However, if -- for example -- you balk at the irony-free use of the word "lovely" in a poem, you had best steer clear of de la Mare's poetry. For "lovely" is a word of which he was fond.
Night
That shining moon -- watched by that one faint star:
Sure now am I, beyond the fear of change,
The lovely in life is the familiar,
And only the lovelier for continuing strange.
Collected Poems (Faber and Faber 1979), page 266.
This is the final stanza of "Fare Well":
Look thy last on all things lovely,
Every hour. Let no night
Seal thy sense in deathly slumber
Till to delight
Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;
Since that all things thou wouldst praise
Beauty took from those who loved them
In other days.
Collected Poems, page 124.
Now
The longed-for summer goes;
Dwindles away
To its last rose,
Its narrowest day.
No heaven-sweet air but must die;
Softlier float
Breathe lingeringly
Its final note.
Oh, what dull truths to tell!
Now is the all-sufficing all
Wherein to love the lovely well,
Whate'er befall.
Collected Poems, page 437.
Have you come across this extraordinary little poem of his?
ReplyDeleteNapoleon
'What is the world, O soldiers?
It is I:
I, this incessant snow,
This northern sky;
Soldiers, this solitude
Through which we go
Is I.'
Nige: Thank you once again for visiting and for commenting. Yes, I was aware of "Napoleon" -- and I agree with you that it is indeed extraordinary. Of all the millions of words written about Napoleon, de la Mare captures his essence (and the essence of any megalomaniac, perhaps) in seven brief lines, doesn't he?
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