Summer 1921. Orwell’s last poem to Jacintha Buddicom:
Friendship and love are closely intertwined,
My heart belongs to your befriending mind:
But chilling sunlit fields, cloud-shadows fall—
My love can’t reach your heedless heart at all.
Jacintha Buddicom responded with:
By light
Too bright
Are dazzled eyes betrayed:
It’s best
To rest
Content in tranquil shade
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Note: Reproduced from Eric and Us (1974) where Jacintha Buddicom commented: “Typical of both of us, Eric with his straightforward, ten-syllable couplets, and me chopping up the same metre into shorter lines with extra rhymes to them, which I thought more fun to do and more singable”.
Eric and Us: A Remembrance of George Orwell (1974)
Source: CW10-62
