatly reduced by a dramatic fall in the price of his shares.[57] Burne-Jones described it as "the beautifullest place on Earth."[58]

After construction, Morris invited friends to visit, most notably Burne-Jones and his wife Georgiana, as well as Rossetti and his wife Lizzie Siddal.[59] They aided him in painting murals on the furniture, walls, and ceilings, much of it based on Arthurian tales, the Trojan War, and Geoffrey Chaucer's stories, while he also designed floral embroideries for the rooms.[60] They also spent much time playing tricks on each other, enjoying games like hide and seek, and singing while accompanied by the piano.[61] Siddall stayed at the House during summer and autumn 1861 as she recovered from a traumatic miscarriage and an addiction to laudanum; she would die of an overdose in February 1862.[62]

In April 1861, Morris founded a decorative arts company, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., with six other partners: Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Webb, Ford Madox Brown, Charles Faulkner, and Peter Paul Marshall. Operating from premises at No. 6 Red Lion Square, they referred to themselves as "the Firm" and were intent on adopting Ruskin's ideas of reforming British attitudes to production. They hoped to reinstate decoration as one of the fine arts and adopted an ethos of affordability and anti-elitism.[63] For additional staff, they employed boys from the Industrial Home for Destitute Boys in Euston, central London, many of whom were trained as apprentices.[64]

Although working within the Neo-Gothic school of design, they differed from Neo-Gothic architects like Gilbert Scott who simply included certain Gothic features on modern styles of building; instead they sought to return completely to Medieval Gothic methods of craftmanship.[65] The products created by the Firm included furniture, architectural carving, metalwork, stained glass windows, and murals.[66] Their stained glass windows proved a particular success in the firm's early years as they were in high demand for the surge in the Neo-Gothic construction and refurbishment of churches, many of which were commissioned by the architect George Frederick Bodley.[67] Despite Morris's anti-elitist ethos, the Firm soon became increasingly popular and fashionable with the bourgeoisie, particularly following their exhibit at the 1862 International Exhibition in South Kensington, where they received press attention and medals of commendation.[68] However, they faced much opposition from established design companies, particularly those belonging to the Neo-Classical school.[69]
Design for Trellis wallpaper, 1862

Morris was slowly abandoning painting, recognising that his work lacked a sense of movement; none of his paintings are dated later than 1862.[70] Instead he focused his energies on designing wallpaper patterns, the first being "Trellis", designed in 1862. His designs would be produced from 1864 by Jeffrey and Co. of Islington, who created them for the Firm under Morris's supervision.[71] Morris also retained an active interest in various groups, joining the Hogarth Club, the Mediaeval Society, and the Corps of Artist Volunteers, the latter being in contrast to his later pacifism.[72]

Meanwhile, Morris's family continued to grow. In January 1861, Morris and Janey's first daughter was born: named Jane Alice Morris, she was commonly known as "Jenny".[73] Jenny was followed in March 1862 by the birth of their second daughter, Mary "May" Morris.[74] Morris was a caring father to his daughters, and years later they both recounted having idyllic childhoods.[75] However, there were problems in Morris's marriage as Janey became increasingly close to Rossetti, who often painted her. It is unknown if their affair was ever sexual, although by this point other members of the group were noticing Rossetti and Janey's closeness.[76]

Imagining the creation of an artistic community at Upton, Morris helped develop plans for a second house to be constructed adjacent to Red House in which Burne-Jones could live with his family; the plans were abandoned when Burne-Jones' son Philip died from scarlet fever.[77] By 1864, Morris had become increasingly tired of life at Red House, being particularly unhappy with the 3 to 4 hours spent commuting to his London workplace on a daily basis.[78] He sold Red House, and in autumn 1865 moved with his family to No. 26 Queen Square in Bloomsbury, the same building that the Firm moved its base of operations to earlier in the summer.[79]
Queen Square and The Earthly Paradise: 1865–70
Portrait of William Morris by George Frederic Watts, 1870.

At Queen Square, the Morris family lived in a flat directly above the Firm's shop.[80] They were joined by Janey's sister Bessie Burton and a number of household servants.[81] Meanwhile, changes were afoot at the Firm as Faulkner left, and to replace him they employed a business manager, Warrington Taylor, who would remain with them till 1866. Taylor pulled the Firm's finances into order and spent much time controlling Morris and ensuring that he worked to schedule.[82] During these years the Firm carried out a number of high-profile designs; from September 1866 to January 1867, they redecorated the Armoury and Tapestry Room in St. James' Palace,[83] in the latter year also designing the Green Dining Room at the South Kensington Museum (it is now the Morris Room at the Victoria and Albert Museum).[84] The Firm's work received increasing interest from people in the United States, resulting in Morris's acquaintance with Henry James and Charles Eliot Norton.[85] However, despite its success, the Firm was not turning over a large net profit, and this, coupled with the decreasing value of Morris' stocks, meant that he had to decrease his spending.[86]

Janey's relationship with Rossetti had continued, and by the late 1860s gossip regarding their affair had spread about London, where they were regularly seen spending time together.[87] Morris biographer Fiona MacCarthy argued that it was likely that Morris had learned of and accepted the existence of their affair by 1870.[88] In this year he developed an affectionate friendship with Aglaia Coronie, the daughter of wealthy Greek refugees, although there is no evidence that they had an affair.[89] Meanwhile, Morris's relationship with his mother had improved, and he would regularly take his wife and children to visit her at her house in Leyton.[90] He also went on various holidays; in the summer of 1866 he, Webb, and Taylor toured the churches of northern France.[91]
A caricature sketch of Morris by Rossetti, "The Bard and Petty Tradesman", reflecting his behaviour at the Firm

In August 1866 Morris joined the Burne-Jones family on their holiday in Lymington, while in August 1867 both families holidayed together in Oxford.[92] In August 1867 the Morrises holidayed in Southwold, Suffolk,[93] while in the summer of 1869 Morris took his wife to Bad Ems in Rhineland-Palatinate, central Germany, where it was hoped that the local health waters would aid her ailments. While there, he enjoyed walks in the countryside and focused on writing poetry.[94]

Morris had continued to devote much time to writing poetry. In 1867 Bell and Dandy published Morris's epic poem, The Life and Death of Jason, at his own expense. The book was a retelling of the ancient Greek myth of the hero Jason and his quest to find the Golden Fleece. In contrast to Morris's former publication, The Life and Death of Jason was well received, resulting in the publishers paying Morris a fee for the second edition.[95] From 1865 to 1870, Morris worked on another epic poem, The Earthly Paradise. Designed as a homage to Chaucer, it consisted of 24 stories, adopted from an array of different cultures, and each by a different narrator; set in the late 14th century, the synopsis revolved around a group of Norsemen who flee the Black Death by sailing away from Europe, on the way discovering an island where the inhabitants continue to venerate the ancient Greek gods. Published in four parts by F. S. Ellis, it soon gained a cult following and established Morris' reputation as a major poet.[96]
Kelmscott Manor and Iceland: 1870–75
Main Entrance to Kelmscott Manor

By 1870, Morris had become a public figure in Britain, resulting in repeated press requests for photographs, which he despised.[97] That year, he also reluctantly agreed to sit for a portrait by establishment painter George Frederic Watts.[98] Morris was keenly interested in Icelandic literature, having befriended the Icelandic theologian Eiríkr Magnússon. Together they produced prose translations of the Eddas and Sagas for publication in English.[99] Morris also developed a keen interest in creating hand-written illuminated manuscripts, producing 18 such books between 1870 and 1875, the first of which was A Book of Verse, completed as a birthday present for Georgina Burne-Jones. 12 of these 18 were handwritten copies of Nordic tales such as Halfdan the Black, Frithiof the Bold, and The Dwellers of Eyr. Morris deemed calligraphy to be an art form, and taught himself both Roman and italic script, as well as learning how to produce gilded letters.[100] In November 1872 he published Love is Enough, a poetic drama based on a story in the Medieval Welsh text, the Mabinogion. Illustrated with Burne-Jones woodcuts, it was not a popular success.[101] By 1871, he had begun work on a novel set in the present, The Novel on Blue Paper, which was about a love triangle; it would remain unfinished and Morris later asserted that it was not well written.[102]

By early summer 1871, Morris began to search for a house outside London where his children could spend time away from the city's pollution. He settled on Kelmscott Manor in the village of Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, obtaining a joint tenancy on the building with Rossetti in June.[103] Morris adored the building, which was constructed circa 1570, and would spend much time in the local countryside.[104] Conversely, Rossetti would be unhappy at Kelmscott, and eventually suffered a mental breakdown.[105] Morris divided his time between London and Kelmscott, however when Rossetti was there he would not spend more than three days at a time at the latter.[106] He was also fed up with his family home in Queen Square, deciding to obtain a new house in London. Although retaining a personal bedroom and study at Queen Square, he relocated his family to Horrington House in Turnham Green Road, West London, in January 1873.[107] This allowed him to be far closer to the home of Burne-Jones, with the duo meeting on almost every Sunday morning for the rest of Morris' life.[108]
Morris' Acanthus wallpaper design, (1875, left) and a page from Morris' illuminated manuscript of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, illustrated by Edward Burne-Jones

Leaving Jane and his children with Rossetti at Kelmscott, in July 1871 Morris left for Iceland with Faulkner, W.H. Evans, and Magnússon. Sailing from the Scottish port of Granton aboard a Danish mail boat, they proceeded to the island via Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands before arriving at Reykjavik, where they disembarked. There they met the President of the Althing, Jón Sigurðsson, with Morris being sympathetic to the Icelandic independence movement. From there, they proceeded by Icelandic horse along the south coast to Bergþórshvoll, Thórsmörk, Geysir, Þingvellir, and then back to Reyjkavik, where they departed back to Britain in September.[109] In April 1873, Morris and Burne-Jones holidayed in Italy, visiting Florence and Siena. Although generally disliking the country, Morris was interested in the Florentine Gothic architecture.[110] Soon after, in July, Morris returned to Iceland, revisiting many of the sites he had previously seen, but then proceeding north to Varna glacier and Fljótsdalur.[111] His two visits to the country profoundly influenced him, in particular in his growing leftist opinions; he would comment that these trips made him realise that "the most grinding poverty is a trifling evil compared with the inequality of classes."[112]

Morris and Burne-Jones then spent time with one of the Firm's patrons, the wealthy George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle and his wife Rosalind, at their Medieval home in Naworth Castle, Cumberland.[113] In July 1874, the Morris family then took Burne-Jones' two children with them on their holiday to Bruges, Belgium.[114] However, by this point Morris' friendship with Rossetti had seriously eroded, and in July 1874 their acrimonious falling out led Rossetti to leave Kelmscott, with Morris' publisher F.S. Ellis taking his place.[115] With the company's other partners drifting off to work on other projects, Morris decided to consolidate his own control of the Firm and become sole proprietor and manager. In March 1875, he paid £1000 each in compensation to Rossetti, Brown, and Marshall, although the other partners waived their claims to financial compensation. That month, the Firm was officially disbanded and replaced by Morris & Co, although Burne-Jones and Webb would continue to produce designs for it in future.[116] This accomplished, he resigned his directorship of the Devon Great Consols, selling his remaining shares in the company.[117]
Textile experimentation and political embrace: 1875–80
Two of Morris' designs: Snakeshead printed textile (1876) and "Peacock and Dragon" woven wool furnishing fabric (1878)

Now in complete control of the Firm, Morris took an increased interest in the process of textile dyeing and entered into a co-operative agreement with Thomas Wardle, a silk dyer who operated the Hencroft Works in Leek, Staffordshire. As a result, Morris would spend time with Wardle at his home on various occasions between summer 1875 and spring 1878.[118] Deeming the colours to be of inferior quality, Morris rejected the chemical aniline dyes which were then predominant, instead emphasising the revival of organic dyes, such as indigo for blue, walnut shells and roots for brown, and cochineal, kermes, and madder for red.[119] Living and working in this industrial environment, he gained a personal understanding of production and the lives of the proletariat, and was disgusted by the poor living conditions of workers and the pollution caused by industry; these factors greatly influenced his political views.[120] After learning the skills of dyeing, in the late 1870s Morris turned his attention to weaving, experimenting with silk weaving at Queen's Square.[121]

In the Spring of 1877, the Firm opened a store at No. 449 Oxford Street and obtained new staff who were able to improve its professionalism; as a result, sales increased and its popularity grew.[122] By 1880, Morris & Co. had become a household name, having become very popular with Britain's upper and middle classes.[123] The Firm was obtaining increasing numbers of commissions from aristocrats, wealthy industralists, and provincial entrepreneurs, with Morris furnishing parts of St. James' Palace and the chapel at Eaton Hall.[124] As a result of his growing sympathy for the working-classes and poor, Morris felt personally conflicted in serving the interests of these individuals, privately describing it as "ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich".[123]

Continuing with his literary output, Morris translated his own version of Virgil's Aeneid, titling it The Aeneids of Vergil (1876). Although many translations were already available, often produced by trained Classicists, Morris claimed that his unique perspective was as "a poet not a pedant".[125] He also continued producing translations of Icelandic tales with Magnússon, including Three Northern Love Stories (1875) and Völuspa Saga (1876).[126] In 1877 Morris was approached by Oxford University and offered the largely honorary position of Professor of Poetry. He declined, asserting that he felt unqualified, knowing little about scholarship on the theory of poetry.[127]

In summer 1876 Jenny Morris was diagnosed with epilepsy. Refusing to allow her to be societally marginalised or institutionalised, as was common in the period, Morris insisted that she be cared for by the family.[128] When Janey took May and Jenny to Oneglia in Italy, the latter suffered a serious seizure, with Morris rushing to the country to see her. They then proceeded to visit a number of other cities, including Venice, Padua, and Verona, with Morris attaining a greater appreciation of the country than he had on his previous trip.[129] In April 1879 Morris moved the family home again, this time renting an 18th-century mansion on Hammersmith's Upper Mall in West London. Owned by the novelist George MacDonald, Morris would name it Kelmscott House and re-decorate it according to his own taste.[130] In the House's grounds he set up a workshop, focusing on the production of hand-knotted carpets.[131] Excited that both of his homes were along the course of the River Thames, in August 1880 he and his family took a boat trip along the river from Kelmscott House to Kelmscott Manor.[132]
Portrait of William Morris by William Blake Richmond

Morris became politically active in this period, coming to be associated with the radicalist current within British liberalism. He joined the Eastern Question Association (EQA) and was appointed the group's treasurer in November 1876. EQA had been founded by campaigners associated with the centre-left Liberal Party who opposed Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's alliance with the Ottoman Empire; the Association highlighted the Ottoman massacre of Bulgarians and feared that the alliance would lead Disraeli to join the Ottomans in going to war with the Russian Empire.[133] Morris took an active role in the EQA campaign, authoring the lyrics for the song "Wake, London Lads!" to be sung at a rally against military intervention.[134] Morris eventually became disillusioned with the EQA, describing it as being "full of wretched little personalities".[135] He nevertheless joined a regrouping of predominantly working-class EQA activists, the National Liberal League, becoming their treasurer in summer 1879; the group remained small and politically ineffective, with Morris resigning as treasurer in late 1881, shortly before the group's collapse.[136]

However, his discontent with the British liberal movement grew following the election of the Liberal Party's William Ewart Gladstone to the Premiership in 1880. Morris was particularly angered that Gladstone's government did not reverse the Disraeli regime's occupation of the Transvaal, introduced the Coercion Bill, and oversaw the Bombardment of Alexandria.[137] Morris later related that while he had once believed that "one might further real Socialistic progress by doing what one could on the lines of ordinary middle-class Radicalism", following Gladstone's election he came to realise "that Radicalism is on the wrong line, so to say, and will never develope [sic] into anything more than Radicalism: in fact that it is made for and by the middle classes and will always be under the control of rich capitalists.[138]

In 1876, Morris visited Burford Church in Oxfordshire, where he was appalled at the restoration conducted by his old mentor, G.E. Street. He recognised that these programs of architectural restoration led to the destruction or major alteration of genuinely old features in order to replace them with "sham old" features, something which appalled him.[139] To combat the increasing trend for restoration, in March 1877 he founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), which he personally referred to as "Anti-Scrape". Adopting the role of honorary secretary and treasurer, most of the other early members of SPAB were his friends, while the group's program was rooted in Ruskin's The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849).[140] As part of SPAB's campaign, Morris tried to build connections with art and antiquarian societies and the custodians of old buildings, and also contacted the press to highlight his cause. He was particularly strong in denouncing the ongoing restoration of Tewkesbury Abbey and was vociferous in denouncing the architects responsible, something that deeply upset Street.[141] Turning SPAB's attention abroad, in Autumn 1879 Morris launched a campaign to protect St Mark's Basilica in Venice from restoration, garnering a petition with 2000 signatures, among whom were Disraeli, Gladstone, and Ruskin.[142]
Later life
Merton Abbey and the Democratic Federation: 1881–84
The Pond at Merton Abbey by Lexden Lewis Pocock is an idyllic representation of the works in the time of Morris

In summer 1881, Morris took out a lease on the seven-acre former silk weaving factory at Merton Abbey Mills, in Merton, Southwest London. Moving his workshops to the site, the premises were used for weaving, dyeing, and creating stained glass; within three years, 100 craftsmen would be employed there.[143] Working conditions at the Abbey were better than at most Victorian factories. However, despite Morris's ideals, there was little opportunity for the workers to display their own individual creativity.[144] Morris had initiated a system of profit sharing among the Firm's upper clerks, however this did not include the majority of workers, who were instead employed on a piecework basis. Morris was aware that, in retaining the division between employer and employed, the company failed to live up to his own egalitarian ideals, but defended this, asserting that it was impossible to run a socialist company within a competitive capitalist economy.[145] The Firm itself was expanding, opening up a store in Manchester in 1883 and holding a stand at that year's Foreign Fair in Boston.[146]

Janey's relationship with Rossetti had continued through a correspondence and occasional visits, although she found him extremely paranoid and was upset by his addiction to chloral. She last saw him in 1881, and he died in April the following year.[147] Morris described his mixed feelings toward his deceased friend by stating that he had "some of the very greatest qualities of genius, most of them indeed; what a great man he would have been but for the arrogant misanthropy which marred his work, and killed him before his time".[148] In August 1883, Janey would be introduced to the poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, with whom she embarked on a second affair, which Morris might have been aware of.[149]

In January 1881 Morris was involved in the establishment of the Radical Union, an amalgam of radical working-class groups which hoped to rival the Liberals, and became a member of its executive committee.[150] However, he soon rejected liberal radicalism completely and moved toward socialism.[151] In this period, British socialism was a small, fledgling and vaguely defined movement, with only a few hundred adherents. Britain's first socialist party, the Democratic Federation (DF), had been founded in 1881 by Henry Hyndman, an adherent of the socio-political ideology of Marxism, with Morris joining the DF in January 1883.[152] Morris began to read voraciously on the subject of socialism, including Henry George's Progress and Poverty, Alfred Russel Wallace's Land Nationalisation, and Karl Marx's Das Kapital, although admitted that Marx's economic analysis of capitalism gave him "agonies of confusion on the brain". Instead he preferred the writings of William Cobbett and Sergius Stepniak, although he also read the critique of socialism produced by John Stuart Mill.[153]
David's Charge to Solomon (1882), a stained-glass window by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris in Trinity Church, Boston, Massachusetts.

In May 1883, Morris was appointed to the DF's executive, and was soon elected to the position of treasurer.[154] Devoting himself to the socialist cause, he regularly lectured at meetings across Britain, hoping to gain more converts, although was regularly criticised for doing so by the mainstream press.[155] In November 1883 he was invited to speak at University College, Oxford, on the subject of "Democracy and Art" and there began espousing socialism; this shocked and embarrassed many members of staff, earning national press coverage.[156] With other DF members, he travelled to Blackburn, Lancashire in February 1884 amid the great cotton strike, where he lectured on socialism to the strikers.[157] The following month he marched in a central London demonstration commemorating the first anniversary of Marx's death and the thirteenth anniversary of the Paris Commune.[158]

Morris aided the DF using his artistic and literary talents; he designed the group's membership card,[159] and helped author their manifesto, Socialism Made Plain, in which they demanded improved housing for workers, free compulsory education for all children, free school meals, an eight-hour working day, the abolition of national debt, nationalisation of land, banks, and railways, and the organisation of agriculture and industry under state control and co-operative principles.[154] Some of his DF comrades found it difficult to reconcile his socialist values with his position as proprietor of the Firm, although he was widely admired as a man of integrity.[160] The DF began publishing a weekly newspaper, Justice, which soon faced financial losses that Morris covered. Morris also regularly contributed articles to the newspaper, in doing so befriending another contributor, George Bernard Shaw.[161]

His socialist activism monopolised his time, forcing him to abandon a translation of the Persian Shahnameh.[162] It also led to him seeing far less of Burne-Jones, with whom he had strong political differences; although once a republican, Burne-Jones had become increasingly conservative, and felt that the DF were exploiting Morris for his talents and influence.[163] While Morris devoted much time to trying to convert his friends to the cause, of Morris' circle of artistic comrades, only Webb and Faulkner fully embraced socialism, while Swinburne expressed his sympathy with it.[164]

In 1884 the DF renamed itself the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) and underwent an internal reorganisation. However, the group was facing an internal schism between those (such as Hyndman), who argued for a parliamentary path toward socialism, and those (like Morris) who deemed the Houses of Parliament intrinsically corrupt and capitalist. Personal issues between Morris and Hyndman were exacerbated by their attitude to British foreign policy; Morris was staunchly anti-imperialist while Hyndman expressed patriotic sentiment encouraging some foreign intervention.[165] The division between the two groups developed into open conflict, with the majority of activists sharing Morris' position. In December 1884 Morris and his supporters – most notably Ernest Belfort Bax and Edward Aveling – left the SDF; the first major schism of the British socialist movement.[166]
Socialist League: 1884–89
Left: the cover of the Socialist League's manifesto of 1885 featured art by Morris. Right: detail of Woodpecker tapestry, 1885.

In December 1884, Morris founded the Socialist League (SL) with other SDF defectors.[167] He composed the SL's manifesto with Bax, describing their position as that of "Revolutionary International Socialism", advocating proletarian internationalism and world revolution while rejecting the concept of socialism in one country.[168] In this, he committed himself to "making Socialists" by educating, organising, and agitating to establish a strong socialist movement; calling on activists to boycott elections, he hoped that socialists would take part in a proletariat revolution and help to establish a socialist society.[169] Bax taught Morris more about Marxism, and introduced him to Marx's collaborator, Friedrich Engels; Engels thought Morris honest but lacking in practical skills to aid the proletariat revolution.[170] Morris remained in contact with other sectors of London's far left community, being a regular at the socialist International Club in Shoreditch, East London,[171] however he avoided the recently created Fabian Society, deeming it too middle-class.[172] Although a Marxist, he befriended prominent anarchist activists Stepniak and Peter Kropotkin,[173][174] and came to be influenced by their anarchist views, to the extent that biographer Fiona MacCarthy described his approach as being "Marxism with visionary libertarianism".[175]

As the leading figure in the League Morris embarked on a series of speeches and talks on street corners, in working men's clubs, and in lecture theatres across England and Scotland.[176] He also visited Dublin, there offering his support for Irish nationalism,[177] and formed a branch of the League at his Hammersmith house.[93] By the time of their first conference in July 1885, the League had eight branches across England and had affiliations with several socialist groups in Scotland.[178] However, as the British socialist movement grew it faced increased opposition from the establishment, with police frequently arresting and intimidating activists. To combat this, the League joined a Defence Club with other socialist groups, including the SDF, for which Morris was appointed treasurer.[179] Morris was passionate in denouncing the "bullying and hectoring" that he felt socialists faced from the police, and on one occasion was arrested after fighting back against a police officer; a magistrate dismissed the charges.[180] The Black Monday riots of February 1886 led to increased political repression against left-wing agitators, and in July Morris was arrested and fined for public obstruction while preaching socialism on the streets.[181]

Morris oversaw production of the League's monthly—soon to become weekly—newspaper, Commonweal, serving as its editor for six years, during which time he kept it financially afloat. First published in February 1885, it would contain contributions from such prominent socialists as Engels, Shaw, Paul Lafargue, Wilhelm Liebknecht, and Karl Kautsky, with Morris also regularly writing articles and poems for it.[182] In Commonweal he serialised a 13-episode poem, The Pilgrims of Hope, which was set in the period of the Paris Commune.[183] From November 1886 to January 1887, Morris' novel, A Dream of John Ball, was serialised in Commonweal. Set in Kent during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, it contained strong socialist themes although proved popular among those of different ideological viewpoints, resulting in its publication in book form by Reeves and Turner in 1888.[184] Shortly after, a collection of Morris' essays, Signs of Change, was published.[185]

Our business[...] is the making of Socialists, i.e. convincing people that Socialism is good for them and is possible. When we have enough people of that way of thinking, they will find out what action is necessary for putting their principles in practice. Therefore, I say, make Socialists. We Socialists can do nothing else that is useful."
— William Morris.[186]

From January to October 1890, Morris serialised his novel, News from Nowhere, in Commonweal, resulting in improved circulation for the paper. In March 1891 it was published in book form, before being translated into French, Italian, and German by 1898 and becoming a classic among Europe's socialist community. Combining utopian socialism and soft science fiction, the book tells the tale of a contemporary socialist, William Guest, who falls asleep and awakes in the mid-20th century, discovering a future society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. In this society there is no private property, no big cities, no authority, no monetary system, no divorce, no courts, no prisons, and no class systems; it was a depiction of Morris' ideal socialist society.[187]

Morris had also continued with his translation work; in April 1887, Reeves and Turner published the first volume of Morris' translation of Homer's Odyssey, with the second following in November.[188] Venturing into new territory, Morris also authored and starred in a play, The Tables Turned; Or Nupkins Awakened, which was performed at a League meeting in November 1887. It told the story of socialists who are put on trial in front of a corrupt judge; the tale ends with the prisoners behind freed by a proletariat revolution.[189] In June 1889, Morris traveled to Paris as the League's delegate to the International Socialist Working Men's Congress, where his international standing was recognised by being chosen as English spokesman by the Congress committee. The Second International emerged from the Congress, although Morris was distraught at its chaotic and disorganised proceedings.[190]

At the League's Fourth Conference in May 1888, factional divisions became increasingly apparent between Morris' anti-parliamentary socialists, the parliamentary socialists, and the anarchists; the Bloomsbury Branch were expelled for supporting parliamentary action.[191] Under the leadership of Charles Mowbray, the League's anarchist wing were growing and called on the League to embrace violent action in trying to overthrow the capitalist system.[192] By autumn 1889 the anarchists had taken over the League's executive committee and Morris was stripped of the editorship of Commonweal in favour of the anarchist Frank Kitz.[193] This alienated Morris from the League, which had also become a financial burden for him; he had been subsidising its activities with £500 a year, a very large sum of money at the time.[194] By the autumn of 1890, Morris left the Socialist League, with his Hammersmith branch seceding to become the independent Hammersmith Socialist Society in November 1890.[195]
The Kelmscott Press and Morris' final years: 1889–96
Morris (right) with Burne-Jones, 1890

The work of Morris & Co. continued during Morris's final years, producing an array of stained glass windows designed by Burne-Jones and the six narrative tapestry panels depicting the quest for the Holy Grail for Stanmore Hall, Shropshire.[196] Morris's influence on Britain's artistic community became increasingly apparent as the Art Workers' Guild was founded in 1884, although, at the time, he was too preoccupied with his socialist activism to pay it any attention. Although the proposal faced some opposition, Morris would be elected to the Guild in 1888, and was elected to the position of master in 1892.[197] Morris similarly did not offer initial support for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, but changed his opinion after the success of their first exhibit, held in Regents Street in October 1888. Giving lectures on tapestries for the group, in 1892 he would be elected president.[198] At this time, Morris also re-focused his attentions on SPAB campaigning; those causes he championed including the preservation of St. Mary's Church in Oxford, Blythburgh Church in Suffolk, Peterborough Cathedral, and Rouen Cathedral.[199]

Although his socialist activism had decreased, he remained involved with the Hammersmith Socialist Society, and in October 1891 oversaw the creation of a short-lived newsletter, the Hammersmith Socialist Record.[200] Coming to oppose factionalism within the socialist movement, he sought to rebuild his relationship with the SDF, appearing as a guest lecturer at some of their events, and supporting SDF candidate George Lansbury when he stood in the Wandsworth by-election of February 1894.[201] In 1893 the Hammersmith Socialist Society co-founded the Joint Committee of Socialist Bodies with representatives of the SDF and Fabian Society; Morris helped draw up its "Manifesto of English Socialists".[202] He offered support for far left activists on trial, including a number of militant anarchists whose violent tactics he nevertheless denounced.[203] He also began using the term "communism" for the first time, stating that "Communism is in fact the completion of Socialism: when that ceases to be militant and becomes triumphant, it will be communism."[204] In December 1895 he gave his final open-air talk at Stepniak's funeral, where he spoke alongside prominent far left activists Eleanor Marx, Kier Hardie, and Errico Malatesta.[205] Liberated from internal factional struggles, he retracted his anti-Parliamentary position and worked for socialist unity, giving his last public lecture in January 1896 on the subject of "One Socialist Party."[29]

In December 1888, the Chiswick Press published Morris' The House of the Wolfings, a fantasy story set in Iron Age Europe which provides a reconstructed portrait of the lives of Germanic-speaking Gothic tribes. It contained both prose and aspects of poetic verse.[206] A sequel, The Roots of the Mountains, followed in 1890.[207] Over the coming years he would publish a number of other fantasy novels: The Story of the Glittering Plain (1890), The Wood Beyond the World (1894), Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair (1895), The Well at the World's End (1896), The Water of the Wondrous Isles (1897) and The Sundering Flood (1898).[208]

In 1892 Morris embarked on a publication of the Anglo-Saxon tale Beowulf by contacting the Anglo-Saxon specialist Alfred John Wyatt at Christ's College, Cambridge and asking him to provide a translation of the text in prose, on which Morris based his poetical version.[209] On publication in February 1895, Morris' Beowulf was not well received.[210] With a production cost of £485 it was also one of the more expensive productions of the Kelmscott Press, on which Morris would make a financial loss.[209]

Following the death of the sitting Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in October 1892, Morris was offered the position, but turned it down, disliking its associations with the monarchy and political establishment; instead the position went to Alfred Austin.[211]
Morris' design for the Kelmscott Press' trademark

In January 1891, Morris began renting a cottage near to Kelmscott House, No. 16 Upper Mall in Hammersmith, which would serve as the first premises of the Kelmscott Press, before relocating to the neighbouring No. 14 in May, that same month in which the company was founded. Devoted to the production of books which he deemed beautiful, Morris was artistically influenced by the illustrated manuscripts and early printed books of Medieval and Early Modern Europe, and commissioned custom typefaces such as his "Golden Type", cut by Edward Prince, to replicate them.[212] Before publishing its first work, Morris ensured that he had mastered the techniques of printing and secured supplies of hand-made paper and vellum which would be necessary for production.[213] Over the next seven years, they would publish 66 volumes.[214] The first of these would be one of Morris' own novels, The Story of the Glittering Plain, which was published in May 1891 and soon sold out. The Kelmscott Press would go on to publish 23 of Morris' books, more than those of any other author.[215] The press also published editions of works by Keats, Shelley, Ruskin, and Swinburne, as well as copies of various Medieval texts.[216] A number of the Press' books contained illustrations provided by Burne-Jones.[217]
Title pages designed by Morris for The works of Geoffrey Chaucer, newly imprinted

The Press' magnum opus would be the Kelmscott Chaucer, published in an edition of 425 copies, which had taken years to complete and included 87 illustrations from Burne-Jones.[218] Morris still remained firmly in an employer relation with those working at the Press, although organised outings for them and paid them above average wages.[219]

By the early 1890s, Morris was increasingly ill and living largely as an invalid; aside from his gout, he also exhibited signs of epilepsy.[220] In August 1891, he took his daughter Jenny on a tour of Northern France to visit the Medieval churches and cathedrals.[221] Back in England, he spent an increasing amount of time at Kelmscott Manor.[222] Seeking treatment from the prominent doctor William Broadbent, he was prescribed a holiday in the coastal town of Folkestone.[223] In December 1894 he was devastated upon learning of his mother's death; she had been 90 years old.[224] In July 1896, he went on a cruise to Norway with construction engineer John Carruthers, during which he visited Vadsö and Trondheim; during the trip his physical condition deteriorated and he began experiencing hallucinations.[225] Returning to Kelmscott House, he became a complete invalid, being visited by friends and family, before dying of tuberculosis on the morning of 4 October 1896.[226] Obituaries appearing throughout the national press reflected that, at the time, Morris was widely recognised primarily as a poet. Mainstream press obituaries trivialised or dismissed his involvement in socialism, although the socialist press focused largely on this aspect of his career.[227] His funeral was held on 6 October, during which his corpse was carried from Hammersmith to Paddington rail station, where it was transported to Oxford, and from there to Kelmscott, where it was buried in the churchyard of St. George's Church.[228]
Personal life
Jane Burden Morris portrayed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Dante Alighieri's muse Beatrice, 1869

Morris' biographer E.P. Thompson described him as having a "robust bearing, and a slight roll in his walk", alongside a "rough beard" and "disordered hair".[229] The author Henry James described Morris as "short, burly, corpulent, very careless and unfinished in his dress ... He has a loud voice and a nervous restless manner and a perfectly unaffected and businesslike address. His talk indeed is wonderfully to the point and remarkable for clear good sense."[229] Morris' first biographer Mackail described him as being both "a typical Englishman" and "a typical Londoner of the middle class" albeit one who was transformed into "something quite individual" through the "force of his genius".[230] MacCarthy described Morris' lifestyle as being "late Victorian, mildly bohemian, but bourgeois",[231] with Mackail commenting that he exhibited many of the traits of the bourgeois Victorian class: "industrious, honest, fair-minded up their lights, but unexpansive and unsympathetic".[232] Although he generally disliked children,[233] Morris also exhibited a strong sense of responsibility toward his family.[57] Mackail nevertheless thought he "was interested in things much more than in people" and that while he did ha ...................MORE AT LINK..

POEMS----

Written by William Morris | Create an image from this poem
The Doomed Ship

The doomed ship drives on helpless through the sea,
All that the mariners may do is done
And death is left for men to gaze upon,
While side by side two friends sit silently;
Friends once, foes once, and now by death made free
Of Love and Hate, of all things lost or won;
Yet still the wonder of that strife bygone
Clouds all the hope or horror that may be.


Thus, Sorrow, are we sitting side by side
Amid this welter of the grey despair,
Nor have we images of foul or fair
To vex, save of thy kissed face of a bride,
Thy scornful face of tears when I was tried,
And failed neath pain I was not made to bear.

Written by William Morris | Create an image from this poem
Autumn

Laden Autumn here I stand
Worn of heart, and weak of hand:
Nought but rest seems good to me,
Speak the word that sets me free.

Written by William Morris | Create an image from this poem
Spring

Spring am I, too soft of heart
Much to speak ere I depart:
Ask the Summer-tide to prove
The abundance of my love.

Written by William Morris | Create an image from this poem
Summer

Summer looked for long am I:
Much shall change or e'er I die.

Prithee take it not amiss
Though I weary thee with bliss.

Written by William Morris | Create an image from this poem
The Earthly Paradise: Apology

Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
Or hope again for aught that I can say,
The idle singer of an empty day.


But rather, when aweary of your mirth,
From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,
And, feeling kindly unto all the earth,
Grudge every minute as it passes by,
Made the more mindful that the sweet days die--
--Remember me a little then I pray,
The idle singer of an empty day.


The heavy trouble, the bewildering care
That weighs us down who live and earn our bread,
These idle verses have no power to bear;
So let em sing of names remember{`e}d,
Because they, living not, can ne'er be dead,
Or long time take their memory quite away
From us poor singers of an empty day.


Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,
Telling a tale not too importunate
To those who in the sleepy region stay,
Lulled by the singer of an empty day.


Folk say, a wizard to a northern king
At Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show,
That through one window men beheld the spring,
And through another saw the summer glow,
And through a third the fruited vines a-row,
While still, unheard, but in its wonted way,
Piped the drear wind of that December day.


So with this Earthly Paradise it is,
If ye will read aright, and pardon me,
Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss
Midmost the beating of the steely sea,
Where tossed about all hearts of men must be;
Whose ravening monsters mighty men shall slay,
Not the poor singer of an empty day.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Kevin%20Roberts%20Poet%20Poetry%20Picture%20Bio.ht m


The HyperTexts

Kevin N. Roberts



Kevin Nicholas Roberts [1969-2008] was a poet, fiction writer and professor of English Literature. He died on December 10, 2008. Kevin spent three years in the English countryside of Suffolk writing Romantic poetry and studying the Romantic Masters beside the North Sea. His poetry has been compared to that of Swinburne, one of his major influences. Kevin was born on the 4th of April in the United States, which, accounting for the hour of his birth and the time zone difference, just happened to be Swinburne's birthdate, April the 5th, in England. Roberts claimed to be the reincarnation of Swinburne ...

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Rondel

Our time has passed on swift and careless feet,
With sighs and smiles and songs both sad and sweet.
Our perfect hours have grown and gone so fast,
And these are things we never can repeat.
Though we might plead and pray that it would last,
Our time has passed.

Like shreds of mist entangled in a tree,
Like surf and sea foam on a foaming sea,
Like all good things we know can never last,
Too soon we'll see the end of you and me.
Despite the days and realms that we amassed,
Our time has passed.



It Is Too Late

It is too late. Though we would reinspire
Our dream, rewake a dead desire,
A dismal sea divides our sighs and smiles;
Between us now so many months and miles
And tears for all things torn away by time,
For faded flowers grown pale and past their prime.
And no sweet words can make sick joys revive,
no mystic kiss keeps loves long dead alive.
What mortal hand can stay the hand of fate?
It is too late.

Astrologia

Based on the painting by Sir Edward Burne-Jones

What secrets burn behind the glass;
What spirits climb?
What sorry things and sad things pass;
What things sublime;
What fate, unfolding like a book,
For her from whom one brief glance took
All innocence and hope for all of time?

Behind her eyes, where grief is grown,
Desire dies
With sighs for all the sorrows flown
And joy that flies
And fades the blush upon her cheek,
Her eyes so beautiful and bleak,
Their blue the subtle blue of seas and skies.

Though knowing is a kind of curse
She can but keep,
She knows not yet which wound is worse,
Which pain more deep—
The pulse of perfect hours fled
Or endless years that lay ahead
With nothing left to do but wait and weep.



Introductory lines from Fatal Women

The darker side of our love,
A lighter shade of death.
The thing that brings me comfort:
The sweet sleeping sound of your breath.



Hyacinthe

Like splendid seas and faultless as a flower
And aptly called by flushing flower’s name,
With sad sweet voice possessed of fairy power
That made me love long ere we met, the same
As had we loved some lost long fevered hour
In frenzied throes, with flesh and lips aflame.

Smooth-skinned and white, with soft pale throat perfumed
And languid limbs that cry to be caressed
And kissed and clutched and full-consumed,
Her passioned lips half-mad to be possessed:
Asleep, alone, with mermaid-dreams entombed,
She waits, frail hands laid light upon her chest.

Mad dreams drone past of maiden pleasures missed,
A flood of fears and subtle, silent sighs,
Half-parted lips, as though they’ve just been kissed,
Half-haunted eyes grown wide and wild and wise,
Reflecting shades, like ghosted clouds of mist,
But clear and calm like sultry seas and skies.

A kiss to wake forgotten fairy powers!
One hallowed touch to conjure sacred sight!
A heart that bleeds to show what shall be ours
In starry eyes so soft and warm and bright:
A swarm of savage, sad, redemptive stars
In some eternal sacrificial night.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

http://www.poetry-archive.com/c/cather_willa.html

POEMS BY WILLA CATHER:

Arcadian Winter
The Hawthorn Tree
London Roses
Paradox
Poppies on Ludlow Castle
The Tavern


****** ARCADIAN WINTER
by: Willa Cather (1873-1947)

OE is me to tell it thee,
Winter winds in Arcady!
Scattered is thy flock and fled
From the glades where once it fed,
And the snow lies drifted white
In the bower of our delight,
Where the beech threw gracious shade
On the cheek of boy and maid:
And the bitter blasts make roar
Through the fleshless sycamore.

White enchantment holds the spring,
Where thou once wert wont to sing,
And the cold hath cut to death
Reeds melodious of thy breath.
He, the rival of thy lyre,
Nightingale with note of fire,
Sings no more; but far away,
From the windy hill-side gray,
Calls the broken note forlorn
Of an aged shepherd's horn.

Still about the fire they tell
How it long ago befell
That a shepherd maid and lad
Met and trembled and were glad;
When the swift spring waters ran,
And the wind to boy or man
Brought the aching of his sires--
Song and love and all desires.
Ere the starry dogwoods fell
They were lovers, so they tell.

Woe is me to tell it thee,
Winter winds in Arcady!
Broken pipes and vows forgot,
Scattered flocks returning not,
Frozen brook and drifted hill,
Ashen sun and song-birds still;
Songs of summer and desire
Crooned about the winter fire;
Shepherd lads with silver hair,
Shepherd maids no longer fair.

"Arcadian Winter" is reprinted from April Twilights. Willa Cather. Boston: The Gorham Press, 1903.

***** THE HAWTHORN TREE
by: Willa Cather (1873-1947)

CROSS the shimmering meadows--
Ah, when he came to me!
In the spring-time,
In the night-time,
In the starlight,
Beneath the hawthorn tree.

Up from the misty marsh-land--
Ah, when he climbed to me!
To my white bower,
To my sweet rest,
To my warm breast,
Beneath the hawthorn tree.

Ask of me what the birds sang,
High in the hawthorn tree;
What the breeze tells,
What the rose smells,
What the stars shine--
Not what he said to me!

"The Hawthorn Tree" is reprinted from April Twilights. Willa Cather. Boston: The Gorham Press, 1903.

****** LONDON ROSES
by: Willa Cather (1873-1947)

"OWSES, Rowses! Penny a bunch!" they tell you--
Slattern girls in Trafalgar, eager to sell you.
Roses, roses, red in the Kensington sun,
Holland Road, High Street, Bayswater, see you and smell you--
Roses of London town, red till the summer is done.


Roses, roses, locust and lilac, perfuming
West End, East End, wondrously budding and blooming
Out of the black earth, rubbed in a million hands,
Foot-trod, sweat-sour over and under, entombing
Highways of darkness, deep gutted with iron bands.

"Rowses, rowses! Penny a bunch!" they tell you,
Ruddy blooms of corruption, see you and smell you,
Born of stale earth, fallowed with squalor and tears--
North shire, south shire, none are like these, I tell you,
Roses of London perfumed with a thousand years.

"London Roses" is reprinted from April Twilights. Willa Cather. Boston: The Gorham Press, 1903.

****** POPPIES ON LUDLOW CASTLE
by: Willa Cather (1873-1947)

THROUGH halls of vanished pleasure,
And hold of vanished power,
And crypt of faith forgotten,
A came to Ludlow tower.

A-top of arch and stairway,
Of crypt and donjan cell,
Of council hall, and chamber,
Of wall, and ditch, and well,

High over grated turrets
Where clinging ivies run,
A thousand scarlet poppies
Enticed the rising sun,

Upon the topmost turret,
With death and damp below,--
Three hundred years of spoilage,--
The crimson poppies grow.

This hall it was that bred him,
These hills that knew him brave,
The gentlest English singer
That fills an English grave.

How have they heart to blossom
So cruel and gay and red,
When beauty so hath perished
And valour so hath sped?

When knights so fair are rotten,
And captains true asleep,
And singing lips are dust-stopped
Six English earth-feet deep?

When ages old remind me
How much hath gone for naught,
What wretched ghost remaineth
Of all that flesh hath wrought;

Of love and song and warring,
Of adventure and play,
Of art and comely building,
Of faith and form and fray--

I'll mind the flowers of pleasure,
Of short-lived youth and sleep,
That drunk the sunny weather
A-top of Ludlow keep.

"Poppies on Ludlow Castle" is reprinted from April Twilights. Willa Cather. Boston: The Gorham Press, 1903.

****** THE TAVERN
by: Willa Cather (1873-1947)

N the tavern of my heart
Many a one has sat before,
Drunk red wine and sung a stave,
And, departing, come no more.
When the night was cold without,
And the ravens croaked of storm,
They have sat them at my hearth,
Telling me my house was warm.

As the lute and cup went round,
They have rhymed me well in lay;--
When the hunt was on at morn,
Each, departing, went his way.
On the walls, in compliment,
Some would scrawl a verse or two,
Some have hung a willow branch,
Or a wreath of corn-flowers blue.

Ah! my friend, when thou dost go,
Leave no wreath of flowers for me;
Not pale daffodils nor rue,
Violets nor rosemary.
Spill the wine upon the lamps,
Tread the fire, and bar the door;
So despoil the wretched place,
None will come forevermore.

"The Tavern" is reprinted from April Twilights. Willa Cather. Boston: The Gorham Press, 1903.


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https://www.poetrysoup.com/article/discovering_willa_cather-1601

Discovering Willa Cather
Written by: Tara Marta

As a high school student, I studied many literary classics by authors like Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Jane Austen, just to name a few. I knew all about Hamlet’s dilemmas, Jean Valjean’s prison sentence, and Mr. Darcy’s s sexual appeal to women. At the time, I thought I’d heard about every literary giant in American Literature, yet there remained one author who seemed utterly forgotten; someone whose name never appeared on summer reading lists or whose stories never made it into our textbooks – Willa Cather.

I first discovered Cather not through books, but, of all places, through television. A film adaptation of her novel My Antonia aired in 1995, and I became instantly enamored with the story, which involved three main elements: Jim, Antonia, and a prairie. Still, I had no idea that the movie had actually been a book written by Willa Cather. Fast forward several years later when I found a copy at a used book sale. Upon reading the novel, I became captivated by Cather’s unique style of writing. Nobody could tell a story with such profundity quite like she could.

Per my usual habit after reading a good book, I did an intensive study on the life of Willa Cather in an effort to get to know the woman behind the words. Through my research I learned that Cather, born in Virginia on December 7, 1873, moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska with her parents and siblings at the age of nine. Life on the prairie did not seem to suit the young girl, and she spent much of her time longing for the home she left behind. Fate, however, had other plans, and little did Cather know that the prairie life she so readily despised, would one day come to serve as a prominent character in two of her most important novels – My Antonia and O’ Pioneers!

During the early part of her life, Cather entertained the idea of becoming a doctor. Her dream of writing did not take flight until a college professor, unbeknownst to her, had one of her essays on Thomas Carlyle published in the Nebraska State Journal. From that moment on Cather became smitten with the written word, and readers have been benefiting from it ever since.

Cather’s incredible gift for writing exhibited not only a person of high intelligence, but an immensely prolific storyteller. She created unforgettable characters and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for the novel One of Ours, much to the dismay of Ernest Hemingway who complained that a woman had no business writing a war novel. Luckily for Cather, readers did not agree.

For me, Cather’s appeal does not solely belong to her work; rather, much can be learned from the way in which she lived her life. At a time when women lived within the confines of conformity, Cather broke barriers to forge her own path – one that did not adhere to being a conventional woman. No marriage, no children, no questions asked, and if one did ask, she likely never felt obliged to answer. She spoke her mind, valued her privacy, and remained unapologetic for her autonomous lifestyle.

When Willa Cather died on April 24, 1947, she left behind an enduring legacy, which included not only great works of literature – even if schools still do not add them to the reading list – but a lasting impression of a strong willed woman whose brilliant acumen kept her way ahead of her time. Although she might be unappreciative of the many books that have been written about her, particularly a recent one containing her personal letters, perhaps she would forgive the intrusion if she knew that we merely wish to get a glimpse into the soul of a woman whose impact has lasted nearly seventy years after her death. Only great writers have the ability to enjoy such longevity.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Anne%20Reeve%20Aldrich%20American%20Sappho%20Poet% 20Poetry%20Picture%20Bio.htm


The HyperTexts

Anne Reeve Aldrich: American Sappho

Anne Reeve Aldrich was an American poet and novelist. She was born April 25, 1866, in New York and died June 22, 1892, also in New York. Her books include The Rose of Flame (1889), The Feet of Love (1890), Nadine and Other Poems (1893), A Village Ophelia and Other Stories (1899) and Songs about Life, Love, and Death (1892). She wrote a number of poems in which she seemed to prophesy an early death for herself, then died at the tender age of 26. According to the preface of Songs about Life, Love, and Death, which was published posthumously, at the time of her death she was so weak that she couldn’t lift her pen, and thus had to dictate her last poem, “Death at Daybreak.” Her grand-uncle was the poet James Aldrich. She published her first volume of poetry, The Rose of Flame in 1889; it was not well received (critics cited its "unrestrained expression"). She was also said to have written “erotic” poems. But she persevered, publishing a novel, The Feet of Love, in 1890, and it seems she was working on her final volume of poems even on her deathbed.

SONGS ABOUT LIFE, LOVE, AND DEATH: “Passion and agony, the one because of the other, are the keys of Anne Reeve Aldrich's nature and verse. This woman is of the few who nearest share the moods of Sappho and her talents.”—Springfield Republican, circa 1892, as quoted in The Book Buyer, volume X, no. 3, April, 1893

http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=495441&t=w

Anne Reeve Aldrich (1866-1892)

http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/4994/aaty2.gif

Artistic rendering of Sappho by William Adolphe Bouguereau



Servitude

The church was dim at vespers.
My eyes were on the Rood.
But yet I felt thee near me,
In every drop of blood.

In helpless, trembling bondage
My soul's weight lies on thee,
O call me not at dead of night,
Lest I should come to thee!



When I Was Thine

"Ricordati da me quand 'ero teco." Tuscan Rispetto.

THE sullen rain breaks on the convent window,
The distant chanting dies upon mine ears.
—Soon comes the morn for which my soul hath languished,
For which my soul hath yearned these many years;
Forget of me this life which I resign,
Think of me in the days when I was thine.

Forget the paths my weary feet have travelled,
The thorns and stones that pierced them as I went;
These later days of prayer and scourge and penance,
These hours of anguish now so nearly spent.
Forget I left thy life for life divine,
Think of me in the days when I was thine.

Forget the rigid brow as thou wilt see it,
The folded eyelids, and the quiet mouth.
Think how my eyes grew brighter at thy coming,
Think of those fervid noontides in the South.
Think when my kisses made life half divine,
Think of me in the days when I was thine.

Forget this nearer past, I do adjure thee,
Remember only what was long ago.
Think when our love was fire unquenched by ashes,
Think of our Spring, and not this Winter's snow.
Forget me as I lie, past speech or sign.
Think of me in the days when I was thine.



Souvenirs

Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

Where is the glove that I gave to him,
Perfumed and warm from my arm that night?
And where is the rose that another stole
When the land was flooded with June moonlight,
And the satin slipper I wore?—Alack,
Some one had that—it was wrong, I fear.
Where are these souvenirs today?
But where are the snows of yesteryear?

The glove was burned at his next love's prayer,
And the rose was lost in the mire of the street;
And the satin slipper he tossed away,
For his jealous bride had not fairy feet.
Give what you will, but know, mesdames,
For a day alone are your favors dear.
Be sure for the next fair woman's sake
They will go—like the snows of yesteryear.



A Little Parable

I made the cross myself whose weight
Was later laid on me.
This thought is torture as I toil
Up life’s steep Calvary.

To think mine own hands drove the nails!
I sang a merry song,
And chose the heaviest wood I had
To build it firm and strong.

If I had guessed—if I had dreamed
Its weight was meant for me,
I should have made a lighter cross
To bear up Calvary!



My Guerdon

I stood where gifts were showered on men from Heaven,
And some had honors and the joy thereof;
And some received with solemn, radiant faces
The gift of love.

The green I saw of bay-leaves, and of laurel,
Of gold the gleam.
A voice spoke to me, standing empty-handed,
"For thee a dream."

Forbear to pity, ye who richly laden
Forth from the place of Heaven s bounty went;
Who marvel that I smile, my hands still empty
I am content.

Ye cannot guess how dowered beyond the measure
Of your receiving to myself I seem.
Lonely and cold, I yet pass on enraptured—
I have my dream.



The Prayer of Dolores

Madrid, 1888

Beneath the grass, I hear them say,
Live loathsome things that hate the day,—
Strange crawling shapes with blinded eyes,
Whose very image terrifies.
I dread not these: make deep my bed
With good black mold round heart and head.
But oh! the fear a Thought may creep
Down from the world to where I sleep,
Pierce through the earth to heart and brain
And coil there, in its home again!
Father, thou hast the good God’s ear, —
And when priests speak He bends to hear,—
Say, " Lord, this woman of Madrid
Begs, when herself in earth is hid,
Her soul s guilt paid for, grain by grain,
In throes of purgatorial pain,
That Thou her soul wouldst clean destroy;
She hath no wish for heavenly joy,

But just to be dissolved to Naught,
Beyond the reach of any thought.
Some sinners dare to beg for bliss,
I know my place, and ask but this:
That He, who made will then unmake
My soul, for His sweet mercy s sake!"



Fraternity

I ask not how thy suffering came,
Or if by sin, or if by shame,
Or if by Fate’s capricious rulings:
To my large pity all’s the same.

Come close and lean against a heart
Eaten by pain and stung by smart;
It is enough if thou hast suffered,—
Brother or sister then thou art.

We will not speak of what we know,
Rehearse the pang, nor count the throe,
Nor ask what agony admitted
Thee to the Brotherhood of Woe.

But in our anguish-darkened land
Let us draw close, and clasp the hand;
Our whispered password holds assuagement,—
The solemn “Yea, I understand!”



Separation

If it were land, oh, weary feet could travel,
If it were sea, a ship might cleave the wave,
If it were Death, sad Love could look to heaven.
And see through tears the sunlight on the grave.
Not land, or sea. or death keeps us apart
But only thou, oh unforgiving Heart.

If it were land, through piercing thorns I'd travel.
If it were sea, I'd cross to thee, or die.
If it were Death, I'd tear Life's veil asunder
That I might see thee with a clearer eye.
Ah none of these could keep our souls apart —
Forget, forgive, oh unforgiving Heart.



The End

Do you recall that little room
Close blinded from the searching sun,
So dim, my blossoms dreamed of dusk?
And shut their petals one by one.
And then a certain crimson eve,
The death of day upon the tide;
How all its blood spread on the waves,
And stained the waters far and wide.
Ah, you forget;
But I remember yet.

When I awake in middle night,
And stretch warm hands to touch your face,
There is no chance that I shall find
Aught but your chill and empty place.
I have no bitter word to say,
The Past is worth this anguish sore,
—But mouth to mouth, and heart to heart,
No more on earth, O God, no more!
For Love is dead;
Would 't were I, instead.



In Extremis

The sacred tapers flickered fair,
The priest has gone with Host and prayer;
I heard the "Nunc Dimittis" said,
Not with the heart, but with the head.

Though I, the while, lay dying near,
This was all my heart could hear:
"I love thee, lay thy lips on mine,
Thy kisses turn my head like wine."

And this was all my heart could see,
Instead of the cross held out to me,
That well-known small and scented room,
Made sweetly dusk by curtain's gloom.

And this was all my heart could feel,
Spite of these pains like stabbing steel,
The throbbing pulses of thy breast,
Where, weary, I was wont to rest.

O what shall come to me, alas!
Whose soul so soon in death must pass
The soul too wholly thine to dwell
On hope of heaven, or dread of hell.

If heaven, that awful glassy sea,
May still reflect some memory.
If hell, not all eternal fire,
Can quite burn out the old desire.

Instead of name of pitying saint
Breathed as the passing soul's last plaint,
Thy name will be my latest breath.
Who wast my life, who art my death.



Love, the Destroyer

Love is a Fire;
Nor Shame, nor Pride can well withstand Desire.
"For what are they," we cry, "that they should dare
To keep, O Love, the haughty look they wear?
Nay, burn the victims, O thou sacred Fire,
That with their death thou mayst but flame the higher.
Let them feel once the fierceness of thy breath,
And make thee still more beauteous with their death."

Love is a Fire;
But ah, how short-lived is the flame Desire!
Love, having burnt whatever once we cherished,
And blackened all things else, itself hath perished.
And now alone in gathering night we stand,
Ashes and ruin stretch on either hand.
Yet while we mourn, our sad hearts whisper low:
"We served the mightiest God that man can know."



Outer Darkness

Where shall I look for help? Our gracious God
Pities all those who weep for sin ingrain,
And potent is the Kingly Victim's blood
To wash repented guilt, and leave no stain.

But ah, what hope for me in Heaven above,
What consolation left beneath the sun,
In those black hours when my lost soul laments
Because it left that one sweet sin undone?



A Return to the Valley

Behold me at thy feet. Alone I climbed
And wandered through the mountain land of Art
Amid God's awful snows; the keen thin air
Pierced through my brain, and chilled me at the heart.

Behold me at thy feet. A famished heart
Does ill to travel by such paths as these.
Better for me to seek this vale once more,
Better for me to crouch here at thy knees.

Behold me at thy feet. And thou dost stretch
No tender hand to raise me to thy breast.
Ah, 't is a foolish bird that hopes to find
Untouched, in leafless hedge, its last year's nest.

I will depart, and seek again the heights,
Above hot love, or wholesome hate of foes.
But from this day my pilgrim feet must leave
A track of blood across the awful snows.



A Song About Singing

O nightingale, the poet's bird,
A kinsman dear thou art,
Who never sings so well as when
The rose-thorns bruise his heart.

But since thy agony can make
A listening world so blest,
Be sure it cares but little for
Thy wounded, bleeding breast!



April—and Dying

Green blood fresh pulsing through the trees,
Blacks buds, that sun and shower distend;
All other things begin anew,
But I must end.

Warm sunlight on faint-colored sward,
Warm fragrance in the breezes’ breath;
For other things art heat and life,
For me is death.



Death at Daybreak

I shall go out when the light comes in—
There lie my cast-off form and face;
I shall pass Dawn on her way to earth,
As I seek for a path through space.

I shall go out when the light comes in;
Would I might take one ray with me!
It is blackest night between the worlds,
And how is a soul to see?



In Conclusion

O Love, take these my songs, made for thy joy,
And speak one tender word of them to me.
And other praise or blame that word will drown
As voice of brook is drowned by sounding sea.

Like all my joys and woes, my garnered verse
To lay at thy dear feet I haste to bring.
Be gracious. Love, remembering that the mouth
Touched by thine own, could scarcely fail to sing!



A Draught

A bitter cup you offer me,
Though roses hide its brim with red.
Yet since your strong hand proffers it,
I shall not spurn, but drink instead.

And when the draught has done its work.
And I lie low, who now stand high.
You, who encompassed this, will pass
With loathing and averted eye.

Yet none the less I humbly bow.
And drain the cup on bended knee.
That holds within its hollow gold
Your pleasure, and your scorn of me.



Recollection

How can it be that I forget
The way he phrased my doom,
When I recall the arabesques
That carpeted the room?

How can it be that I forget
His look and mein that hour,
When I recall I wore a rose,
And still can smell the flower?

How can it be that I forget
Those words that were his last,
When I recall the tune a man
Was whistling as he passed?

These things are what we keep from life's
Supremest joy or pain;
For memory locks her chaff in bins
And throws away the grain.



Suppose

How sad if, by some strange new law,
All kisses scarred!
For she who is most beautiful
Would be most marred.

And we might be surprised to see
Some lovely wife
Smooth-visaged, while a seeming prude
Was marked for life.



In November

Brown earth-line meets gray heaven,
And all the land looks sad;
But Love’s the little leaven
That works the whole world glad.
Sigh, bitter win; lower, frore clouds of gray:
My Love and I are living now in May!



Love's Change

I went to dig a grave for Love,
But the earth was so stiff and cold
That, though I stove through the bitter night,
I could not break the mould.

And I said: 'Must he lie in my house in state,
And stay in his wonted place?
Must I have him with me another day,
With that awful change in his face?'



Music Of Hungary

My body answers you, my blood
Leaps at your maddening, piercing call
The fierce notes startle, and the veil
Of this dull present seems to fall.
My soul responds to that long cry;
It wants its country, Hungary!
Not mine by birth. Yet have I not
Some strain of that old Magyar race?
Else why the secret stir of sense
At sight of swarthy Tzigane face,
That warns me: 'Lo, thy kinsmen nigh.'
All's dear that tastes of Hungary.

Once more, O let me hear once more
The passion and barbaric rage!
Let me forget my exile here
In this mild land, in this mild age;
Once more that unrestrained wild cry
That takes me to my Hungary!

They listen with approving smile,
But I, O God, I want my home!
I want the Tzigane tongue, the dance,
The nights in tents, the days to roam,
O music, O fierce life and free
God made my soul for Hungary!



The Rose of Flame

Look at this tangled snare of undergrowth,
These low-branched trees that darken all below;
Drink in the hot scent of this noontide air,
And hear, far off, some distant river flow,
Lamenting ever till it finds the sea.
New Life, new World, what's Shame to thee and me ?

Let us slay Shame; we shall forget his grave
Locked in the rapture of our lone embrace.
Yet what if there should rise, as once of old,
New wonder of this new, yet ancient place:
An angel, with a whirling sword of flame,
To drive us forth forever in God's name!



A Wanderer

The snows lie thick around his door,
That door made fast by bar and lock.
He will not heed thee, trembling, chilled;
He will not hear thy piteous knock.

Poor wandering Heart, canst thou not see
There is no welcome here for thee?
The air is numb with frost and night.
O wait no longer in the snow,

For lo, from yonder latticed pane
Faint music and the fire-light's glow;
He hath another guest in state,
And thou, poor Heart, thou art too late!



Lent

Ah, the road is a weary road
That leads one on to God,
And all too swift the eager race
To suit a lagging pace,
And far, far distant looks the goal
To the most patient soul.
So I forsook the sharp set road,
And walked where pleasant herbs were sowed.
I flung the sandals from tired feet,
And strayed where honeyed flowers grew sweet,
Nor strained tense nerves, nor onward pressed,
But made the goal his breast.
His circling arms my Heaven I made,
And, save to him, no more I prayed.
So for my sin I paid the price
Of endless joys of Paradise.
Good fellow-pilgrims, go your way.
For me 't is all in vain to pray.
I weep, when o'er the windy track
Your victors' hymns float echoing back,
But still I know, with eyelids wet,
I could return, but not forget.



Dreams

So still I lay within his arms
He dreamed I was asleep,
Across my lips I felt his breath
Like burning breezes creep.

I felt his watchful, searching gaze
Though closed eyes cannot see;
I felt his warm and tender grasp
More closely prison me.

The waking dream was all too sweet
For me to wish to sleep.
I was too far beyond Earth's woes
To speak, or smile, or weep.

How after this, could I endure
The troublous times of Age and Tears,
To sit and wait for Death to dawn
Across the midnight of my years!

Love will not stay, though we entreat;
Death will not come at call.
Ah, to return to life and grief!
Ah, having risen to fall!

I felt his mouth burn on my own;
I raised my eyes to his eyes' deep.
He thought his kiss had wakened me,
—He dreamed I was asleep!



Under the Rose

He moved with trembling fingers
From my throat, the band of red,
And a band of burning kisses
His lips set there instead.

Then he tied again the ribbon.
"I will hide them, Love," said he,
"And the secret of thy necklace
None shall know, save thee and me."

It was just a foolish fancy,
But from that day to this,
I wore the crimson ribbon
To hide my lover's kiss.

He has gone, and love is over,
But this blade within my hand,
Still shall hide our secret kisses
With another crimson band.



Immolation

Take her, and lay her head upon thy breast,
And be thou blest beyond thy heart's desire;
And as the star that ushers in the dawn
Fades from the sight in morning's glow and fire,

So, having heralded thy break of day,
'T is Nature's law that I no longer stay.
A path was I that led thee to thy goal;
Forget the path, since now the goal is won.

That was its proper place in all the land,
And it was made to set thy feet upon.
Its blessing is that all its course did tend
To bring thee to thy journey's happy end.



Arcadia

Sunlight on us, Love;
Not a shadow comes between.
Midway of the field we stand,
Heart in heart and hand in hand
And all the land is green.

Look around thee, Love,
Naught but meadows shining fair,
Save, as far as eye can see,
Long, low hills, clothed tenderly
By the veils of mist they wear.

But below us, Love,
Hidden by the meadow's rise,
Whispers brokenly a stream
Like a voice heard in a dream;
Clear its current as thine eyes.

Thou must linger, Love,
For a little on this side;
Both its banks are soft with moss.
Grieve not, Dear, that I shall cross,
For but shallow is its tide.

Canst not see it, Love?
Nay, Heart's Dearest, nor can I;
But in pauses to mine ear
Comes the sound thou canst not hear,
Filling silence with a sigh.

Smile again, dear Love,
Brighter day was never seen.
Pull these blossoms for thy hair;
Spring-time's joy is in the air,
And all the land is green.



Two Partings

He said good-bye with laughing eyes,
Too careless of me to be wise
And see I grieved, since he must go.
With weary tears, through night and day,
In thought, I follow on his way,
For he must go, and I must stay.
—I dread the bitter winds that blow.

Now time, at last, brings near a day
When I must go, and he must stay,
And I, like him, shall smile to go.
And when he says good-bye to me,
Although he weep, I shall not see,
But if in thoughts he follow me,
—He need not dread the winds that blow.



Rose Song

Plant, above my lifeless heart
Crimson roses, red as blood.
As if the love, pent there so long
Were pouring forth its flood.

Then, through them, my heart may tell,
Its Past of Love and Grief,
And I shall feel them grow from it,
And know a vague relief.

Through rotting shroud shall feel their roots,
And unto them myself shall grow,
And when I blossom at her feet,
She, on that day, shall know!



A New Year

THY bride is waiting in the kirk,
The wedding wine waits in thy hall.
Adieu.
For me, the stream's cold tide to drink,
Where once we lingered at its brink,
The kirk-yard waits thy Summer's work.
Adieu.

For her, the sweetest flowers that grow,
For me, the faded Autumn grass,
Adieu.
For me, the dead leaves' tarnished gold.
Ah, linger not, for once of old,
Love, thou did'st stay when I said "Go!"
Adieu.

For her, the pearl wrought marriage-dress,
The choir, the Mass, the ring of gold.
Adieu.
For me, the chants that night-birds sing.
My hand in thine, I asked no ring,
Nor blessed by love, the Church to bless.
Adieu.

For her, the wedding sheets are spread,
For her, the cup of Love and Life.
Adieu.
For me, the cup of Love and Death.
Then earth to earth, as the priest saith,
My bed of love, and my last bed.
Adieu.



A Fete-Day

They brought me snowy roses,
A picture of my Saint,
A little dove, whose tender note
Was like a virgin's plaint.

But you? You brought fierce kisses
That caught my heart in snare,
They crushed the snowy roses,
That decked my throat and hair.

The pictured Saint, in anguish,
Gazed down from carven frame,
And prayed, perhaps in heaven,
For her who bears her name.

The frightened dove moaned softly,
With ruffled wing and crest.
And never since will nestle
As once, within my breast!


In Exculpation

You seared both eyes with kisses,
And then bade me, blinded, go.
Nor leave betraying foot-prints
Upon your life's pure snow.

Ah, Love, you should remember
Ere you set blind captives free
They cannot find the by-paths
Who can no longer see!

Ah, Love, 't was your cruel folly
That set me journeying so,
And hoped to find, thereafter,
No foot-prints on the snow.



The Rose of Flame

God-like ignorance have they
Who the voyage dare undertake.
Yet men venture every day
For the mystic Blossom's sake.
Smile and weep for such as they,
If perchance ye know the way.
Smile for foe, and weep for friend,
Strange the journey, sure its end.

Through wide, twilight seas the course.
He may start from any port.
Fate alone stands at the helm,
Be the sailing long or short.
Night or day or weary week,
Still she guides, and does not speak.
No wild gale, or tempest's wrath
Dares to cross his vessel's path.

And what place of dreams is this,
Where the keel slides in the sand?
Never mortal's eyes but once
Gaze on such a magic strand.
The shore is veiled by mists of Shame
Where grows the luring Rose of Flame.
Bare sand, without a shrub or tree,
And vapor white, and whispering sea.

And now Fate holds him by the hand,
And leads him inland, till no more
The mist of Shame cleaves to the sand,
And distant grows the sea and shore.
Out of the desert, stretching bare,
Come dizzy scents that load the air.
Blindly and unfatigued he goes;
He breathes the perfume of the Rose.

Nearer—he feels the burning heat.
Can desert hold a flower like this?
He sees, is blinded by its glow;
The scent is like a clinging kiss.
The perfume deepens to a pang,
And in his brain strange music sang,
Such as lost Spirits sing in Hell.
Then,—days,—or years; he best can tell.

Withered, sere, and scorched at heart,
He must seek the world once more.
Never shall he sail again
Through such seas, to touch such shore,
And the memory of that strand
Makes him loathe all other land,
And no flower seems worth the name,
Since he saw the Rose of Flame.

Related pages: Romanticism Then and Now, Romanticism Defined, The Best Romantic Poetry, The Best Romantic Poets, American Sapphos

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

O Sing Fair Lady When With Me
------------------- By Pushkin

O sing, fair lady, when with me Sad songs of Georgia no more:
They bring into my memory Another life,
a distant shore.

Your beautiful,
your cruel tune Brings to my memory,
alas, The steppe, the night - and
with the moon Lines of a far, unhappy lass.

Forgetting at the sight of you That shadow fateful,
shadow dear,
I hear you singing - and anew
I picture it before me, here.

O sing, fair lady,
when with me Sad songs of Georgia no more:
They bring into my memory Another life, a distant shore.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/48067


Poems by Elinor Wylie

Address to My Soul
Atavism
Cold Blooded Creatures
A Crowded Trolley Car
Epitaph


Wild Peaches
---------- By Elinor Wylie
1

When the world turns completely upside down
You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore;
We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town,
You’ll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown
Homespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold color.
Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,
We’ll swim in milk and honey till we drown.

The winter will be short, the summer long,
The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,
Tasting of cider and of scuppernong;
All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all.
The squirrels in their silver fur will fall
Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot.


2

The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass
Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold.
The misted early mornings will be cold;
The little puddles will be roofed with glass.
The sun, which burns from copper into brass,
Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold
Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold
Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass.

Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover;
A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year;
The spring begins before the winter’s over.
By February you may find the skins
Of garter snakes and water moccasins
Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear.


3

When April pours the colors of a shell
Upon the hills, when every little creek
Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake
In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell,
When strawberries go begging, and the sleek
Blue plums lie open to the blackbird’s beak,
We shall live well — we shall live very well.

The months between the cherries and the peaches
Are brimming cornucopias which spill
Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black;
Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches
We’ll trample bright persimmons, while you kill
Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback.


4

Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones
There’s something in this richness that I hate.
I love the look, austere, immaculate,
Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.
There’s something in my very blood that owns
Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,
A thread of water, churned to milky spate
Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.

I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,
Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves;
That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath,
Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,
Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,
And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.

************************************************** ***

Speed the Parting—
--------- By Elinor Wylie
I shall not sprinkle with dust
A creature so clearly lunar;
You must die—but of course you must—
And better later than sooner.
But if it should be in a year
That year itself must perish;
How dingy a thing is fear,
And sorrow, how dull to cherish!
And if it should be in a day
That day would be dark by evening,
But the morning might still be gay
And the moon have golden leavening.
And beauty’s a moonlight grist
That comes to the mills of dying;
The silver grain may be missed
But there’s no great good in crying.
Though luminous things are mould
They survive in a glance that crossed them,
And it’s not very kind to scold
The empty air that has lost them.
The limpid blossom of youth
Turns into a poison berry;
Having perceived this truth
I shall not weep but be merry.
Therefore die when you please;
It’s not very wise to worry;
I shall not shiver and freeze;
I shall not even be sorry.
Beautiful things are wild;
They are gone, and you go after;
Therefore I mean, my child,
To charm your going with laughter.
Love and pity are strong,
But wisdom is happily greater;
You will die, I suppose, before long,
Oh, worser sooner than later!

Elinor Wylie, “Speed the Parting—” from Selected Works of Elinor Wylie, edited by Evelyn Helmick Hively. Used with the permission of The Kent State University Press, http://upress.kent.edu/books/Hively2.htm.
Source: Selected Works of Elinor Wylie (Kent State University Press, 2005)

************************************************** ****



https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/elinor-wylie

Elinor Wylie
Poet Details
1885–1928
The Kent State University Press

Extravagantly praised in her lifetime, the poet and novelist Elinor Wylie suffered a posthumous reversal in her reputation but has experienced something of a revival of interest among feminist critics since the 1980s.

Wylie was born in Somerville, New Jersey to a socially prominent family, and grew up in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C. As the daughter of a lawyer who later became solicitor general of the United States, she was trained for the life of a debutante and a society wife, but she rebelled against that destiny and became notorious, in her time, for her multiple marriages and affairs. Her childhood was unhappy, according to Edward Kelly in the Dictionary of Literary Biography; her father had a mistress, her mother was a chronic hypochondriac, and at least one of her siblings, a brother, committed suicide. Another brother was rescued after jumping off a ship, and a sister died under equivocal circumstances. Wylie herself, although known for her beauty, suffered from dangerously high blood pressure all her adult life; it caused unbearable migraines, and would kill her by means of a stroke at the age of forty-three.

Wylie's first marriage, to Philip Hichborn in 1905, occurred "on the rebound" from another romance, according to Karen F. Stein in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Hichborn, a would-be poet, was emotionally unstable, and it was during this period that Wylie's headaches began. In 1910, she left her husband and their son to escape to England with a married lawyer, Horace Wylie, under the assumed name of Waring; this event caused a scandal in the Washington, D.C., social circles Elinor Wylie had frequented. Encouraged by Horace Wylie, Elinor published privately, and anonymously, a small book of poems she had written since 1902, Incidental Numbers (1912). The couple returned to the United States at the outbreak of World War I, and lived in Boston, Augusta, Georgia, and Washington, D.C., under the stress of social ostracism and Elinor's illness. Wishing for a second child, she suffered several miscarriages between 1914 and 1916, as well as a stillbirth and the live birth of a premature child who died after one week.

The Wylies did not officially marry until 1916, after Elinor's first husband had committed suicide and Horace's first wife had divorced him. By that time, however, the couple were drawing apart. Elinor Wylie began to move in literary circles in New York; her friends there numbered John Peale Bishop, Edmund Wilson, John Dos Passos, Sinclair Lewis, Carl Van Vechten, and her future third husband, William Rose Benet. Encouraged by her friends, she submitted poems to Poetry magazine despite her own self-doubts; four were published by Harriet Monroe in the May, 1920, edition, including her most widely anthologized poem, "Velvet Shoes."

Benet had begun to act as informal literary agent for Wylie, and feeling the increasing pull of the literary world, she separated from Horace Wylie in 1921. Commented Stein in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "She captivated the literary world with her slender, tawny-haired beauty, personal elegance, acid wit, and technical virtuosity." However, Wylie was no salon dilettante; working hard, she published four volumes of poetry and four novels between 1921 and her death in 1928, in addition to writing some essays and reviews and working as a literary editor of prominent magazines such as Vanity Fair.

In 1921, Wylie's volume Nets to Catch the Wind, which many critics still consider to contain her best poems, was issued. In addition to "Velvet Shoes," it contains the notable poems "August," "Wild Peaches," "A Proud Lady," "The Eagle and the Mole," "Sanctuary," "Winter Sleep," "Madman's Song," "The Church-Bell," and "A Crowded Trolley Car." Her poems were miniature in scope, displaying what Wylie in an essay called her "small clean technique." Stanzas and lines were quite short, and the effect of her images was of a highly detailed, polished surface. Often, her poems expressed a dissatisfaction with the realities of life on the part of a speaker who aspired to a more gratifying world of art and beauty. Nets to Catch the Wind "conveys a deep knowledge of life and evidences a mature talent," in the view of a Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism contributor; in its own time, it attracted the praise of poets such as Edna St. Vincent Millay and Louis Untermeyer.

Nets to Catch the Wind was followed in 1923 by another successful volume of verse, Black Armour, which Stein in the Dictionary of Literary Biography viewed as exemplifying, and confessing, the limitations of Wylie's miniaturist method. An admirer of the British Romantic poets, and particularly of Shelley, to a degree that some critics have seen as abnormal, Wylie seemed to realize, nevertheless, that she was a genius of a lesser rank, one who could only create a "gilded bird" as opposed to Shelley's gloriously alive skylark. Stein, commenting that most of the personae in Black Armour are outcasts from society, interprets the work as self-pitying rather than maturely self-aware.

In the same year as Black Armour, Wylie's first novel, Jennifer Lorn: A Sedate Extravaganza, was published to considerable acclaim: famously, the critic Carl Van Vechten organized a torchlight parade in Manhattan to celebrate its publication. The novel is a romantic pastiche set in Britain and India in the late 1700s; it encompasses the love and marriage of handsome, wealthy Gerald Poynyard and the fragile, beautiful Jennifer. Van Vechten hailed it as "the only successfully sustained satire in English." Modern critics, such as Kelly in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, are more prone to admire its lapidary passages of prose description and to express misgivings about its melodramatic plot and shaky structure; Alice R. Bensen, in the Reference Guide to American Literature, called it "a long catalogue of lovely, delicate objects."

Wylie's second novel, The Venetian Glass Nephew (1925) is considered her best by Kelly for its unity of theme; however, many critics would assign that honor to her fourth novel, the 1928 Mr. Hodge and Mr. Hazard, of which Stein asserted, "Critics agree that this book is her best novel." In The Venetian Glass Nephew, a Roman Catholic cardinal seeks a nephew to whom he can bequeath his generosity. He is drawn to the lair of a glassblower who makes a handsome nephew for the cardinal out of glass. When a beautiful young woman falls in love with the artificial nephew and finds him unable to love in return, she volunteers to be turned into glass herself, in what Kelly terms "one of modern literature's rare reversals of the Pygmalion theme."

Wylie's two later novels both express her idolatry of Shelley. In The Orphan Angel (1926), the great young poet is rescued from drowning off an Italian cape and travels to America, where he encounters the dangers of the frontier. Although the novel was a Book-of-the-Month selection in 1926, its critical and popular reception both were mixed. In retrospect, Kelly in the Dictionary of Literary Biography identified it as "her only failure," and Stein explained, "Its chief difficulty is that it fails to achieve Wylie's purpose, that of kindling admiration for the heroic poet. Instead, the novel becomes a picaresque exploration with minimal plot interest."

Much more successful, says the consensus of critics, was Mr. Hodge and Mr. Hazard, which portrays the decline of a fictitious late-Romantic poet in an England clouded by the beginnings of Victorianism. Despite its historical setting, the novel contains characters and scenes that were recognizable to Wylie's friends. According to a Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism contributor, this novel "is a sensitive allegory of the poet's tragedy in a world indifferent to the artist's needs."

Wylie's third volume of verse, Trivial Breath (1928), was dedicated to Shelley. It appeared at a time of personal upheaval. She had married Benet in 1923, but the marriage became strained, and the two agreed to live apart, Wylie moving to London. By 1927, she had already written to her second husband, Horace Wylie, of her enduring love for him. In 1928, she met a married man, Henry de Clifford Woodhouse, with whom she fell in love. This love inspired a series of nineteen sonnets, One Person, which she later included as the first section of Angels and Earthly Creatures (1928).

These love poems seem, at times, to express an understanding that she had previously lacked genuine passion, and therefore to claim that she has achieved such a state; for this reason, some critics consider it her most mature poetry. This view is countered, however, by Thomas A. Gray in his 1969 study Elinor Wylie, who stated that "Wylie's later work . . . represents a reversal of the normal direction of development of a writer's art, in which his unique way of using language seems ever more the 'necessary and inevitable' expression of his individual way of seeing and feeling. . . . The 'new' way of speaking in One Person does not suggest any new way of feeling." It must be added, however, that Stein in the Dictionary of Literary Biography considered Gray's study "unsympathetic."

A very different view was proposed in 1979 by Wylie's biographer Stanley Olson, who called the One Person sonnets "perhaps, her finest achievement. They are testimony to the power of her emotions, distilled and purified. . . . The love in these lyrics is not a private love, not a variety of confession, but an abstracted one, free of the protection of subjectivity. . . . The nineteen sonnets are paced with strength, energy and undeniable feeling, sustained as a group by shifting through the complexities and vicissitudes of love."

It was while going over a typescript of Angels and Earthly Creatures, on a Christmas visit to Benet in New York in 1928, that Wylie died. Picking up a volume of John Donne's poems, she asked Benet for a glass of water; when he returned with it, as Stein recounted in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "she walked toward him, murmured, 'Is that all it is?,' and fell to the floor, dead of a stroke." Her reputation was kept high for a while by her surviving champions, but after the 1950s, both attention and esteem flagged. Assessing her poetry, Gray in 1969 wrote that it "is largely a portrayal of the stratagems by which a fragile sensibility shields itself from the threats and shocks of existence in a world too rough for it. . . . She forever draws attention away from what she is saying by the way in which she insists on saying it. This characteristic explains the thinness of her themes and the fragility of her style: in place of fresh perceptions, she very often gives an artificially posed personality and, in place of style, stylishness."

Stein, in contrast, pointed respectfully to more than one passage of Wylie's verse in which the poet calls realistic attention to the disappointments of marriage and the contradictions and constrictions of traditional womanhood. Calling Wylie's gifts "notable, but problematic," Stein in the Dictionary of Literary Biography averred, "Inclusion of Wylie's poetry in recently published anthologies testifies to a continuing interest, and may hopefully lead to further examination of her poetry and prose." Kelly, appreciating Wylie's prose as "always clear and undigressive," reserved his greater admiration for her verse, and concluded, "Without doubt the poems and novels of Elinor Wylie can stand on their own, even if we do not know the tortured woman beneath the silver-cool facade of physical beauty."
Bibliography
POETRY

(As anonymous) Incidental Numbers, privately printed (London), 1912.
Nets to Catch the Wind, Harcourt, Brace (New York, NY), 1921.
Black Armour, Doran (New York, NY), 1923.
Trivial Breath, Knopf (New York City and London), 1928.
Angels and Earthly Creatures: A Sequence of Sonnets (also known as One Person), privately printed, Borough Press (Henley on Thames, England), 1928.
Angels and Earthly Creatures (includes Angels and Earthly Creatures: A Sequence of Sonnets), Knopf (New York City and London), 1929.
Birthday Sonnet, Random House (New York, NY), 1929.
Last Poems of Elinor Wylie, transcribed by Jane D. Wise, foreword by William Rose Benet, tribute by Edith Olivier, Knopf (New York City), 1943, Academy Chicago (Chicago), 1982.

NOVELS

Jennifer Lorn: A Sedate Extravaganza, Doran (New York, NY), 1923, Richards (London), 1924.
The Venetian Glass Nephew, Doran, 1925, Academy Chicago, 1984.
The Orphan Angel, Knopf (New York, NY), 1926, published as Mortal Image, Heinemann, 1927.
Mr. Hodge & Mr. Hazard, Knopf (New York City) and Heinemann (London), 1928, Academy Chicago, 1984.

COLLECTIONS

Elinor Wylie, edited by Laurence Jordan, Simon & Schuster (New York City), 1926.
Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie, Knopf (New York, NY), 1932.
Collected Prose of Elinor Wylie, Knopf (New York, NY), 1933.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

On the Eclipse of the Moon of October, 1865

One little noise of life remained--I heard
The train pause in the distance, then rush by,
Brawling and hushing, like some busy fly
That murmurs and then settles; nothing stirred
Beside. The shadow of our traveling earth
Hung on the silver moon, which mutely went
Through that grand process, without token sent,
Or any sign to call a gazer forth,
Had I not chanced to see; dumb was the vault
Of heaven, and dumb the fields--no zephyr swept
The forest walks, or through the coppice crept;
Nor other sound the stillness did assault,
Save that faint-brawling railway's move and halt;
So perfect was the silence Nature kept.

Charles Turner

-------------------------------------------------------

The Sonneteer to the Sea-Shell

Fair ocean shell, the poet's art is weak
To utter all thy rich variety!
How thou dost shame him when he tries to speak,
And tell his ear the rapture of his eye!
I cannot paint as very truth requires
The gold-green gleam that o'er thee breaks and roves,
Nor follow up with words thy flying fires,
Where'er the startled rose-light wakes and moves.
Ah! why perplex with all thy countless hues
The single-hearted sonnet? Fare thee well!
I give thee up to some gay lyric muse,
As fitful as thyself, thy tale to tell:
The quick-spent sonnet cannot do thee right
Nor in one flash deliver all thy light.

Charles Turner

--------------------------------------------------------

We Cannot Keep Delight

We cannot keep delight--we cannot tell
One tale of steady bliss, unwarped, uncrost,
The timid guest anticipates his farewell,
And will not stay to hear it from his host!
I saw a child upon a summer's day,
A child upon the margin of a pond,
Catch at the boughs that came within his way,
>From a fair fruit-tree on the bank beyond;
The gale that swayed them from him aye arose,
And seldom sank into such kindly calm
As gave his hand upon the bunch to close;
Which then but left its fragrance on his palm;
For the wind woke anew from its repose,
And bore the fruit away, but wafted all its balm.

Charles Turner

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Tennyson_Turner


Charles Tennyson Turner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Charles Tennyson Turner (4 July 1808 – 25 April 1879) was an English poet. Born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, he was an elder brother of Alfred Tennyson; his friendship and the "heart union" with his greater brother is revealed in Poems by Two Brothers (1829). Another poet brother was Frederick Tennyson.

In 1833, Charles was ordained a priest in the Church of England. On 1 October 1835, he changed his surname to Turner after inheriting the estate of his great-uncle, the Reverend Samuel Turner of Caistor in Lincolnshire. On 24 May 1836, he married Louisa Sellwood, the younger sister of Alfred's future wife; she later suffered from mental illness and became an opium addict. Charles died on 25 April 1879, at the age of 70, at 6 Imperial Square in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.[1]

Turner was key in the construction of Grasby, a small village on the outskirts of Caistor. He helped construct part of the school (Grasby School) and was the reverend of Grasby Church for a while.
Published works

Sonnets (1864)
Small Tableaux (1868)
Sonnets, Lyrics and Translations (1873)
Collected Poems (1880, 8 months after death), assembled by Alfred and Hallam Tennyson, and James Spedding

References
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
Charles Tennyson Turner

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wood, James, ed. (1907). "Turner, Charles Tennyson". The Nuttall Encyclopædia. London and New York: Frederick Warne.

W. H. Auden - 'Family Ghosts' - Rev. Charles Turner [formerly Tennyson] (I10561)

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

http://www.rattle.com/goya-could-have-painted-this-by-douglas-blazek/


June 13, 2017
“Goya Could Have Painted This” by Douglas Blazek

Douglas Blazek

GOYA COULD HAVE PAINTED THIS

Next door my neighbor
massages his car with a mass
of diapers and a fussy muscle.
Fuels it spoon by spoon
with wealthy gas to perfume its exhaust.
Works his keyed-in personality
to soothe a herd of ignition sparks.
Drives his fantasies about his doubts
as demons round a rosary.

Trees in his hands are branchless pets.
Roses succumb to the passion of fence.
He pockets blocks of deadlocked stats.
Calculates estates in a sea of distress.
Stuck in logic to secure mere fact,
his speech adds anchor to the ship he subtracts.

I would rather eat hooks and electricity,
chew a quarter mile of chrome,
than live in this slum of prosperity,
but wherever I am Mr. Everywhere goes.

Goya could have painted this
but not with a brush.
Goya would have stretched our skull
to the dull diode glow
of a Sony canvas, then broadcast
our monstrous success as Pavlovian
reflex eating more resource
to fill its abyss.

—from Rattle #15, Summer 2001

__________

Douglas Blazek: “No matter how dramatic, facts require more than empathy to be relevant. Add them up and the sum is nothing the universe cannot rehash another way. Drop biography, and facts become more interesting. Poetry is the empathy that reveals the forces by plugging fact-flow into overview.”

This modern poet writes verses I can feel, understand and acknowledge as having been born of great poetic talent.--Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Plea
-----by Leslie Mellichamp

O singer, sing to me—
I know the world's awry—
I know how piteously
The hungry children cry—

But I bleed warm and near,
And come another dawn
The world will still be here
When home and hearth are gone.

Formal poetry lost a staunch advocate when Leslie Mellichamp died on December 18, 2001. Editor of The Lyric, the oldest magazine in North America devoted to traditional poetry, he was the author of scores of poems, essays, and short stories that appeared in the 1950s and '60s in such places as the Atlantic, New York Times, Saturday Review, Ladies' Home Journal, and the Georgia Review. Believing with the gifted contributors who have kept The Lyric alive since 1921 that the roots of a living poetry lie in music and the common life, rather than in the fragmented bizarre, and that rhyme, structure, and lucidity are timeless attributes of enduring poetry, he offered his own lyrics as tributes to life's ancient ironies, the earth's patient resilience, the impudence of lovers, the wondrous eyes of children, and the cunning of that soft-shoed thief, Time. Below are a few of Leslie Mellichamp's poems, would that there had been more.

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A Garden Song
- Poem by Henry Austin Dobson


HERE in this sequester'd close
Bloom the hyacinth and rose,
Here beside the modest stock
Flaunts the flaring hollyhock;
Here, without a pang, one sees
Ranks, conditions, and degrees.

All the seasons run their race
In this quiet resting-place;
Peach and apricot and fig
Here will ripen and grow big;
Here is store and overplus,--
More had not Alcinoüs!

Here, in alleys cool and green,
Far ahead the thrush is seen;
Here along the southern wall
Keeps the bee his festival;
All is quiet else--afar
Sounds of toil and turmoil are.

Here be shadows large and long;
Here be spaces meet for song;
Grant, O garden-god, that I,
Now that none profane is nigh,--
Now that mood and moment please,--
Find the fair Pierides!

Henry Austin Dobson

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http://www.thehypertexts.com/Best%20Unknown%20Poets.htm


After the Rain
--- by Jared Carter

After the rain, it’s time to walk the field
again, near where the river bends. Each year
I come to look for what this place will yield—
lost things still rising here.

The farmer’s plow turns over, without fail,
a crop of arrowheads, but where or why
they fall is hard to say. They seem, like hail,
dropped from an empty sky,

yet for an hour or two, after the rain
has washed away the dusty afterbirth
of their return, a few will show up plain
on the reopened earth.

Still, even these are hard to see—
at first they look like any other stone.
The trick to finding them is not to be
too sure about what’s known;

conviction’s liable to say straight off
this one’s a leaf, or that one’s merely clay,
and miss the point: after the rain, soft
furrows show one way

across the field, but what is hidden here
requires a different view—the glance of one
not looking straight ahead, who in the clear
light of the morning sun

simply keeps wandering across the rows,
letting his own perspective change.
After the rain, perhaps, something will show,
glittering and strange.

I admire this poem by the contemporary poet Jared Carter, especially its closing lines. This poem capitalizes on the poet's capacity for wonder.


simply keeps wandering across the rows,
letting his own perspective change.
After the rain, perhaps, something will show,
glittering and strange


This reminds me, days in my youth, wandering across the field behind our home, after a hard rain and picking up Indian arrow heads on the farm.
Imagining the lives of my ancestors and their hardships.-Tyr

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ARCADIAN WINTER
--- by Willa Cather

WOE is me to tell it thee,
Winter winds in Arcady!
Scattered is thy flock and fled
From the glades where once it fed,
And the snow lies drifted white
In the bower of our delight,
Where the beech threw gracious shade
On the cheek of boy and maid:
And the bitter blasts make roar
Through the fleshless sycamore.


White enchantment holds the spring,
Where thou once wert wont to sing,
And the cold hath cut to death
Reeds melodious of thy breath.

He, the rival of thy lyre,
Nightingale with note of fire,
Sings no more; but far away,
From the windy hill-side gray,
Calls the broken note forlorn
Of an aged shepherd's horn.


Still about the fire they tell
How it long ago befell
That a shepherd maid and lad
Met and trembled and were glad;
When the swift spring waters ran,
And the wind to boy or man
Brought the aching of his sires--
Song and love and all desires.

Ere the starry dogwoods fell
They were lovers, so they tell.


Woe is me to tell it thee,
Winter winds in Arcady!
Broken pipes and vows forgot,
Scattered flocks returning not,
Frozen brook and drifted hill,
Ashen sun and song-birds still;
Songs of summer and desire
Crooned about the winter fire;
Shepherd lads with silver hair,
Shepherd maids no longer fair.

Poem by Willa Cather
*************************************
PARADOX
by Willa Cather

I KNEW them both upon Miranda's isle,
Which is of youth a sea-bound seigniory:
Misshapen Caliban, so seeming vile,
And Ariel, proud prince of minstrelsy,
Who did forsake the sunset for my tower
And like a star above my slumber burned.

The night was held in silver chains by power
Of melody, in which all longings yearned--
Star-grasping youth in one wild strain expressed,
Tender as dawn, insistent as the tide;
The heart of night and summer stood confessed.

I rose aglow and flung the lattice wide--
Ah, jest of art, what mockery and pang!
Alack, it was poor Caliban who sang.

Willa Cather

---------------------------------------------------------------


https://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poems/best/willa_cather

Biography

Willa Cather poems, biography, quotes, examples of poetry, articles, essays and more. The best Willa Cather resource with comprehensive poet information, a list of poems, short poems, quotations, best poems, poet's works and more.

Willa Cather Biography...Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I. Cather grew up in Nebraska and graduated from the University of Nebraska. She lived and worked in Pittsburgh for ten years, then at the age of 33 she moved to New York, where she lived for the rest of her life.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Richard Wilbur, "The Death of a Toad" (1950)



THE DEATH OF A TOAD

A toad the power mower caught,
Chewed and clipped of a leg, with a hobbling hop has got
To the garden verge, and sanctuaried him
Under the cineraria leaves, in the shade
Of the ashen and heartshaped leaves, in a dim,
Low, and a final glade.

The rare original heartsblood goes,
Spends in the earthen hide, in the folds and wizenings, flows
In the gutters of the banked and staring eyes. He lies
As still as if he would return to stone,
And soundlessly attending, dies
Toward some deep monotone,

Toward misted and ebullient seas
And cooling shores, toward lost Amphibia's emperies.
Day dwindles, drowning and at length is gone
In the wide and antique eyes, which still appear
To watch, across the castrate lawn,
The haggard daylight steer.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher
--By Walter Savage Landor

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm’d both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.

--------------------------------------------

The Maid’s Lament
--By Walter Savage Landor

I loved him not; and yet, now he is gone,
I feel I am alone.
I check’d him while he spoke; yet, could he speak,
Alas! I would not check.
For reasons not to love him once I sought,
And wearied all my thought
To vex myself and him: I now would give
My love could he but live
Who lately lived for me, and, when he found
’Twas vain, in holy ground
He hid his face amid the shades of death.
I waste for him my breath
Who wasted his for me! but mine returns,
And this lorn bosom burns
With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep,
And waking me to weep
Tears that had melted his soft heart: for years
Wept he as bitter tears.
Merciful God! such was his latest prayer,
These may she never share.
Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold,
Than daisies in the mould,
Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate,
His name and life’s brief date.
Pray for him, gentle souls, whoe’er you be,
And oh! pray too for me!

---------------------------------------------------

Mild is the Parting Year
--By Walter Savage Landor

Mild is the parting year, and sweet
The odour of the falling spray;
Life passes on more rudely fleet,
And balmless is its closing day.

I wait its close, I court its gloom,
But mourn that never must there fall
Or on my breast or on my tomb
The tear that would have soothed it all.

--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Let No Charitable Hope
by Elinor Wylie
Now let no charitable hope
Confuse my mind with images
Of eagle and of antelope:
I am in nature none of these.

I was, being human, born alone;
I am, being woman, hard beset;
I live by squeezing from a stone
The little nourishment I get.

In masks outrageous and austere
The years go by in single file;
But none has merited my fear,
And none has quite escaped my smile.

This poet, deserves far, far, FAR more recognition that ever is given, IMHO..-TYR

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

An Invitation
---- by Thomas Blackburn
Holding with shaking hands a letter from some
Official – high up he says in the Ministry,
I note that I am invited to Birmingham,
There pedagogues to address for a decent fee.
'We like to meet,' he goes on, 'men eminent
In the field of letters each year,' and that's well put,
Though I find his words not wholly relevant
To this red-eyed fellow whose mouth tastes rank as soot.
No doubt what he's thinking of is poetry
When 'Thomas Blackburn' he writes, and not the fuss
A life makes when it has no symmetry,
Though the term 'a poet' being mainly posthumous,
Since I'm no stiff, is inappropriate.
What I can confirm is the struggle that never lets up
Between the horses of Plato beneath my yoke,
One after Light, and for Hell not giving a rap,
The other only keen on infernal smoke.
And poems...? From time to time they commemorate
Some particularly dirty battle between these two;
I put the letter down – what's the right note?
'Dear Sir,' I type, 'how nice to speak to you!'



What I can confirm is the struggle that never lets up
Between the horses of Plato beneath my yoke,
One after Light, and for Hell not giving a rap,
The other only keen on infernal smoke.
And poems...? From time to time they commemorate
Some particularly dirty battle between these two;
I put the letter down – what's the right note?
'Dear Sir,' I type, 'how nice to speak to you!'

I got a real kick out of this one, discovered today.-Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

To See Him Again
- Poem by Gabriela Mistral


Never, never again?
Not on nights filled with quivering stars,
or during dawn's maiden brightness
or afternoons of sacrifice?

Or at the edge of a pale path
that encircles the farmlands,
or upon the rim of a trembling fountain,
whitened by a shimmering moon?

Or beneath the forest's
luxuriant, raveled tresses
where, calling his name,
I was overtaken by the night?
Not in the grotto that returns
the echo of my cry?

Oh no. To see him again --
it would not matter where --
in heaven's deadwater
or inside the boiling vortex,
under serene moons or in bloodless fright!

To be with him...
every springtime and winter,
united in one anguished knot
around his bloody neck!
Gabriela Mistral

********************************************

I was not expecting that last verse- or even that last stanza.
This one has power and apparently,heartache, pain, angst, anger, hatred and extreme loathing of a lost lover..-Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

A Modest Love
BY SIR EDWARD DYER
The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall,
The fly her spleen, the little sparks their heat;
The slender hairs cast shadows, though but small,
And bees have stings, although they be not great;
Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs;
And love is love, in beggars as in kings.

Where rivers smoothest run, deep are the fords;
The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move;
The firmest faith is in the fewest words;
The turtles cannot sing, and yet they love:
True hearts have eyes and ears, no tongues to speak;
They hear and see, and sigh, and then they break.

*******************************************

This I found to be immensely deep, beautifully crafted and
so wondrously woven.... --Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Mesopotamia
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
1917

They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:
But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?

They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain
In sight of help denied from day to day:
But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,
Are they too strong and wise to put away?

Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide—
Never while the bars of sunset hold.
But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,
Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?

Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?
When the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,
Even while they make a show of fear,
Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends,
To conform and re-establish each career?

Their lives cannot repay us—their death could not undo—
The shame that they have laid upon our race.
But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,
Shall we leave it unabated in its place?

************************************************** ***

Justice
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
October, 1918


Across a world where all men grieve
And grieving strive the more,
The great days range like tides and leave
Our dead on every shore.
Heavy the load we undergo,
And our own hands prepare,
If we have parley with the foe,
The load our sons must bear.

Before we loose the word
That bids new worlds to birth,
Needs must we loosen first the sword
Of Justice upon earth;
Or else all else is vain
Since life on earth began,
And the spent world sinks back again
Hopeless of God and Man.

A People and their King
Through ancient sin grown strong,
Because they feared no reckoning
Would set no bound to wrong;
But now their hour is past,
And we who bore it find
Evil Incarnate held at last
To answer to mankind.

For agony and spoil
Of nations beat to dust,
For poisoned air and tortured soil
And cold, commanded lust,
And every secret woe
The shuddering waters saw—
Willed and fulfilled by high and low—
Let them relearn the Law:

That when the dooms are read,
Not high nor low shall say:—
"My haughty or my humble head
Has saved me in this day."
That, till the end of time,
Their remnant shall recall
Their fathers' old, confederate crime
Availed them not at all:

That neither schools nor priests,
Nor Kings may build again
A people with the heart of beasts
Made wise concerning men.
Whereby our dead shall sleep
In honour, unbetrayed,
And we in faith and honour keep
That peace for which they paid.

[FakeNewsSux]

https://classicalpoets.org/2020/03/04/a-bernie-sanders-poem-b-s-2020-by-joe-tessitore/
[/I][/FONT][/COLOR]

Removed- purely political posts are not allowed in this forum...

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildred_Plew_Meigs

Mildred Plew Meigs (born Mildred Plew) was an American poet, author of poems. Born to Chicago financier James E. Plew and Nettie Plew (nee Raymond), Mildred spent her adult life in Valparaiso, Florida. Mildred is most famous for her poem, "The Pirate Don Durk of Dowdee", which she published in Child Life Magazine in a 1923 issue.

Her first published book, The Road To Raffydiddle is dated 1913, and features illustrations by Frank Aloise.[3]

She contributed dozens of poems to Child Life Magazine, Harper's, Motion Picture,[4] Poetry, and other lifestyle magazines, and is credited as the author of six children's books.[5]

Mildred Plew Meigs died 1944, February 22, in her home in Valparaiso, Florida.[2]



Silver Ships
by Mildred Plew Merryman


There are trails that a lad may follow

When the years of his boyhood slip,



But I shall soar like a swallow

On the wings of a silver ship,



Guiding my bird of metal,



One with her throbbing frame,

Floating down like a petal,



Roaring up like a flame;

Winding the wind that scatters



Smoke from the chimney's lip,

Tearing the clouds to tatters



With the wings of a silver ship;



Grazing the broad blue sky light



Up where the falcons fare,

Riding the realms of twilight,



Brushed by a comet's hair;

Snug in my coat of leather,



Watching the skyline swing,

Shedding the world like a feather



From the tip of a tilted wing.

*********************************


Moon Song

by Mildred Plew Merryman



Zoon, zoon, cuddle and croon —



Over the crinkling sea,

The moon man flings him a silvered net



Fashioned of moonbeams three.



And some folk say when the net lies long

And the midnight hour is ripe;



The moon man fishes for some old song

That fell from a sailor's pipe.



And some folk say that he fishes the bars

Down where the dead ships lie,



Looking for lost little baby stars

That slid from the slippery sky.



And the waves roll out and the waves roll in

And the nodding night wind blows,



But why the moon man fishes the sea

Only the moon man knows.



Zoon, zoon, net of the moon



Rides on the wrinkling sea;

Bright is the fret and shining wet,



Fashioned of moonbeams three.



And some folk say when the great net gleams

And the waves are dusky blue,



The moon man fishes for two little dreams

He lost when the world was new.



And some folk say in the late night hours

While the long fin'shadows slide,



The moon man fishes for cold sea flowers

Under the tumbling tide.



And the waves roll out and the waves roll in

And the gray gulls dip and dose,



But why the moon man fishes the sea

Only the moon man knows.



Zoon, zoon, cuddle and croon —



Over the crinkling sea,

The moon man flings him a silvered net



Fashioned of moonbeams three.



And some folk say that he follows the flecks

Down where the last light flows,



Fishing for two round gold'rimmed "specs"

That blew from his button4ike nose.



And some folk say while the salt sea foams



And the silver net lines snare,

The moon man fishes for carven combs



That float from the mermaids' hair.



And the waves roll out and the waves roll in

And the nodding night wind blows,



But why the moon man fishes the sea

Only the moon man knows.

*********************************

Another great poet I recently discovered.
One that deserves much greater recognition imho..-Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Catbird
-- by Mary Oliver

He picks his pond, and the soft thicket of his world.
He bids his lady come, and she does,
flirting with her tail.
He begins early, and makes up his song as he goes.
He does not enter a house at night, or when it rains.
He is not afraid of the wind, though he is cautious.
He watches the snake, that stripe of black fire,
until it flows away.
He watches the hawk with her sharpest shins, aloft
in the high tree.
He keeps his prayer under his tongue.
In his whole life he has never missed the rising of the sun.
He dislikes snow.
But a few raisins give him the greatest delight.
He sits in the forelock of the lilac, or he struts
in its shadow.
He is neither the rare plover or the brilliant bunting,
but as common as the grass.
His black cap gives him a jaunty look, for which
we humans have learned to tilt our caps, in envy.
When he is not singing, he is listening.
Neither have I ever seen him with his eyes closed.
Though he may be looking at nothing more than a cloud
it brings to his mind several dozen new remarks.
From one branch to another, or across the path,
he dazzles with flight.
Since I see him every morning, I have rewarded myself
the pleasure of thinking that he knows me.
Yet never once has he answered my nod.
He seems, in fact, to find in me a kind of humor,
I am so vast, uncertain and strange.
I am the one who comes and goes,
and who knows why.
Will I ever understand him?
Certainly he will never understand me, or the world
I come from.
For he will never sing for the kingdom of dollars.
For he will never grow pockets in his gray wings.

*********************

Most definitely a true and very great poetess! -Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Clinton Scollard
Clinton Scollard [1860-1932] was a prolific American poet and sometime novelist. He was an excellent poet technically.
His verse often feature the natural world and depict small incidents that are honed to perfection. He has been compared with Robert Fros

***

Three poems by -- Clinton Scollard



An Exile


I can remember the plaint of the wind on the moor,
Crying at dawning, and crying at shut of the day,
And the call of the gulls that is eerie and dreary and dour,
And the sound of the surge as it breaks on the beach of the bay.

I can remember the thatch of the cot and the byre,
And the green of the garth just under the dip of the fells,
And the low of the kine, and the settle that stood by the fire,
And the reek of the peat, and the redolent heathery smells.

And I long for it all though the roses around me are red,
And the arch of the sky overhead has bright blue for a lure,
And glad were the heart of me, glad, if my feet could but tread
The path, as of old, that led upward and over the moor!

© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

********

Dawn, The Harvester

The purple sky has blanched to blue
With freaks and streaks of rose and fawn,
While on the rolling meads of sea
Gleam the gold footsteps of the Dawn.

What harvest, think you, will he find
Whither he sets his feet to roam?
Upon that boundless beryl plain
Only the lilies of the foam!

© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

**********

Khamsin


Oh, the wind from the desert blew in! — Khamsin

The wind from the desert blew in!
It blew from the heart of the fiery south,
From the fervid sand and the hills of drouth,
And it kissed the land with its scorching mouth;
The wind from the desert blew in!

It blasted the buds on the almond bough,
And shriveled the fruit on the orange tree;
The wizened dervish breathed no vow
So weary and parched was he.
The lean muezzin could not cry;
The dogs ran mad, and bayed at the sky;
The hot sun shone like a copper disk,
And prone in the shade of an obelisk
The water-carrier sank with a sigh,
For limp and dry was his water-skin;
And the wind from the desert blew in.

The camel crouched by the crumbling wall,
And, oh, the pitiful moan it made!
The minarets, taper and slim and tall,
Reeled and swam in the brazen light;
And prayers went up by day and night,
But thin and drawn were the lips that prayed.
The river writhed in its slimy bed,
Shrunk to a tortuous, turbid thread;
The burnt earth cracked like a cloven rind;
And still the wind, the ruthless wind, Khamsin,
The wind from the desert, blew in!

Into the cool of the mosque it crept,
Where the poor sought rest at the prophet's shrine;
Its breath was fire to the jasmine vine;
It fevered the brow of the maid who slept,
And men grew haggard with revel of wine.

The tiny fledgling died in the nest;
The sick babe gasped at the mother's breast.
Then a rumor rose and swelled and spread
From a tremulous whisper faint and vague,
Till it burst in a terrible cry of dread.
The plague! the plague! the plague!
Oh, the wind, Khamsin,
The scourge of the desert, blew in!

© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

A Triad
---BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
Three sang of love together: one with lips
Crimson, with cheeks and bosom in a glow,
Flushed to the yellow hair and finger tips;
And one there sang who soft and smooth as snow
Bloomed like a tinted hyacinth at a show;
And one was blue with famine after love,
Who like a harpstring snapped rang harsh and low
The burden of what those were singing of.
One shamed herself in love; one temperately
Grew gross in soulless love, a sluggish wife;
One famished died for love. Thus two of three
Took death for love and won him after strife;
One droned in sweetness like a fattened bee:
All on the threshold, yet all short of life.

****

Dream Land
--BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
Where sunless rivers weep
Their waves into the deep,
She sleeps a charmed sleep:
Awake her not.
Led by a single star,
She came from very far
To seek where shadows are
Her pleasant lot.

She left the rosy morn,
She left the fields of corn,
For twilight cold and lorn
And water springs.
Through sleep, as through a veil,
She sees the sky look pale,
And hears the nightingale
That sadly sings.

Rest, rest, a perfect rest
Shed over brow and breast;
Her face is toward the west,
The purple land.
She cannot see the grain
Ripening on hill and plain;
She cannot feel the rain
Upon her hand.

Rest, rest, for evermore
Upon a mossy shore;
Rest, rest at the heart's core
Till time shall cease:
Sleep that no pain shall wake;
Night that no morn shall break
Till joy shall overtake
Her perfect peace.

********

Winter: My Secret
--BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
I tell my secret? No indeed, not I;
Perhaps some day, who knows?
But not today; it froze, and blows and snows,
And you’re too curious: fie!
You want to hear it? well:
Only, my secret’s mine, and I won’t tell.

Or, after all, perhaps there’s none:
Suppose there is no secret after all,
But only just my fun.
Today’s a nipping day, a biting day;
In which one wants a shawl,
A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:
I cannot ope to everyone who taps,
And let the draughts come whistling thro’ my hall;
Come bounding and surrounding me,
Come buffeting, astounding me,
Nipping and clipping thro’ my wraps and all.
I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows
His nose to Russian snows
To be pecked at by every wind that blows?
You would not peck? I thank you for good will,
Believe, but leave the truth untested still.

Spring’s an expansive time: yet I don’t trust
March with its peck of dust,
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
Nor even May, whose flowers
One frost may wither thro’ the sunless hours.

Perhaps some languid summer day,
When drowsy birds sing less and less,
And golden fruit is ripening to excess,
If there’s not too much sun nor too much cloud,
And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
Perhaps my secret I may say,
Or you may guess.
**************************************

This poet must always rank within the top 5 best female poets ever, imho..
No modern female poet rates even in the top 10 best female poets -if a true rating is to be given, imho..-Tyr

[Mika-El]

[QUOTE=Tyr-Ziu Saxnot;836263]Lucy Maud Montgomery Poems

Definitely one of my faves Ty

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

[QUOTE=Tyr-Ziu Saxnot;836263]Lucy Maud Montgomery Poems

Definitely one of my faves Ty
As she is mine as well. A truly brilliant poet, imho. See my post number 6 on this very thread. I list her poems, her bio...
She was truly a poet's poet....--Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

A Winter Dawn


Above the marge of night a star still shines,
And on the frosty hills the sombre pines
Harbor an eerie wind that crooneth low
Over the glimmering wastes of virgin snow.

Through the pale arch of orient the morn
Comes in a milk-white splendor newly-born,
A sword of crimson cuts in twain the gray
Banners of shadow hosts, and lo, the day!

by--- Lucy Maud Montgomery

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

A Dirge

BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Why were you born when the snow was falling?
You should have come to the cuckoo’s calling,
Or when grapes are green in the cluster,
Or, at least, when lithe swallows muster
For their far off flying
From summer dying.

Why did you die when the lambs were cropping?
You should have died at the apples’ dropping,
When the grasshopper comes to trouble,
And the wheat-fields are sodden stubble,
And all winds go sighing
For sweet things dying.