Francis Brett Young
Reading edition
Francis Brett Young, who is a novelist as well as a poet, and who has been called, by The Manchester Guardian, "one of the promising evangelists of contemporary poetry," has written much that is both graceful and grave. There is music and a message in his lines that seem to have as their motto: "Trust in the true and fiery spirit of Man." Best known as a writer of prose, his most prominent works are Marching on Tanga and The Crescent Moon.
Brett Young's Five Degrees South (1917) and his Poems 1916-18 (1919) contain the best of his verse.
LOCHANILAUN
This is the image of my last content: My soul shall be a little lonely lake, So hidden that no shadow of man may break The folding of its mountain battlement; Only the beautiful and innocent Whiteness of sea-born cloud drooping to shake Cool rain upon the reed-beds, or the wake Of churned cloud in a howling wind's descent. For there shall be no terror in the night When stars that I have loved are born in me, And cloudy darkness I will hold most fair; But this shall be the end of my delight:— That you, my lovely one, may stoop and see Your image in the mirrored beauty there.