Farewell

Chapter 52: LAST WORD

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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.

LAST WORD

Let no man call me coward that I will die

And dip no more my bread in living’s foul

And muddy stream; but, God, accept my soul

Which into air so soon must wandering fly.

For I have never hated you at all,

You brother men, albeit that you must

Hate all such dust as is not of your dust,

Content for power to strive and hate and brawl.

But to you who have laughed and holpen one another,

You few gay valiant souls amid the rabble,

I say—“God knows I have loved you!” Then forgive

Me in whose heart is no more power to live:

Who must with this poor gesture break the bubble

Which held us here on Earth brother to brother.