The Poetry of Laurence Binyon - Volume V: The Death of Adam & Other Poems
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Robert Laurence Binyon, CH, was born on August 10th, 1869 in Lancaster in Lancashire, England to Quaker parents, Frederick Binyon and Mary Dockray. He studied at St Paul's School, London before enrolling at Trinity College, Oxford, to read classics. Binyon’s first published work was Persephone in 1890. As a poet, his output was not prodigious and, in the main, the volumes he did publish were slim. But his reputation was of the highest order. When the Poet Laureate, Alfred Austin, died in 1913, Binyon was considered alongside Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling for the post which was given to Robert Bridges. Binyon played a pivotal role in helping to establish the modernist School of poetry and introduced imagist poets such as Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) to East Asian visual art and literature. Most of his career was spent at The British Museum where he produced many books particularly centering on the art of the Far East. Moved and shaken by the onset of the World War I and its military tactics of young men slaughtered to hold or gain a few yards of shell-shocked mud Binyon wrote his seminal poem For the Fallen. It became an instant classic, turning moments of great loss into a National and human tribute. After the war, he returned to the British Museum and wrote numerous books on art; especially on William Blake, Persian and Japanese art. In 1931, his two volume Collected Poems appeared and in 1933, he retired from the British Museum. Between 1933 and 1943, Binyon published his acclaimed translation of Dante's Divine Comedy in an English version of terza rima. During the Second World War Binyon wrote another poetic masterpiece 'The Burning of the Leaves', about the London Blitz. Robert Laurence Binyon died in Dunedin Nursing Home, Bath Road, Reading, on March 10th, 1943 after undergoing an operation.
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The Poetry of Laurence Binyon - Volume V - Laurence Binyon
The Poetry of Laurence Binyon
Volume V - The Death of Adam & Other Poems
Robert Laurence Binyon, CH, was born on August 10th, 1869 in Lancaster in Lancashire, England to Quaker parents, Frederick Binyon and Mary Dockray.
He studied at St Paul's School, London before enrolling at Trinity College, Oxford, to read classics.
Binyon’s first published work was Persephone in 1890. As a poet, his output was not prodigious and, in the main, the volumes he did publish were slim. But his reputation was of the highest order. When the Poet Laureate, Alfred Austin, died in 1913, Binyon was considered alongside Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling for the post which was given to Robert Bridges.
Binyon played a pivotal role in helping to establish the modernist School of poetry and introduced imagist poets such as Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) to East Asian visual art and literature. Most of his career was spent at The British Museum where he produced many books particularly centering on the art of the Far East.
Moved and shaken by the onset of the World War I and its military tactics of young men slaughtered to hold or gain a few yards of shell-shocked mud Binyon wrote his seminal poem For the Fallen. It became an instant classic, turning moments of great loss into a National and human tribute.
After the war, he returned to the British Museum and wrote numerous books on art; especially on William Blake, Persian and Japanese art.
In 1931, his two volume Collected Poems appeared and in 1933, he retired from the British Museum.
Between 1933 and 1943, Binyon published his acclaimed translation of Dante's Divine Comedy in an English version of terza rima.
During the Second World War Binyon wrote another poetic masterpiece 'The Burning of the Leaves', about the London Blitz.
Robert Laurence Binyon died in Dunedin Nursing Home, Bath Road, Reading, on March 10th, 1943 after undergoing an operation.
Index of Contents
DEDICATION – TO C.M.P.
THE DEATH OF ADAM
TO THE SUMMER NIGHT
THE SNOWS OF SPRING
A VISION OF RESURRECTION
QUEEN VENUS ON A DAY OF CLOUD
THE BELFRY
LOOK NOT TOO DEEP
HAREBELL AND PANSY
GRIEF
LAMENT
SURSUM COR!
EUROPE, MDCCCCI. (TO NAPOLEON)
UMBRIA
S. FRANCESCO DEL DESERTO
A DREAM
THE TUNNEL
AN HOUR
AT EVENING
A HYMN OF LOVE
BAHRAM THE HUNTER
THE DESERTED PALACE
SANTA CRISTINA
WORDS
A PRAYER TO TIME
LAURENCE BINYON - A SHORT BIOGRAPHY
LAURENCE BINYON - A CONCISE BIBLIOGRAPHY
DEDICATION
TO C. M. P.
O love in whose heart-murmured name
Is charm against life’s endless wrongs
Since all the untuned world became
In you a song!
I bring not only all I wrought
Into the faltering words of speech,
I dedicate the song I sought
Yet could not reach,
Nay, all that passionately fired
My heart with hope for ever new
Of unattained, but deep-desired
Beauty, to you,
16th August, 1903
THE DEATH OF ADAM
Cedars, that high upon the untrodden slopes
Of Lebanon stretch out their stubborn arms,
Through all the tempests of seven hundred years
Fast in their ancient place, where they look down
Over the Syrian plains and faint blue sea.
When snow for three days and three nights hath fallen
Continually, and heaped those terraced boughs
To massy whiteness, still in fortitude
Maintain their aged strength, although they groan;
In such a wintriness of majesty,
O'ersnowed by his uncounted years, and scarce
Supporting that hard load, yet not overcome.
Was Adam: all his knotted thews were shrunk.
Hollow his mighty thighs, toward which his beard.
Pale as the stream of far-seen waterfalls.
Hung motionless; betwixt the shoulders grand
Bowed was the head, and dim the gaze; and both
His heavy hands lay on his marble knees.
So sits he all day long and scarcely stirs,
And scarcely notes the bright shapes of his sons
Moving in the broad light without his tent,
That propt on poles about a giant oak
Looks southward to the river and the vale:
Only sometimes slowly he turns his head,
As seeking to recover some lost thought
From the dear presence of the white-haired Eve
Who, less in strength, hath less endured, and still
With slow and careful footsteps tendeth him,
Or seated opposite with silent eyes
Companions him; their thoughts go hand in hand.
So now she sits reposing in the dusk
Of their wide tent, like a great vision throned
Of the Earth Mother, tranquil and august.
Accorded to some youthful votary
Deep in an Asian grove, under the moon.
Peace also rests on Adam; not such peace
As comes forlornly to men dulled with cares.
Whom no ennobling memory uplifts;
Peace of a power far mightier than his own.
Outlasting all it fostered into life,
Pervades him and sustains him: such a peace
As blesses mossed and mouldering architraves
Of pillars standing few among the wreck
Of many long since fallen, pillars old.
Reared by a race long vanished, where the birds
Nest as in trees, and every crevice flowers.
As mothering Earth, having some time indulged
Men's little uses, makes their ruin fair
Ere in her bosom it be folded up.
Thus Adam's mind relinquishing the world,
That grows more dim