Samphire

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. This haunting collection moves through spiritual struggle, cosmic dread, and fierce inward vision, turning pain and terror into poems of startling imaginative force. In works such as "The Ultimate," "Demogorgon," and "The Old Pier-Post," the speaker confronts mortality, religious anxiety, and the strange power of imagination to transfigure suffering into insight. As the book deepens, its atmosphere grows more secluded and uncanny. "The Castle of Gathore" evokes a sinister stronghold that mirrors estrangement from love and ordinary life, while "The Twilight of the Gods" imagines ancient divinities fading into grotesque weakness. Poems like "The Face" and "The Heron's Nest" reveal hidden terror beneath daily existence, yet still allow for beauty, soul, and transcendence to emerge from decay. Powys blends myth, irony, pagan vitality, and Christian symbolism with a voice that is both ancient and intensely personal. "Lubberlu" offers a tragic folkloric Christmas scene where innocence, prophecy, and death collide, and "The Old Satyr to the Young Platonist" provides a tender defense of earthy love against abstract idealism. The result is a darkly lyrical meditation on fear, longing, and the mysterious universe beyond human understanding.