THE POET TODAY, NOTWITHSTANDING ALL THE DISCOVERIES OF SCIENCE, AND THE ACCUMULATED LEARNING OF MANKIND, ENJOYS NO ADVANTAGE OVER HOMER. (Henry David Thoreau)

"Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them - transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they be half smothered between two musty leaves in a library - aye, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature."

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[The above text, is, of course, by Henry David Thoreau. It was written circa 1850/60. It struck a chord with me, as i'm sure it did my father, a little bit of an antiquarian when it came to literature and the arts, from whose little Penguin Edition book, sent to him from Australia, by Retta, in 1999, i copied-out this paragraph. My father said he did not care for "modern poetry". The most modern he got was to read the poetry of Thomas Hardy and William Barnes, due to the fact that we moved to Dorset, from Hampshire, in 1986. He was not interested to browse through my own library, under his own roof. i note this, not to disparage, simply to give  you, the blog reader, a little background snapshot. i am so pleased that  these books of his find a friendly place amongst my own. And i feel there are worthy contemporary poets whom Thoreau would applaud, just as i applaud Thoreau himself, writing some 160 years ago.]

 [The present-day Goldy Hermitage was my father's house from 1986 to 2006.]

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bernard hemensley

11 / September / 2015

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