Everything by Harold Monro
May 7th 2007 14:17
Years ago, I'd read a beautiful poem in an anthology. I've forgotten what the title was or what it was about but remember how it made me feel. Strange huh? I also remember who wrote it. It was Harold Monro, a minor Georgian poet. There's very little of Harold to be found on the net and his books are not easily available either.
It is said that he was a repressed homosexual who spent his life making friends with poets and encouraging them. He was primarily a printer of poetry and he also founded the Poetry Review. While printing poems of others, he would sometimes write his own. When the First World War broke out, he volunteered and came back a disillusioned man.
It is said that is one of those "warpoets" who pioneered a more realist style of modern poetry.Nevertheless, war poetry is not his chief appeal. He writes poems that celebrates the quotidian life. He is able to find stillness and music in the humdrum melee. To find solitude he does not to repair to some sylan haunt or to an unspoiled copse. He does not excoriate the modern world but keeps probing it, chiefly for the echoes of his own souding.
A poem called Everything is not his best but is typical :
Since man has been articulate,
Mechanical, improvidently wise
(Servant of Fate),
He has not understood the little cries
And foreign conversations of the small
Delightful creatures that have followed him
Not far behind;
He failed to hear the sympathetic call
Of Crockery and Cutlery, those kind
Reposeful Teraphim
Of his domestic happiness; the Stool
He sat on, the Door he entered through:
He has not thanked them, overbearing fool!
What is he coming to?
But you should listen to the talk of these.
Honest they are, and patient they have kept,
Served him without his Thank-you or his Please...
I often heard
The gentle bed, a sigh between each word,
Murmuring before I slept.
The candle, as I blew it, cried aloud,
Then bowed,
And in a smoky argument
Into the darkness went.
The kettle puffed a tentacle of breath:--
"Pooh! I have boiled his water, I don't know
Why; and he always says I boil too slow.
He never calls me 'Sukie dear,' and oh,
I wonder why I squander my desire
Sitting submissive on his kitchen fire."
Now the old Copper Basin suddenly
Rattled and tumbled from the shelf,
Bumping and crying: "I can fall by myself;
Without a woman's hand to coax and flatter me,
I understand
The lean and poise of gravitable land."
It gave a raucous and tumultuous shout,
Twisted itself convulsively about,
Rested upon the floor, and, while I stare,
It stares and grins at me.
The old impetuous Gas above my head
Begins irascibly to flare and fret,
Wheezing into its epileptic jet,
Reminding me I ought to go to bed.
The Rafters creak; an Empty-Cupboard door
Swings open; now a wild Plank of the floor
Breaks from its joist, and leaps behind my foot.
Down from the chimney half a pound of Soot
Tumbles, and lies, and shakes itself again.
The Putty cracks against the window-pane.
A piece of Paper in the basket shoves
Another piece, and toward the bottom moves.
My independent Pencil, while I write
Breaks at the point: the ruminating Clock
Stirs all its body and begins to rock,
Warning the waiting presence of the Night,
Strikes the dead hour, and tumbles to the plain
Ticking of ordinary work again.
You do well to remind me, and I praise
Your strangely individual foreign ways.
You call me from myself to recognize
Companionship in your unselfish eyes.
I want your dear acquaintances, although
I pass you arrogantly over, throw
Your lovely sounds, and squander them along
My busy days. I'll do you no more wrong.
Purr for me, Sukie, like a faithful cat.
You, my well trampled Boots, and you, my Hat,
Remain my friends: I feel, though I don't speak,
Your touch grow kindlier from week to week.
It well becomes our mutual happiness
To go toward the same end more or less.
There is not much dissimilarity,
Not much to choose, I know it well, in fine,
Between the purposes of you and me,
And your eventual Rubbish Heap, and mine.
The chairs and tables, the uncomplaining furniture, the expectant pet, the warm fireside, these are the things he brings an immsense dignity to, hopping to find in their solidity his own sense of nothingness.
I do not share his penchant for subsidence but I , along with him, do enjoy the creaking sounds of the doors and the muggy feeling of old boots. I do remember what I like in his poetry even though I have not been able to find the poem I liked.
The text is quoted from this site which has some more poems.
It is said that he was a repressed homosexual who spent his life making friends with poets and encouraging them. He was primarily a printer of poetry and he also founded the Poetry Review. While printing poems of others, he would sometimes write his own. When the First World War broke out, he volunteered and came back a disillusioned man.
It is said that is one of those "warpoets" who pioneered a more realist style of modern poetry.Nevertheless, war poetry is not his chief appeal. He writes poems that celebrates the quotidian life. He is able to find stillness and music in the humdrum melee. To find solitude he does not to repair to some sylan haunt or to an unspoiled copse. He does not excoriate the modern world but keeps probing it, chiefly for the echoes of his own souding.
A poem called Everything is not his best but is typical :
Since man has been articulate,
Mechanical, improvidently wise
(Servant of Fate),
He has not understood the little cries
And foreign conversations of the small
Delightful creatures that have followed him
Not far behind;
He failed to hear the sympathetic call
Of Crockery and Cutlery, those kind
Reposeful Teraphim
Of his domestic happiness; the Stool
He sat on, the Door he entered through:
He has not thanked them, overbearing fool!
What is he coming to?
But you should listen to the talk of these.
Honest they are, and patient they have kept,
I often heard
The gentle bed, a sigh between each word,
Murmuring before I slept.
The candle, as I blew it, cried aloud,
Then bowed,
And in a smoky argument
Into the darkness went.
The kettle puffed a tentacle of breath:--
"Pooh! I have boiled his water, I don't know
Why; and he always says I boil too slow.
He never calls me 'Sukie dear,' and oh,
I wonder why I squander my desire
Sitting submissive on his kitchen fire."
Now the old Copper Basin suddenly
Rattled and tumbled from the shelf,
Bumping and crying: "I can fall by myself;
Without a woman's hand to coax and flatter me,
I understand
The lean and poise of gravitable land."
It gave a raucous and tumultuous shout,
Twisted itself convulsively about,
Rested upon the floor, and, while I stare,
It stares and grins at me.
The old impetuous Gas above my head
Begins irascibly to flare and fret,
Wheezing into its epileptic jet,
Reminding me I ought to go to bed.
The Rafters creak; an Empty-Cupboard door
Swings open; now a wild Plank of the floor
Breaks from its joist, and leaps behind my foot.
Down from the chimney half a pound of Soot
Tumbles, and lies, and shakes itself again.
The Putty cracks against the window-pane.
A piece of Paper in the basket shoves
Another piece, and toward the bottom moves.
My independent Pencil, while I write
Breaks at the point: the ruminating Clock
Stirs all its body and begins to rock,
Warning the waiting presence of the Night,
Strikes the dead hour, and tumbles to the plain
Ticking of ordinary work again.
You do well to remind me, and I praise
Your strangely individual foreign ways.
You call me from myself to recognize
Companionship in your unselfish eyes.
I want your dear acquaintances, although
I pass you arrogantly over, throw
Your lovely sounds, and squander them along
My busy days. I'll do you no more wrong.
Purr for me, Sukie, like a faithful cat.
You, my well trampled Boots, and you, my Hat,
Remain my friends: I feel, though I don't speak,
Your touch grow kindlier from week to week.
It well becomes our mutual happiness
To go toward the same end more or less.
There is not much dissimilarity,
Not much to choose, I know it well, in fine,
Between the purposes of you and me,
And your eventual Rubbish Heap, and mine.
The chairs and tables, the uncomplaining furniture, the expectant pet, the warm fireside, these are the things he brings an immsense dignity to, hopping to find in their solidity his own sense of nothingness.
I do not share his penchant for subsidence but I , along with him, do enjoy the creaking sounds of the doors and the muggy feeling of old boots. I do remember what I like in his poetry even though I have not been able to find the poem I liked.
The text is quoted from this site which has some more poems.
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