Welcome to Litsy!

"O that I might sail into this night,
Draw on my course in the teeth of the summer gale,
Divide the silver furrows of the sea,
Following the moonwake on the waves,
And at the cold hour of the windfall meet with the dawn.

O to be there now: the noise of the summer sea
About me, as summer scents from the land blown,
Wild thyme from the cliffs, honeysuckle & mown
Sweet hay, the rhythm of the tide to bear me
Onward, myself the wind, myself the sail"

In the inmost recesses of consciousness,
The wound opening inwards,
The spirit too proud to admit an injury,
Incessantly grazed and torn again
By the insensitive, the enemy that hates
Difference, quality that escapes submission
To common complacency, impure hypocrisy-
That would annihilate what is uncommon,
Challenging their meanness, their lack of standards
With something electric and alive, a vibrancy
That offers not a new Heaven and a new Earth

"The red house, the grey & the white,
The leaning figures of the silver birches
Like Baucis & Philemon,
The music of the weir, the planes, the birds,
The purple catkins of the alders:
This perfect moment of contented afternoon,
Blue skies above the domestic English scene-
Yet what disturbs the heart?
The dimpled, dappled river,
Crimped by the wind,
Moves swiftly onward to the sea:
It is my life the river bears away
And all the temporal part of me"

"It is not surprising that with the experience of our own age, suffering should come foremost, and out of suffering, in the end, emergence, fortitude, loyalty, faith in each other, overwhelming love."

I picked up this book of poetry, published by Faber in 1946, knowing nothing about the author, but attracted by this passage in the Preface. Having read a little about Rowse in preparation for the book, I'm less sure of him, but we'll have to see...