Tides: A Book of Poems

Chapter 15: FOR A GUEST ROOM

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

A sequence of lyric poems that range from intimate rural and seasonal scenes—Cotswold hills, gardens, ploughing—to meditations on love, memory, and wartime loss, with occasional civic and political reflections. The voice uses vivid pastoral imagery and simple, songlike rhythms to register everyday labour, landscape, and personal feeling, moving between quiet domestic observation and memorial or civic address. The collection is organized as short, standalone poems that juxtapose pastoral tranquility with the disruptions of modern conflict.

FOR A GUEST ROOM

All words are said,
And may it fall
That, crowning these,
You here shall find
A friendly bed,
A sheltering wall,
Your body’s ease,
A quiet mind.

May you forget
In happy sleep
The world that still
You hold as friend,
And may it yet
Be ours to keep
Your friendly will
To the world’s end.

For he is blest
Who, fixed to shun
All evil, when
The worst is known,
Counts, east and west,
When life is done,
His debts to men
In love alone.