I wish I had the skill of Virginia,
to spark your interest,
in the most trivial of things,
like ‘A mark on the wall’,
or make you wonder,
whether it’s
‘Monday or Tuesday’,
as if it is as important
as having
“A Room of One’s Own”,
To contemplate,
To paint,
To write,
A room where one can have
No gender, No classification,
where one can love,
a man or a woman alike,
or even simple
‘Solid objects’.
In 1882, her life had begun,
within an upper-class family,
in Kensington,
Her parents, both
enlightened intellectuals,
ensured their children
could think and learn,
and had in their circle,
distinguished friends,
Henry James, George Eliot,
and even Lord Tennyson.
Summers of her childhood
were spent amongst
‘The Waves’,
where whiled away they,
their time,
in some cricket,
play and fun.
But short-lived was
the childhood
so happy and secure,
Virginia’s gentle heart
had much more to endure.
First, in 1895,
her mother passed away,
Leading to
her nervous breakdown;
she was no longer gay.
Then her sister Stella,
was by a fever taken,
She was only
two and twenty,
when even
her father’s
companionship
was forsaken.
Too many losses.
too hard to bear,
Then the sexual advances
by a half-brother, so unfair!
There was no one
to confide in,
No parent’s bosom
to hide in,
While the brothers
were to the university sent,
The sisters
were homeschooled,
With the
twists and turns
of the modern society,
they were
sometimes enamoured
and often fooled.
Sister Vanessa turned to painting,
and Virginia would write,
even with all obstacles,
both would have
a career, bright;
But Virginia’s mental state
became unstable,
For her heart clogged with grief;
She approached utmost madness
and heard a bird sing in Greek;
Jumped out of her window she,
The first attempt at suicide,
The family decided to leave
the house
where so many had died.
From Hyde Park Gate
to Bloomsbury, they moved,
which had the British Museum beside;
An area where with no restrictions,
the society was ever tied.
Here the fate of the novelist changed,
For destiny had for her so arranged,
the friendship of individuals such
with whom her thoughts
could be exchanged,
For each in their own field
was a master,
The likes of John Maynard Keynes,
or the well known EM Forster.
Vanessa and Virginia were a perfect fit
For the Bloomsbury Group,
which demanded vision and wit.
At Morley College,
Virginia began to teach
the minds of working men and women
were now in her reach;
but still the deaths
she couldn’t avoid
For in 1906,
her brother, Toby, died of typhoid.
To an old friend,
Violet Dickinson,
Virginia would often
write, and tell,
That Vanessa got engaged,
With a member: Clyde Bell,
Also that in 1911,
arrived in the group
a man, Intelligent,
and sensitive too,
whose marriage proposal
Virginia accepted,
and wrote to Dickinson,
that she was marrying,
‘a penniless Jew’,
For Leonard Woolf gave up
his post of a civil servant
which he had back in Ceylon,
And turned to writing after marriage,
And remained
by his wife alone.
Virginia continued to love and write,
With Leonard
her days were a little bright,
Yet depression swallowed her again,
as per her life’s usual trend,
a second attempt to die came by,
just when her second novel
was about to end.
Shocked this her husband completely,
yet instead of remorse,
he looked after her lovingly.
What an unsung hero,
this husband proved to be!
In his spousal care,
she was stable and steady.
Her novels were published,
and admired,
For success, this couple was perfectly wired.
The Hogarth Press, together they bought,
and published books,
even of T.S. Eliot.
Virginia Woolf became
a feminist icon,
And argued if
Shakespeare had a sister,
who could similarly write,
could as many
hearts as her brother
she would have won?
In 1923, she fell for
Vita Sackville-West
due to whom her novel
‘Orlando’ was born,
Their platonic intimacy
survives in letters,
But then their lives by the
First World War was torn.
Just like Septimus, her
character from ‘Mrs. Dalloway’,
her mental state became,
The war clouded her mind,
she couldn’t remain the same.
When their London house
was bombed,
Leonard and Virginia moved
to their country house,
But fearful she remained,
For German planes flew above,
And a Jew was her spouse.
The thought of losing Leonard
opened her old pain.
The war overwhelmed her,
she was deeply depressed again,
When things became too much to bear,
When Leonard was at a lecture, unaware,
She left him a letter and rose
With an overcoat filled with stones.
Thus completed she her last prose.
Suffered by melancholia,
stepped into the river she
and signed off in 1941
serving through her death,