Rice pudding glowing faces shewed all the benefit of a country run, and seemed to ensure a quick despatch of the roast mutton and rice pudding they were hastening home for". "Rice Pudding" is the title and subject of a poem by A. A. Milne, in which the narrator professes puzzlement as to what is the matter with Mary Jane, who is "crying with all her might and main/And she won't eat her dinner—rice pudding again—/What is the matter with Mary Jane?" T.S. Eliot, in the poem "Bustopher Jones: The Cat About Town", writes: "If he looks full of gloom/Then he's lunched
W. S. Graham with T. S. Eliot, then editor of Faber and Faber, who published "The White Threshold". Faber and Faber remained Graham's publishers for the rest of his life. In 1954, Graham returned to Cornwall to live near the St Ives, Cornwall artists' colony. Here he became friendly with several of the resident painters, including Bryan Wynter and Roger Hilton. The following year, Faber and Faber published his "The Nightfishing," a book whose title poem marked a dramatic change in Graham's poetry. The poem moved on from his earlier style and moved away from the neo-romantic/apocalyptic tag. Unfortunately for the poet, the