68355: Had I A Song / The Lock-Keeper

Manuscript in pen in Ivor Gurney's hand. Found in a black hard-cover exercise book inscribed 'I.B. Gurney / 1 Westfield Terrace / Longford / Gloucester'. The poem exists in various drafts. A shorter poem with the same title, inscribed 'To the memory of Edward Thomas', was included in 'War's Embers' (1919). The version shown here was included in Edmund Blunden and Leonard Clark's editions of Gurney poems in 1954 and 1973 respectively. |

File description(s):

Manuscript in pen in Ivor Gurney's hand. Found in a black hard-cover exercise book inscribed 'I.B. Gurney / 1 Westfield Terrace / Longford / Gloucester'. 'Had I a Song' was included in Leonard Clark's edition of Gurney poems of 1973, and in P.J. Kavanagh's 'Ivor Gurney: Collected Poems' (2004). 'The Lock-Keeper', with the opening shown on these pages, exists in various drafts. A shorter poem with the same title, inscribed 'To the memory of Edward Thomas', was included in 'War's Embers' (1919). The version shown here was included in Edmund Blunden and Leonard Clark's editions of Gurney poems in 1954 and 1973 respectively. Written while Gurney was a patient at Middlesex War Hospital, St Albans.
Manuscript in pen in Ivor Gurney's hand. Found in a black hard-cover exercise book inscribed 'I.B. Gurney / 1 Westfield Terrace / Longford / Gloucester'. The poem exists in various drafts. A shorter poem with the same title, inscribed 'To the memory of Edward Thomas', was included in 'War's Embers' (1919). The version shown here was included in Edmund Blunden and Leonard Clark's editions of Gurney poems in 1954 and 1973 respectively.
Manuscript in pen in Ivor Gurney's hand. Found in a black hard-cover exercise book inscribed 'I.B. Gurney / 1 Westfield Terrace / Longford / Gloucester'. The poem exists in various drafts. A shorter poem with the same title, inscribed 'To the memory of Edward Thomas', was included in 'War's Embers' (1919). The version shown here was included in Edmund Blunden and Leonard Clark's editions of Gurney poems in 1954 and 1973 respectively.