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"England and Yesterday": A Book of Short Poems

Chapter 45: SHROPSHIRE LANDSCAPE.
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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.

SHROPSHIRE LANDSCAPE.

Vague, in a silver sheen
Rayed from their armour green,
Some aged limes upstand;
Nigh fields kindle and shine:
Beauty incarnadine!
What thrill of what Uranian wine
So flushed the placid land?
All tints of a broken wave
Light the leafy architrave,
Far up the cloudy spring;
And the ploughed soil ruddier glows
Than the ruby or the rose,
Or the moon, when the harvest goes
Beneath her blazing wing.
Trees keep the broad outpost;
Dusk, by their dusky host,
Long-loved Severn glides.
Thence, towards the hilly south,
Like a queen, battle-wroth,
Upon a vermeil saddle-cloth,
The three-spired city rides.