Margaret Benson

Margaret Benson Poems

Margaret Benson Biography

Margaret Benson (16 June 1865 – May 1916) was an English author and amateur Egyptologist, one of the six children of Edward White Benson, an Anglican clergyman (later Archbishop of Canterbury). She was one of the first women to be admitted to Oxford University, where she attended Lady Margaret Hall. She was the first woman to be granted a concession to excavate in Egypt. With her companion Janet Gourlay she excavated for three seasons (1895-97) in the Temple of the Goddess Mut, Mut Complex, a part of Karnak, Thebes. She suffered from frail health most of her life, was not able to continue the excavation after 1897, and in 1907 she suffered a severe mental breakdown and died in 1916 (in the Priory, Roehampton) at the age of 51. There was a strain of tragedy in her family, in that several members suffered from mental illnesses, probably bipolar disorder. She had five siblings, and none of whom married. One brother was the popular novelist E. F. Benson. Another was A. C. Benson, the author of the lyrics to Elgar's "Land of Hope and Glory" and master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Her youngest brother, Robert Hugh Benson became a minister of the Church of England before converting to Catholicism and writing many popular novels. Her mother was Mary Sidgwick Benson, the sister of philosopher Henry Sidgwick. After the archbishop's death, his widow set up a lesbian household with Lucy Tait, daughter of the previous Archbishop of Canterbury, Archibald Campbell Tait.)

The Best Poem Of Margaret Benson

Once On A Time

Once on a time I used to dream
Strange spirits moved about my way,
And I might catch a vagrant gleam,
A glint of pixy or of fay;
Their lives were mingled with my own,
So far they roamed, so near they drew;
And when I from a child had grown,
I woke - and found my dream was true.

For one is clad in coat of fur,
And one is decked with feathers gay;
Another, wiser, will prefer
A sober suit of Quaker gray:
This one's your servant from his birth,
And that a Princess you must please,
And this one loves to wake your mirth,
And that one likes to share your ease.

O gracious creatures, tiny souls!
You seem so near, so far away,
Yet while the cloudland round us rolls,
We love you better every day.

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