Thirty-Five Poems by Herbert Read, I repeat
Stavesacre – a larkspur plant or its seeds
Benison - benediction
Sodality – fellowship, concgregaion, association for chairty
Cincture – belt or girdle
Lanthorn – lantern
Herbert Read, in the veritable slim volume, starts in the First World War. He is not particularly well known as a war poet, but he has been honoured as such. For him, it seems that the confrontation with daily horror led not only to the recognition of the absurdity of conflict, but also an appreciation of its political futility.
… Our victory was our defeat
Power was retained where power had been misused
And youth was left to sweep away
The ashes that fires had strewn beneath our feet.
The poetry is often rooted in the tangibly real, so much so that it sometimes seems to deny the possibility of an imagined ideal.
… Now chaos intervenes
and I leave not gladly but with harsh disdain
a world too strong in folly for the bliss of dreams.
He was a noted anarchist and was politically and philosophically sophisticated. But sometimes the simplest argument is stronger.
… your god has not this power. Or he would heal
the world’s wounds and create the empire
now left in the defeated hands of men.
He does not, however, appear to be an atheist overall. He does allow himself occasionally to inhabit a heaven he often seems to deny.
This good achieved, then to God we turn
for a crown on our perfection: God we create
in the end of action, not in dreams.
There is only Reality, however. The experience of that reality, in all its natural beauty is here. It presents experience which is worth recording merely for what it is, But reality, also, just might not be the only thing we might encounter.
Fate is in facts: the only hope
an unknown chance.