"England and Yesterday": A Book of Short Poems

Chapter 3: I. ON FIRST ENTERING WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

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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.
ON FIRST ENTERING WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

Holy 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 cool enshadowed 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 altar-isle,

Above the stormless sea of ended kings.