GLOUCESTERSHIRE MEN
Gloucester, Glevum, and Caer Glow,
The name is nothing! Then as now
Men mowed the meadow-grass for cattle,
Died for Gloucestershire in battle,
Fought, and loved, and built, and planned,
And wrested with this kindly land.
Man’s tiny spark of mortal fire
Seems suddenly big in Gloucestershire.
The little chain of life on earth
Lengthens out round Minsterworth.
Here and in all the country round
Marks of men are on the ground.
Here no brooding iron peak,
No barren desert is, to shriek
The little loneliness of man,
Whose days are measured by a span;
But in the faces of our brothers
See we the looks of those old “others”:
The men in yonder humped-up barrow,
Crouched with their mortal joys and sorrow;
The Roman soldier sound asleep
By walls where English weeds slow creep
(A thousand years are but a span ...):
Each dead man was a Gloucestershire man!