Landor: One Hundred Poems

By Maurice Craig

Walter Savage Landor was born in Warwick, in 1775, and died in Florence in 1864. His output in prose and poetry was prodigious. 'No English writer - no English poet - of equal size and quality has been less attended to in the last fifty years' wrote Geoffrey Grigson in 1964, and though three selections appeared in the next eight years, this remains broadly true. Most editors have mixed verse and prose, doing him dubious service. This short and lively selection of Landor's poetry concentrates on the lyrical and epigrammatic poems in which, Maurice Craig believes, his greatest strength lay. Landor is fortunate in his editor, who shares much of his wide learning and whose eagerness to transmit his understanding and life-long admiration for Landor is reflected in this fresh collection. New readers will discover in Landor a remarkable poet; those who already know him well will welcome this charming anthology and Maurice Craig's thoughtful and perceptive introduction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Lilliput Press
• Release date: Jan 1, 1999
• ISBN: 9781843513537

Book preview

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

ONE HUNDRED POEMS

Selected and Introduced by

MAURICE CRAIG

MERRION / LILLIPUT

London and Dublin

In memory of

Geoffrey Taylor & Vivian Mercier

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

P

UBLISHERS

’ N

OTE

I

NTRODUCTION

1 Proem

P

OEMS

P

UBLISHED BEFORE 1837

2 Rose Aylmer

3 from Sappho

4 from Alcaeus

5 Corinna to Tanagra

6 Progress of Evening

7 To Sleep

8 Smiles soon abate

9 Past ruin’d Ilion

10 Mild is the parting year

11 Dirce

12 Lines to a Dragon Fly

13 Cleone to Aspasia

14 We hurry to the river

15 In Clementina’s artless mien

16 On a Quaker’s tankard

17 On love, on grief

18 Naturally

19 Demophilè rests here

20 To Burns

21 The Mermaid

22 To Priapus

23 from Mimnermus

24 On a Poet in a Welsh Churchyard

25 To a Painter

26 Fæsulan Idyl

27 Farewell to Italy

P

OEMS

P

UBLISHED

IN 1846–7

28 from Moschus

29 Leontion on Ternissa’s death

30 On seeing her sit for her portrait

31 The Fæsulan Villa

32 Remain, ah not in youth alone

33 Dull is my verse

34 Thou hast not rais’d

35 What News (sent to Lady Blessington)

36 Tell me not things

37 He who in waning age

38 Milton

39 To Robert Browning

40 Boastfully call we all the world

41 Twenty years hence

42 In spring and summer

43 Retire, and timely

44 Night airs

45 The brightest mind

46 Ten thousand flakes

47 Various the roads of life

48 Plays

49 Sweet was the song

50 Fate! I have askt few things

51 Why, why repine

52 My guest! I have not led you

53 O friends! who have accompanied

54 The leaves are falling

55 From you, Ianthe, little troubles pass

56 Idle and light

57 Is it not better

P

OEMS

P

UBLISHED IN 1849–1864

58 I strove with none

59 Why do I praise a peach

60 Separation

61 In memory of Lady Blessington

62 Remonstrance and Reply

63 Lately our poets loiter’d

64 There falls with every wedding chime

65 A Funeral

66 Leaf after leaf

67 The Georges

68 The Dule of York’s Statue

69 March 24 1854

70 All is not over

71 Age

72 Death of the Day

73 On Catullus

74 Destiny Uncertain

75 ’Twas far beyond the midnight hour

76 Ye who have toil’d uphill

77 To Age

78 The cattle in the common field

79 Well I remember how you smiled

80 from Appendix to the Hellenics

81 from To Cuthbert Southey

82 When the mad wolf

83 Death indiscriminately gathers

84 The scentless laurel

85 A Quarrelsome Bishop

86 Here lies Landor

87 Come forth, old lion

88 What bitter flowers

89 A Reply to Tom Moore

90 To a Fair Maiden

91 Verses why Burnt

92 The Grateful Heart

93 Portrait

94 He who sits thoughtful

95 There are who say

96 Life’s Romance

97 There is a time

98 Death stands above me

99 Memory

100 A Friend to Theocritos in Egypt

N

OTES

I

NDEX OF

F

IRST

L

INES

Copyright

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE

Landor is fortunate in his editor, Maurice Craig, who shares much of his wide learning. His eagerness to transmit his understanding and life-long admiration for Landor is reflected in this fresh collection.

Merrion and Lilliput are happy to span the Irish Sea in publishing this anthology together, as a tribute both to W. S. Landor and to Maurice Craig.

INTRODUCTION

Landor will not fit in. He will neither stand up to be counted nor lie down as though dead. He is not an Augustan nor is he (for the most part) a Victorian, yet he is not quite an early Romantic either. His devotion to the concrete and his aversion to metaphysics sets him apart from