Book Description
The Land is a book-length narrative poem by Vita Sackville-West. Published in 1926 by William Heinemann, it is a Georgic celebration of the rural landscape, traditions and history of the Kentish Weald where Sackville-West lived.
The poem adopts the traditional Georgic structure of the four seasons and is divided into four parts, running from Winter to Autumn, and documenting the agricultural traditions and changing landscape through the year. The poem’s intention to capture the natural processes that exist outside of history are made clear in the opening lines:
I sing the cycle of my country’s year,
I sing the tillage, and the reaping sing,
Classic monotony, that modes and wars
Leave undisturbed, unbettered, for their best
Was born immediate, of expediency.
The poems were popular and won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature.