SOURCE: "Edwin Muir's Penelope Poems," in Studies in Scottish Literature, Vol. XXIV, 1989, pp. 212-20.

In the following essay, Taylor discusses Muir's repeated use of the story of Penelope in his poems.

"Nothing yet was ever done

Till it was done again"

In our day poetry is more often read with the eyes than the voice, and its spoken quality—that power of language to move—is often lost. When it is heard, as all poetry ought to be, the mind creates pictures from the sounds. Read aloud, for instance, these lines from "Telemachos Remembers" by Edwin Muir:

Twenty years, every day,
 The figures in the web she wove
 Came and stood and went away.
 Her fingers in their pitiless play
 Beat downward as the shuttle drove.

Slowly, slowly did they come.
 With horse and chariot, spear and bow,
 Half-finished heroes sad and mum.
 Came slowly to the shuttle's...