When I stopped by Sheila’s early this morning I learned that April was National Poetry Month. So it seems only appropriate to mark the occasion with a brief inquiry into the mystery surrounding Irene Rutherford McLeod.

First, her writing. This poem has been anthologized many times so it may be familiar to some of you:

Lone Dog

I’m a lean dog, a keen dog, a wild dog and lone;
I’m a rough dog, a tough dog, hunting on my own;
I’m a bad dog, a mad dog, teasing silly sheep;
I love to sit and bay the moon , to keep fat souls from sleep.

I’ll never be a lap dog, licking dirty feet,
A sleek dog, a meek dog, cringing for my meat,
Not for me the fireside, the well-filled plate,
But shut door, and sharp stone, and cuff and kick, and hate.

Not for me the other dogs, running by my side,
Some have run a short while, but none of them would bide.
O mine is still the lone trail, the hard trail, the best,
Wide wind, and wild stars, and hunger of the quest!

Others of her poems are somewhat less well-known:

Is Love, then, so Simple

Is love, then, so simple my dear?
The opening of a door,
And seeing all things clear?
I did not know before.

I had thought it unrest and desire
Soaring only to fall,
Annihilation and fire:
It is not so at all.

I feel no desperate will,
But I think I understand
Many things, as I sit quite still,
With Eternity in my hand.

Other samples of McLeod’s work that I could locate are the poems Song and When My Beloved Sleeping Lies. They are similiar to the examples above - short, simple and direct. There is no mystery about the poetry - instead the mystery surrounds the poet.

Consider the entry for Lone Dog on Bartleby.com, the contents of which were derived from an anthology titled Modern British Poetry. Notice anything odd? Her year of birth is given as 1891 and the date of death…. not listed. While I initially supposed this was an oversight, it did pique my curiosity about Irene Rutherford McLeod, so I went digging for information. I haven’t come with much (so far)…

I learned here that she is ‘reputed to have been born in Australia, was the wife of Aubrey de Selincourt and a sister-in-law of A.A. Milne.

Google Books contains the full text for Modern British Poetry and here we learn that Ms. McLeod was born Aug 21, 1891, was married in 1919 and had written (at the time of Modern British Poetry’s publication in 1920) three volumes of verse. Further searching reveals this brief review of Before Dawn, one of those volumes. There are other anthologies listed as containing her poems, and further reviews (evidently she also wrote a novel called Graduation) but scant biographical information.

I’m not the only one who has tried to track down the fate of Ms. McLeod. Check out this thread from the now defunct Google Answers. Apparently she was still alive when her husband died in 1962 - but after that, nothing. Vanished - at least from reference.