This is the second Roy Campbell poem to be featured here. Looking back on the first, entitled Autumn, I realize that my enthusiasm for the work of this great brawny Carlyle-hero of a man, to borrow a phrase from Russell Kirk, led me to write the longest essay on a poet that has ever appeared in these pages. And this finds me, this week, with little to do except add a few notes and observations.

For starters, I think I should reiterate something that was included in the first essay but which should have been held in anticipation of the essay for this poem, which I certainly knew would appear here some day; namely, that Campbell knew the Zulu people well, having learned their language almost as soon as he learned English; that while attending Oxford his stories of his youth in the African bush earned him the nickname "Zulu;" and that his friend Wyndham Lewis modeled the character Zulu Blades in his novel "The Apes of God" after him.

And finally, because I mentioned in the essay a few weeks ago on Vita Sackville-West that one of her lovers was Roy Campbell's wife Mary, I should note here that this affair came close to destroying their marriage. Not only did it prompt Campbell to move with Mary and their two children to the continent, but it spurred him to write one of his best known poems, entitled the The Georgiad, a lengthy satirical attack on the famous Bloomsbury Group.

The Campbells had been a part of this literary circle, which included Sackville-West and her most prominent lover, Virginia Woolf, but Campbell savaged them in his poem, which I will someday excerpt at some length in these pages. In the meantime, here is a short sample.

Hither flock all the crowds whom love has wrecked
Of intellectuals without intellect
And sexless folk whose sexes intersect . . .

But for now, please enjoy The Zulu Girl. It's a fine poem by a great poet.