Delectable Duchy

Where yonder villa hogs the sea

Was open cliff to you and me.

The many-coloured cara’s fill

The salty marsh to Shilla Mill.

And, foreground to the hanging wood,

Are toilets where the cattle stood.

The mint and meadowsweet would scent

The brambly lane by which we went;

Now, as we near the ocean roar,

A smell of deep-fry haunts the shore.

In pools beyond the reach of tides

The Senior Service carton glides,

And on the sand the surf-line lisps

With wrappings of potato crisps.

The breakers bring with merry noise

Tribute of broken plastic toys

And lichened spears of blackthorn glitter

With harvest of the August litter.

Here in the late October light

See Cornwall, a pathetic sight,

Raddled and put upon and tired

And looking somewhat over-hired,

Remembering in the autumn air

The years when she was young and fair—

Those golden and unpeopled bays,

The shadowy cliffs and sheep-worn ways,

The white unpopulated surf,

The thyme- and mushroom-scented turf,

The slate-hung farms, the oil-lit chapels,

Thin elms and lemon-coloured apples—

Going and gone beyond recall

Now she is free for “One and All.”1

One day a tidal wave will break

Before the breakfasters awake

And sweep the cara’s out to sea,

The oil, the tar, and you and me,

And leave in windy criss-cross motion

A waste of undulating ocean

With, jutting out, a second Scilly,

The isles of Roughtor and Brown Willy.