Laurence Binyon's "The Burning of the Leaves"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Arts, Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2021

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

Robert Laurence Binyon, CH (10 August 1869 – 10 March 1943) was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. Born in Lancaster, England, his parents were Frederick Binyon, a clergyman, and Mary Dockray. He studied at St Paul's School, London and at Trinity College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1891. He worked for the British Museum from 1893 until his retirement in 1933. In 1904 he married the historian Cicely Margaret Powell, with whom he had three daughters, including the artist Nicolete Gray.

Moved by the casualties of the British Expeditionary Force in 1914, Binyon wrote his most famous work "For the Fallen", which is often recited at Remembrance Sunday services in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. In 1915, he volunteered as a hospital orderly in France and afterwards worked in England, helping to take care of the wounded of the Battle of Verdun. He wrote about these experiences in For Dauntless France. After the war, he continued his career at the British Museum, writing numerous books on art.

He was appointed Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University in 1933. Between 1933 and his death in 1943, he published his translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. His war poetry includes a poem about the London Blitz, "The Burning of the Leaves", regarded by many as his masterpiece.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem. I'm David Kern and today's Wednesday, November 3rd, 2021.
0:07.0	Today's poem is by an English poet and dramatist named Robert Lawrence Binion. He goes by Lawrence Binion.
0:14.8	He lived from August of 1869 until March of 1943. He was Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University in 1933,
0:24.3	and he was also a translator of Dante's Divine Comedy.
0:29.5	The poem that I'm going to read today is called The Burning of the Leaves
0:31.8	and is considered by many his masterpiece,
0:35.0	but he also wrote a poem called For the Fallen,
0:38.6	which is, I believe, about the British Expeditionary Forces in 1914.
0:44.1	So he's a poet of the World War I era.
0:47.7	The Burning of the Leaves is pretty long.
0:50.2	So I'm going to read the first four stanzas.
0:52.4	It's kind of part one of the poem.
0:54.3	You can find the whole thing online if you'd like to read the whole, you know, all, I believe it was four or five parts.
1:02.2	But I'm just going to read part one this time.
1:05.9	The Burning of the Leaves by Lawrence Binion.
1:11.6	Now is the time for the burning of the leaves.
1:16.3	They go to the fire.
1:18.5	The nostril, pricks with smoke, wandering slowly into a weeping mist.
1:25.1	Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves,
1:28.4	a flame seizes the smoldering ruin
1:30.2	and bites on stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist.
1:35.9	The last Hollyhawks' fallen tower is dust.
	...

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