The Echoing Green: Three Elegies

by Peter Levi

Peter Levi writes of the poems in `The Echoing Green': `This series of three laments was written for three of my friends who died in 1981, all rather young for death. They were all scholars, and I had known them all in Oxford... These three laments are a deliberate series of poems. Anne Pennington's is the Christian centre-piece, and Denis Bethell's is a pure elegy, a tribute of affection, but Colin Macleod's is the climax, it expresses unconsoled grief and unreconciled anger. They must be taken together.' Since his `Collected Poems 1955-1975', Peter Levi's books of poems have been `Five Ages' and `Private Ground'. John Heath-Stubbs wrote of the latter that `what breathes from these poems - some of the finest he has written - is a true humanism, which accepts the inevitability of death and decay, and does not appear to seek for any consolation in an idea of transcendance.'

Paperback

Published January 1, 1983

About the author

Peter Chad Tigar Levi, FSA, FRSL, Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford (1984–1989) was a poet, archaeologist, sometime Jesuit priest, travel writer, biographer, academic and prolific reviewer and critic.