The Roger Lonsdale archive, at Balliol College, Oxford, includes his reflections, in 2005, on his poetry, with lists of his ninety poems—alphabetically by first lines, and chronologically—as well as his notebooks as a poet; and, at that time, he noted, in reference to these sixteen poems from Un-Gyve Press in a numbered, limited edition of seventy-five: “At present the following seem worth preserving for one reason or another.”

Parting

Written circa 1959, New Haven

There are days when all turns capable of grief,

Deploring rain, outraging wind, and sky

Burdened with fire;

When causes of corresponding sorrow cry

From any heart — absence without relief,

Heavy desire.

Then is it to be vile or natural

To find the following day the weather calm,

Know those late sufferings

Too vast for lamentation, to pace a room

Only an hour catching at pain, once more to fall

To small and regular things?