Seeds in the Wind: 20th-century Juvenilia from W.B.Yeats to Ted Hughes

by Neville Braybrooke

A collection of writings traces the early literary careers of Virginia Woolf, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Sylvia Plath, George Orwell, T.S. Eliot, and others

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Shane Moore · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not nearly well-read enough to recognize every person whose early work was included in this book. I knew who about one in five of the authors were, and of those I had only previously read the work of a few. However, I still enjoyed reading the early talent of these writers. The collection's editor selected work that was as interesting as it was notable, though I image a teacher might like it less.

I don't recommend this book for general reading. Without the context of the writers' later work it is a dry collection of mediocre writing, but I have excerpted the passages I found most interesting here.

I've only read "The Man Who Was Thursday" from G.K. Chesterton, but in the poem, "Idolatry", which he wrote as a teenager he was already demonstrating a strong disdain for the moral superiority of his contemporaries.

He wrote:

Shall we say of the wild-eyed savage who crouches with gibber and moan, Where the dead stone god sits glaring, that the worship is dead as the stone?
Not so; for the worshipper lives, and with him the worship grew, And the fear of his heart is deep and the prayer of his lips is true
...
Not alone to you ghastly idol the savage prays today, He prays to the presence within him that has prompted his heart to pray.

The poet Andrew Young got started early:

Battle of Bannockburn by Andrew Young, aged 5

They fell, they fell
Till there were too few to tell
How the great battle was ended.

This next poem from George Orwell shows that the war hawkishness that would inspire him at 33 to fight in the Spanish Civil War was also present when he was a pre-teen.

Awake! Young men of England by George Orwell, aged 11

Oh! give me the strength of the Lion
The wisdom of Reynard the Fox
And then I'll hurl troops at the Germans
And give them the hardest of knocks.

Oh! think of the War lord's mailed fist,
That is striking at England today:
And think of the lives that our soldiers
Are fearlessly throwing away.

Awake! Oh you young men of England,
For if when your country's in need,
You do not enlist by the thousand,
You truly are cowards indeed.

Lastly, we have the 15-year-old Sylvia Plath writing about as hopefully as she ever did.

You ask me why I spend my life writing?
Do I find entertainment?
Is it worthwhile?
Above all, does it pay?
If not, then, is there a reason? …
I write only because
There is a voice within me
That will not be still.