Preface to “High and Low”

MURRAY, you bid my plastic pen

A preface write. Well, here’s one then.

Verse seems to me the shortest way

Of saying what one has to say,

A memorable means of dealing

With mood or person, place or feeling.

Anything extra that is given

Is taken as a gift from Heaven.

    The English language has such range,

Such rhymes and half-rhymes, rhythms strange,

And such variety of tone,

It is a music of its own.

With MILTON it has organ power

As loud as bells in Redcliffe tower;

It falls like winter crisp and light

On COWPER’s Buckinghamshire night.

It can be gentle as a lake,

Where WORDSWORTH’s oars a ripple make

Or rest with TENNYSON at ease

In sibilance of summer seas,

Or languorous as lilies grow,

When DOWSON’s lamp is burning low—

For endless changes can be rung

On church-bells of the English tongue.

    MURRAY, your venerable door

Opened to BYRON, CRABBE and MOORE

And TOMMY CAMPBELL. How can I,

A buzzing insubstantial fly,

Compare with them? I do not try,

Pleased simply to be one who shares

An imprint that was also theirs,

And grateful to the people who

Have bought my verses hitherto.