The Lost Romantic by Lucy Newlyn and Jude Cowan Montague

The Lost Romantic

“But there’s a tree, of many, one, A single field which I have looked upon; Both of them speak of something that is gone.”

I cannot tell perceiver from perceived. The tree is only seen; it can’t be known. There is no story that can be believed.

My vision may be faulty, misconceived: I cannot reach the stoniness of stone; I cannot tell perceiver from perceived.

How can I be other than deceived When all I hear’s an echo of my tone? There is no story that can be believed.

No wonder that I feel so lost, and so bereaved While wandering by the lake so all alone. I cannot tell perceiver from perceived,

Loser from lost, or thief from thieved. When all the age-old certainties have gone, There is no story that can be believed:

The tree itself can never be retrieved; The swallow in her swallow-ness has flown; I cannot tell perceiver from perceived.

And so, when all is given, all received, In this one field which I have looked upon There is no story that can be believed.

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Why do you look so worried, so aggrieved? It’s not my fault, when all is said and done. We cannot tell perceiver from perceived: There is no story that can be believed.

Lucy Newlyn

STC

I wander lonely as a cloud because the cloud is inside me. It wears me like a wedding-shroud that battens on my very blood. I’d rather be a sheep, a stone, a tree than miserable lonely STC.

Lucy Newlyn

for STC

To be a cloud is very free afloat in liquid ecstasy. I am the sky the sky is me an undercoast of bluest sea we ’re water changing into rain to wash clean our Romantic pain.

Jude Cowan Montague

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Laudanum

The romance of the cloud is gone. It rains and rains - all wet, all one. The whole of Borrowdale is sunk under black cloud. I’m sad, I’ m drunk, and no-one ’s here; I'm all alone. Think I’ll creep back, under my stone.

Lucy Newlyn

Laudanum

The stone is keeping me quite dry, I came up here to have a cry but drink has turned my day to sun when mixed with opiates for fun. No one’s here my plight to see, so there is all the more for me.

Jude Cowan Montague

Joy

The sun is shining on the lake; it is alive for your sweet sake dear Sara, who makes everything laugh and shout and loudly sing.

The hills are dancing hand in hand around the lake and on the sand. That little boat is full of glee bouncing about so merrily.

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And all is done with joy, not drink for laudanum just makes me sink into a slough of deep despond, as sheer and dark as Black Moss Pond.

Lucy Newlyn

There is one thing I mustn’t take, that’s laudanum upon the lake for then the boat can start to sink when I have had too much to drink.

And then where would my Sara be? We’d both be lost and so I’ll flee back to the rocks and find that stone and hide until my rain has gone.

Jude Cowan Montague

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