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| Ivon Hitchens Study for the mural painting at Cecil Sharp House, London ca. 1950 oil, tempera and pastel on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| William Roberts The Temptation of St Anthony 1950-51 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Jesse Dale Cast Miss Beatrice M Dale Cast 1950 and ca. 1964 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
from An English Garden in Austria (Seen after "Der Rosenkavalier")
. . . It was not thus that you sang, Farinelli!
By graver stages, up a sterner way,
You won to those fields the candelabra lit,
Paused there; sang, as no man since has sung –
A present and apparent deity – the pure
Impossible airs of Arcady: and the calm
Horsehair-wigged shepherds, Gods of the Arcadian
Academy, wept inextinguishable tears.
Such power has music; and the repeated spell
Once a day, at evening, opened the dull heart
Of old mad Philip; all his courtiers wept
And the king asked, weeping: "Why have I wept?"
And Farinelli sang on; Ferdinand
Buried his father, ruled –
and heard, paused, heard again:
The years went on, men withered, Farinelli sang.
– Randall Jarrell (1950)
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| Carel Weight The Rendezvous (Holland Park) 1953 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Composition February I 1954 oil on panel Tate Gallery |
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| Joseph Beuys From the Life of the Bees 1954 watercolor Tate Gallery |
from More Fables from La Fontaine
Book Twelve
XVI
The Woods and the Woodman
A woodcutter had split or perhaps had mislaid
The axe-handle to which he had fitted the blade.
Replacing it meant that the man was delayed
And the forest was spared from which wood was conveyed.
A suppliant then as his manner made plain,
The man asked the woods to afford him again
A branch, just one which he would take
For one more haft which he would make,
And he would fell trees in a place further on,
Permitting oaks and pines to flourish where they'd grown,
Since everyone admired their vast height and fair form.
This was a service the woods did without alarm,
Followed by deep regret, since with his axe helved as before,
The hard wretch slashed to the core,
The very trees that had staunched his grief,
Felling trunks he could barely span
Although they groaned as their sap ran –
Martyred to benefit a thief.
Ingrates are typical of our world everywhere –
Downright turncoats against him who made them his care.
I tire of laboring the point. Show me the kindly wood
That has not known ingratitude
And could not tell what I'm telling you.
Irony, alas, for one to argue long and hard.
Ingratitude and violence too,
Are evils nothing can retard.
– Marianne Moore (1954)
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| Alberto Giacometti Portrait of Jean Genet 1954 or 1955 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Terry Frost Khaki and Lemon 1956 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| John Wells Painting 1956 oil on panel Tate Gallery |
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| Edward Middleditch Flowers, Chairs and Bedsprings 1956 oil on panel Tate Gallery |
from Corps de Ballet
But there is still the old sentimental balm
With which sneakingly to soothe ourselves: discerning
Posterity, improved from the present, will accord us
The vulgar plaudits we shun in our lifetime.
None can disprove it; which, as with all faiths,
Makes it as handy for corrupt as for holy uses,
Gives us leeway, as far as we let ourselves
Believe it, to go on plaiting hope
With more than one cheap strand of excuses
Which we know must rot soon and ruin the fabric.
While the truth of it is that time
Is the talent trusted to us for trying,
Our matter to be made, that takes our measure,
Tricks us out, our witness and sentence.
Watching us as we watch these dancers.
Our impatience they use to play against,
Take from it tension, which they turn to our pleasure;
By long study learn the arduous motions
Of grace, that can command our suspense,
How our breath can be baited with pure excellence,
Ourself stilled to the silly story. For while we are here
We are their future; they have no other.
And though they grow weary in our entertainment,
Such ease they will feign as will convince us
That we are clement, made generous with enjoyment,
Our strength new and gentle, our motion glorious.
Yet only a few can our minds keep,
Later, when they have gone and the playing;
A few figures with that authority
Invade us that can move there still,
Themselves sharp, as though the clear light were still on them.
And what of the rest who blur already
Like features carved in the desert, but fading more quickly;
Who fall from us like sleeping or waking,
Their colours as snow, their limbs as dust drifting;
Who work hard as any, with less consolation,
Hope shrinking in many, surely, with chances shortening?
Well, from habit strong in them, or the love of it
They still divert us; at their truth we have assisted,
Been moved by the subdued music of a dedication
Which to lay ears must seem like a monotone.
Minded of that music, we may see again
Their motion's meaning, the grace of their labour.
– W.S. Merwin (1956)
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| Adrian Stokes Olive Trees 1958 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Michael Andrews Study for a Man in a Landscape (Digswell) 1959 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| Kenneth Martin Seventeen Lines 1959-63 oil on panel Tate Gallery |
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| Jack Smith Figure in a Room I 1959 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
The Fountain
Her agitation suddenly stops.
The pumps that worked her have shuddered to their last stroke.
The water falls back into the pool at the base of the statue.
Lying for once quite still
It reflects the sky
The motionless marble horses
The shapes of trees nude or covered with leaves
The faces of women who lean to the water as to a primping-glass
The hands that dip to cool themselves or to break the ice-skim.
When it rains she feels blessed
Remembering the vigor and beauty of high white arcs crossing in sunlight
Streaming downward in wind
Far out to one side beyond the basin's rim
Splashing the dusty cobbles
The shoulders of passers-by
Obliterating the pattern of rain in the basin.
At night she cannot sleep
Thinking of the wide heavens whose lights bury themselves in her.
I take what I reflect to be part of myself.
She says it also of the jars that come to draw off her substance.
– Barbara Gibbs (1959)
Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)