Poetry

I’m sat in the main room of the library on a wooden chair with a fabric cushion. I’m writing on a wooden desk which is propped up against the historical poetry section.  On a nearby shelft there is a collection of the Poetical Works of Thomas Moore, with volumes dating from 1841-1853. The cloth book jackets are so fragile they are tied with ribbons. On the shelf above Moore’s works there is Earth Dear Earth by James A Mackereth (published in 1928). Mackereth’s book includes poems such as Hymn to Flowers, The Withered Leaf, To a Thrush Singing in February, The Wood that Disappeared and After Rain. I turn to The Withered Leaf and read:

There fluttered from my path away
What seemed to be a living thing
Some creature frightened of the day
With a wounded foot or wing

In After Rain, Mackereth writes:
So  brightly after the rain
The garden gleams and glitters
Out pops the sun again
And every blackbird titters

I wonder what twenty-first century enviromentalists would make of these poems.