Five Days Old


"Five Days Old" is a poem by Australian poet Francis Webb.
It was originally published in The Bulletin on 30 April 1958, and was subsequently reprinted in the author's single-author collections and a number of Australian poetry anthologies.
According to The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature "The background to the poem, according to Webb's friend, Sister M. Francisa Fitz-Walter, was that a kindly doctor, hoping to renew Webb's interest in life and to restore his desire to write, placed a five-day old baby named Christopher John in Webb's arms."

Critical reception

The Oxford Literary History of Australia wrote that Webb's "rich tapestry of metaphors and similes has contributed greatly to his popularity among his successors, some of whom might even have taken his mental condition as part of a true poet's inevitable alienation from modern society, or even from all society. 'Five Days Old' represents Webb in an unusually lyrical and publicly open mode."

Publication history

After the poem's initial publication in The Bulletin magazine in 1958 it was reprinted as follows:Australian Poetry 1958 selected by Vincent Buckley, Angus and Robertson, 1958Socrates and Other Poems by Francis Webb, Angus and Robertson, 1961Modern Australian Verse edited by Douglas Stewart, Angus and Robertson, 1964New Impulses in Australian Poetry edited by Rodney Hall and Thomas Shapcott, University of Queensland Press, 1968A Book of Australian Verse edited by Judith Wright, Oxford University Press, 1968Collected Poems by Francis Webb, Angus and Robertson, 1969Modern Australian Poetry edited by David Campbell, Sun Books, 1970Twelve Poets, 1950-1970 edited by Alexander Craig, Jacaranda Press, 1971Australian Verse from 1805 : A Continuum edited by Geoffrey Dutton, Rigby, 1976Cross-Country : A Book of Australian Verse edited by John Barnes and Brian MacFarlane, Heinemann, 1984The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Verse edited by Beatrice Davis, Nelson, 1984My Country : Australian Poetry and Short Stories, Two Hundred Years edited by Leonie Kramer, Lansdowne, 1985Anthology of Australian Religious Poetry edited by Les Murray, Collins Dove, 1986Cap and Bells : The Poetry of Francis Webb edited by Michael Joseph Griffith and James A. McGlade, Angus and Robertson, 1991Australian Poetry in the Twentieth Century edited by Robert Gray and Geoffrey Lehmann, Heinemann, 1991Fivefathers : Five Australian Poets of the Pre-Academic Era edited by Les Murray, Carcanet, 1994The Oxford Book of Modern Australian Verse edited by Peter Porter, Oxford University Press, 1996Australian Verse : An Oxford Anthology edited by John Leonard, Oxford University Press, 1998Poems for All Occasions edited by Ron Pretty, Five Islands Press, 2002The Puncher & Wattmann Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Leonard, Puncher & Wattmann, 2009Australian Poetry Since 1788 edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray, University of NSW Press, 2011
The poem was also translated into Indonesian in 1991.

Note

  • The poem has an epigraph: "For Christopher"