The poet, critic and editor Geoffrey Grigson (1905–85) was also a keen naturalist and countryman in the tradition of Edward Thomas. These interests come together in his late poem “Ruskin’s View, Kirby Lonsdale”, first published in the TLS in 1980 and subsequently in his collection The Cornish Dancer (1982). Kirkby Lonsdale (to restore the correct spelling), a small market town on the edge of the Lake District, was admired by Turner who, perhaps inspired by Books VI and VII of Wordsworth’s The Excursion (“The Churchyard Amongst the Mountains”), painted a view of the River Lune from St Mary’s church, of which Ruskin owned an engraving (now in the Ashmolean Museum). “I do not know in all my own country, still less in France or Italy”, Ruskin said of this spot, “a place more naturally divine, or a more priceless possession of true ‘Holy Land’” (Fors Clavigera, 1884).
Like Ruskin’s, Grigson’s sense of the sublime is rooted in a precise understanding of what he is looking at: Ruskin’s biographer W. G. Collingwood wrote that Ruskin knew “more about scenery than most geologists, and more about geology than most artists”, while for Anthony Thwaite it was “the passionate naturalist, archaeologist, topographer and traveller” who watches, too, from the centre of Grigson’s poems. And with the precision of Grigson’s observing eye goes an assured handling of cadence and internal rhyme. Peter Scupham suggests Grigson is ambivalent about whether, when life speaks to us most clearly, it speaks of itself or something other. But here the poet seems to be able to distinguish, beyond the heavily-mediated responses of the “be- / Sotted aesthete”, the religious impulse behind them, “A peace-be-unto-us, in cool / Matt affinities of green”. (tls)
Ruskin’s View, Kirby Lonsdale
So this is Mr. Ruskin’s view,This ultimacy of green;Benched beyond graves, I see
What Ruskin and Co mean.
A river draws a curve: parkedMeadows are marvellously wide;And green shelves up, then back into wild
Fells on the far side.
It is October: trees not – orSo it seems – too intentionally setIn order and disorder, display
No dead tones yet.
I see past graves what that be-Sotted aesthete and the others mean –A peace-be-unto-us, in cool
Matt affinities of green.
GEOFFREY GRIGSON (1980)
Like Ruskin’s, Grigson’s sense of the sublime is rooted in a precise understanding of what he is looking at: Ruskin’s biographer W. G. Collingwood wrote that Ruskin knew “more about scenery than most geologists, and more about geology than most artists”, while for Anthony Thwaite it was “the passionate naturalist, archaeologist, topographer and traveller” who watches, too, from the centre of Grigson’s poems. And with the precision of Grigson’s observing eye goes an assured handling of cadence and internal rhyme. Peter Scupham suggests Grigson is ambivalent about whether, when life speaks to us most clearly, it speaks of itself or something other. But here the poet seems to be able to distinguish, beyond the heavily-mediated responses of the “be- / Sotted aesthete”, the religious impulse behind them, “A peace-be-unto-us, in cool / Matt affinities of green”. (tls)
Ruskin’s View, Kirby Lonsdale
So this is Mr. Ruskin’s view,This ultimacy of green;Benched beyond graves, I see
What Ruskin and Co mean.
A river draws a curve: parkedMeadows are marvellously wide;And green shelves up, then back into wild
Fells on the far side.
It is October: trees not – orSo it seems – too intentionally setIn order and disorder, display
No dead tones yet.
I see past graves what that be-Sotted aesthete and the others mean –A peace-be-unto-us, in cool
Matt affinities of green.
GEOFFREY GRIGSON (1980)
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