I'd like to send this letter by
elgarbanzo
Could "Cradle Song at Twilight" be a poem that disguises its subject - a dark-skinned young nurse the Meynells once employed? Or is the poet remembering herself as a reluctant young mother? These are tempting interpretations. Yet it seems a pity to try and press a haunting and un-homely poem into some purely naturalistic mould. Bathed in their own twilight, the two stanzas are like a hinged icon, where, instead of a rapt, mutual exchange, the eye-contact between the Child and the Virgin flows only one-way. The child is happy in the loose hold of his young nurse, the nurse is restlessly dreaming of another life. How convincing and unsettling they are ??? whoever they may be.