Poems
These Little Songs
These little Songs,
Found here and there,
Floating in air
By forest and lea,
Or hill-side heather,
In houses and throngs,
Or down by the sea –
Have come together,
How, I can’t tell:
But I know full well
No witty goose-wing
On an inkstand begot ’em;
Remember each place
And moment of grace,
In summer or spring,
Winter or autumn
By sun, moon, stars,
Or a coal in the bars,
In market or church,
Graveyard or dance,
When they came without search,
Were found as by chance.
A word, a line,
You may say are mine;
But the best in the songs,
Whatever it be,
To you, and to me,
And to no one belongs
Found here and there,
Floating in air
By forest and lea,
Or hill-side heather,
In houses and throngs,
Or down by the sea –
Have come together,
How, I can’t tell:
But I know full well
No witty goose-wing
On an inkstand begot ’em;
Remember each place
And moment of grace,
In summer or spring,
Winter or autumn
By sun, moon, stars,
Or a coal in the bars,
In market or church,
Graveyard or dance,
When they came without search,
Were found as by chance.
A word, a line,
You may say are mine;
But the best in the songs,
Whatever it be,
To you, and to me,
And to no one belongs
Analysis (ai): The poem frames its creation as spontaneous and external, rejecting deliberate authorship in favor of songs gathered passively from nature and daily life, suggesting the muse operates beyond conscious control.
- Structure and Form: Written in irregular stanzas with loose iambic rhythms and partial rhymes, the poem departs from rigid Victorian forms, mimicking the natural, scattered manner in which inspiration arrives.
- Themes of Transience and Universality: The speaker emphasizes that the songs emerge unpredictably across seasons and settings, reinforcing their ephemeral nature and shared emotional resonance beyond individual ownership.
- Attitude Toward Authorship: Unlike many Victorian poets who asserted authorial control, the speaker disclaims full ownership, insisting the “best” parts belong to no one, aligning with Romantic ideas of inspiration as collective or divine.
- Relation to Allingham’s Oeuvre: Among his lesser-known works, this poem stands out for its meta-poetic reflection; most of his other pieces focus on Irish folklore or pastoral scenes without such direct commentary on the creative process.
- Place in Victorian Context: While contemporaries like Tennyson or Browning often emphasized crafted eloquence, this poem quietly resists artistic pride, favoring humility and receptivity unusual for the period’s poetic norms.
- Modern Resonance: Though written before 1900, its decentering of the author prefigures modernist skepticism toward individual genius, anticipating later ideas about language and creativity as communal phenomena.
- Less-Discussed Angle: Rather than celebrating rural nostalgia—a common reading of such imagery—the poem subtly critiques authorship itself, framing creation as accidental and distributed, not the product of solitary genius.
- Final Statement: The closing lines dissolve the boundary between poet and audience, insisting the essence of art transcends origin, a quiet challenge to both Romantic individualism and Victorian self-assurance.
William Allingham (19 March 1824 – 18 November 1889) was an Irish poet, diarist and editor. He wrote several volumes of lyric verse, and his poem “The Faeries” was much anthologised. But he is better known for his posthumously published Diary, in which he records his lively encounters with Tennyson, Carlyle and other writers and artists. His wife, Helen Allingham, was a well-known artist, watercolourist and illustrator.
