This month, we are delighted to have a book choice from renowned actor Charles Dance, OBE, who we’ve admired in everything from The Jewel in the Crown to Game of Thrones.
‘A Dream in the Luxembourg’ by Richard Aldington. It’s a romantic novel in verse – really a long narrative poem, now long out of print, that I found in a bookshop one rainy afternoon in Chichester. For me, it’s one of the most beautiful pieces of poetic writing that I’ve ever read.’
Although currently out of print… A good choice in time for Valentine’s Day! Thank you to Charles Dance for this recommendation.
Here is another of Richard Aldington’s poems, to whet the poetry appetite:
Goodbye!
Come, thrust your hands in the warm earth
And feel her strength through all your veins;
Breathe her full odors, taste her mouth,
Which laughs away imagined pains;
Touch her life’s womb, yet know
This substance makes your grave also.
Shrink not; your flesh is no more sweet
Than flowers which daily blow and die;
Nor are your mein and dress so neat,
Nor half so pure your lucid eye;
And, yet, by flowers and earth I swear
You’re neat and pure and sweet and fair.