A Roadside Harp: A Book of Verses

Chapter 27: Rooks in New College Gardens

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About This Book

This collection gathers lyrical and narrative poems that range from ballads and sonnets to short meditations. The verses move between rural and urban settings, evoking English and Irish countryside, Italian art and London streets, and blend historical, religious, and classical allusion with close natural observation. Recurring concerns include time and memory, faith and loss, friendship and artistic response; many pieces treat ruined churches, portraiture, and small domestic scenes with musical language and formal polish. Alternating narrative storytelling and reflective shorter lyrics, the work balances nostalgic melancholy with bright sensory detail and a cultivated, songlike cadence.

Rooks in New College Gardens

THRO’ rosy cloud, and over thorny towers,
Their wings with all the autumn distance filled,
From Isis’ valley border hundred-hilled,
The rooks are crowding home as evening lowers:
Not for men only and their musing hours,
By battled walls did gracious Wykeham build
These dewy spaces early sown and stilled,
These dearest inland melancholy bowers.

Blest birds! A book held open on the knee

Below, is all they know of Adam’s blight:

With surer art the while, and simpler rite,

They follow Truth in some monastic tree,

Where breathe against their innocent breasts by night

The scholar’s star, the star of sanctity.