Collected Poems 1935-1992

F.T. Prince’s Collected Poems 1935-1992 incorporates all the work that he wished to preserve, from his earliest published poems to late, uncollected pieces. Prince has become best known for his wartime poem ‘Soldiers Bathing’, a meditation on violence and redemption. Collected Poems reveals the riches of a lifetime’s work. His poetry combines a deep affinity with European humanist traditions and a modernist rigour: here is one of the essential twentieth-century writers.

Table of Contents:
Prefatory Note POEMS (1938) An Epistle to a Patron To a Man on his Horse In the Wood The Tears of a Muse in America The Wind in the Tree On a Cold Night The Intention The Token Words from Edmund Burke To a Friend on his Marriage To My Sister The Letter Keeper’s Wood False Bay The Babiaantje The Moonflower In a Province Chapel-at-Ease For the Deserted For Fugitives For Thieves and Beggars Cefalù Chaka IThe King Watches at Night II He Compares Old Customs with Those of his Kingdom IIIHow Festivals were Celebrated IVHe Bathes in the Morning VThe People Rest after Conquests SOLDIERS BATHING (1954) I Soldiers Bathing The Inn The Dice The Diamond The Book The Question II Apollo and the Sybil The Old Age of Michelangelo THE DOORS OF STONE (1963) Watching Song Coeur de Lion ‘Moult sont Prud’hommes les Templiers’ Les Congés du Lépreux The Stolen Heart Mortimer Strambotti Gregory Nazianzen Campanella Strafford Autumn Journey Sea View Handfast Point At Beaulieu MEMOIRS IN OXFORD (1970) DRYPOINTS OF THE HASIDIM (1975) AFTERWORD ON RUPERT BROOKE (1976) A LAST ATTACHMENT (1979) LATER ON (1983) The Yüan Chên Variations His Dog and Pilgrim A Byron-Shelley Conversation NOT A PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEW (1986) WALKS IN ROME (1987) SENILIA Family Mottoes Youth and Age To a Granddaughter on one of her Suggestions for a Christmas Present On a Report that in Some Rest Homes Residents who are Depressed will be Charged at a Higher Rate Ecumenical Exchange, 1989 The Two Beggars: A Reminiscence Creation Myth Renouncing an Epigram Finis Coronat Opus Vivat Last Poem Notes Index of Titles and First Lines

About the Author :
F.T. Prince was born in Kimberley, South Africa, in 1912 and educated at the Christian Brothers’ College in Kimberley, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and at Balliol College, Oxford. After graduating, he travelled and studied in Europe, particularly Italy, before taking up a graduate fellowship at Princeton. He returned to England in 1937 and worked as a foreign policy analyst at Chatham House for three years. His first collection was published by T.S. Eliot at Faber in 1938. During the Second World War F.T. Prince served in the Army Intelligence Corps, at Bletchley Park, in the Middle East and in Italy. His most celebrated poem, ‘Soldiers Bathing’, was written in 1942 and first published in 1943 in More Poems from the Forces, edited by Keidrych Rhys. After the war, Prince joined the English department at Southampton University, serving as professor from 1957 to 1974. From 1968 to 1969 he was a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. In 1972-3 he delivered the Clark Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge. After retirement from Southampton, he took visiting professorships in Jamaica, the United States and Yemen. In 1985-6 he was president of the English Association. F.T. Prince died in 2003.

Review :
'The mastery Prince achieved and the thrilling variety of his modes and voices means that, with the exception of the self-consciously minor late work (Prince labelled it "Senilia"), this volume reads like the highlights of a more copious body of work. Collected Poems will introduce readers to a poet of supreme skill and great intellectual curiosity.' Paul Batchelor, the Guardian