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Cecil Day-Lewis (or '''Day Lewis''') CBE ( 27 April 1904 – 22 May 1972 ) was an Anglo- Irish Poet born in Ballintubber , County Laois , Ireland , the son of the Rev. Frank Cecil Day Lewis and Kathleen Squires. He was educated at Sherborne School and at Wadham College, Oxford , where he made the acquaintance of W. H. Auden . LIFE After Day-Lewis' mother died in 1906, he was brought up in London by his father, with the help of an aunt. Day-Lewis graduated from Wadham College , Oxford, in 1927. In Oxford he became part of the circle gathered around W.H. Auden and helped him to edit ''Oxford Poetry 1927''. His first collection of poems, ''Beechen Virgil'', appeared in 1925. In his youth Day-Lewis adopted Communist Views , becoming a member of the Communist party from 1935 to 1938, and his early poetry was marked by didacticism and a preoccupation with social themes. He served as a partisan in the Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War , but after the late 1930s he gradually became disillusioned,. Among his works is his autobiography, ''Buried Day'' (1960), in which he renounces his communist views. In 1928 he married Mary King, the daughter of a Sherborne master, and worked as a schoolmaster in three schools. In 1935 Day-Lewis decided to supplement his income from poetry by writing a detective novel, ''A Question of Proof'', in which he created Nigel Strangeways, an amateur investigator, who, as the nephew of an Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard , has the same access to, and good relations with, official crime investigation bodies as those enjoyed by other fictional sleuths such as Ellery Queen , Philo Vance and Lord Peter Wimsey. This was followed by nineteen more crime novels. From the mid-1930s Day-Lewis was able to earn his living by writing. During the Second World War he worked as a publications editor in the Ministry Of Information . His work was now no longer so influenced by Auden and he was developing a more traditional style of Lyricism . Some critics believe that he reached his full stature as a poet in ''Word Over All'' (1943), when he was finally distanced from Auden. After the war, he joined publisher Chatto & Windus as a director and senior editor. In 1946, Day Lewis was a lecturer at Cambridge University , publishing his lectures in ''The Poetic Image'' (1947). In 1951, he married the actress Jill Balcon. He later taught poetry at Oxford , where he was Professor Of Poetry from 1951-1956. Day-Lewis's two marriages yielded five children, one of whom is . In succession to John Masefield he was appointed Poet Laureate in 1968. Day-Lewis was also chairman of the Arts Council Literature Panel , vice-president of the Royal Society Of Literature , an Honorary Member of American Academy, a Member of Irish Academy Of Letters and a professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College , London. Day-Lewis died on May 22, 1972, in the Hertfordshire home of Kingsley Amis and Elisabeth Jane Howard, where he and his wife were staying. A great admirer of Thomas Hardy , he had arranged that he should be buried as close as possible to the author's grave in Stinsford churchyard. POETRY ''"Untitled"'' :Come, live with me and be my love, :And we will all the pleasures prove :Of peace and plenty, bed and board, :That chance employment may afford. :I'll handle dainties on the docks :And thou shalt read of summer frocks: :At evening by the sour canals :We'll hope to hear some madrigals. :Care on thy maiden brow shall put :A wreath of wrinkles, and thy foot :Be shod with pain: not silken dress :But toil shall tire thy loveliness. :Hunger shall make thy modest zone :And cheat fond death of all but bone- :If these delights thy mind may move, :Then live with me and be my love. WORKS Poetry collections
Essays
Translations Novels Written as Nicholas Blake
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