SIMON CURTIS 47

Midnight drive Where constellations, cold,

In silvery fastness wheel, A light glows red and calm

High above Arbury Hill. It marks the radio mast,

And I listen, driving home Through Woodford Hake,

To Hilversum, to Rome,

Its antennae absorbing From midnight air

The teeming waves, to relay Far scraps of song, far

Bulletins and requests; Across a hemisphere

Its voices come, Engaging, near.

I turn for Litchborough Past Preston Capes;

My frosty headlights Conjure madman shapes

On brick-wall, barn, On a willow’s bole.

Through water, beneath, Nose otter and vole,

Black through chill black, Each ruthless for prey.

.They’re keeping alive; They’re driven that way.

Across a grey pasture From copse of beech

Breaks an unearthly Brown owl’s screech -

Staking territory out Along my route home;

Landscape I once likened To a painting by Crome.

48 Critical Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 1

To electronics, now, The affection warms;

Steadfast, those signals, Man-made, their norms.

BYRON’S LETTERSAND 0 JOURNALS

Edited by LESLIE A. MARCHAND

‘One of the great pleasures in life is a new vo!ume of Byron’s letters. I look forward to.them with growing impatience for he is the most enjoyable letter-writer in the world.’ Elizabeth Longford.

for June 1979publication

‘In the Wind’s Eye’ Volume 9, 1821-22

When Byron arrived in Pisa in November 1821 to join Teresa Guiccioli and her father and brother, who had been exiled from Ravenna. for political activities, he became closely associated with Shelley and his circle, which included Edward Williams, Thomas Medwin, John Taaffe, and later Trelawny. His unique journal, ‘Detached Thoughts’, begun in Ravenna, was finished in Pisa soon after his arrival. His principal correspondents were still Murray, Kinnaird, Hobhouse and Moore.

frontispiece probably f 7.50

already published

Volume 1 ‘In my hot Youth’ f5.75

Volume 2 ‘Famous in my time’ fs .75 Volume 3 ‘Alas! the love of Women!’ f5.75

Volume 4 ‘Wedlock’s the Devil’ f5.75

Volume 5 ‘So late into the night’ f5.95

Volume 6 ‘The flesh is frail’ f5.95 Volume 7 ‘Between two worlds’ f6.50 Volume 8 ‘Born for opposition’ f7.50

JOHN MURRAY

50 Critical Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 1

Twice or thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name; So in a voice, so in a shapelesse flame, Angells affect us oft, and worship‘d bee;

Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.

Takes limmes of flesh, and else could nothing doe,

Love must not be, but take a body too,

Still when, to where thou wert, I came,

But since my soule, whose child love is,

More subtile than the parent is,

And therefore what thou wert, and who, I.bid Love aske, and now

That it assume thy body, I allow, And fixe it selfe in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love, I thought, And so more steddily to have gone, With wares which would sinke admiration, I saw, I had loves pinnace overfraught,

Ev’ry thy haire for love to worke upon Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;

For, nor in nothing, nor in things Extreme, and scatt’ring bright, can love inhere;

Then as an Angell, face, and wings Of aire, not pure as it, yet pure doth weare,

So thy love may be my loves spheare; Just such disparitie

As is twixt Aire and Angells puritie, ‘Twixt womens love, and mens will ever bee.