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"England and Yesterday": A Book of Short Poems

Chapter 27: XII. RETRIEVAL.
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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.

XII.
RETRIEVAL.

Stars in the bosom of thy triple tide,
June air and ivy on thy gracile stone,
O glory of the West, as thou wert sown,
Be perfect: O miraculous, abide!
And still, for greatness flickering from thy side,
Eternal alchemist, upraise, enthrone
True heirs in true succession, later blown
From that same seed of fire which never died.
Nor love shall lack her solace, to behold
Ranged to the morrow’s melancholy verge,
Thy lights uprisen in Thought’s disclosing spaces;
And round some beacon-spirit, stable, old,
In radiant broad tumultuary surge
For ever, the young voices, the young faces.