Lydia Dwight Resurrected.
(V&A Museum Number 1054-1871)
 
She wears her shroud lightly now, Lydia Dwight,
Each fold testament to a modeller's skill,
Life-referring blooms at her feet, a skull
As memento of the grave's chilly blight;
Her figure sculpted in clay, bluish-white,
Worthy of any fine Renaissance school,
All-luminous, but still with death bed scowl,
A risen child, salt-glazed she plays with light.
How else would England’s first master potter
Give material expression to his grief
Save through the medium of stoneware clay?
What more fitting, more elegiac, way
Of reaffirming his hope and his belief
In life eternal for his dear, dead daughter?

Philip Howard

If you have any comments on this poem,  Philip Howard would be pleased to hear them.