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A Roadside Harp: A Book of Verses

Chapter 43: On First Entering Westminster Abbey
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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.

THABOR of England! since my light is short
And faint, O rather by the sun anew
Of timeless passion set my dial true,
That with thy saints and thee I may consort,
And wafted in the calm Chaucerian port
Of poets, seem a little sail long due,
And be as one the call of memory drew
Unto the saddle void since Agincourt!
Not now for secular love’s unquiet lease
Receive my soul, who rapt in thee erewhile
Hath broken tryst with transitory things;
But seal with her a marriage and a peace
Eternal, on thine Edward’s holy isle,
Above the stormy sea of ended kings.