An elegy to the poet’s personal physician is full of vivid detail delivered with infectious warmth
An elegy to the poet’s personal physician is full of vivid detail delivered with infectious warmth
On the Death of Dr Robert Levet by Samuel Johnson
Condemned to Hope’s delusive mine
As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blast or slow decline,
From an almost whimsical beginning, these verses on wishing to overcome mortality grow lyrical and deeply moving
The radical young poet’s backhanded tribute to the older writer is a stern judgment on his lapsed political idealism
Two sonnets absorb with calm clarity a boy’s anguish at his mother’s loss
The moon becomes the witty image of an isolated and contemptuously neglected elderly relation
Words of stern moral advice to a besotted young man are delivered with a brisk and even sunny touch
A single missing word in the 1902 poem sparks a deeper look at rhythm, dialect and longing
