Farewell

Chapter 34: IDENTITY

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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.

IDENTITY

I am the blood that burns,

The flesh that dies,

The haunted heart that turns

To Paradise,

The soul that laugheth low

And whispereth

There are sweet things to know

After—Death.

Such powers am I, and more

Both good and bad;

Nor all the learnéd lore

Solomon had

Could ill and good dissever.

Yet this is true:

Naught’s me that doth not ever

Cleave to you.