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"England and Yesterday": A Book of Short Poems

Chapter 16: I. THE TOW-PATH.
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About This Book

The collection gathers sonnets and shorter lyrics that observe English locales, chiefly London and Oxford, and move between public bustle and quiet precincts. Urban pieces register fog, crowds, docks, and social inequality alongside civic and ecclesiastical history; Oxford poems and pastoral lyrics dwell on college gardens, ancient churches, and memory. The verse balances formal sonnet discipline with lyrical interludes, employing vivid sensory detail and reflective, often elegiac tone. Recurring concerns include transience, the persistence of historical presence, spiritual consolation, and a moral awareness of poverty and beauty.

I.
THE TOW-PATH.

Furrow to furrow, oar to oar succeeds,
Each length away, more bright, more exquisite;
The sister shells that hither, thither flit,
Strew the long stream like dropping maple-seeds.
A comrade on the marge now lags, now leads,
Who with short calls his pace doth intermit:
An angry Pan, afoot; but if he sit,
Auspicious Pan among the river reeds.
West of the glowing hay-ricks, (tawny-black,
Where waters by their warm escarpments run),
Two lovers, slowly crossed from Kennington,
Print in the early dew a married track,
And drain the aroma’d eve, and spend the sun,
Ere, in laborious health, the crews come back.