2003 - Exeter College - University of Oxford

And I more blessed with her than Jove with Aegin’,
Or Dis adorned with Proserpine.
From love to history, he charted a great range of subjects
in his poetry. He wrote a ‘celebration of cyclical
history’:
Paestum, be still a guide and canon of the way
Where grace has passed, and when time has unfurled
New banners, should again return…
And O you gods of beauty, that have seen
The rise of Athens and the fall of Rome,
Teach me to bear the failings of this time
And weakness of my rhyme,
With patience, knowing well, that fresh to clean
The fields for wonder, and the wearied loam
For growth to purify, we fall, and all
Devices with us, ending being there,
Yea, even where
Beginning springs anew, and mending
Spirit, fast as our rich robes are rending.
Bell writes of his stance at this time as ‘one of curious
complexity, reared over opposites’. It was autumn 1938,
and events in Europe caused him also to reflect on the
crisis and all it brought with it. The same subject received
a variety of different treatments at his hand:
prefaced by an amusing Dedication, before the opening
lines:
Of the first great fall of erring man,
(Who has fallen since the world began
With charming regularity)
I sing with modest clarity.
I pray you if my song be coarse,
Forgive me, I am very hoarse.
Or if my tone suggest a frog,
Condemn my parents of the bog.
(For I have studied evolution,
As well as Biblical effusion,
And both of them I say are true;
Deride them not, I conjure you.)
Bell traverses the genres with vivacity, passion, joy, and sparkling
energy. Let us hope that the wings of wind which
spread such myriad parts travel even further.
Charles Bell is nearing the end of two new books, on his
art of “Poetic Translation” and his “Life and Poems” —
the latter an autobiography with unpublished and previously
published work.
The waste of our last war was not of wealth
But charity; for the wealth, had it been given
That there was burnt, would have made no war need be.
And that war’s loss was not of life, but love;
Had martyrs so many died for truth and kindness
As there for hate, what world might we not see
By hate we have won hate, greed, greed, war, war.
Can submission kill more, or sacrifice waste more,
Or peace cost more, or achieve less than these
He also penned what he calls ‘a grotesque scoff at
Cromwell’:
“Trust in God,” said Cromwell,
“And keep your powder dry.”
“God is love,” said Jesus,
“And love’s humility.”
What God was Cromwell trusting
Belial the black, say I.
He drew the sword of anger,
And by that sword we die.
The myriad parts of the puff ball described in Bell’s first
extant poem may be seen as an image of the variety of
styles and subjects of the rest of his work. Along with
the serious and grave, are touches of humour and wit.
His poem ‘Paradise Well Lost’, is a take-off on Milton,
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EXON - Autumn 2003 - www.exeter.ox.ac.uk/alumni