Louis MacNeice

thumb|Plaque at site of MacNeice's childhood home in Carrickfergus Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was a poet and playwright of Northern Irish birth. Though not a dogmatically political writer, he is often associated with his close friends, the left-wing thirties poets: W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and C. Day Lewis. Quotes In my own prejudice ... I would have of a poet ... whose worlds would not be too esoteric ... fond of talking ... capable of pity and laughter ... appreciative of women ... involved in personal relationships ... susceptible to physical impressions... Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay (Oxford University Press, 1938), ch. xi, p. 198 Though patriotism includes a sentimental, as it were a family, feeling for place, we can distinguish the ethical motive from the sentimental. At certain times in certain countries there has been a moral urgency to be patriotic when the actual or ideal policy of a man’s nation has been a sine qua non for his conscience. But to-day patriotism, in so far as it means subordination to a specifically national policy, is superannuated. This war, we assume, is not being fought-not by most of us-for any merely national end; we are fighting it, primarily and clearly, for our lives, and secondarily, and, alas! vaguely, for a new international order. "Traveller's Return", in Horizon (February 1941) Reprinted in David Pierce Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century: A Reader (Cork University Press, 2000) Politics: distrust all parties but consider capitalism must go. Interview, in Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft, eds., Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature, 3rd ed. (New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1950), p. 889 Collected Poems (1966) London: Faber & Faber By a high star our course is set,Our end is Life. Put out to sea. "Thalassa", st. 3 First published in The London Magazine (c. 1963) For the last blossom is the first blossomAnd the first blossom is the best blossomAnd when from Eden we take our wayThe morning after is the first day. "Apple Blossom", st. 6 His father gave him a box of truismsShaped like a coffin, then his father died;The truisms remained on the mantelpiece. "The Truisms", st. 1 Letters from Iceland (1937) London: Faber and Faber Holidays should be like this,Free from over-emphasis,Time for soul to stretch and spitBefore the world comes back on it. "Epilogue: For W. H. Auden", st. 10 Poems (1937) New York: Random House thumb|Something of glass about her, of dead water,Chills and holds us. thumb|The great cranks plod with their Assyrian feetTo match the monotonous energy of the sea. center| The little sardine men crammed in a monster toyWho tilt their aggregate beast against our crumbling Troy. "Turf-stacks", st. 2 (1932) Something of glass about her, of dead water,Chills and holds us,Far more fatal than painted flesh or the lodestone of live hairThis despair of crystal brilliance. "Circe", l. 1 (1931) Down the road someone is practising scales,The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails,Man’s heart expands to tinker with his carFor this is Sunday morning, Fate’s great bazaar. "Sunday Morning", l. 1 (1933) World is crazier and more of it than we think,Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portionA tangerine and spit the pips and feelThe drunkenness of things being various. "Snow", st. 2 (1935) The sunlight on the gardenHardens and grows cold,We cannot cage the minuteWithin its net of gold,When all is toldWe cannot beg for pardon. "Sunlight on the Garden", st. 1 (1937) Our freedom as free lancesAdvances towards its end;The earth compels, upon itSonnets and birds descend;And soon, my friend,We shall have no time for dances. "Sunlight on the Garden", st. 2 Upon the decks they take beef-teaWho are so free, so free, so free,But down the ladder in the engine-room(Doom, doom, doom, doom)The great cranks rise and fall, repeat,The great cranks plod with their Assyrian feetTo match the monotonous energy of the sea. "Passage Steamer", st. 1 It’s no go the merrygoround, it’s no go the rickshaw,All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.Their knickers are made of crêpe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python,Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with the heads of bison. "Bagpipe Music", l. 1 It’s no go the Yogi-Man, it’s no go Blavatsky,All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi. "Bagpipe Music", l. 9 It’s no go the picture palace, it’s no go the stadium,It’s no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,It’s no go the Government grants, it’s no go the elections,Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension. "Bagpipe Music", l. 27 It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet;Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,But if you break the bloody glass you won’t hold up the weather. "Bagpipe Music", l. 31 Autumn Journal (1939) London: Faber and Faber Some now are happy in the hive of home,Thigh over thigh and a light in the night nursery,And some are hungry under the starry domeAnd some sit turning handles. II Spider, spider, spinYour register and let me sleep a little,Not now in order to end but to beginThe task begun so often. II Where skill will no longer languish nor energy be trammelled To competition and graft, Exploited in subservience but not allegiance To an utterly lost and daft System that gives a few at fancy prices Their fancy lives, While ninety-nine in the hundred who never attend the banquet Must wash the grease of ages off the knives. III And all of London littered with remembered kisses. IV And we who have been brought up to think of "Gallant Belgium"As so much blagueAre now preparing again to essay good through evilFor the sake of Prague;And must, we suppose, become uncritical, vindictive,And must, in order to beatThe enemy, model ourselves upon the enemy,A howling radio for our paraclete. VII Better authentic mammon than a bogus god. XII To-night we sleepOn the banks of Rubicon—the die is cast;There will be time to auditThe accounts later, there will be sunlight laterAnd the equation will come out at last. XXIV Poems 1925–1940 (1940) New York: Random House Under the coffered gilt the court historianTurns the mothy silks that time has left him. "The Court Historian" (1927) So they were married—to be the more together—And found they were never again so much together,Divided by the morning tea,By the evening paper,By children and tradesmen’s bills. "Les Sylphides", st. 5 (Summer 1939) I have no liking to deferTo capitalist or bureaucrat;As for your Social RegisterYou know what you can do with that! "Ballade in a Bad Temper" (August 1940) Plant and Phantom (1941) London: Faber and Faber Some on commission, some for the love of learning, Some because they have nothing better to do Or because they hope these walls of books will deaden The drumming of the demon in their ears. "The British Museum Reading Room", l. 4 (July 1939) And under the totem poles—the ancient terror—Between the enormous fluted Ionic columnsThere seeps from heavily jowled or hawk-like foreign facesThe guttural sorrow of the refugees. "The British Museum Reading Room", l. 18 Time was away and somewhere else,There were two glasses and two chairsAnd two people with the one pulse(Somebody stopped the moving stairs):Time was away and somewhere else. "Meeting Point", st. 1 (April 1939) Crumbling between the fingers, under the feet,Crumbling behind the eyes,Their world gives way and diesAnd something twangs and breaks at the end of the street. "Dèbâcle", st. 5 (September 1940) In my childhood trees were greenAnd there was plenty to be seen. "Autobiography", l. 1 (September 1940) The dark was talking to the dead;The lamp was dark beside my bed. "Autobiography", l. 13 Springboard (1944) London: Faber & Faber I am not yet born; O hear me.Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the   club-footed ghoul come near me. "Prayer Before Birth", l. 1 I am not yet born; forgive meFor the sins that in me the world shall commit, my wordsWhen they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,My treason engendered by traitors beyond me,My life when they murder by means of myHands, my death when they live me. "Prayer Before Birth", l. 11 I am not yet born; O fill meWith strength against those who would freeze my   humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,     would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with       one face, a thing, and against all those         who would dissipate my entirety, would            blow me like thistledown hither and             thither or hither and thither               like water held in the                 hands would spill me.Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me,Otherwise kill me. "Prayer Before Birth", l. 11 Holes in the Sky (1949) New York: Random House O early one morning I walked out like Agag,Early one morning to walk through the fireDodging the pythons that leaked on the pavementsWith tinkle of glasses and tangle of wire. "The Streets of Laredo", l. 1 MacNeice’s poem, a grotesque vision of the London Blitz, is not to be confused with the cowboy ballad "The Streets of Laredo" Then twangling their bibles with wrath in their nostrilsFrom Bonehill Fields came Bunyan and Blake:"Laredo the golden is fallen, is fallen;Your flame shall not quench nor your thirst shall not slake." "The Streets of Laredo", l. 21 Quotes about MacNeice If the term “poet's poet” means a poet whose virtuosity can be fully appreciated only by other poets, it may be applied to MacNeice. But if it were taken to imply that his work cannot be enjoyed by the larger public of poetry readers, the term would be misleading. He had the Irishman's unfailing ear for the music of verse, and he never published a line that is not good reading. I am very proud of having published the first volume he had to offer after coming down from the university. T. S. Eliot, "Obituary for Louis MacNeice", The Times (5 September 1963). Quoted in The Collected Prose of T.S. Eliot (2016), vol. iv, p. 546 The elegance in MacNeice's poetry is more one of sensuality now and less one of ingenuity, and the poems he is writing are the experiences of a lonely contemplative person, occupied with himself and with the world we share. Geoffrey Grigson, New Verse magazine (Summer 1938), p. 17. Quoted in Jon Stallworthy, Louis MacNeice, p. 224 The difference between loneliness and mere solitariness, after all, is that the lonely sensibility wants to be otherwise. There is a reaching out that never quite touches. In MacNeice’s best work, the ingeniousness and inevitable failure of that reaching indicates the depth of the longing. He is a superb love poet, for instance, yet his love poems often foreground their own ephemerality, like ice sculptures in the summertime. ̣̣̣̣̺ David Orr "Free Range", The New York Times (30 August 2013) From a review of Louis MacNeice Collected Poems, ed Peter McDonald (Faber, 2007 (UK); Wake Forest University Press (US), 2013) ̹̹̟External links Category:1907 births Category:1963 deaths Category:People from Belfast Category:Poets from Northern Ireland Category:Formalist poets