This is Episode 49 of Poems for the Speed of Life.

Today’s poem is "Entirely", by Louis MacNeice.

Louis MacNeice was a British-Irish poet who was born in Belfast in the early 1900s, was educated from the age of 10 in England, attended Oxford Univeristy and died in London in the 1960s at the age of 55. 

In his life he is said to have felt always as an outsider — he was an Irishman in England, but never felt at home back in Ireland either. The general political upheaval, both in Ireland — which went through rebellion, independence and partition into the Republic and Northern Ireland in his lifetime — and globally, with two World Wars, the rise of Nazism and Communism, seemed to cause in MacNeice a great doubt and skepticism. 

A little of that feeling is captured in this poem, "Entirely", with its subtle encouragement for us to step forward even though we can never really be sure of ourselves, of where we are, or where we're going.

Music Credit:

Once Upon a Time by Alex-Productions | https://onsound.eu/  | Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com