POETRY IN LOCKDOWN: 10

This is another poem of grief for the loss of a child. The Cornish tin-miner poet John Harris (1820-84) was one of those self-educated writers who dot the literary landscape and are sometimes dismissed as “local poets”. Along with John Clare and William Barnes, Harris is one of the best.  He had an extravagant imagination and a lyric gift that refused to be constrained by either poverty or geography. (He is said to have left Cornwall only once, to visit the grave of Shakespeare at Stratford.)

This is an extract from Harris’s long poem Land’s End written in blank verse and in high biblical language. His strong religious feeling and the power of nature are summoned to give him strength after the death of his young daughter Lucretia. “My heart is wounded” is a quotation from Psalm 109 and “All flesh is grass” is from Isaiah 40. Whether the second line is the true source of the title of the album by the Rolling Stones is a question for better rock n roll scholars than me.

I first read this extract in an anthology whose compiler left out the lines 13-18, presumably because they sound too much like the preacher that Harris became later in life. It's true they aren't the best lines but I don't think they should be omitted.

My heart is wounded, and it will not heal:
I pray that it should not; no, let it bleed.
The world is cruel; there’s relief in tears;
I pour them out upon the far Land’s End.
Methought a spirit winged and glistering                           5
In Eden’s vesture sat upon the rocks,
And cried “All flesh is grass, and like the flower
So fade away the beautiful of the earth.
All flesh is grass. The prophets, where are they?
And where the travellers of the mighty past,                        10
Who roamed among those fearful trumpeters,
And drank the echoes of this mammoth choir?
Gone like the exhalations from the fen.
The truly wise obey their Maker’s voice
And love the being that created them.                                    15
They arm themselves to meet the fleshless foe
Ere he o’ertake them mid the damps of time.
All flesh is grass.” And the Atlantic waves
Thundered the spirit’s dirge, “All flesh is grass”.