Lines of Life: "Not so sweet, but all my own, Not so fair, but mine alone"

By Henry W. Nevinson

Henry Woodd Nevinson was born on October 11th, 1856.

Nevinson was schooled at Shrewsbury School and at Christ Church, Oxford. John Ruskin influenced his time at Oxford. Fascinated by German Culture he spent some time at Jena before publishing, in 1884, Herder & His times, a study on Johnann Gottfried Herder.

In 1897 he became the Daily Chronicle's reporter for the Greco-Turkish War. He was also noted for his reporting on the Second Boer War.

During the 1880s Nevinson had attached his politics to Socialism and by 1889 had joined the Social Democratic Federation.

In 1904, he was hired by Harper's Monthly Magazine to report on a supposed trade in slaves from Angola to the cocoa plantations of São Tomé. He produced evidence of people being trafficked to settle debts or seized by Portuguese agents and taken in shackles to the coastal towns. Once there he wrote that Portuguese officials "freed" them and continued the charade by declaring they were now voluntary workers who agreed to go to São Tomé for five years. Despite severe ill health he continued to follow the slaves to São Tomé. He found plantation conditions so appalling that one in five workers died each year. His account was serialised from August 1905 and then published as "A Modern Slavery" in 1906.

He was also a suffragist, being one of the founders in 1907 of the Men's League for Women's Suffrage.

In 1914 he co-founded the Friends' Ambulance Unit and later in World War I, as a war correspondent, was wounded during the infamous Gallipoli campaign.

E. M. Forster described Nevinson's book, More Changes, More Chances in 1925 as "exciting", and that "He has brought to the soil of his adoption something that transcends party-generosity, recklessness, a belief in conscience joined to a mistrust of principles".

A committed Socialist Nevinson could see, during the 20s and 30s, the foundations of a titanic struggle began to gather its forces. In Nancy Cunard's Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War, Nevinson said "I detest the cruel systems of persecution and suppression now existing under Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Stalin in Russia".

Nevinson married Margaret Wynne Jones and after her death in 1933, he married his long-time lover, and fellow suffragist, Evelyn Sharp.

Henry W. Nevinson died on November 9th, 1941

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Oct 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781787801820

Book preview

Lines of Life by Henry W. Nevinson

Henry Woodd Nevinson was born on October 11th, 1856.

Nevinson was schooled at Shrewsbury School and at Christ Church, Oxford.  John Ruskin influenced his time at Oxford.  Fascinated by German Culture he spent some time at Jena before publishing, in 1884, Herder & His times, a study on Johnann Gottfried Herder.

In 1897 he became the Daily Chronicle's reporter for the Greco-Turkish War. He was also noted for his reporting on the Second Boer War.

During the 1880s Nevinson had attached his politics to Socialism and by 1889 had joined the Social Democratic Federation.

In 1904, he was hired by Harper's Monthly Magazine to report on a supposed trade in slaves from Angola to the cocoa plantations of São Tomé. He produced evidence of people being trafficked to settle debts or seized by Portuguese agents and taken in shackles to the coastal towns. Once there he wrote that Portuguese officials freed them and continued the charade by declaring they were now voluntary workers who agreed to go to São Tomé for five years. Despite severe ill health he continued to follow the slaves to São Tomé. He found plantation conditions so appalling that one in five workers died each year. His account was serialised from August 1905 and then published as A Modern Slavery in 1906.

He was also a suffragist, being one of the founders in 1907 of the Men's League for Women's Suffrage.

In 1914 he co-founded the Friends' Ambulance Unit and later in World War I, as a war correspondent, was wounded during the infamous Gallipoli campaign.

E. M. Forster described Nevinson's book, More Changes, More Chances in 1925 as exciting, and that He has brought to the soil of his adoption something that transcends party-generosity, recklessness, a belief in conscience joined to a mistrust of principles.

A committed Socialist Nevinson could see, during the 20s and 30s,  the foundations of a titanic struggle began to gather its forces. In Nancy Cunard's Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War, Nevinson said I detest the cruel systems of persecution and suppression now existing under Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Stalin in Russia.

Nevinson married Margaret Wynne Jones and after her death in 1933, he married his long-time lover, and fellow suffragist, Evelyn Sharp.

Henry W. Nevinson died on November 9th, 1941

Index of Contents

A JOURNEY

THE ROSE 

VITA NUOVA XXI

SITTING AT A PLAY 

A BALLADE OF PLACE

THE DEMONIAC 

A SHRINE 

TIME AND TIDE

SOUTHWARD BOUND 

AT SEA

ON GUARD 

THE COMMON ROUND 

A MEETING

THE HALLOWED STEPS 

AFTER EPIPHANY

AN EMPTY BOX 

DEATH IN LIFE 

SPACE 

AUTUMN 

PYTHAGORAS AT ARGOS 

MISERICORDE

AT THIRTY-FIVE

OH, FOR MORE WORLDS TO CONQUER!

AN OLD PORTRAIT

GOOD-BYE

CREMATION

A FRENCH SUNDIAL

DIVINE FRENZY

SOULS

SHEEP-SHEARING

THOMAS À KEMPIS

ST. JOHN OF AMIENS

PRAYER

THE PICTURESQUE

A HOLIDAY

ABROAD

IN CENTRAL AFRICA

A GERMAN WINTER

PILGRIM'S SONG

BLAGOVESCHENSK 1900

HOME, SWEET HOME

A BALLADE OF TIME

THE SIREN

AFFATIM EDI, BIBI, LUSI

THE HAUNTED SPRING: 1915

AN ANCIENT BATTLEFIELD

THE FOOL IN GOD

THE FOOL IN MAN

WOUNDED

EPIMENIDES THE CRETAN

THE RETURN OF ALCESTIS

FORWARD

DEDICATA

A PRAYER IN SPRING

SOLDIER M.P.

A CABINET MINISTER

A VIGIL

HENRY N. NEVINSON – A CONCISE BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Often in my past life the selfsame dream has come to me, sometimes in one form, sometimes in another, but always saying the same thing:―'Follow the Muse, Socrates! Strictly meditate the Muse.' In old days I thought the dream was only encouraging and inciting me to work at the very thing I was after. As spectators hound on the runners in a race with their cheers, the dream, I supposed, was hounding me along the course I was already following; since the pursuit of wisdom is the highest art of the Muse, and I was pursuing wisdom. But when the trial was over, and the festival of Apollo delayed my execution, I thought that, if after all the dream was ordering me to 'cultivate the Muse'

in the common meaning of the words, I ought not to disobey, but to do my best in that line. For it seemed safer not to depart this life before I had absolved and purified my soul by making poems, in obedience to the dream."

SOCRATES, on the morning of his execution: Phaedo IV

LINES OF LIFE

A JOURNEY

Oh, speed! Oh, haste!

Plunge to the solid land,

Ship, having traversed the intervening waste

Of tedious water! Plunge onward till you stand

Unmoved by baffling gales and