Message in a Bottle from Philip Larkin

Message in a bottle (2)

Messages in a bottle are passages, quoted from writers who lived in the past, conveying a message that can still be appreciated in the present.

Philip Arthur Larkin, (Coventry 9 August 1922 – London 2 December 1985) was an English poet, novelist and librarian. Exactly thirty years after his death Margutte reports one of his poems, The Mower, written on 12 June 1979. It was first published in Humberside, the Hull Literary Club magazine, in 1979.

The Mower

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

(Drawing by Franco Blandino)

Message in a Bottle from Henry David Thoreau
Message in a Bottle from Samuel Butler
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