[Holly Martins]

I've always had a soft spot for the Georgian Poets. When modern art was exploding around them they kept on going, no doubt hoping one day people like Eliot, Pound, Picasso and Schoenberg would be exposed as charlatans. Nowadays it's ok to say you don't like Pound or Picasso but the poor old Georgians remain terminally uncool. Here's a poem by John Drinkwater (1882-1937):


BIRTHRIGHT

Lord Rameses of Egypt sighed
Because a summer evening passed;
And little Ariadne cried
That summer’s fancy fell at last
To dust; and young Verona died
When beauty’s hour was overcast.

Theirs was the bitterness we know
Because the clouds of hawthorn keep
So short a state, and kisses go
To tombs unfathomably deep.
While Ramases and Romeo
And little Ariadne sleep.