I haven’t been in the university library much lately so my “poetry serendipity” project has slowed down. The last book I brought home for it was a collection by Wendy Cope inspired by coming across “Being Boring” some other way and wondering if I’d like others of hers as much. I didn’t! But Liz reminded me recently of the “Poem A Day” program from the Academy of American Poets so I signed up for it again and it has been another good means of poetic happenstance. I do delete a lot of the ones that show up in my inbox pretty quickly, but others do catch my attention, and a few really linger, most recently John Masefield’s “On Growing Old,” which opens “Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying,” and ends like this:
Only, as in the jostling in the Strand,
Where the mob thrusts or loiters or is loud,
The beggar with the saucer in his hand
Asks only a penny from the passing crowd,
So, from this glittering world with all its fashion,
Its fire, and play of men, its stir, its march,
Let me have wisdom, Beauty, wisdom and passion,
Bread to the soul, rain where the summers parch.
Give me but these, and, though the darkness close,
Even the night will blossom as the rose.
The email with the poem describes this as one of Masefield’s best known poems, but it was unknown to me before now, and Masefield more generally is a poet I know nothing about, except for recognizing his name–in spite of what was clearly a rich and prolific life. Poets.org has only one other of his poems posted, so next time I’m in the library I will be more purposeful and hunt up a collection of them.
Novel Readings 