Marjorie Pickthall Poems

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Marjorie Pickthall
Born near London at Gunnersbury on September 14, 1883, Marjorie Pickthall emigrated to Canada and settled in Toronto in 1889. After receiving her education at Bishop Strachan School for Girls, she worked in the library of Victoria College in the University of Toronto, where she helped compile a bibliography of Canadian poetry. Pickthall first published stories and poems in 1898 in the Toronto Globe and then very widely elsewhere. Her literary output, which includes several hundred short stories and five novels, nearly halted at her mother's death in 1910, but Pickthall returned to England from 1912 to 1920 and recovered her will to write. She lived both at a cottage at Bowerchalke, near Salisbury, and in London. During this period she published two volumes of poetry: The Drift of Pinions (1913) and The Map of Poor Souls (1916). Her war-time work overseas included farming, training as an ambulance driver, and working in the South Kensington Meteorological Office library. Late in this period she wrote the following in a letter dated December 27, 1919 (Lorne Pierce, Marjorie Pickthall: A Book of Remembrance [Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1925]: 104): To me the trying part is being a woman at all. I've come to the ultimate conclusion that I'm a misfit of the worst kind, in spite of a superficial femininity -- emotion with a foreknowledge of impermanence, a daring mind with only the tongue as an outlet, a greed for experience plus a slavery to convention -- what the deuce are you to make of that? -- as a woman? As a man, you could go ahead and stir things up fine. Homesick, she sailed back to Canada in 1920 and, after a brief time with her father in Toronto, settled in a cottage on Vancouver Island. She died unexpectedly from an embolus in the spring of 1922 following an operation in a Vancouver General Hospital for a recurrent ailment. She was interred in St. James' Cemetery in Toronto. After her death, three volumes of her poetry came out: The Woodcarver's Wife and Other Poems (1922), Little Songs (1925), and The Naiad and Five Other Poems (1931). Her father compiled and published her Collected Poems in 1925 and again, definitively, in 1936. Victoria College holds a major collection of her manuscripts. Biographical information Given name: Marjorie Family name: Pickthall Birth date: 1883 Death date: 1922 Nationality: Canadian Literary period: modern Cause of death: embolus Buried at: St. James Cemetery, Toronto

introduction to the songs of experience
 
 
Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, and Future, sees;
Whose ears have heard... [read poem]
london
 
 
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark ... [read poem]
milton: and did those feet in ancient time
 
 
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy L... [read poem]
auguries of innocence
 
 
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm... [read poem]
the divine image
 
 
To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of deligh... [read poem]
jerusalem: i see the four-fold man, the humanity in deadly sleep
 
 
I see the Four-fold Man, The Humanity in deadly sleep
And its fallen Emanation, the Spectre and... [read poem]
america: a prophecy
 
 
The shadowy Daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc,
When fourteen suns had faintly journey'd ... [read poem]
europe: a prophecy
 
 
The nameless shadowy female rose from out the breast of Orc,
Her snaky hair brandishing in the ... [read poem]
song: memory, hither come
 
 
Memory, hither come,
And tune your merry notes;
And, while upon the wind
... [read poem]
song: my silks and fine array
 
 
My silks and fine array,
My smiles and languish'd air,
By love are driv'n away;... [read poem]
to the muses
 
 
Whether on Ida's shady brow,
Or in the chambers of the East,
The chambers of the sun... [read poem]
the book of urizen
 
 
Lo, a shadow of horror is risen
In Eternity! Unknown, unprolific,
Self-clos'd, all-repelli... [read poem]
mad song
 
 
The wild winds weep
And the night is a-cold;
Come hither, Sleep,
And my g... [read poem]
milton: the sky is an immortal tent built by the sons of los
 
 
The sky is an immortal tent built by the Sons of Los:
And every space that a man views around h... [read poem]
the clod and the pebble
 
 
"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives it... [read poem]
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