Eleanor Farjeon – The Good Reader

Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965) was a well-known writer for children. Her most enduring work is the hymn Morning Has Broken, something we used to sing in junior school days.

More recently, her book of poems A Sussex Alphabet has been re-issued.

I don’t know exactly when the short poem below was written. Something about it suggest the 1920s, as it almost a minimalist work in a style influenced by modernism.

It is an appropriate poem for the turn of the year, as it is about the inevitability of the passage of time. What fascinates me is the ambiguity of the last line. Is the fleeting nature of the night being seen as a negative or positive thing? After all, one would want sorrow to pass as quickly as possible but for a tune to last longer. A reminder that even the good things will pass, perhaps. It just goes to show how much meaning can be packed into so few words when a poet really knows what they are doing.

This is another poem that I discovered in that wonderful anthology, Come Hither, compiled by Walter de la Mare and first published in 1923.

The Night Will Never Stay by Eleanor Farjeon

The night will never stay,
The night will still go by,
Though with a million stars
You pin it to the sky;
Though you bind it with the blowing wind
And buckle it with the moon,
The night will slip away
Like sorrow or a tune.

First World War poetry used to mean poems written by men who had served as soldiers on the Western Front. The work of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenburg and others concentrated on conditions on the battlefield and the terrible consequences of combat for those involved.

More recently, the definition has widened, helped by Andrew Motion’s 2003 anthology, to include poems written by women that deal with bereavement and the situation on the home front.

So here, in the run-up to Remembrance Day is a poignant poem about the moment when a couple must part which speaks for itself, really. It is by Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965), later a prolific author for children and perhaps best known today for the words to the hymn Morning has Broken.

Now that You Too Must Shortly Go by Eleanor Farjeon

Now that you too must shortly go the way
Which in these bloodshot years uncounted men
Have gone in vanishing armies day by day,
And in their numbers will not come again:

I must not strain the moments of our meeting
Striving for each look, each accent, not to miss,
Or question of our parting and our greeting,
Is this the last of all? is this—or this?

Last sight of all it may be with these eyes,
Last touch, last hearing, since eyes, hands, and ears,
Even serving love, are our mortalities,
And cling to what they own in mortal fears:—
But oh, let end what will, I hold you fast
By immortal love, which has no first or last.

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