A Final Follow-up to: "All Fled, All Done": Redux on Robert E. Howard's Famous Couplet

In January 2019, I posted on this blog "'All Fled, All Done': Redux on Robert E. Howard's Famous Couplet", which mostly sorted out the inspiration of Howard's famous couplet as coming from a poem by Viola Taylor (later Viola Taylor Garvin). I reproduced the publication of the poem from 1912, and noted that it had probably first appeared in The Westminster Gazette. In 1926, Taylor/Garvin dated the original appearance to 1906. Herewith I can update this and complete the study.

The poem did appear in The Westminster Gazette, but not in 1906. Viola Taylor contributed around twenty poems to The Westminster Gazette beginning in 1902. "The House of Cæsar" appeared in the 25 June 1909 issue, on page two. It was the final appearance by Viola Taylor in The Westminster Gazette. I copy this version of the poem below:

 

Three months earlier, on 22 March 1909 (page four), The Westminster Gazette reviewed her first book, a small collection of poems, The Story of Amaryllis and Other Verses (London:  Sidgwick & Jackson, 1908). Published in December 1908, the book was clearly out before "The House of Cæsar" had been written. I append the review below. 

 

 

 

 

A Lost Charles Williams Poem?

I think I have happened upon a lost Charles Williams poem.  At least, after a cursory look in prominent sources on Williams, I find no mention of it.  I found it in an original compilation by Harry H. Mayer, The Lyric Psalter: The Modern Reader’s Book of Psalms (Liveright, 1940). Mayer notes in his short foreword that:

The poems of this book have all been specifically written for inclusion in this publication. They might rightly be classified as essentially a pioneer work. Woven around the psalms of the Bible they should carry a message old as the story of man, new as tomorrow's sunrise and covering the entire circumstance of living. The method of procedure followed by the contributing poets was left to their own discretion. When the poet's version of his assigned part had been accepted, it was criticized and such changes or re-writes as sometimes seem to be called for were agreed upon. . . . Not only with regard to procedure were the poets of the present volume untrammeled. They were allowed complete freedom with regard also to the substance and thought of their interpretations. 

The contributors range though traditional and modernist poets, including (alphabetically), among others,  W.H. Auden, Witter Bynner, Padraic Colum, John Cournos, Lord Dunsany, Louis Golding, Shane Leslie, Louis MacNeice, Thoma Moult, L.A.G. Strong, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Charles Williams. Some authors contributed more than one poem.

Williams's single contribution, a rendition of Psalm 146 under the title of "Put Not Your Trust in Human Strength" (pp. 292-294), is reproduced below.  His biographical sketch (pp. 349-350) follows after the poem. The whole book was reprinted in 1944 by Liveright under the title The Modern Reader’s Book of Psalms.

 

Tolkien on Mercury

 So I see that there is a crater named Tolkien near the north pole of Mercury.  What about Lessingham?