"You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.
But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there's
no occasion to."
Humbert Wolfe
An Italian-born British poet, man of letters and civil servant.
He was born in Milan 5th January, 1885, Italy, and came from a Jewish family background, his father, Martin Wolff, being of German descent and his mother, Consuela, née Terraccini, Italian. He was brought up in Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire and was a pupil at Bradford Grammar School.[2] Wolfe attended Wadham College at the University of Oxford.
রচনা কর্ম।
- London Sonnets (1920)
- Shylock Reasons with Mr. Chesterton and other poems (1920)
- "Labour Ministry and Department of Labour (United Kingdom)" and "Labour Supply and Regulation (United Kingdom)" Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. XXXI (1922)
- Circular Saws (1923)
- Labour Supply and Regulation (1923)
- The Lilac (1924)
- Lampoons (1925)
- The Unknown Goddess (1925) poems
- Humoresque (1926)
- News of the Devil (1926) poems
- Requiem (1927) poems
- Cursory Rhymes (1927) poems
- Others Abide (1927) translator, Ancient Greek poems
- Kensington Gardens (1924)
- Dialogues and Monologues (1928) criticism
- This Blind Rose (1928) poems
- Troy (1928) Faber & Gwyer, Ariel poems
- The Moon and Mrs. Misses Smith (1928)
- The Craft of Verse (1928) essay
- The Silver Cat and other poems (1928)
- Notes on English Verse Satire (1929)
- A Winter Miscellany (1930) editor, prose anthology, plus some original poems
- Homage to Meleager (1930 Limited Edition)
- Tennyson (1930) criticism of Maud
- The Uncelestial City (1930) poems
- Early Poems (1930)
- George Moore (1931) biography
- Snow (1931) poems
- Signpost to Poetry (1931)
- Reverie of Policeman: A ballet in three acts (1933)
- Now a Stranger (1933) autobiography
- Romantic and Unromantic Poetry (1933)
- Truffle Eater. Pretty Stories and funny pictures An anti-Nazi parody of the famous Struwwelpeter, published under the alias "Oistros", with pictures by Archibald Louis Charles Savory (1933)
- Portraits by Inference (1934) biographical sketches
- Sonnets pour Helene (by Ronsard) (1934) translator
- X at Oberammergau : A poem (1935) drama
- The Fourth of August (1935) poems
- Selected Lyrics of Heinrich Heine (1935) translator
- P. L. M.: Peoples Landfalls Mountains (1936)
- The Pilgrim's Way (1936)
- Personalities; a selection from the writings of A. A. Baumann (1936) editor, biographical sketches by Arthur A. Baumann
- The Silent Knight: A Romantic Comedy in Three Acts (by Eugene Heltai)(1937)
- Others Abide: Translated Greek Epigrams (1937)
- The Upward Anguish (1938) autobiography
- Out of Great Tribulation (1939) poems
- Kensington Gardens in War-Time (1940) poems
- Cyrano de Bergerac (1941) by Edmond Rostand translator।
He was one of the most popular British authors of the 1920s. He was also a translator of Heinrich Heine, Edmond Fleg (1874–1963) and Eugene Heltai (Heltai Jenő). A Christian convert, he remained very aware of his Jewish heritage.[citation needed]
His career was in the Civil Service, beginning in the Board of Trade and then in the Ministry of Labour. By 1940 he had a position of high responsibility. His work was recognised with a CBE and then a CB.
Wolfe said in an interview with Twentieth Century Authors that he was "of no political creed, except that his general view is that money and its possessors should be abolished."
He died on his 55th birthday 1940.
Poem - 1
The grey squirrel
Like a small grey
coffee-pot,
sits the squirrel.
He is not
all he should be,
kills by dozens
trees, and eats
his red-brown cousins.
The keeper on the
other hand,
who shot him, is
a Christian, and
loves his enemies,
which shows
the squirrel was not
one of those.
Poem -2
Requiem: The Soldier
Down some cold field in a world outspoken
the young men are walking together, slim and tall,
and though they laugh to one another, silence is not broken;
there is no sound however clear they call.
They are speaking together of what they loved in vain here,
but the air is too thin to carry the things they say.
They were young and golden, but they came on pain here,
and their youth is age now, their gold is grey.
Yet their hearts are not changed, and they cry to one another,
'What have they done with the lives we laid aside?
Are they young with our youth, gold with our gold, my brother?
Do they smile in the face of death, because we died?'
Down some cold field in a world uncharted
the young seek each other with questioning eyes.
They question each other, the young, the golden hearted,
of the world that they were robbed of in their quiet paradise.
I do not ask God's purpose. He gave me the sword,
and though merely to wield it is itself the lie
against the light, at the bidding of my Lord,
where all the rest bear witness, I'll deny.
And I remember Peter's high reward,
and say of soldiers, when I hear cocks cry,
"As your dear lives ('twas all you might afford)
you laid aside, I lay my sainthood by."
There are in heaven other archangels,
bright friends of God, who build where Michael destroys,
in music, or in beauty, lute players.
I wield the sword; and though I ask nought else
of God, I pray to Him: "But these were boys,
and died. Be gentle, God, to soldiers."
Poem -3
Suddenly he sang across the trenches,
vivid in the fleeting hush
as a star-shell through the smashed black branches,
a more than English thrush.
Suddenly he sang, and those who listened
nor moved nor wondered, but
heard, all bewitched, the sweet unhastened
crystal Magnificat.
One crouched, a muddied rifle clasping,
and one filled grenade,
but little cared they, while he went lisping
the one cleat tune he had.
Paused horror, hate and Hell a moment,
(you could almost hear the sigh)
and still he sang to them, and so went
(suddenly) singing by.
Poem -4
Love is a keeper of swans!
Helen, amid what dark wherries
are you steering the silver boat
that for all the love of Paris,
and his lips against your throat,
passed out of Troy with windless vans?
And, fairest of Italians,
where do you glimmer, Beatrice?
what light of heaven stains your wings
with gold that were all fleur de lys?
And do you hear when Dante sings>
'Love is a keeper of swans.'
Love is a keeper of swans,
Have you left the barren plain,
and stormed a gold-eagle's eyrie?
Queen-swan of the eagle strain,
what mountain has you, Mary?
and is its name, as ever, still romance?
And you, bright cygnet of immortal Hans,
you need not join your sisters yet.
You have all time. Why should you hasten?
What though the lake with reeds be set,
one reed is murmuring, oh, listen!
'Love is a keeper of swans!
Poem -5
All that I ask
is a desk -
with blotting paper white
changed every night;
no little but the good
company of dead wood:
a glass inkpot so clean
my pen can wade therein
up to her waist and not
be liable to blot -
also laid in her place
a crystal pencil case;
and in that glassy bed -
pencils new sharpened;
nothing to vex the soul
in the next pigeon-hole;
and finally there must
be not a speck of dust
And I would have the wall
austerely virginal,
with nothing to intervene
(above my desk) between
the thing I try to see
and me.
There let me sit
and write at it -
content with this
Slim doorway to infinities.
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