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Charles (Walter Stansby) Williams |
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The headstone of Charles Walter Stansby Williams has the single word "Poet" at its center--with "UNDER THE MERCY" inscribed at the foot. Williams thought his poetry most important, and indeed Taliessin through Logres (1938) and The Region of the Summer Stars (1944), together with a few unfinished contributions to the cycle, constitute the great modern poem about the Holy Grail. His early poetry was admired by Alice Meynell (who arranged for the publication of his first volume), Robert Bridges, and G. K. Chesterton and (to his surprise) gained him a 1924 Olympic diploma and bronze medal. Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury (1936) followed T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral (1935) as the Canterbury Festival play. But he was not solely a poet. The Figure of Beatrice (1943) encouraged Dorothy L. Sayers to undertake her study and translation of Dante. James I (1934), The New Christian Year (1941), and Witchcraft (1941), all much admired by Helen Gardner, together with The Descent of the Dove: A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church (1939) and The New Book of English Verse (1935) serve as further examples of the breadth of reading, put to use in fresh and challenging ways, of a scholar and critic who was largely an autodidact.
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