Come Girl, And Embrace

Frank James Prewett 1893 (Ontario, ) – 1962 (Inverness, )



Come girl, and embrace
And ask no more I wed thee;
Know then you are sweet of face,
Soft-limbed and fashioned lovingly;
Must you go marketing your charms
In cunning woman-like,
And filled with old wives' tales' alarms?
  
I tell you, girl, come embrace;
What reck we of churchling and priest
With hands on paunch, and chubby face?
Behold, we are life's pitiful least,
And we perish at the first smell
Of death, whither heaves earth
To spurn us cringing into hell.
  
Come girl, and embrace;
Nay, cry not, poor wretch, nor plead,
But haste, for life strikes a swift pace,
And I burn with envious greed:
Know you not, fool, we are the mock
Of gods, time, clothes, and priests?
But come, there is no time for talk.
  
Font size:
Collection  PDF     
 

Submitted on August 03, 2020

Modified on March 05, 2023

39 sec read
3

Quick analysis:

Scheme Ababcxc adadexe Afafxxx
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 693
Words 131
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 7, 7, 7

Frank James Prewett

Frank James Prewett (February 24, 1893 - February 16, 1962) was a Canadian poet who spent most of his life in the United Kingdom. He was a war poet of the First World War and was taken up by Siegfried Sassoon, but after a period of being lionised socially he led a mainly unsatisfactory life, suffering from bad health. He was born near Mount Forest, Ontario, and brought up on a farm near Kenilworth, Ontario. In 1915 he left his studies at the University of Toronto and enlisted as a private in the Canadian Army. Later he was offered and accepted a commission in the British Army, serving in the Royal Field Artillery. He served in France, but was invalided out in 1917 after being injured twice, once having to claw his way out of the earth after being buried alive. While he was recovering from shell shock in a psychiatric hospital in 1918 he began pretending to be an Iroquois called Toronto. This was accepted at the time, but was later questioned, and ultimately disproved by DNA analysis, which found no genetic connection to Iroquois. The claim has been attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder. At Lennel Auxiliary Hospital, a sister hospital to Craiglockhart War Hospital, he met Sassoon, who later wrote a brief portrait of him in his autobiography, Siegfried's Journey.. Sassoon introduced him to Lady Ottoline Morrell and he stayed at Garsington, her estate, while he awaited repatriation to Canada. Prewett later maintained a regular correspondence with Lady Ottoline (Darroch 215) and when he returned to England he was offered a job at Garsington, but "he fell under suspicion of keeping back farm earnings" (Darroch, 233) and was asked to leave. Prewett had an academic job at an agricultural research institute from the mid-1920s to 1934. He married, but the marriage failed. On Sassoon's evidence, he suffered from clinical depression. His poems were recognised by the inclusion of some of them in the final Georgian Poetry anthology and in Oxford Poetry, and by publication by the Hogarth Press; followed by a collection The Rural Scene in 1922. In the 1930s he was a BBC broadcaster and did editorial work. A historical novel set in Berkshire in the times of Captain Swing, The Chazzey Tragedy (1933), made little impact. He was married again, to Dorothy Pollard, who was a colleague on the editorial staff of The Countryman, the magazine where he was working. During the Second World War he served in the RAF, and he stayed on in the Air Ministry until 1954. Retiring because of poor health, he farmed near Abingdon until his death in Inverness. Robert Graves, a friend from Oxford days, edited his Collected Poems, published in 1964. Graves's introduction provides the longest printed account of Prewett's life available. A volume of Selected Poems was published in 1987.  more…

All Frank James Prewett poems | Frank James Prewett Books

0 fans

Discuss the poem Come Girl, And Embrace with the community...

0 Comments

    Translation

    Find a translation for this poem in other languages:

    Select another language:

    • - Select -
    • 简体中文 (Chinese - Simplified)
    • 繁體中文 (Chinese - Traditional)
    • Español (Spanish)
    • Esperanto (Esperanto)
    • 日本語 (Japanese)
    • Português (Portuguese)
    • Deutsch (German)
    • العربية (Arabic)
    • Français (French)
    • Русский (Russian)
    • ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada)
    • 한국어 (Korean)
    • עברית (Hebrew)
    • Gaeilge (Irish)
    • Українська (Ukrainian)
    • اردو (Urdu)
    • Magyar (Hungarian)
    • मानक हिन्दी (Hindi)
    • Indonesia (Indonesian)
    • Italiano (Italian)
    • தமிழ் (Tamil)
    • Türkçe (Turkish)
    • తెలుగు (Telugu)
    • ภาษาไทย (Thai)
    • Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
    • Čeština (Czech)
    • Polski (Polish)
    • Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
    • Românește (Romanian)
    • Nederlands (Dutch)
    • Ελληνικά (Greek)
    • Latinum (Latin)
    • Svenska (Swedish)
    • Dansk (Danish)
    • Suomi (Finnish)
    • فارسی (Persian)
    • ייִדיש (Yiddish)
    • հայերեն (Armenian)
    • Norsk (Norwegian)
    • English (English)

    Citation

    Use the citation below to add this poem to your bibliography:

    Style:MLAChicagoAPA

    "Come Girl, And Embrace" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/55270/come-girl,-and-embrace>.

    Become a member!

    Join our community of poets and poetry lovers to share your work and offer feedback and encouragement to writers all over the world!

    March 2024

    Poetry Contest

    Join our monthly contest for an opportunity to win cash prizes and attain global acclaim for your talent.
    2
    days
    20
    hours
    47
    minutes

    Special Program

    Earn Rewards!

    Unlock exciting rewards such as a free mug and free contest pass by commenting on fellow members' poems today!

    Browse Poetry.com

    Quiz

    Are you a poetry master?

    »
    The use of words and phrases to create mental images and evoke sensory experiences is called _______.
    A imagery
    B personification
    C metaphor
    D symbolism