Letters of Ted Hughes, selected and edited by Christopher Reid. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2008, 758 pp., $45. Published originally, Faber & Faber, UK, 2007, £30.… continue reading... “Getting Out of the Flames”

III

O early ripe! To thy abundant store
What could advancing age have added more?
It might (what nature never gives the young)
Have taught the numbers of thy native tongue.