Selected PoemsIn this welcome centenary edition of C. Day Lewis's poems, Jill Balcon has substantially extended her husband's own Penguin selections of 1951 and 1969, including not only his last collection The Whispering Roots (1970), but also vers d'occasion written when he was Poet Laureate and a number of the Posthumous Poems. This broad retrospective allows the reader a proper view of the technical variety and range of Day Lewis's work, from the pastoral lyrics of his youth, inspired by Hardy and Yeats, through the political verse of the 1930s, to the reflective and more personal poems of his later years. Day Lewis was fond of quoting Robert Frost's dictum that 'a poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom'. This could equally well describe his own development as a writer: idealistic, sincere and psychologically acute, he bears witness in his poetry to a lifelong commitment to serving literature and its makers. |
Contents
Introduction by Jill Balcon | 12 |
Preface by C Day Lewis from Selected Poems 1969 | 23 |
My Love Is a Tower | 31 |
Copyright | |
24 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Basque Basque country beneath bird Bizkaya blood bone break breast breath calm Canarias Cecil child cloud countryside dark Day Lewis dead dear death Donostia dream earth Elizabeth Jane Howard EMILY BRONTË eyes father feel fire flame flesh flowers Frost Galdames gate ghost grass green Guipuzkoa guns Hardy heart hills Hogarth Press hope hour immortal innocence Jill Balcon Jonathan Cape keep light live look love's lover mind mist move Nabara never night passion peace Pegasus play Poems Jonathan poet poetry Posthumous Poems pure Robert Frost Ronald Searle seed seems shadow ship silence sleep solitude song soul spring star Stinsford stone strange summer tell there's thing Thomas Hardy Transitional Poem trawlers tree truth turn valley verse vision W. B. Yeats W. H. Auden walk warm watch wave wind wings word