Edwin Muir
Who is Edwin Muir
Edwin Muir CBE (15 May 1887 – 3 January 1959) was a Scottish poet, novelist and translator. Born on a farm in Deerness, a parish of Orkney, Scotland, he is remembered for his deeply felt and vivid poetry written in plain language and with few stylistic preoccupations.
Biography
Muir was born at the farm of Folly in Deerness, the same parish in which his mother was born. The family then moved to the island of Wyre, followed by a return to the Mainland, Orkney. In 1901, when he was 14, his father lost his farm, and the family moved to Glasgow. In quick succession his father, two brothers, and his mother died within the space of a few years. His life as a young man was a depressing experience, and involved a raft of unpleasant jobs in factories and offices, includin...
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Edwin Muir Poems
- They Could Not Tell Me Who Should Be My Lord
They could not tell me who should be my lord,
But I could read from every word they said
The common thought: Perhaps that lord was dead,
And only a story now and a wandering word.
...
- Scotland 1941
We were a tribe, a family, a people.
Wallace and Bruce guard now a painted field,
And all may read the folio of our fable,
Peruse the sword, the sceptre and the shield.
...
- The Child Dying
Unfriendly friendly universe,
I pack your stars into my purse,
And bid you so farewell.
That I can leave you, quite go out,
...
- Robert The Bruce (to Douglas In Dying)
'MY life is done, yet all remains,
The breath has gone, the image not,
The furious shapes once forged in heat
Live on though now no longer hot.
...
- Abraham
The rivulet-loving wanderer Abraham
Through waterless wastes tracing his fields of pasture
Led his Chaldean herds and fattening flocks
With the meandering art of wavering water
...
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Edwin Muir Quotes
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Comments about Edwin Muir
- Dorsetwriter: the labyrinth by edwin muir | 1949 edition | faber books | flickr
- Stephenwatt_: publisher: ok edwin muir, hugh macdiarmid has already written heaps of poems about scotland, maybe you should as well.
edwin muir: cool, well i've done it, think this might be my most hopeful patriotic poem yet. i mean i've only moaned about john knox for four lines!
- Dorsetwriter: edwin muir v. hugh macdiarmid!
from my library. on the left, edwin muir, on the right hugh macdiarmid.
i read them both. i don't take sides on the language question. i return to muir's poetry more often than i do to macdiarmid's. at present i am focused on willa muir!
- Dorsetwriter: edwin and willa muir: a literary marriage - the late margery mcculloch - google books
- Dorsetwriter: edwin muir on the british council, 1954, from books, the journal of the national book league, no. 284, march-april 1954.
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