(Robert) Laurence Binyon - For the Fallen, Music, Post-war life, Bibliography of key works

Poet and art critic, born in Lancaster, Lancashire, NW England, UK. On leaving Oxford, he joined the British Museum, and became keeper of Oriental prints and paintings (1913–33). His poetic works include Lyric Poems (1894), Odes (1901), and Collected Poems (1931). He also wrote plays, and translated Dante into terza rima. He was professor of poetry at Harvard (1933–4). Extracts from his poem ‘For the Fallen’ (set to music by Elgar) adorn war memorials throughout the British Commonwealth.

Robert Laurence Binyon (August 10, 1869 at Lancaster – March 10, 1943 at Reading, Berkshire) was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. works

The son of Quakers, Binyon was educated at St Paul's High School and Trinity College, Oxford.

After graduation, from 1893 he worked at the Department of Printed Books in the British Museum.

Although too old to enlist in the First World War, he went to the Western Front in 1916 to work for the Red Cross as a medical orderly with an Ambulance Unit.

For the Fallen

He is best known for the poem For the Fallen, written while sitting on The Rumps, Polseath Polzeath, Cornwall, and first published in The Times in September, 1914.

The fourth verse from that poem has gained an existence of its own and is known today as the Ode of Remembrance - one that applies to all war dead:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.

"The Ode" is still regularly recited on occasions such as Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday in the United Kingdom and Canada and ANZAC day in Australia and New Zealand, and adorns numerous war memorials including The Cenotaph in Whitehall. In Australia's Returned and Services Leagues, it is read out nightly at 6 p.m.

Time of our Darkness is the title of a novel by South African author Stephen Gray.

There has been some debate as to whether the line “Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn” should end with the words ‘condemn’ or ‘contemn’.

When the poem was printed ‘condemn’.

The issue of what word was meant seems only to have arisen in Australia, with little debate in other Commonwealth countries that mark Remembrance Day.

Music

Edward Elgar set Binyon's poems to music as The spirit of England: op.

Post-war life

After the war, he returned to the British Museum and wrote numerous books on art;

In 1931 his two volume Collected Poems appeared.

As well as writing poetry Binyon continued his academic work: in May 1939 he gave the prestigious Romanes Lecture in Oxford on Art and Freedom, and in 1940 he was appointed the Byron Professor of English Literature at University of Athens.

Binyon had been friends with Ezra Pound since around 1909, and in the 1930s the two became especially friendly - Pound affectionately called him "BinBin", and closely assisted Binyon with his Dante translation work.

Between 1933 and 1943, Binyon published an acclaimed translation of Dante's Divina commedia in an English version of terza rima.

There is a slate memorial at Aldworth, St. Mary's Church, where Binyon's ashes were scattered after death.

His daughter Helen Binyon (1904-1979) was an artist who studied with Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious.

Bibliography of key works

Poems and verse:

Lyric Poems (1894) Porphyrion and other Poems (1898) Odes (1901) Death of Adam and Other Poems (1904) London Visions (1908) England and Other Poems (1909) "For The Fallen", The Times, September 21, 1914 Winnowing Fan (1914) The Anvil (1916) The Cause (1917) The New World: Poems (1918) The Idols (1928) Collected Poems Vol 1: London Visions, Narrative Poems, Translations. (1931) Collected Poems Vol 2: Lyrical Poems. (1931) The Burning of the Leaves and Other Poems (1944) The Madness of Merlin (1947)

English arts & myth

William Blake: Being all his Woodcuts Photographically Reproduced in Facsimile (1902) English Poetry in its relation to painting and the other arts (1918) Drawings and Engravings of William Blake (1922) Arthur: A Tragedy (1923) The Followers of William Blake (1925) The Engraved Designs of William Blake (1926) Landscape in English Art and Poetry (1931) Gerard Hopkins and his influence (1939) Art and freedom. Oxford: The Clarendon press, (1939) English Watercolours (1944)

Japanese & Persian arts:

Painting in the Far East (1908) Japanese Art (1909) Flight of the Dragon (1911) The Court Painters of the Grand Moguls (1921) Japanese Colour Prints (1923) The Poems of Nizami (1928) (Translation) Persian Miniature Painting (1933) The Spirit of Man in Asian Art (1936)

Autobiography:

For Dauntless France (1918) (War memoir)

Biography:

Botticelli (1913) Akbar (1932)

Stage plays:

Brief Candles (Richard III's life as a verse-drama) Godstow Nunnery: Play Boadicea; A Play in eight Scenes Attila: a Tragedy in Four Acts Ayuli: a Play in three Acts and an Epilogue Sophro the Wise: a Play for Children

(Most of the above were written for John Masefield's theatre).