Re: When Your Pop Is The Poet Laureate Of England...

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: FRAUD!!!  YOU'RE NOT DOC MARY.  YOU ARE DOCTORATE M.

: *it's frightening the way she pops up just when thoughts of her enter your head unbidden and half-formed.  She indeed be witch.
: In league with the divil.  Burn her!  Burn her!!

: Nice poem by the way.  

: Gnome Dome

: : ...this is what you get as a birthday present! Sometime a month
: : or so ago, a few of you asked for the poem Cecil Day Lewis
: : wrote upon the birth of his son, the Big D. I finally found
: : in a large pile of books that I really must do something
: : about one of these days. Here it is.

: : The Newborn

: : This mannikin who just now
: : Broke prison and stepped free
: : Into his own identity--
: : Hand, foot, and brow
: : A finished work, a breathing miniature--
: : Was still, one night ago,
: : A hope, a dread, a mere shape we
: : Had lived with, only sure
: : Something would grow
: : Out of its coiled nine-month nonentity.

: : Heaved hither on quickening throes,
: : Tossed up on earth today,
: : He sprawls limp as a castaway
: : And nothing knows
: : Beside the warm sleep of his origin.
: : Soon lips and hands shall grope
: : To try the world; this speck of clay
: : And spirit shall begin
: : To feed on hope,
: : To learn how truth blows cold and loves betray.

: : Now like a blank sheet
: : His lineaments appear;
: : But there's invisible writing here
: : Which the day's heat 
: : Will show; legends older than language, glum
: : Histories of the tribe,
: : Directives from his near and dear--
: : Charms, curses, rules of thumb --
: : He will transcribe
: : In his own blood, to write upon an heir.

: : This morsel of man I've held--
: : What potency it has,
: : Though strengthless still and naked as
: : A nut unshelled!
: : Every newborn seems a reviving seed
: : Or metaphor of the divine.
: : Charged with the huge, weak power of grass
: : To split rock. How we need
: : Any least sign
: : That our stone age can break, our winter pass!

: : Welcome to earth, my child!
: : Joybells of blossom swing,
: : Lambs and lovers have their fling,
: : The streets run wild 
: : With April airs and rumours of the sun.
: : We time-worn folk renew
: : Ourselves at your enchanted spring,
: : As though mankind's begun
: : Again in you.
: : This is your birthday and our thanksgiving.

: : From Pegasus and Other Poems by C. Day Lewis


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