Title/From Begins Poet Song for St Cecelia’s Day From harmony, from heavenly harmony John Dryden Flight to Australia Orchestrate this theme, artificer-poet Cecil Day Lewis For the Fallen With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children Laurence Binyon Futility Move him into the sun – Wilfred Owen Anthem for Doomed Youth What passing-bells for those […]
November
November 9 Ted Hughes
And finally from fantasy to realism in Ted Hughes’ memo: NOVEMBER The month of the drowned dog. After long rain the land Was sodden as the bed of an ancient lake, This poem is copyright, but you can read it here.
November 8 Walter de la Mare
The Vicar of Morwenstow’s efforts were not wholly successful as evidenced by Walter de la Mare’s dramatic monologue entitled: SAM Where Sam goes back in memory, It is to where the sea This poem is copyright, but you can read it here. Next: The Month of the Drowned Dog Ted Hughes
November 7 Charles Causley
Charles Causley recounts how an earlier Cornish poet, the Reverend R.S.Hawker of “And shall Trelawney die?” fame, sought to cure his parishioners of their superstitions by dressing up as a mermaid. THE MERRYMAID Robert Stephen Hawker, Vicar of Morwenstow, This poem is copyright. Next: Sam Walter de la Mare
November 6 Edmund Spenser
Spenser’s pageant figure, as you may guess, is lurking not far away: Next was November; he full gross and fat As fed with lard, and that right well might seem; For he had been a-fatting hogs of late, That yet his brows with sweat did reek and steam, And yet the season was full sharp […]
November 5 Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth” has a similar touch of the universal, going beyond the formal commemorations of the Cenotaph to find reconciliation between the actualities of war and the realities of grief: What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle […]
November 4 Wilfred Owen
Wilfrid Owen, an Infantry Officer in the Artists’ Rifles during the first World War, thus described his own writings: “My subject is War and the pity of War: the poetry is in the pity.” His poem “Futility” pities the dead fellow countrymen, and questions the purpose of life in its cosmic setting: Move him into […]
November 3 Laurence Binyon
November is the month for sad and proud remembrance of the service men who died in the World Wars. Laurence Binyon’s memorable words, so often used, are worth putting in their poetic context: For the Fallen With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flesh of […]
November 2 Cecil Day-Lewis
Flight to Australia A Poet Laureate of the twentieth century, Cecil Day Lewis uses the metaphor of an orchestra to describe the lift-off of a condemned D.H.9 during the “Flight to Australia” of Parer and M’Intosh in l920: an exploit that ended successfully. This verse paragraph too is full of appropriate sound: “Orchestrate this theme, […]
November 1 John Dryden
The close relationship of poetry and music is celebrated by our first officially designated Poet Laureate, John Dryden, in his “Song for St Cecilia’s Day, 22nd November, l687”: St Cecilia is especially associated with the organ. From harmony, from heavenly harmony This universal frame began; When Nature underneath a heap Of jarring atoms lay, And […]