Fringilla: Some Tales in Verse

Blackmore wrote Lorna Doone. He also wrote poetry, and this collection reveals a poet of surprising range and emotional depth. The book opens with "Fringilla", a sequence of poems narrated by a small brown finch who worries over his songs, wonders if anyone listens, and keeps singing anyway. It's a charming meditation on artistic doubt, told with the kind of gentle humor that made Blackmore's prose so beloved. Then the collection shifts dramatically into "Lita of the Nile," a narrative poem set in ancient Egypt where beauty and sacrifice walk hand in hand along a river that governs fates. Here Blackmore proves himself a master of exotic romance, weaving tales of devotion so intense they bend the laws of nature. The two halves might seem unrelated, but they share a central obsession: what does it mean to create something beautiful in a world that may not notice? The finch asks this question in whispers. Lita answers it in blood and starlight. For readers who think they know Blackmore from one famous novel, these verses offer a different kind of magic.