The Art of Restraint: English Poetry from Hardy to Larkin

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University of Delaware Press, 1991 - Literary Criticism - 332 pages
Richard Hoffpauir argues that the works of the best poets have found ways of not capitulating to contemporary reality and outlines the terms of the debate by setting the weaknesses of Yeats against the strenghts of Hardy. Subsequent chapters discuss the nature poetry of Edward thomas; the war poetry of Graves, Blunden, and Gurney; the love poetry of Bridges, Lawrence, and Graves; and the political and social verse of Rickword, Daryush, Betjeman, and Larkin.

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Contents

Social Consolations
202
Notes
266
Bibliography
311
Copyright

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Page 244 - LORD, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth ; send thy HOLY GHOST, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace, and of all virtues ; without which, whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee : Grant this for thine only Son JESUS CHRIST'S sake. Amen.
Page 147 - I can give not what men call love, But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above And the Heavens reject not, The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow...
Page 145 - To live again in these wild woods forlorn ? Should God create another Eve, and I Another rib afford, yet loss of thee Would never from my heart : no, no ! I feel The link of Nature draw me : flesh of flesh, Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.
Page 112 - ... its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds, — Woke, once, the clays of a cold star. Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides, Full-nerved — still warm — too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? — O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?
Page 116 - But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns, That they should be as stones; Wretched are they, and mean With paucity that never was simplicity. By choice they made themselves immune To pity and whatever moans in man Before the last sea and the hapless stars; Whatever mourns when many leave these shores ; Whatever shares The eternal reciprocity of tears.
Page 95 - tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? how then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is honour? a word. What is that word, honour? air. A trim reckoning! — Who hath it? he that died o
Page 91 - dulce' non 'et decor' . . . walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving came home, home to a lie, home to many deceits, home to old lies and new infamy; usury age-old and age-thick and liars in public places.
Page 117 - here is no cause to mourn." "None," said the other, "save the undone years, The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours, Was my life also; I went hunting wild After the wildest beauty in the world, Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair, But mocks the steady running of the hour, And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here. For...
Page 40 - Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
Page 83 - Yes. I remember Adlestrop The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop - only the name And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky . And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther,...

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