*Jan 24 2026 | House On A Cliff by Louis MacNeice

This is the selection kindly provided by Paul @noseinabook58 a few weeks ago after experiencing some health issues and knowing he would unlikely yet be well enough to do it himself.

House On A Cliff
by Louis MacNeice

Indoors the tang of a tiny oil lamp. Outdoors
The winking signal on the waste of sea.
Indoors the sound of the wind. Outdoors the wind.
Indoors the locked heart and the lost key.

Outdoors the chill, the void, the siren. Indoors
The strong man pained to find his red blood cools,
While the blind clock grows louder, faster. Outdoors
The silent moon, the garrulous tides she rules.

Indoors ancestral curse-cum-blessing. Outdoors
The empty bowl of heaven, the empty deep.
Indoors a purposeful man who talks at cross
Purposes, to himself, in a broken sleep.

This poem was first published in 1955 and was subsequently included in MacNeice's 1957 collection titled Visitations.

For more information about MacNeice (1907—1963) see the Poetry Foundation's biographical information.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/louis-macneice

Another interesting article on the poet is the review in The Guardian of the publication of Letters of Louis MacNeice edited by Jonathan Allison.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jun/05/letters-louis-macneice-jonathan-al...

There is a picture of him via the National Portrait Gallery site, photographed with Ted Hughes, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, and Stephen Spender as "The Faber Poets." https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw12811/The-Faber-Poets-Frede...

>1 DebiCates: He is a favourite poet of mine, as I may have said before. I have his collected works on my shelves and often dip into it.

"the garrulous tides" - fantastic.

>3 PaulCranswick: I love that too. Nearly everything in this poem has its contrast, like "the silent moon" then "the garrulous tides." I agree about how fantastic that is, I'll always think of that now, how tides are garrulous, noisy and busily not really getting anywhere.

This poem is like a painting. I can see it, all of it... what a fantastic talent to have. Another new poet to me. Thank you for sharing and hoping Paul @noseinabook58 is feeling a lot better.

reading this is like watching the movie, the sound of the clock, the waves, the building torment, and to capture it in a poem, amazing

It's a lovely poem @noseinabook58, and I don't think I've ever read MacNeice before, other than possibly in a literary anthology way back in college? So this is quite a treat for me.

I find the poem a bit mysterious, though pleasantly so.

The speaker is so cut off from the world, shut away indoors with a locked heart and no key to open it. I wonder about the meaning of "curse cum blessing," maybe that the speaker is both cursed and blessed? Or that this condition of life he is living is both a curse and a blessing?

I love that image of the locked heart. It makes me think of Surrealist paintings. And I love that beautiful spare imagery of the world outside: the silent moon that rules her garrulous tides and the empty bowl of heaven and empty deep. Outside the world is silent and empty other than those garrulous tides. And these tides move at the behest of something silent and distant.

It feels philosophical, this whole setup, but to me, it's a bit cryptic. And that obliqueness gives it a sense of mystery. But when I try to feel what this poem means to me, I feel that the empty deep is vast; the ocean is vast. The outdoors is vast. But inside, he is locked up with the quickening noise of the clock. The clock is ticking off time, his life maybe - his life seems to go by quicker and quicker? Maybe the time seems to go by faster and faster without him finding a way to open his heart and connect to that larger life outside? He's purposeful, but he can't seem to find a way to fix it. And he's restless; his sleep is broken. He's not at peace with this condition of life, and he can't find a way to change it because he's missing the metaphorical key?

Those are just my own meanderings as I read the poem. But either way, it's a beautiful poem, and I feel sadness and yearning at its heart.

This is a fascinating poem. I have never heard of this poet before. Now, I have something to do, as the northeastern US is set to get hammered by a snow storm tomorrow.

Thank you for sharing

=-- Matt

Also a new poet to me, not even the name familiar.

This poem contemplative, the indoors & outdoors suggesting also interior life & social life, a life of the heart and mind set against that of activity in the world, with others.

This is an exceptionally lonely poem to me, spoken by a narrator who has experienced some sort of deep pain (locked heart as well as a lost key) that he cannot escape (indoor the sound of the wind, outdoors the wind). And the home where he took refuge? The place where mankind goes for safety and blessings is also a curse, perhaps memories lurk there. And outdoors is the vast emptiness of indifference (heaven and the deep). Even the title "House on A Cliff" seems to indicate a perilous psychological position while his "blood cools" and time is distortedly fast, speeding headlong to what? Something with which he cannot successfully argue or plead. It just is.

In all these contrasts, is a "strong" "purposeful" man who cannot but endure the no place no peace no comfort of a pain he likely contributed to himself (talks at cross-purposes). To me, this poem speaks of a stoic anguish that, not even in 2026, is entirely gone, that old school masculinity.

Before this week's selection, I was unaware of MacNeice who, thankfully, has not gone of the radar of Paul S and Paul C, @noseinabook58 and @PaulCranswick.

This is Another moment I am thankful for this group and our wonderous unfolding anthology.

Thank you Paul S, I hope you will soon be able to rejoin us.

>10 DebiCates: "This is Another moment I am thankful for this group and our wonderous unfolding anthology."

Yes!

And well wishes to Paul S for as full and as quick a recovery as possible!

>10 DebiCates: When I think of houses on cliffs my mind always jumps to the houses in Christchurch along the cliffs, in which the fronts of the houses facing the cliffs are missing, all the fascades having followed the landslides during the earthquakes. Because of this, I've often thought of cliffside houses as something very precarious - on edge, if you will.

I think that precariousness carries over to the lonely character, as you noted. He seems a man on edge of collapse, from loneliness, I'm guessing. In the words of Thom Yorke, 'Loneliness is a way to drown.'

The line, "Indoors the sound of the wind. Outdoors the wind," is probably my favourite. While it's quite simple, it feels like it speaks to the hostility the man finds in the landscape. Inside he is haunted by the very atmosphere, through the walls. Outside he is so dreadfully exposed.

Often in poetry, the beauty of nature, in one form or another, is one of the subjects of a poem. Here however, the descriptions of the landscape reveal a lot about the character, because he finds no beauty in it. I wonder whether maybe he moved to this cliffside house because he was looking for beauty, but in his present loneliness, he finds none. He looks at the view and sees 'the waste of sea,' 'the chill, the void,' 'the garralous tides.' He makes the world seem so empty and lifeless.

When I read this I think of 'Spring' by Edna St Vincent Millay, another poem in which demeaning descriptions of nature reflect the narrator's state of mind. From that poem, specifically the lines, "Life in itself / Is nothing," and "It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, / April / Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers."

>1 DebiCates: This is such an interesting followup after Robinson Jeffers' poem. We go from an indifferent universe that will continue long past mankind's self-centered concerns -- to a poet asking how humans, aware of the world's indifference, find a way to live in it. Each human construction, the oil lamb, the key/lock, the clock, the notion of curses and blessings, the fitful dreams -- is at odds with the wind, the moon, the empty expanses of sky and ocean. One doesn't really live without the other. Inside the man has order and safety but that can only nourish him so much, leaving the blood cold or an isolation of his own making. Outside there's creative energy and connection but also danger and chaos. A lot of what defines being human, the constant desire to construct, the constant realization we are at odds with ourselves.

>13 Interstellar_Octopus: I enjoyed what you've said here. After reading your thoughts I'm now sure that if the man came to the House on a Cliff in some hope of peace by being close to nature (and ancestors?), he certainly didn't find it.

That Edna St Vincent Millay poem is to die for! What an original thinker she was and wickedly infiltrates one's mind. (Will I ever think of Spring quite so sublime again?) Her narrator and MacNeice's narrator would be quite the addition to any party. And god forbid last week's Jeffers showed up. Other guests would be jumping off that cliff!

>14 DAGray08: A lot of what defines being human, the constant desire to construct, the constant realization we are at odds with ourselves.

Very well put. A great observation how the two poets/poems are in essence working with the same issues, almost the same material. (Serendipity that was!) Jeffers clearly decided humans needed to conform more to nature's indifference and magnitude. MacNeice's narrator feels the same pressure of that oppressive emptiness but remains at the personal struggle, hasn't sorted out a conclusion. Not yet.

Would you agree with that? Or, something else?

I just had a thought about the "blind clock" that "grows louder, faster." If your mind is contemplating the moon, the heavens, the tides, you are going to think your pitiful clock is out of sync with that much bigger time. Since a human lifetime is nothing in that perspective, then the time we experience is actually extraordinarily quick. It would seem then (accurately) Blind. Louder. Faster.

I have always thought of this poem as a reflection on aging. "The strong man pained to find his red blood cools, While the blind clock grows louder, faster." I picture an older man, alone, perhaps having driven everyone away with his "locked heart and the lost key."

>18 saskia17: Nica, that makes sense yet I completely didn't go there. Odd.

That could give the poem a different struggle. Well, maybe it's the same struggle, a universal one, but is now a starkly impending one.

>16 DebiCates: 'MacNeice's narrator feels the same pressure of that oppressive emptiness but remains at the personal struggle, hasn't sorted out a conclusion. Not yet.' I think so, and he probably won't sort out a conclusion since that conflict is part of what defines him.

Felt a lot of similarities to Wallace Stevens' Snow Man, ('One must have a mind of winter') where our ability to describe place means we can only get close to it, being out in it is more authentic but wordless.