Ten years ago I challenged myself to learn some poems off by heart. Some of them have faded a bit in my mind, but not "The Sunlight on the Garden" by Louis MacNeice. Every autumn I think of it again, how it captures the mood of dusk closing in so perfectly, the wistfulness of summer memories too, and of course that dark premonition of the "evil iron, siren". MacNeice wrote it in the late 1930s and reading it now we know what it was that he saw on the horizon. In late 2025 the horizon also looks ominous, but exactly how dark only future generations will know.
Back in that post in 2015 I mentioned how I first heard this poem in an interview with Clive James, and how I was pleased that he seemed to be recovering from his most recent health problem. He died in 2019. This poem will always remind me of him and of how many great writers I discovered through him.
The Sunlight on the Garden
by Louis MacNeice
The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.
Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.
The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying
And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.
