Suzy Hazelwood / Pexels

• The Poet’s Corner
• Here where the end of bone is no end of song 
• And the earth is bedecked with immortality 
• In what was poetry 
• And now is pride beside 
• And nationality, 
• Here is a battle with no bravery 
• But if the coward’s tongue has gone 
• Swording his own lusty lung. 
• Listen if there is victory 
• Written into a library
• Waving the books in banners 
• Soldierly at last, for the lines 
• Go marching on, delivered of the soul.

• And happily may they rest beyond 
• Suspicion now, the incomprehensibles 
• Traitorous in such talking 
• As chattered over their countries’ boundaries. 
• The graves are gardened and the whispering 
• Stops at the hedges, there is singing
• Of it in the ranks, there is a hush 
• Where the ground has limits 
• And the rest is loveliness.

• And loveliness? 
• Death has an understanding of it 
• Loyal to many flags 
• And is a silent ally of any country 
• Beset in its mortal heart 
• With immortal poetry.

• In Due Form
• I do not doubt you. 
• I know you love me. 
• It is a fact of your indoor face, 
• A true fancy of your muscularity. 
• Your step is confident. 
• Your look is thorough. 
• Your stay-beside-me is a pillow 
• To roll over on 
• And sleep as on my own upon. 
• But make me a statement 
• In due form on endless foolscap 
• Witnessed before a notary 
• And sent by post, registered, 
• To be signed for on receipt 
• And opened under oath to believe; 
• An antique paper missing from my strong-box, 
• A bond to clutch when hail tortures the chimney 
• And lightning circles redder round the city, 
• And your brisk step and thorough look
• Are gallant but uncircumstantial, 
• And not mentionable in a doom-book.

Laura Riding

Laura Riding (1901-1991) was an American poet, critic and fiction writer. Born in New York City, she first rose to prominence as a poet in the early 1920s after becoming associated with the Southern poets known as the Fugitives. After one of its members, Alan Tate, introduced her to the group, some of her poems appeared in its influential literary magazine, The Fugitive. The only female to be included in the publication, she was awarded the 1924 Nashville Prize by the group. After divorcing her husband, historian Louis Gottschalk, she moved to England at the invitation of British poet Robert Graves, who, with his wife, invited her to form a menage-trois, which eventually destroyed Graves’ marriage. In 1941, she renounced poetry as an inadequate means of personal expression and turned instead to a style of criticism which has been seen as anticipating the emerging New Criticism school, which sought to judge literary texts divorced from their historical or biographical contexts. She died of a heart attack exactly 30 years ago—on September 2, 1991.