Introduction (1935) to Selections from the Poems of Dorothy Wellesley (1936)

Abstract

Some months ago, when recovering in bed from a long illness, I read many anthologies, skipping every name known to me, discovering poetry written since I read everybody, being young. It was perhaps my illness that made me hard to please, for almost all seemed clay-cold, clay-heavy; I thought at my worst moments, ‘I have read too much abstract philosophy; I can no longer understand the poetry of other men.’ Then, in an anthology edited by Sir John Squire, I found poems signed Dorothy Wellesley.1 Though she is well known among the younger poets and critics, I had never heard of her. My eyes filled with tears. I read in excitement that was the more delightful because it showed I had not lost my understanding of poetry. I had opened the book in the middle of a poem called ‘Walled Garden’: Blue lilies, sprung† between three oceans, said: ‘Grinding, and half atilt The light-swung boulders rock upon the veldt: We bloom † by lions dead Of old age in the wild.’†2 KeywordsPeriod CloseTraditional RichnessModern SubjectAbject PovertyHuman DestinyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.