Today’s poem is chosen and introduced by our registrar, Ms. Holland:
“This is one of my favourite poems by John Masefield (01.06.1878 12.05-1967), The Lovely Swan
John Masefield was Poet Laureate from 1930 to 1967. Born in Ledbury, Herefordshire to George, solicitor, and his wife Caroline. His mother died in childbirth when Masefield was six. He served in the Royal Navy on board HMS Conway. It was whilst serving in the Navy that Masefields love of story-telling grew, and he decided to become a writer and story-teller himself.
During Christmas 1895 Masefield read the December edition of Truth, a New York periodical, which contained the poemThe Piper of Aril by Duncan Campbell Scott. Several years later Masefield wrote to Scott telling him what reading that poem had meant to him:
‘I had never until that time cared very much for poetry, but your poem impressed me deeply, and set me on fire. Since then poetry has been the one deep influence in my life, and to my love of poetry I owe all my friends, and the position I now hold.’
Among his best known works are the childrens novels The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights, and the poems The Everlasting Mercy and Sea-Fever
My former Ballet Mistress, Mme Dubois, introduced me to this poem and in itself the poem ‘impressed me deeply, and set me on fire’.”
The Lovely Swan
I heard men mutter of you, She will die ..
That gentle Swan is sped, her white plumes cast .
Lovely she was, but she has danced her last;
One planet more slips westward from the sky.
Then, when that Ballet from the time gone by
Played, but not bringing you, as in the past.
I thought, Her spirit wanders in the vast .
Under the primrose roots her beauties lie.
Another June, with other roses, came,
There, in the theatre, we read your name.
Can it be she? we hoped; but doubt denied.
Then, lo, to faery horn and violin,
You, given back to life, came floating in.
O, in that happy instant all Death died.
