Poem: One Foot in Eden

From These Beclouded Skies

One Foot in Eden is by the Scottish poet, novelist, and translator: Edwin Muir (1887–1959). Published in 1956, the poem delves into the predominant theme that carries through much of his work: Man's expulsion from Eden. He saw it as a kind of archetypal journey (in the Jungian sense) that is repeated again and again in each of our lives. To express this, he often drew upon his own family's move in 1901 from the agrarian and idyllic world of his childhood home on the Orkney Islands to the the gritty industrial city of Glasgow where his mother, father, and two brothers all died within 5 years of arriving. One Foot in Eden is included in the Religious Poetry Appendix for Lent and Easter of the Divine Office (1974).


Reading by Fr. John J. O'Riordain, CSsR from Mt. St. Alphonsus, Limerick


By Nicholas Maw (1935-2009), Performed by the Helsinki Chamber Choir