SHADOW OF PARADISE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 137, 8 December 1930, Page 11

SHADOW OF PARADISE

MASEFIELD HONOURED

TRUE WEALTH OF A LAND

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 31st October. Mr. John Masefield, the- Poet Laureate, last week received the Freedom of Hereford. He is the first non-resident of the city to be so honoured since the Freedom was conferred on. Nelson in 1802 after his return from the Battle p£ the Nile. The poet is a native of Herefordshire. H© was born at Ledbury, about 15 piiles from Hereford, and lived there •while his father was practising as a solicitor. ■ ■ "' "I believe," said Mr. Masefield in liis speech of thanks, "that life is the expression of a will or law which has a purpose in every one of its manifestations. "I believe that this world is only a shadow of the real world, and I think that by brooding on what is brightest and most generous in this world theloeauty and the bounty and the majesty of the real world shine in upon the soul. "I am linked to this county by ties 'deeper than I can explain. They are ties of beauty. Whenever I think of 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 the bounty of God, I think of parts of this shire. "There is no more lovely county in ■this lovely land, and I cannot be thankful enough that I passed my childhood days in a land in which nearly everybody lived on and by the land, singing when they brought tho harvest home, and taking such pride in their great cattle and in their great horses, their apple orchards, their dovecotes, and their little gardens. "It will be a happy day for Eng3and when she realises again that the ■true wealth of a land is in these things, and in the men and women who care1 for these things, since tho beauty and the bounty of earth must be the shadow pf Paradise. "When I was a little child I looked upon this beautiful landscape, the red earth and deep woodlands and running brooks and streams, and I felt that they were tho shadow of Paradise, and that just beyond the-re was Paradise. "Then for many years I brooded upon these things, hoping that by some miracle of poetry I might get boyond into that reality of Heaven of which these things are only the shadows, and that, getting into Heaven, I might health c words and come back to earth and j toll men and women, so that they would know and be happy." The Mayor (Mrs. Luard) said that in many of Mr. Masefield's poems they recognised the beauties of Ledbury and the country on the Herefordshire side .jaf the Malvern Hills.