The Old Liberals

Pale green of the English Hymnal! Yattendon hymns

    Played on the hautbois by a lady dress’d in blue

    Her white-hair’d father accompanying her thereto

On tenor or bass-recorder. Daylight swims

    On sectional bookcase, delicate cup and plate

    And William de Morgan tiles around the grate

And many the silver birches the pearly light shines through.

I think such a running together of woodwind sound,

    Such painstaking piping high on a Berkshire hill,

    Is sad as an English autumn heavy and still,

Sad as a country silence, tractor-drowned;

For deep in the hearts of the man and the woman playing

    The rose of a world that was not has withered away.

Where are the wains with garlanded swathes a-swaying?

Where are the swains to wend through the lanes a-maying?

    Where are the blithe and jocund to ted the hay?

    Where are the free folk of England? Where are they?

Ask of the Abingdon bus with full load creeping

    Down into denser suburbs. The birch lets go

    But one brown leaf upon browner bracken below.

Ask of the cinema manager. Night airs die

To still, ripe scent of the fungus and wet woods weeping.

    Ask at the fish and chips in the Market Square.

    Here amid firs and a final sunset flare

Recorder and hautbois only moan at a mouldering sky.