"England and Yesterday": A Book of Short Poems

Chapter 42: OF JOAN’S YOUTH.

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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.

OF JOAN’S YOUTH.

I would unto my fair restore

A simple thing:

The flushing cheek she had before!

Out-velveting

No more, no more,

By Severn shore,

The carmine grape, the moth’s auroral wing.

Ah, say how winds in flooded grass

Unmoor the rose;

Or guileful ways the salmon pass

To sea, disclose;

For so, alas,

With Love, alas,

With fatal, fatal Love a girlhood goes.