A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POESY

By Edward Black

Caedmon in Celtic Whitby found his gift of song

later Scottish ballads in declaiming

and Chaucer with French words rhyming

all added to our poetry pudding

Sir Henry Neville wrote all “Shakespeare”

in sonorous rolling phrasing

encapsulating all thought and knowledge in that era:

Our Supreme Standard-Bearer.

The Age of Reason brought thought

and philosophy so taut

not much fun there

My Dear, I fear !

The Romantics described God in Nature

and man’s mind even loftier:

a thousand times more beautiful

than the earth on which he dwells

Manley Hopkins made language go so very far -

poetry scaling new heights to describe God’s Grandeur

Thomas Hardy, then, for me is the best

well ahead of the rest

but, for most,

Yeats singer of songs comes up to the mark

But since – who else has the divine poetic spark ?

Wystan Hugh Auden and Edward James Hughes !!

© Edward Black April 2020

Edward can be contacted at: egblack@hotmail.com

• Associated pages
• Visiting the Sick Tree at St. Pancras Old Church Cemetery
• 'Great Things' and 'The Oxen'
• Desperate Remedies
• A Laodicean - Part of the Novels of Ingenuity Trilogy
• The Withered Arm
• The Heaths of Hardy
• Best and Worst Poems of Thomas Hardy
• Tess (No Angel Wings)
• The Darkling Heart
• Great Things
• The Hand of Ethelberta - A New Play
• The Lepidopterist's Tragedy
• The Destruction of My England
• Henchard's Last Will and Testament
• The Gabriel Oak Tree
• The Three Wayfarers (Opera)
• Settings for Baritone and Piano by John Whittaker
• Hardy Perennials by Brenda Sharp
• Neutral Tones: Song Settings of the Poetry of Thomas Hardy
• Penpethy Souls
• A History of English Poesy
• The Coppice Gate
• Where the Picnic Was with a Musical Accompaniment by Gary Cunliffe
• In Praise
• Thomas Hardy Songs
• 'Bathsheba' by Izzy Rees
• The Three Strangers
• 'Interlopers at the Knap'
• 'What the Shepherd Saw'
• 'The Superstitious Man'
• Thomas Hardy's The Hand of Ethelberta
• Thomas Hardy Poems to Music

Dates for your Diary

From 14/09/2024 until 01/08/2026
Starts 09:00 until 18:00

10th DORCHESTER LITERARY FESTIVAL

From 12/10/2024 until 19/10/2024
Starts 12:00 until 19:30

MARK CHUTTER A LITERARY WALK – WESSEX WRITERS

On 13/10/2024
Starts 12:00 until 14:00

Alan Hollinghurst

On 16/10/2024
Starts 18:00 until 21:00

Thomas Hardy Society visit to Stourhead

Sep2024

Neolithic site found under Max Gate

Sep2024

A Hedgehog Hospital for Dorset

Aug2024

Thomas Hardy Society Schools Outreach

Aug2024