Category: Poetry

Days of Wine and Roses by Ernest Dowson

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I have given this poem the title by which it is generally known, because Ernest Dowson (1867–1900)himself did not give it an English title. As an Oxford man of that era, he preferred a Latin one, Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam, from the poet Horace. It translates roughly as“the shortness of life forbids us long hopes”.

It was used very memorably in the TV series The Durrells, where it was recited by Keeley Hawes as Louisa Durrell. She was trying to make her squabbling children understand that their life on Corfu was an idyllic sojourn that would not last forever.

Sadly but somewhat appropriately for the author of a poem about the brevity of life, Dowson, who was associated with the decadent movement, died of alcoholism at the age of thirty–two.

Days of Wine and Roses by Ernest Dowson

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
   Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
   We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
    Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
   Within a dream.

The Poplar Field by William Cowper

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They came and did some work on the tall plane trees in my road back in the spring. Men swarmed up on ropes and cut off all the small branches, leaving the trees black and stumpy against the blue sky.

Those trees are so high, they must be older than a lot of the local buildings that surround them. I don’t know just why it had to be done; there will be green shoots again, in time, I thought, but will they come this year?

At least the trees, even in their denuded state, were still there. During the summer, helped by the rain perhaps, they became bushy and green again, and now the leaves are starting to change colour.

You can see why the whole episode made me think of the poem below. Writing towards the end of his life, William Cowper (1731–1800) uses the image of the felled trees replaced by newly grown ones to reflect on the passing of time and life itself, and the impermanence of all things. 

The Poplar Field by William Cowper

The poplars are felled; farewell to the shade
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade;
The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.

Twelve years have elapsed since I last took a view
Of my favourite field and the bank where they grew;
And now in the grass behold they are laid,
And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade.

The blackbird has fled to another retreat
Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat,
And the scene where his melody charmed me before,
Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more.

My fugitive years are all hasting away,
And I must ere long lie as lowly as they,
With a turf on my breast and a stone at my head
Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.

’Tis a sight to engage me if anything can,
To muse on the perishing pleasures of man;
Though his life be a dream, his enjoyments, I see,
Have a being less durable even than he.

The Idlers by Edmund Blunden

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Edmund Blunden (1896–1974) is remembered as one of the soldier-poets of the first world war. He served on the Western Front from May 1916 until the end of the war and, like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, was awarded the Military Cross. After the war, he became an academic and writer.

There is an emphasis on the rural world in much of his work, and his prose memoir Undertones of War has a particular feel for the shattered landscapes of Belgium and France. One of his later books is Cricket Country, an examination of the rural roots of cricket and its abiding significance in English culture.

Gypsies with their brightly painted caravans were a bit of a thing in early twentieth century British art, featuring in works by Augustus John, Alfred Munnings, Laura Knight and others. The Idlers was published in 1922. One can imagine that the gypsy lifestyle might have seemed attractive to Blunden after his time in the trenches. It’s almost as if he is talking about “dropping out” before that was even a concept.

There’s a strong sense here of a less-developed, less crowded country, where there was room for this sort of life.  

The Idlers by Edmund Blunden

The gipsies lit their fires by the chalk-pit gate anew,
And the hoppled horses supped in the further dusk and dew;
The gnats flocked round the smoke like idlers as they were
And through the goss* and bushes the owls began to churr.

An ell above the woods the last of sunset glowed
With a dusky gold that filled the pond beside the road;
The cricketers had done, the leas all silent lay,
And the carrier’s clattering wheels went past and died away.

The gipsies lolled and gossiped, and ate their stolen swedes,
Made merry with mouth-organs, worked toys with piths of reeds:
The old wives puffed their pipes, nigh as black as their hair,
And not one of them all seemed to know the name of care.

* goss is a form of gorse 

When I Have Fears by Noel Coward

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Some years ago, a dear friend of mine from schooldays died prematurely. He was blessed with an exceptional sense of humour. It is one of the great regrets of my life that I had lost contact with him somewhat.

I wish I had known this poem in those sad days after the funeral. The last three lines of the second verse sum up my feelings exactly. I am sure many people have gained comfort from this poem over the years. It uses straightforward words to express universal emotions.

It may be a surprise that such a poignant meditation on life and death came from the pen of Noel Coward, of all people. There again, one of his best and most enduring plays is Blithe Spirit, which suggests that there may be some kind of survival after death, as do the last two lines here.

Now I think of it, the words blithe spirit apply rather well to my late friend. As someone else who died too young said: “Only the bores stay to the end of the party”.  

When I Have Fears by Noel Coward

When I have fears, as Keats had fears,
Of the moment I’ll cease to be
I console myself with vanished years
Remembered laughter, remembered tears,
And the peace of the changing sea.

When I feel sad, as Keats felt sad
That my life is so nearly done
It gives me comfort to dwell upon
Remembered friends who are dead and gone
And the jokes we had and the fun.

How happy they are I cannot know,
But happy I am who loved them so.

Nocturne by Crosbie Garstin

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Crosbie Garstin? I had never heard of him when I came across this poem in an early twentieth century anthology. Something about Nocturne said “South Africa” to me. I wondered whether he had been there, perhaps as a soldier of the Boer War.

A little research revealed that Crosbie Garstin (1887–1930) was a poet of the first world war and also a novelist. He came from Cornwall and before the war had lived an adventurous, outdoor life in many different parts of the world, including a spell farming in South Africa. He died in a mysterious boating accident in Devon at the age of forty-two.

The poem uses very concentrated language to capture beautifully the feeling of sleeping outdoors under a starry sky round a dying camp fire.

Something about the sense of peace, freedom and closeness to nature is very appealing in these uncertain times, when none of us can be sure about travelling anywhere again.  

Nocturne by Crosbie Garstin

The red flame flowers bloom and die,
   The embers puff a golden spark,
Now and again a horse’s eye
   Shines like a topaz in the dark.

A prowling jackal jars the hush,
   The drowsy oxen chump and sigh —
The ghost moon lifts above the bush
   And creeps across the starry sky.

Low in the south the “Cross” is bright,
   And sleep comes dreamless, undefiled,
Here in the blue and silver night,
   In the star-chamber of the Wild.       

The Water Lady by Thomas Hood

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Thomas Hood (1799–1845) is not really one of the famous names of the romantic era of poetry. His best-known poem today is probably “I Remember, I Remember”, but I have chosen the one below instead.

It uses simple, straightforward language with short lines and almost gives the impression it was written for children. With a haunting, dreamlike feel, it is like a compendium of some of the preoccupations of the romantic poets: the night, the feminine, water, the moment of vision.

It has a strongly visual quality and reads like the verbal equivalent of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. I like to think it inspired a painting by a forgotten Victorian artist that is still out there somewhere.

The Water Lady by Thomas Hood

Alas, the moon should ever beam
To show what man should never see!
I saw a maiden on a stream,
And fair was she!

I stayed awhile, to see her throw
Her tresses back, that all beset
The fair horizon of her brow
With clouds of jet.

I stayed a little while to view
Her cheek, that wore in place of red
The bloom of water, tender blue,
Daintily spread.

I stayed to watch, a little space,
Her parted lips if she would sing;
The waters closed above her face
With many a ring.

And still I stayed a little more,
Alas! she never comes again;
I throw my flowers from the shore,
And watch in vain.

I know my life will fade away,
I know that I must vainly pine,
For I am made of mortal clay,
But she’s divine!

Sunny Prestatyn by Philip Larkin

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I think Sunny Prestatyn is one of my favourite Larkin poems. It was included in his 1964 collection, The Whitsun Weddings. I like the humorous tone, with that hint of something darker underneath. There is a disturbing suggestion of real-life violence here. The life of the poster can be taken as the story of a human life.

I can see in my mind’s eye exactly the kind of railway poster that Larkin is referring to. They used bold, primary colours, clean lines and idealised imagery to make British seaside resorts look more attractive than they could ever possibly be in reality. It’s this gap between the ideal and grim reality that the poem is all about. Just how sunny is Prestatyn, on the north Welsh coast, anyway?

We are still in the steam era here, just. And what was Whitsun? It is the Christian festival of Pentecost, taking place eight weeks after Easter Sunday. It therefore moves in the calendar, as Easter does each year. In 1972 the Whitsun bank holiday was replaced by the late spring bank holiday, giving a more predictable date each year, and the word “Whitsun” began to move back into the past, just like steam trains.      

Sunny Prestatyn by Philip Larkin

Come To Sunny Prestatyn
Laughed the girl on the poster,
Kneeling up on the sand
In tautened white satin.
Behind her, a hunk of coast, a
Hotel with palms
Seemed to expand from her thighs and
Spread breast-lifting arms.

She was slapped up one day in March.
A couple of weeks, and her face
Was snaggle-toothed and boss-eyed;
Huge tits and a fissured crotch
Were scored well in, and the space
Between her legs held scrawls
That set her fairly astride
A tuberous cock and balls

Autographed Titch Thomas, while
Someone had used a knife
Or something to stab right through
The moustached lips of her smile.
She was too good for this life.
Very soon, a great transverse tear
Left only a hand and some blue.
Now Fight Cancer is there.

Piano by D H Lawrence

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D H Lawrence was considered an important writer when I was younger, but his reputation has declined somewhat since then. There are signs that interest in his work may be reviving, helped by the recent publication of a new biography, Burning Man: The Ascent of D H Lawrence by Frances Wilson.

Like Thomas Hardy, D H Lawrence was best-known as a novelist but was arguably at his best in his poetry. It was Lawrence’s novels and essays that went out of fashion, whereas the poems have continued to be included in anthologies. Many of his poems are written in a very loose, free verse style, but this earlier one from 1913 is tighter and more structured.

The poem gives a very accurate depiction of how memory works. The woman singing at the piano in the present day summons the memory of the poet’s mother. It’s not a conscious act but something that happens involuntarily. What Lawrence calls “the flood of remembrance” is the kind of memory that Proust was so interested in. Lawrence was also certainly aware of Freud’s theories quite early on, although he later argued against them.

We can all recognise that painful feeling of realising the impossibility of going back into the past. There’s a wistful longing for the security of childhood here. The poem gets it across very effectively and poignantly.

Ultimately though, Piano is a very enjoyable poem. With its long lines and strong end rhymes the poem itself has a musical quality.  

Piano by D H Lawrence

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

The Ship by J C Squire

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I don’t know much about J C Squire (1884–1958). He was one of those early twentieth century all-round “men of letters”, a type that does not really exist today. As well as a poet, he was the editor of the London Mercury, a literary magazine of the 1920s.  

I’m not sure of the date of this poem. It was certainly written before 1928, when the anthology I found it in was published. Like so many poems of that era, it can be taken as a metaphor for the first world war.

I have chosen to share it, though, because I find that the return of the ghost-like ship has taken on a different meaning as we finally come to the end of this strange phase of life that we have all been through together. The ragged crew have returned to harbour, with no material gain from their difficult voyage, just glad to have endured and made it back alive.   

The Ship by J C Squire 

There was no song nor shout of joy
Nor beam of moon or sun,
When she came back from the voyage
Long ago begun;
But twilight on the waters
Was quiet and gray,
And she glided steady, steady and pensive,
Over the open bay.

Her sails were brown and ragged,
And her crew hollow-eyed,
But their silent lips spoke content
And their shoulders pride;
Though she had no captives on her deck,
And in her hold
There were no heaps of corn or timber
Or silks or gold.

The Trees by Philip Larkin

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I don’t quite know what to make of Philip Larkin’s poems these days. They strike me just now as too relentlessly gloomy. That might be to do with my current circumstances, health worries and so on, and the strange dislocation of normality we have all endured over the last year. Perhaps he looks at life more directly than I am comfortable with.

It’s not an exact science, though, one’s taste in poetry. It feels slightly absurd to say that I find Larkin too gloomy, when Thomas Hardy is a real favourite of mine.

I chose this poem because it is May and I was looking for a poem to celebrate the coming of spring, which seems to have been rather delayed this year. I find that I had rather mis-remembered it. Only Larkin could write a poem about spring featuring the words “grow old”, “die” and “grief”. I suppose he is talking about the cycle of life.

That said, I cherish the poem for its use of “f” and “s” sounds to represent the leaves swaying in the wind. I think the last verse is one of the finest marriages of sound and meaning in the whole of poetry in English. To get the full effect, just read it aloud to yourself.

The Trees by Philip Larkin

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.