Description

 

Greene, Grahame (1904 – 1991)

A very rare autograph quotation signed by Graham Greene. The author has written out four lines from  his poem A Prayer on a 3.5″ X 6″ card.

In full: ‘The stripped trees and the grubbed fields and the passive sky / and the craving for death: / O You who gave man too the blessing to die / shorten the term of our breath’.

Greene signs boldly beneath the quotation.

Together with a typed letter signed by Greene, 10th January 1989, in which he encloses ‘the shortest piece of verse I can find in the only volume in existence!’ He adds, ‘I enclose a typewritten copy because my handwriting is not very good.’

Extremely rare in this format. The first autograph quotation we can remember seeing.

The poem in question, A Prayer, was written by Greene in 1949 but not published. It was written in a commonplace album for his close friend Leopoldo Duran, who later published much of his correspondence with Greene.