on Frances Cornford, Anna Adams and Ruth Pitter

Frances Cornford was a woman who could get out of bed in the morning. Possibly the very least of epoch-making feats, but when you lie awake all night and manage to fall asleep only a couple of hours before dawn, the task of getting up with the lark each day can make even Sisyphus look like a bit of a slacker. Sleepless nights and reluctant mornings provide the occasion for poem after poem:
 

O what wide shore,
What vision of a plain
By the last bird deserted, and last
  light,
Will lead me from this labyrinth of
  pain,
Absolve me from my bone-
  surrounded brain,
In amplitude of night
To ache no more.

Here as in many of these poems, a trick of the rhythm belies the apparent mundanity of language. The tentative flow and then ebb of momentum through both rhyme and rhythm evokes the clearing of a shore by the tide, tantalising the insomniac with its mimicry of sleep's action while reminding her that a night's rest is a mere moment compared to the peace of eternity.

But it wasn't just lack of sleep that Frances Cornford had to contend with of a morning. For her the new day took on the daunting aspect of a clean slate, offering her a perfection which would be shattered by the first mistake or intrusion:
 

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