A much terser view of the subject than Andrew Marvell’s, with his green thoughts in a green shade, but it has its own charm and originality. The author is Ivor Gurney (1890-1937). This fascinating and tragic figure, composer as well as poet, was, like his better-known contemporaries Wilfred Owen and Edward Thomas, caught up in the First World War. Though he survived being gassed and shell-shocked in 1917 (and indeed saw his first collection, Severn & Somme, published that year), he suffered from a severe nervous breakdown in 1918 and from 1922 was confined to an asylum, where he continued his creative work. He died of tuberculosis.
He had studied with Ralph Vaughan Williams and his 5 Elizabethan Songs (1920) are highly regarded. The Elizabethan poets and Walt Whitman were among his inspirations. Lesley Duncan

THE GARDEN

The ordered curly and plain cabbages
Are all set out like school-children in rows;
In six short weeks shall these no longer please,
For with that ink-proud lady the rose, pleasure goes.

I cannot think what moved the poet men
So to write panegyrics of that foolish
Simpleton - while wild-rose as fresh again
Lives, and the drowsed cabbages keep soil coolish.