A perpetual memory and other poems: By Henry Newbolt: With brief memoirs by Walter de la Mare and Ralph Furse and a portrait by Sir William Rothenstein |
 | I. |
A Letter to R. B. after a Visit
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 | II. |
 | A perpetual memory |  |
22
A Letter to R. B. after a Visit
AUGUST, 1921 (WRITTEN IN HIS HOST'S “NEW NARRATIVE METHOD”)
My dear Bridges before I do anything elseI must thank you for my visit: it was all good—
From the kind welcome and renewal of friendship
Down to that excellent wine and Devonshire cream.
I believe I did say something of my feelings,
But words are useless: I might go on heaping them
Epithet on epithet all down my paper
Like the elephant piling teak in Kipling's poem
And still leave the real thing wholly unexpressed.
But I do wish I could give you some idea
Of how much I like your new narrative method
And admire the poems by which you shew it off,
Especially of course the polyglot parrot
Who demonstrates in a ludicrous but apt image
How you in verse whose service is perfect freedom
Can tell a plain prosy tale, or write a letter,
Or toss a song to the stars or the salt seawind,
Or toll the deep old Latin and Italian bells,
Or dance among French accents without breaking them
Or wake again the poignant memories of Greece.
But here is post time, and this must go.
Believe me
My dear Bridges (how glad I am to write the words)
If you are my “old friend,” as your kindness declared,
I am yours too, as always grateful and devoted.
H. N.
| A perpetual memory | |