Poem of the Week – I Love all Beauteous Things by Robert Bridges
Robert Bridges was Poet Laureate from 1913 to 1930. Achieving literary recognition late in life, he initially trained as a doctor, but ironically, due to ill health, he was forced to retire from his chosen profession prematurely. After abandoning his medical practice, he dedicated himself exclusively to literary research and composition, often compounding his descriptive precision and distinct rhythms with themes pertaining to his deep Christian faith.
A close companion of the genius Gerard Manley Hopkins, he collected and published his friend’s profound poems thirty years after his early death. The championing of Hopkins’s prodigious work is perhaps Bridge’s greatest claim to fame today. However, he was not afforded the Laureateship for no good reason.
Perfecting the Victorian art of romantic sentimentality, Bridges mastered the popular lyricism of late-Victorian verse and distinguished himself while Tennyson, Browning and Swinburne were posthumously lauded as the greatest generation of English poets since the death of Byron, Keats and Shelley.
His quaint style and occasionally fustian themes have not advanced his fame into the modern-day or endeared his corpus to a sizeable current readership. Still, his skill, sincerity and excellent facility for simple phrases certainly warrants attention.
This week’s poem is indicative of Bridges’ wider work. I Love all Beauteous Things displays Bridges’s delicacy and proneness to praise.
We hope you enjoy this week’s poem as much as we did.
I Love all Beauteous Things by Robert Bridges
I love all beauteous things,
I seek and adore them;
God hath no better praise,
And man in his hasty days
Is honoured for them.
I too will something make
And joy in the making;
Altho’ to-morrow it seem
Like the empty words of a dream
Remembered on waking.