And yet, I think there is a hint of Wordsworth in the poem. 

Shade's: "There was a time in my demented youth" ( Canto Two) seems closer to certain verses in "Tintern Abbey"  than to Eliot's: "there will be time to murder and create".. 

Dear Jansy,

 

My unironic belief is that there is much more than a hint of Wordsworth in Shade's poem.

 

"There was a time when meadow, grove and hill" comes from Intimations of Immortality (which, imho, is a great poem.).

 

>I take it he was not seriously considering Edself Ford's lines as meriting enthusiastic exclamations of the sort "and what poetry!"Which wasn't interrupted even to ask/The time;" ..Astonishing!", <

 

I confess to unnecessary sarcasm in that remark. I picked out what seemed to me a positively dreadful line and a bit of enjambement from Edsel.

 

"Which wasn't interrupted even to ask

The time"

 

appears to me just about as unpoetic, or as crudely versified, as it is possible to be. The thought is banal in the extreme; the line does not scan; the last word is simply there to provide a rhyme. It is prose.

 

I do find The Prelude prosaic. If one admires The Prelude one may well admire Shade's poem. It is not a parody, but it is a pastiche. Edsel Ford's poem, or the little bit that has been quoted, strikes me as very much a pastiche of The Prelude. For example:

 

Eager and never weary we pursued

Our home-amusements by the warm peat-fire

At evening, when with pencil, and smooth slate

In square divisions parcelled out and all

With crosses and with cyphers scribbled o'er,

We schemed and puzzled, head opposed to head

In strife too humble to be named in verse:

Or round the naked table, snow-white deal,

Cherry or maple, sate in close array,

And to the combat, Loo or Whist, led on

A thick-ribbed army; not, as in the world,

Neglected and ungratefully thrown by

Even for the very service they had wrought,

But husbanded through many a long campaign.

 

This is not my idea of poetry. "And to the combat, Loo or Whist, led on" has stuck in my head for the last 50 years as the height of uninspired and almost comic banality. But, I suppose it's a matter of taste. Wordsworth was aiming for what he considered plain speech. "I've measured it from side to side/It's two foot long and three foot wide." But his inversions and syntax are still artificial; and this kind of narration describes activities which really are too humble to be named in verse.

 

The opening lines of Shade's poem are striking. But much of it is not unlike the above. William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity was a revelation to me: here, it seemed to me, was at last a true understanding of how true poetry gains its power.

 

Again, perhaps my tastes aren't broad enough.

 

Charles