Previously, the author has presented R.A.K. Mason as essentially a sensitive modern romantic at odds with the New Zealand where he spent his life from 1905-1971, and with, in a larger sense, not only man but also the ...

Mason is writing about the plight of man, trapped in a hostile place, i.e. our planet, which, in the space of the universe as a whole, is 'fixed at the friendless outer edge'. Even if perhaps a poet in an isolated country ...