To Stuart Piggott, 1975

Stuart, I sit here in a grateful haze

Recalling those spontaneous Berkshire days

In straw-thatched,

                                chalk-built,

                                                     pre-War

                                                                    Uffington

Before the March of Progress had begun,

When all the world seemed waiting to be won,

When evening air with mignonette was scented,

And ‘picture-windows’ had not been invented,

When shooting foxes still was thought unsporting,

And White Horse Hill was still the place for courting

When church was still the usual place for marriages

And carriage-lamps were only used for carriages.

    How pleased your parents were in their retirement

The garden and yourself their chief requirement.

Your father, now his teaching days were over,

Back in his native Berkshire lived in clover.

Your cheerful mother loyally concealed

Her inward hankering for Petersfield,

For Hampshire Downs were the first Downs you saw

And Heywood Sumner taught you there to draw.

    Under great elms which rustled overhead

By stile and foot-bridge village pathways led

To cottage gardens heavy with the flower

Of fruit and vegetables towards your tower,

St Mary, Uffington, famed now as then

The perfect Parker’s Glossary specimen

Of purest Early English, tall and pale,

—To tourists the Cathedral of the Vale,

To us the church. I’m glad that I survive

To greet you, Stuart, now you’re sixty-five.