Siegfried Sassoon on Alcuin
Bullough revised and added to the manuscript over a period of 30 years and when his cancer was diagnosed at the end of last year, he sent it to the publishers. He lived to read and agree the final proof and his biography ("Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation") will be coming out later this year.
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Awareness of Alcuin
by Siegfried Sassoon
At peace in my tall-windowed Wiltshire room,
(Birds overheard from chill March twilight's close)
I read, translated, Alcuin's verse, in whom
A springtide of resurgent learning rose.
Homely and human, numb in feet and fingers,
Alcuin believed in angels; asked their aid;
And still the essence of that asking lingers
In the aureoled invocation which he made
For Charlemagne, his scholar. Alcuin, old,
Loved listening to the nest-near nightingale,
Forgetful of renown that must enfold
His world-known name; remembering pomps that fail.
Alcuin, from temporalities at rest,
Sought grace within him, given from afar;
Noting how sunsets worked around to west;
Watching, at spring's approach, that beckoning star;
And hearing, while one thrush sang through the rain,
Youth, which his soul in Paradise might regain.
JOC/EFR August 2007
The URL of this page is:
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Sassoon_Alcuin.html