2. Changing attitudes: nature

A central focus in my poems is the way many attitudes have, inevitably, changed over the centuries. For example, I was moved by the poignant realisation that so many of the older poets saw Nature as an eternal power, as in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ God’s Grandeur:

“Nature is never spent …. There lie the dearest, freshest deep-down things…”. Mere mortals might be flawed, but the consolation of Nature would never fail. How tragic that we now know that this is not the case, and that Nature has been despoiled by our greed.

Hardy’s famous The Darkling Thrush gave me the chance to express this sad truth: whereas Hardy begins with desolation at the bleakness of the landscape but then moves on to find “some blessed hope” in the song of his “blast-beruffled” thrush, I began with the beauty of an Autumnal walk, hearing a blackbird’s “heartfelt evensong” but went on to lament the loss of the songbirds of my childhood:

“Cuckoo, nightingale and swallow
Lost in the human rush
For domination. Soon may follow
Hardy’s valiant thrush….”

My final quatrain, in contrast to Hardy’s, is the bleakest:

“So much has vanished from the past –
I fear the future’s Spring
In lands where so much does not last
And no birds sing.”

Next: Changing attitudes: faith