Farewell

Chapter 11: ON BIRDLIP

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About This Book

A varied collection of poems and short prose pieces that celebrate the Cotswold and Gloucestershire countryside while exploring love, longing, and spiritual yearning. The poems range from concise nature lyrics—observing rivers, hedges, birds, and seasonal light—to sonnets and free-verse meditations that ask for vision, joy, and fellowship. Several pieces foreground homesickness and the solace of ritual and local customs, others offer wry or reflective commentary on mortality, vanity, and daily life. Prose poems and songs intersperse formal verse, producing a sequence that alternates celebratory rural description, quiet grief, religious petition, and gentle humour.

ON BIRDLIP

I’ve tramped a score of miles to-day

And now on Cotswold stand,

Wondering if in any way

Their owners understand

How all those little gold fields I see

And the great green woods beyond

Have given themselves to me, to me

Who own not an inch of land.

Because I loved with deep desire,

Wooing all as I walked,

This noble country by tree and spire

Taught (as if music talked)

How Beauty is never bought or sold,

But freely given to them

Who worship more than crowns of gold

Her dew-bright diadem.

Now all that under open heaven

I see of arable

Or pasture land to me is given,

As runs the parable—

“To him that hath not——” Even so,

For all we love is ours

While the little streams of Cotswold flow,

Swaying forget-me-not flowers.