Not His Silent Night

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 637, 13 April 1929, Page 18

Not His Silent Night

. POET LAUREATE BROADCASTS ADDRESS ON SUBJECT OF ENGLISH POETRY. DR. BRIDGES AT EIGHTY-ONE ■o HOPE you will latch ' the gate,” said the ? Poet Laureate, “because of the rabbits,” ,j when Commander H. £ M. Daniel, “Daily Mail” representative, called upon him. Somehow it seemed significant that rabbits should be the subject of the injunction of the poet of England's hedgerows. I assured Dr. Robert Bridges that this would not be forgotten (writes Commander Daniel). He stood before me in his Study, a tall, fine figure with pointed grey beard and the keen eyes of a man of middle age. A grey woollen muffler was round his neck, and the corner of a black velvet hat flopped over his forehead. But of old age there was no sign, despite his 85 years, and his huge frame he carried erect. The matter which evidently concerned him was his voice, and he told me that if he was not very careful he would be unable to broadcast on the following evening on the subject of English poetry. "On that accouqt,” he said, “I am afraid I cannot talk.” Or, as the Americans had it when he visited the United States, “King’s Canary Won’t Chirp.” But that is a salient characteristic of the man; he hates limelight. The hurried and often imperfect methods of to-day are horrible to his mind. When the public asks why he does not more often give them poetry, especially on official and national occasions, he will say to his friends, “I will not force my Muse.” But for all that his poems fill over 400 pages, and are held to contain masterpieces of English verse. HIS WIDER AUDIENCE There is a certain quaintness in the thought of the silent poet addressing the whole world through the microphone. The poet who commemorated the discovery of fire by man in one of his earlier and less known poems, “Prometheus the Fire Giver,” now avails himself of the latest of man’s inventions. From his house at the edge of Powder Hill Copse, on Boar’s Hill, Oxford can be seen on one side and on the other the Upper Thames Valley stretches beneath. But the Cumnor Hills are covered with snow, and I could not help feeling sorry for the hungry rabbits which I shut out from the closed garden when I carried out the Laureate’s request to latch the gate.