Len and Richard, in the context of war's onset, that reference to lights going out is pithier than we might guess from our present vantage. Other work from that period indicates that Francis was gravely troubled about the state of the world.
Kate, I am very pleased that you have read Francis after seeing this discussion. It makes the whole project feel more worthwhile if even one poet discovers another she had not known before.
In his later years, as you note, Francis kept returning to the same themes, and his writing became increasingly thin. When he sought other themes, other effects, the results were unfortunate. At this stage of his life, hunger for notice had drawn Francis from his rural isolation. He even spent some months abroad. Writing of this period, I observed:
"Two more collections followed, in 1965 and 1972. Each incorporated a great deal of learned dross spun from the poet’s time in Europe. The Rome Prize had vaulted Francis into libraries and museums. They were not good places for him. Had such experiences befallen him in youth, he might have matured into a very different poet, more like Richard Wilbur, someone who has assimilated much of Western culture and woven it deftly into verse. Coming late to “Aphrodite as History” or “Picasso and Matisse,” Francis merely acquired a patina."
Francis is at his best evoking nature, reflecting on the human condition, and admiring young men, for whom he had an abiding but largely unsatisfied passion.
Alan Sullivan
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