Regular readers of this site know that I am slightly obsessed with bringing the work of Gertrude Eileen Trevelyan back to light (and back to print via the Recovered Books series at Boiler House Press). Though I thought I had exhausted the resources of the Internet and numerous archives in search of information about Trevelyan, I recently stumbled across four poems that were published in Nineteenth Century and Beyond in 1927 following her graduation from Oxford and her winning the Newdigate Prize for her poem “Julia, Daughter of Claudius.” Not only are these the only works by Trevelyan published between her Newdigate poem and her first novel Appius and Virginia (1932), but the poems are credited to G. Eileen Trevelyan, suggesting this was how she preferred to be known — at least in print.
In the interest of making Trevelyan’s work more accessible, I reprint here the four poems. The poems appeared in the September 1927 issue of Nineteenth Century and Beyond and were prefaced by the following note from the editors: “Miss G. Eileen Trevelyan of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, was the authoress of the Newdigate Prize poem of this year. It is the first award of this prize to a woman.”
Vale Atque Ave
I shall not hear the wailing and the chants,
I shall not see the smoke’s thin, acrid spire,
Nor hear the long, low throbbing of the drums,
Nor cast one blossom on your funeral pyre.
My feet will not read out the ancient dust
That stirs about Benares’ mystic shrine,
Nor, when your ashes flutter to their rest,
May there attend them any prayer of mine:
Yet shall I hail you in the setting sun,
In every changing glory of the air,
And find you ever in each blade and bloom
That grows on earth. Beauty is everywhere.
The Prisoner
“Do your chains clash loud on floor and wall,
Do you gnaw the bars of some dark den
Deep in the earth, where reptiles crawl,
Where day is harsh with frenzied brawl
And night with the shrieks of men?”
“My cell is clean and white and bar,
It echoes to no warder’s tread;
The hushed foot-falls of memory
Die slowly on the stagnant air,
And a sigh not born of misery,
A long-drawn, passionless despair,
The breath of the living dead.”
The Jewel
They brought the radiance from the violet wings
Of exquisite moments; myriad-plumaged hours
Of light and green-blue evening, starred with thought;
Dove-grey silences and emerald showers
Of song; and burned ecstacies of gold,
Crimson, amethyst and jade to mould
A jewel of limpid fire.
The brought the brazier
Of molten dreams; entwined curved filigrees,
Tortuous soul-threads, anguish-bright, drawn fine
By poignant fingers. Intricately now
Each facet blazed with subtle artistries
Of pain, a glory pendant in Life’s brow,
A flaming lamp in His eternal shrine.
Portrait
Broad white cliffs that face the sea,
Feathered spray and glistening loam:
Broad white brow that bends to me,
Bright as the foam.
Elfin smile that, dimpling, plays
At hide and seek with her lips and eyes:
Thistle-down the light wind sprays
Among hovering butterflies,
While far below where sea-birds sweep,
Where the blue sea takes the sky to mate,
The surge is hushed and the smooth sands sleep
And the still depths wait.