Customer Reviews

Songs and Verses

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Goudge's poetry from the novels

I like Elizabeth Goudge's novels, for adults, and for children -- sometimes for both.
Many of them contain prefatory poems, such as the ballad that appears before prose story of "The Little White Horse" actually begins.
Many contain songs and hymns that Goudge wrote.

This book is a collection of the verse that was published in the novels.
But it also includes some few other poems that had not been previously published.

Her poetry is attractive, usually strophic, and classically rhymed and metrical.

Her subjects either directly contribute to the characters, settings, and events in her books -- and the novels give special interest to the poems -- or they are slighter, and more like short, poetic reflections on a stream, or a heron, or a white owl (a sonnet), or February, or a small boy playing with a toy train set, or going to bed, or the boy's guardian angel, or a statue near a boat-launching slipway (another sonnet), or the cat that was also in the barn at the Nativity.

But they are by Goudge. Marvellous!

John Gough -- Deakin University -- jagough49@gmail.com