THE POET LAUREATE.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20107, 10 December 1930, Page 18

THE POET LAUREATE.

HONOURED BY HIS COUNTI. (TKOi£ OtJB OWV CORRESPONDENT.) I/ONDON, October 31. Mr John Masefield, the Poet Laureate, last week received tho Freedom of Hereford. He is the first nonresident of the city to be bo honoured since the Freedom was conferred on Nelson in 1802 after his return from the Battle of tho Nile. Mr Masefield is a native of Herefordshire. He was born at Ledbury, about 15 miles from Hereford, and lived there while his father was practising as a solicitor. u l believe/' said Mr Masefield in his speech of thanks, "that life is the expression of a will or law which has a purpose in every one of its manifestations. 1 believe that this world is only a shadow of the real world, and 1 think that by brooding on what is brightest and most genoroTis in this world, the beauty and the bounty and the majesty of the real world shine iu upon the soul. Ties of Beauty. "I am linked to this county by tics deeper than I can explain. They are ties of boauty. Whenever T think ot Paradise I think of parts of this county. Whenever I think of any perfect human sight, I think of things which I have seen in this county, and whenever I think of the beauty and tho bounty of God, I think of parts of this sbfre. "There is no more lovely county in this lovely land, and I cannot be thankful enough that 1 passed my childhood days in a land in which nearly everybody lived on and by the land, sinking when they brought the harvest home, and taking such pride in their great cattle and in their great horses, their apnlo orchards, their dovecotes, and their little gardens. It will be a happy day for England when she realises again that the true wealth of a land is in these things, and in tho men and women who care for these things, since the beauty and the bounty of earth ruust be the shadow of Paradise. "When I was a littlo child I looked upon this beautiful landscape, the red earth and deep woodlands and running brooks and streams, and I felt that they were the shadow of Paradise, and Ihnt just beyond there was Paradise. Then for many years I brooded upon these things, hoping that by some miracle of poetry I might get beyond into that reality of Hteaven of which these things are only the shadows, and that, getting into Heaven, I might hear the words and come back to oarth and tell men and women, so that they would know and be happy." The Mayor (Mrs Luard) said that in many of Mr Maaeflejd's poems they recognised the beauties of Ledbiiry and the country on the Herefordshire side of the Malvern Hills.