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Cecil Day Lewis

I lived from 1904-1972. I was from Ireland, and am in the English category.

C. D. Lewis was born at Ballintubber, Queen's County (now county Laois), Ireland. His father was a Protestant clergyman. After his mother died, he was brought up in London by his father, with the help of an aunt. Day Lewis graduated from Wadham College, Oxford, in 1927. In Oxford he became part of the circle that gathered around W.H. Auden and helped him to edit Oxford Poetry 1927. His own first collection of poems, BEECHEN VIRGIL, appeared in 1925. Cecil Day Lewis was appointed Poet Laureate in 1968. He also gained fame as a detective story writer under the name Nicholas Blake. In sixteen of his twenty mystery novels the hero was Nigel Stangeways, an Oxford graduate. Lewis was married twice and fathered five children, one of whom is the Academy Award-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

My poetry

  • Untitled
    Come, live with me and be my love,
    And we will all the pleasures prove
    16 lines, 2 comments
  • A Hard Frost
    A frost came in the night and stole my world
    And left this changeling for it - a precocious
    20 lines
  • Two Travellers
    One of us in the compartment stares
    Out of his window the whole day long
    36 lines
  • Where Are The War Poets ?
    They who in folly or mere greed
    Enslaved religion, markets, laws,
    8 lines
  • Newsreel
    Enter the dream-house, brothers and sisters, leaving
    Your debts asleep, your history at the door:
    33 lines
  • Come, live with me and be my love
    Come, live with me and be my love,
    And we will all the pleasures prove
    19 lines
  • The Conflict
    I sang as one
    Who on a tilting deck sings
    38 lines
  • The Ecstatic
    Lark, skylark, spilling your rubbed and round
    Pebbles of sounds in air’s still lake,
    13 lines

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