Hertfordshire

I had forgotten Hertfordshire,

    The large unwelcome fields of roots

Where with my knickerbockered sire

    I trudged in syndicated shoots;

And that unlucky day when I

    Fired by mistake into the ground

Under a Lionel Edwards sky

    And felt disapprobation round.

The slow drive home by motor-car,

    A heavy Rover Landaulette,

Through Welwyn, Hatfield, Potters Bar,

    Tweed and cigar smoke, gloom and wet:

“How many times must I explain

    The way a boy should hold a gun?”

I recollect my father’s pain

    At such a milksop for a son.

And now I see these fields once more

    Clothed, thank the Lord, in summer green,

Pale corn waves rippling to a shore

    The shadowy cliffs of elm between,

Colour-washed cottages reed-thatched

    And weather-boarded water mills,

Flint churches, brick and plaster patched,

    On mildly undistinguished hills—

They still are there. But now the shire

    Suffers a devastating change,

Its gentle landscape strung with wire,

    Old places looking ill and strange.

One can’t be sure where London ends,

    New towns have filled the fields of root

Where father and his business friends

    Drove in the Landaulette to shoot;

Tall concrete standards line the lane,

    Brick boxes glitter in the sun:

Far more would these have caused him pain

    Than my mishandling of a gun.