The Country Bedroom

In The Joy of the Snow, Elizabeth Goudge describes each home she'd lived in. She loved homes, and her homes, a fondness that we share. Her last home was Rose Cottage in Oxfordshire. Like other very old English homes, its ceilings were graced with ships' timbers, and Goudge sometimes felt her old cottage was a bit like a ship. A dear friend sent her a copy of this little poem, found on the wall of another cottage in Devon. It's by Frances Darwin Cornford.

The Country Bedroom

My room's a square and candle-lighted boat,
In the surrounding depths of night afloat;
My windows are the portholes, and the seas
The sound of rain on the dark apple-trees.

Seamonster-like beneath, an old horse blows
A snort of darkness from his sleeping nose,
Below, among the drowned daisies. Far off, hark!
Far off one owl amidst the waves of dark.

I love this poem. It's nearly perfect, small, consistent, sensorily appealing, easy in its flow (as a rocking boat), with a strong, fascinating metaphor at its core. If I were teaching it, I'd ask the students one question: What do the daisies drown in -- How are they drowned?

Goudge found that at her cottage she had the owl and the old horse and the apple trees. The poem seemed meant for her. I've nearly finished her little autobiography now.