This moving poem by Louis MacNeice is about the illness and loss of his mother, who died when he was five years old.
"She suffered gynaecological problems, a mental breakdown, which meant she left the family to go into a nursing-home in 1913, and, finally, death from tuberculosis a year later.
The loss of his mother at such an early age had a profound and lasting effect on MacNeice; his sister Elizabeth writes that “His last memory-picture of her walking up and down the garden path in tears seems to have haunted him for the rest of his life”.
“Autobiography”, one of his finest poems, turns this haunting into eerily effective art as it moves from an evocation of the beloved mother, “My mother wore a yellow dress; / Gently, gently, gentleness”, into the nightmarish aftermath of her going, “When I was five the black dreams came; / Nothing after was quite the same”
(Michael O'Neill, University of Durham)
Louis MacNeice
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
My father made the walls resound,
He wore his collar the wrong way round.
When I was five the black dreams came;
Nothing after was quite the same.
When I woke they did not care;
Nobody, nobody was there.
In my childhood trees were green
And there was plenty to be seen.
When my silent terror cried,
Nobody, nobody replied.
I got up; the chilly sun
Saw me walk away alone.
My mother wore a yellow dress;
Gentle, gently, gentleness.
The dark was talking to the dead;
The lamp was dark beside my bed.
Come back early or never come.
Louis MacNeice
P.S. His father was of course a clergyman: "He wore his collar the wrong way round"
jollyweez
His visage is strong and masculine, a handsome man. On the inside, a lost little boy who was never really taught the things should learn with each stage of his journey into manhood. Nobody there to guide or lead him. Obviously, his father being a clergyman, would have been unyielding always demanding perfection and obedience. An abandoned, lonely little boy, forever seeking his mum. What a sweet heart he had and such sadness.
I can feel it as he pours it out into his poetry. Thank you for introducing his life to us, because we would otherwise have been bewildered by the tone of his poems.