Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Biographical Outline
- Abbreviations and References
- Introduction
- 1 Critical Writing
- 2 Biographies
- 3 Early Novels
- 4 Late Novels
- 5 Short Stories, Poems, Letters
- 6 Reputation and Influence
- Appendix Uncollected and Unattributed Poems
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Appendix - Uncollected and Unattributed Poems
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Biographical Outline
- Abbreviations and References
- Introduction
- 1 Critical Writing
- 2 Biographies
- 3 Early Novels
- 4 Late Novels
- 5 Short Stories, Poems, Letters
- 6 Reputation and Influence
- Appendix Uncollected and Unattributed Poems
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
‘G. B. S.’
Childless old fellow, you fell from the apple tree And your million children drew their breath in pain.
You are the only one left, for ever spared to them While the gas flickered out and the street was lit with atoms.
Ninety-four years not being too long a reminder That there is a human mind in the human body.
And not the easy angel of failure with willow-green tears But bitter success appeared in the long old age.
To make all you thought of come true, said the bitter angel, And still he will not give in, say his million children.
P. M. F.
‘Como El Vilano’, by Vincente Aleixandre
Lovely is the Kingdom of love
But bitter also is the Kingdom.
It is because the lover's heart
Is bitter in the lonely hours apart
Watching the inaccessible cloud of air
He sees her eyes are there
The lover is born for happiness
For propagation everlasting
Which from his innermost heart unfolds
To lose itself for ever and ever
In the pure heart of love delivered
But the solicitous round of life
The nagging hours day by day
And that same airy cloud, and dreams
And the short flight of the young whom love inspires
All whisper against the duration of the impossible fires.
‘The Queue’
It was a story for childen's children
A winter's tale of the death of a King –
When the heard-of died, the unheard stood in their thousands
In the sootblack frostwhite night before spring.
Lights on the bridge, the dazzled dark
River ran between fire and fire
With sensible shoes and ruined faces
They crawled towards their heart's desire.
They were blind in the icy breath,
To the nightlong thought of majesty
Goldringed goldrobed envied apart
But as thou art so he shall be
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade
But the day and the night, and the day and the night
War borne, war torn, care shared, dead in the prime,
Their own dust shaken, their dear heart breaking,
They cared for this, in winter time.
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- Information
- Penelope Fitzgerald , pp. 118 - 119Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2018