“Bread crumbs”(perhaps how you got here)

(Originally posted August 20th, 2008)

Today's Thing of the Day is a poem by Rachel Annand Taylor. It comes from The Golden Treasury of Scottish Poetry, edited by Hugh McDiarmid (1941):

The Princess of Scotland

"Who are you that so strangely woke,
  And raised a fine hand?"
Poverty wears a scarlet cloke
In my land.

"Duchies of dreamland, emerald, rose
  Lie at your command?"
Poverty like a princess goes
In my land.

"Wherefore the mask of silken lace
  Tied with a golden band?"
Poverty walks with wanton grace
In my land.

"Why do you softly, richly speak
  Rhythm so sweetly-scanned?"
Poverty hath the Gaelic and Greek
In my land.

"There's a far-off scent about you seems
  Born in Samarkand."
Poverty hath luxurious dreams
In my land.

"You have wounds that like passion-flowers you hide:
  I cannot understand."
Poverty hath one name with Pride
In my land.

"Oh! Will you draw your last sad breath
  'Mid bitter bent and sand?"
Poverty begs from none but Death
In my land.

Our local public library (as I think I've mentioned elsewhere) has the curious policy of putting those books of its collection that do not circulate much out upon a shelf where they can be bought for twenty-five cents each. That's how I came to acquire this fine anthology of Scottish poetry, including many poems and poets whose acquaintance I had never made. Presumably this Golden Treasury of Scottish Poetry had sat neglected on the shelves for fifty years or more. Plainly, I am now much the richer, while the citizens of Wickenburg are poorer, given that the book is now on my shelf, occupying one of the honored positions as a book I keep within easy reach.

How immensely sad! I had never heard of Rachel Annand Taylor. Wikipedia gives her dates as 1876 to 1960; she was, according to the same source, admired by Aldington and D H Lawrence. That's a strong recommendation. Supposedly she was one of the "mystic" poets. I have no notion what this really meant. The Worlding of Jean Rhys, by Sue Thomas (1999, excerpt available through Google Book Search) includes a little elaboration of Taylor's preface cited below.

One book of Taylor's, The Hours of Fiammetta, is available for free at Project Gutenburg. The following is its preface:

There are two great traditions of womanhood. One presents the Madonna brooding over the mystery of motherhood; the other, more confusedly, tells of the acolyte, the priestess, the clairvoyante of the unknown gods. This latter exists complete in herself, a personality as definite and as significant as a symbol. She is behind all the processes of art, though she rarely becomes a conscious artist, except in delicate and impassioned modes of living. Indeed, matters are cruelly complicated for her if the entanglements of destiny drag her forward into the deliberate aesthetic effort. Strange, wistful, bitter and sweet, she troubles and quickens the soul of man, as earthly or as heavenly lover redeeming him from the spiritual sloth which is more to be dreaded than any kind of pain.

The second tradition of womanhood does not perish; but, in these present confusions of change, women of the more emotional and imaginative type are less potent than they have been and will be again. They appear equally inimical and heretical to the opposing camps of hausfrau and of suffragist. Their intellectual forces, liberated and intensified, prey upon the more instinctive part of their natures, vexing them with unanswerable questions. So Fiammetta mistakes herself to some degree, loses her keynote, becomes embittered and perplexed. The equilibrium of soul and body is disturbed; and she fortifies herself in an obstinate idealism that cannot come to terms with the assaults of life. No single sonnet expresses absolute truth from even her own point of view. The verses present the moods, misconceptions, extravagances, revulsions, reveries – all the obscure crises whereby she reaches a state of illumination and reconciliation regarding the enigma of love as it is, making her transition from the purely romantic and ascetic ideal fostered by the exquisitely selective conspiracies of the art of the great love-poets, through a great darkness of disillusion, to a new vision infinitely stronger and sweeter, because unafraid of the whole truth.

Fiammetta is frankly an enthusiast of the things of art; and her meditations unfortunately betray the fact that Etruscan mirrors are as dear to her as the daisies, and that she cannot find it more virtuous to contemplate a few cows in a pasture than a group of Leonardo's people in their rock-bound cloisters. For the long miracle of the human soul and its expression is for her not less sacredly part of the universal process than the wheeling of suns and planets: a Greek vase is to her as intimately concerned with Nature as the growing corn – with that Nature who formed the swan and the peacock for decorative delight, and who puts ivory and ebony cunningly together on the blackthorn every patterned Spring.

The Shaksperean form of sonnet yields most readily the piercing quality of sound that helps to describe a malady of the soul. But the system of completed quatrains in that model suits more assured and dominating passion than the present matter provides. A more agitated hurry of the syllables, a more involved sentence-structure, sometimes a fainter rime-stress, seem necessary to the music of bewilderment.

It is difficult to imagine a poem more finely crafted than the one presented above, or prose so elegantly and precisely written as her preface. Rachel Annand Taylor was clearly a great poet, richly deserving more fame than has been her lot.

 All text on this page is the work of J W Durham and is licensed only under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Other licensing terms may be available. E-mail me