by Michael Partridge

Introduction

There is a well-known saying that the past is a foreign country. These poems belong to mine—written in a youth shaped less by the 1970s than by a nineteenth-century, Brontë-inspired romanticism, out of step with its own decade, and perhaps with any decade.

Where a poem grew out of a particular place or experience, I have added a note. Whether any of this has lasting value is not for me to judge; I offer the poems as they are, in the hope that, for some kindred spirits, they might strike a chord that resonates.

Fragments 1974

Happiest when alone
To follow where my nature leads
With thoughts that are my own

As man by faith, so is desire
made pure by love.
Childlike in learning of bliss.

The Storm and I are one,
At our centre lies the peace,
That is the hope of things to come
When all our struggles cease.

Having been brought up by the sea on the East Coast, storms have always fascinated me. I remember the first time that I saw Malham Tarn in the Yorkshire Dales. It was a wild stormy day with low clouds and was memorably dramatic. I can still visualise it. However, I went back another time, when the sky was blue and all was calm. It was much less impressive!

You have ravished my heart

You have ravished my heart,
My sister, my spouse;
You have ravished my heart
With one look of your eyes.

Song of Solomon 4:9

At Sunset Whitby

Dark against a darkening sky
Swift the seagulls fleeting glide,
Graceful through the rushing air
And ever upwards soaring seek
To view from high the hand of God
And sense of his perfections, all
Emblazoned by the dying sun.

21st August 1975

Anyone who knows Whitby will be familiar with the 199 steps that lead up to St. Mary’s Church and the remains of the former abbey. It is a commanding spot giving a wide view of the town and the harbour below. I sat there for some two hours one afternoon as the sun began to set and it was one of those rare occasions where an inner peace seemed to descend and I felt totally at one with the universe. A mystical experience? Perhaps, but it was certainly a memorable one that stays with me even after the lapse of many years. As well as being of historical significance, Whitby also figures in Bram Stoker’s Dracula as the place where the vessel carrying Count Dracula to England runs aground during a violent storm. The crew, all missing apart from the Captain, who was found dead and tied to the ship’s helm.

Lines composed on gazing at the moon

Beauty has no grace
Like yours,
Nor honour, chastity.
For your are fairest
Of the night
And Queen of all I see.

5th October 1975

Prose Poem

Who said that winter is a time of death? Harsh and bitter it may be, contrasted with the flesh and blood of summer. Yet it its nakedness resides a vision of conception. A quickening of the senses, the forces from whose flowering the earth will rise. to be reborn in spring. It beats with an almost visible pulse, with each new bud, each rotting leaf new turned to mould.

Boxing Day 1975

Sunset and Evenrise

Dusk, the time when day and night
Are held in perfect balance,
Lasts for what to human eyes
Is but a moments peace.

All the world is subtly merged
By shades of mist and colour.
While nature’s self begins to dream
With inward searching power.

For the shadowed sky turns purple
The stars burn a little more fierce,
And night deepens round about us
To banish all our fears.

4th January 1976

Happiest when alone

I was ever happiest when alone
To follow where my nature leads,
Through high hills and valleys roam
With thoughts that are my own.

My own, for none can share
Those hidden dreams with me,
That come to lift me from despair
Out of the reach of mortal care.

My spirit breathes a world divine
Of clearer eye and brighter view (hue)
Beyond the reck and ken of time
With quickened sense of all in thine.

12th March 1976

I watch the waves

I watch the waves
With insatiable desire
Fall upon the shore,
To strive and recoil
Undaunted, to try
Again once more.

An irrepressible movement
In which I find
An echo of my loneliness.

Easter 1976

Anyone who has heard the sound of waves breaking on a shingle beach will already have the background music to this memory. The ebb and flow of the ocean striking the shore and then retreating to gather pace and return once more.

Memorial

Fair maid whom I have never seen
Or thought to know but in a dream,
Can I with fond imaginings voice
Speak soft to thee beyond the grave?

For now, no more, thy spirit moves
With life through this brief world of ours,
Yet we who wait are strangely soothed
To think on thee, at peace, at last.

Thy life was short and blessings few
Were here bestowed on thee,
Save love with patience to endure
And untold harmony.

25th April 1976

These lines were inspired by a memorial I once saw in a church in Christchurch, near Bournemouth on England’s South Coast.

Love

Put perfect trust in love
It is divinest measure
Of noble thoughts above
For human hearts to treasure.

29th August 1976

The pale young moon – a fragment

The pale young moon
Lacking lustre and life
Grows bold as night
draws nigh…

Undated

A crescent moon softly pillowed on cloud

A crescent moon softly
Pillowed on cloud — the
Plash of a herons wing.

The stars above so tranquil
And mild — and a soul that
Has learned to sing.

27th September 1976

Fragment

Like autumn passing through to spring.
Death is peace — Cool stone
Brown earth — Release.

20th December 1976

To Charlotte

What can those eyes see
Now that they are dimmed
To all that speaks of beauty and of life?
For she is dead and my love is pure,
Unsullied by the taint of lust.

She loved and yet was not beloved.
She wept but was not comforted.
And here her bones lie
Mouldering in the grave,
Her flesh is past decay.

If this be all there is no pain
But simply tragic waste.

Christmas Day 1976

The Charlotte referred to here is the novelist Charlotte Brontë, who is buried at Haworth in Yorkshire.

The River

There is a softness in the air,
That comes of noon day light
In winters time, when all
Is beauty here enshrined
To favour us in solitude.
And as we watch time seems
Stood still in meet humility,
To see how fair the river lies
Beneath this canopy of blue
So gentle and so perfect there.

28th December 1976

My youth was spent living on the Essex coast and I used to love to go for solitary walks along the River Crouch in all its different moods. These lines record a rare moment in winter when, while out walking near Creeksea, I saw the river still as glass under a clear blue sky. It was a bright, cold day and for a brief moment seemed perfect.

The sun is almost set

The sun is almost set;
The young birds
Sing their last song
And all the shadows fade
Beneath a timeless sky.
The softest harmony this,
That ever I have known,
A soundless music that
Delights the ear
With subtle difference.

20th May 1977

A whistle in the darkness
— the drawing in of oars
— the drying of the mudbank
A vision out of doors.

Undated

Outside my window

Outside my window
On a winters night
I thought I heard
The wind stand up
To speak —

I heard his knock
Upon the pane
And quickly moved
To let him in —

His voice came softly
On the breeze
And soon I felt
The touch of him.

16th August 1977

Storm-tossed the leaves

Storm-tossed the leaves
And I with quiet devotion
Marked how they uprose
At every touch of force.

There was no trace of anguish
Nor soft caress of love, but
Merely meek compliance to
The power of things above.

17th August 1977

The Rainbow

Of all good things
That are create the
Rainbow stands alone,
The liquid symbol
Of a living God.
Who through such
Transient motifs speaks
To us whose hearts
Are otherwise to him
Self hardened and obtuse.

8th March 1978

Man’s hand may mar

Man's hand may mar
Earth's natural grace
With dark and unrelenting
Scar. Yet still in time
We may discern, through
Such faint signs as Nature
Yields, The possibility
That hope is not forlorn
Illusion’s child.

For nature moves through
Eternal years. What are
The works of man to Her
But some unsightly excrescence,
Thrown up onto the shore
From out the sea of time.

Revised 17th February 1980

These lines were inspired by the sight of a quarry in England’s Lake District National Park. A man-made scar in which it was already possible to see Nature’s hand reclaiming and bringing the landscape back to beauty.

Night

How terrible the night may seem
To one shoe heart is full of pain
Is known to but a very few
Who, as their lamp of faith
Is dimmed by covering mantle
Of deep despair, see only darkness
Closing in and not the gleam
Of stars alight in heaven’s sphere.

14th April 1979

Lines composed on Haworth Moor

If we are forever doing,
Striving for our own success
We may never know the bliss
Where should lie our happiness.

We may never know of loves fruition
Which is all our solace here,
If we are forever doing,
Striving so we cannot hear.

Haworth Moor. 5th June 1981

Captivated by a smile

Captivated by a smile
Imprisoned by a look
Lost before a word was said
My heart an open book.

7th March 1985

Night thoughts

Behind the silences
Of the night there stand
Worlds more wonderful
Than this we know.

Truths more perfect,
Joys more full,
And loves less fragile —
Faiths that last.

All is revealed to
Pilgrims here
By way of echoes
From the past.

For intimations of eternity
Are here unveiled
For all to see; if only
We can find the key.

Elusive dreams?
No, deep realities.
It is now we dream and
Know not when we wake.

Soon we will wake
And recollect the dream.

26th May 1986

The Author

A longtime Ipswich Town FC supporter, Mike grew up on the East Coast in what he likes to describe as the East Anglian part of Essex, but now lives in Cheshire, not far from Manchester. A Fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute, after 40 years in Commercial Insurance, he began a second career as a student. In September 2021 he completed with Distinction his Masters in Kingdom Theology from Westminster Theological Centre (WTC) accredited by the University of Chester. His dissertation, supervised by Dr. Lucy Peppiatt, was titled Simone Weil’s Soteriology in relation to her Doctrine of Creation. Mike has been active in the George MacDonald Society since 1995 and is co-editor with Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson of Informing the Inklings (Winged Lion Press, 2018). From December 2019 to April 2025 he acted as co-Chair of the Society and continues serving as Treasurer.