"England and Yesterday": A Book of Short Poems

Chapter 21: VI. ON THE SAME (CONTINUED).

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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.

VI.
ON THE SAME (CONTINUED).

Is this the end? Is this the pilgrim’s day

For dread, for dereliction, and for tears?

Rather, from grass and air and many spheres,

In prophecy his spirit sinks away;

And under English eaves, more still than they,

Far-off, incoming, wonderful, he hears

The long-arrested, the believing years

Carry the sea-wall! Shall he, sighing, say:

“Farewell to Faith, for she is dead at best

Who had such beauty”? or, with kisses lain

For witness on her darkened doors, go by

With a new psalm: “O banished light so nigh!

Of them was I, who bore thee and who blest:

Even here remember me when thou shalt reign.”