The Earth Compels

The Earth Compels gathers together poems written by Louis MacNeice between 1935 and 1937. The manuscript was sent to the publishers Faber and Faber in late 1937. T. S. Eliot, who was an editor at Fabers and had previously given encouragement and support to MacNeice, wrote back on 6 January 1938: 'I have read THE EARTH COMPELS last night, and am very much pleased with it.' He had a couple of minor editorial queries, but as soon as these were settled, he said, 'the poems can go straight to the printer'.[3] The collection was published in book form on 28 April 1938.

The phrase "The earth compels" appears twice in the poem "The Sunlight on the Garden."

Another book by Louis MacNeice also published in 1938, Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay, begins with the declaration: 'This book is a plea for impure poetry, that is, the poetry conditioned by the poet's life and the world around him.' This attitude provides the context for the poems in The Earth Compels. The poems were written during a turbulent period in MacNeice's life - he described 1937 as his 'year of wild sensations'. On a more public level, events in Germany and Spain had persuaded MacNeice that another European war was approaching.

The first poem in the collection, 'Carrickfergus', is autobiographical, and describes MacNeice's childhood in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. Other poems reflect MacNeice's life in the years 1935 to 1937. In November 1935 MacNeice's first marriage had collapsed when his wife Mary left him for Charles Katzman; after their divorce had been finalised in 1936, MacNeice wrote The Sunlight on the Garden for Mary. In early 1937 MacNeice began an affair with Nancy Coldstream (later Nancy Spender), and Nancy provided the inspiration for 'Leaving Barra' (as well as for two sections of MacNeice's next volume of poetry, Autumn Journal). The poem 'Iceland' reflects the journey MacNeice took with W. H. Auden in the summer of 1936, while 'Bagpipe Music' was inspired by a journey to the Hebrides in 1937 and was later described by MacNeice as 'a satirical elegy for the Gaelic districts of Scotland and indeed for all traditional culture'.[4] Rugby Football Excursion describes a journey from London - leaving from Euston railway station - to Dublin, in order to watch a rugby game at Lansdowne Road. The final poem in the collection, Epilogue, is subtitled 'For W. H. Auden', and reviews the Iceland trip MacNeice and Auden had taken together; the poem mentions events that had occurred while MacNeice and Auden were in Iceland, such as the fall of Seville (marking the start of the Spanish Civil War) and the Olympic Games in Berlin.