WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
"England and Yesterday": A Book of Short Poems cover

"England and Yesterday": A Book of Short Poems

Chapter 57: WRIT IN MY LORD CLARENDON’S “HISTORY OF THE REBELLION.”
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

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.

WRIT IN MY LORD CLARENDON’S “HISTORY OF THE REBELLION.”

How life hath cheapened, and how blank
The Worlde is! like a fen
Where long ago unstainèd sank
The starrie gentlemen:
Since Marston Moor and Newbury drank
King Charles his gentlemen.
If Fate in any air accords
What Fate denied, O then
I ask to be among your Swordes,
My joyous gentlemen;
Towards Honour’s heaven to goe, and towards
King Charles his gentlemen!