Frances Cornford

Frances Crofts Cornford (née Darwin; 30 March 1886 – 19 August 1960) was an English poet in the Georgian tradition. She belonged to the Darwin-Wedgwood family.

Quotes

• A young Apollo, golden-haired,
  Stands dreaming on the verge of strife,
  Magnificently unprepared
  For the long littleness of life.
  • "Youth", line 1; from Poems (Hampstead: Priory Press, 1910) p. 15; on Rupert Brooke.

• O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
  Missing so much and so much?
  O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
  Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
  When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
  And shivering-sweet to the touch?
  O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
  Missing so much and so much?
  • "To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train", from Poems (Hampstead: Priory Press, 1910) p. 20.

• Whoso maintains that I am humbled now
  (Who wait the Awful Day) is still a liar;
  I hope to meet my Maker brow to brow
  And find my own the higher.
  • "Epitaph for a Reviewer", line 1; from Collected Poems (London: Cresset Press, 1954) p. 112.