From Many Times and Lands
's From Many Times and Lands is a volume of some one hundred original poems, mostly dramatic monologues, vignettes, and narratives, based on historical episodes "that seem lastingly alive". Varying in length from sixteen pages to a few lines, and written largely between 1935 and 1953, the poems were intended to show, in Lucas's words in the Preface, that "The Greeks were right. The essential theme is men in action. That has been the greatness of the West." They were thus a reaction to the "soul-scratching" interiority of mid-20th century modernist verse. Lucas quotes approvingly "the wise Acton": 'History must be our deliverer, not only from the undue influence of other times, but from the undue influence of our own'. In one of the poems he has the explorer Anthony Jenkinson discuss with a number of English poets and playwrights in a London tavern in 1597 the authority of Marlowe's Tamburlaine as history:
| "I try to find episodes in history that seem lastingly alive: and try to make them live on paper." ... "We have had too many Narcissi murmuring unintelligibly over their own reflections in shallow, often muddy pools. 'I and she.' 'I and Nature.' 'I and God.' 'I and myself.'..." |
Jenkinson then goes on to speak of the impressions he took away from his meetings with Tsar Ivan IV.
Title and subtitle
The book's title is taken from Swinburne's 'The Garden of Proserpine'. The dust-cover and back-strip of the first edition carried the subtitle 'Poems of Legend and History'. "They are not always factually true," wrote Lucas of these pieces. "But what men could believe, even falsely, is also part – and not the least part – of human history. Wherever historic facts are concerned, I have tried to distort them as little as possible. Where episodes are invented, I have tried to keep them true to the spirit of their time."Themes
A number of the longer poems explore the techniques of handling, one-to-one, dangerous people in positions of absolute power. Cases in point include the court poet Yuan Shen and Emperor Ming Huang in 'The Smile that cost an Empire'; Sir John Cornwall and Henry V in 'King Hal'; Anthony Jenkinson and Tsar Ivan in 'Ivan the Terrible'; and counsellor Yeliu Chutsai and Genghiz Khan in 'The End of Genghiz'.Typical in its message is 'The Last Hope of Constantinople', telling the story of the fast Greek sailing boat sent from Constantinople during the desperate last days of the siege in 1453, to scour the Greek coasts for news of the promised Venetian fleet coming to the city's rescue – and to report back. But there is no fleet. The captain, Michaelis Imvriotis, tells his eleven-man Greek crew that it is their duty to return to the doomed city. A heated debate on deck follows, with some men arguing that to return would be futile. The captain closes the argument with the words
A vote is taken – two against ten. A few days later, the boat is sighted slipping back through Turkish lines to the Neorion Quay. There is momentary joy in the city: surely the crew would only have returned if they had good news? But the cheering falters:
The missing crew member, Spiridion Sathas, who had argued for flight, has stolen away by night in the row-boat. He marries "a rich Venetian dame", and thirty years later dies a "noble merchant" in Venice.
Verse forms
A variety of stanzaic forms, rhyme-schemes and metres are employed, as well as heroic couplets, blank verse, accentual verse, and free verse. The last stanza of 'The dead of Oran', on the funerals of French sailors killed in the Royal Navy's destruction of the French Fleet in 1940:Reception
The Times Literary Supplement wrote of the volume: "The excitement is unequalled by any but a very few volumes of verse published these last few years. This is poetry written to be read aloud, to be relished for its information, to be taken to bed and read, like a detective novel, for the relaxation that comes from a good story well told... These are stories in poetry. The poetry is not the worse for the story, but the story is infinitely more compelling for being set in verse."A notable example of such "compelling" story-telling occurs in 'A Tale of Two Centuries'. At the Revolutionary Tribunal in 1793 the public prosecutor Fouquier-Tinville, aware that the judges of the Comte de Custine are well disposed towards him because of the beauty of his daughter-in-law, Delphine de Custine, who attends the trial with him, has arranged for a mob to kill her as she leaves the Palais de Justice:
The mob, momentarily dumb and bewildered by "some awe of womanhood, some touch of shame", watch her go, gain her carriage in the street below, silently pass the baby back to its mother, and drive away, "Saved by a child she nevermore would see".