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The poems in this selection are from Nugae canorae, published in 1819. The previous year, Lloyd had escaped from the asylum in York to which he had been committed with mental illness, and, with the help and protection of De Quincey, been reunited with his wife and taken up his life again. Many of the poems in the selection date from the late 1790s, when he and Sophia were living in the Lake District.
A sample from Selected poetry is available on this website.
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De Quincey described Lloyd's poetry as being produced by his "excess of suffering", and indeed the reader is aware of an unremitting strain of sadness in most of poems in this selection. Lloyd writes nostalgically and melancholically about his happy childhood, and of those he has loved and lost through death. The modern reader may wonder just how much comfort his widowed sister-in-law derived from the verses written in honour of his brother:
Still 'tis a holier privilege to grieve
For Him, than with a less pure friend to live!
Lloyd's evocation of the landscape of the Lake District is vivid; the natural world was for him (as for other Romantic poets) awe-inspiring and terrible as well as beautiful. Nature also provided a support and comfort for him in his darker moments.
Nature, thou alone canst boast the power
To reillume the melancholy eye--
Cheer the dejection of the restless hour,
Or bid advent'rous thought to trackless regions tower.
Perhaps some of the most touching poems are those dedicated to his children and his wife, Sophia. In a poem written in 1807, before his mental problems became critical, Lloyd acknowledges her continued love and support:
Yet there is One who faithful still remains,
Who loves my solitude, as once she loved
My cheer in social life: who loves my joy,
Nor flies my couch when gnawing sickness reigns:
She, like the minister of heaven, hath proved
That "time and chance" can true love never destroy.
And, even though he admits that it was written "under the Influence of great Depression of Spirits", Lloyd's poem Lines to my children contains warm and loving evocations of his role as a fond father.
By the kisses so fond I have given,
By the plump little arm's cleaving twine,
By the bright eye, whose language was heaven,
By the rose on the cheek pressed to mine;
By its warmth that seemed pregnant with spirit;--
By the little feet's fond interlacing,
While others pressed forward to inherit
The place of the one thus embracing; ……By the girl, who, to sleep when consign'd,
The promised kiss still recollected;
And no sleep on her pillow could find,
If her father's farewel were neglected;Who asked me, when infancy's terrors
Assail'd her, to sit by her bed;
And for the past day's little errors
On my cheek tears of penitence shed.
Page created 20 January 2003 and last
updated 27 January 2003
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