Another poem about the power of books, this time from Kit Wright’s Ode to Didcot Power Station (Bloodaxe Books, £9.95).

Tennyson, whose great poem Ulysses featured on Thursday, provides the starting point.

A DEDICATION RESTORED FROM 1860

Poems by Alfred Tennyson

Of 1859:

Blue, battered boards; indented gilt;

A loose and flapping spine.

~

The first day of the new-turned year,

She penned this affidavit,

A bright inscription that revives

The ghost of her who gave it:

~

A New Year’s gift from a loving wife

To her fond and affectionate husband.

~

It’s gone forever from the world,

That tender, measured kind

Of intimate formality,

Long fallen out of mind,

Long fallen out of mind.

~

And I know nothing of the man

And wife thus linked, or rather

Know just that when he died she gave

The book to my grandfather . . .

~

Who drowned beneath the Bay of Biscay

When my Dad was ten,

And therefore was a mystery

And is one, now as then.

~

So I am glad to find what lay

So long without detection:

A testament of ancient love,

And fondness, and affection.