They met in a pink-washed room at the back of the bar
and talked of the new world to come
where each man was his private government,
and the palaces of this world not unlike here
with its litter, beer and meagre food.

They were such simple men. I was laughing when the
                    destroyers
dropped their grey chains in the open bay.
All the villagers could do was shuffle onto the cinder beach and watch each
private government make its silent exit
under the darkness of their sallow faces.

from 'Midsummer Morning (1936)'

Faithful, Cliff Ashcroft's first book of poems, maintains what Penelope Shuttle calls a 'characteristic tone of reserved epiphanies, a stillness within process'. It is a book of intimate, often elegiac poems, ranging widely in place and history from Spain during the civil war to England under Roman occupation. Often the most vivid localities are imaginary; the Greek underworld and its shadow citizens, the trials of those close to gospel events, and our own curious contemporary hells and heavens. Faithful engages in its five sections with various aspects of faith and creates a distinctive atmosphere -- ghostly, still, as though the various voices spoke close and quiet, into your own ear.

The reviewer of New Poetries in the Times Literary Supplement singled Ashcroft out as the book's 'most consistently impressive poet; simple, natural vocabulary and a careful, level tone [which] reminds us that small objects contain infinite possibilities.'