Upper Lambourne

Up the ash-tree climbs the ivy,

    Up the ivy climbs the sun,

With a twenty-thousand pattering

    Has a valley breeze begun,

Feathery ash, neglected elder,

    Shift the shade and make it run—

Shift the shade toward the nettles,

    And the nettles set it free

To streak the stained Carrara headstone

    Where, in nineteen-twenty-three,

He who trained a hundred winners

    Paid the Final Entrance Fee.

Leathery limbs of Upper Lambourne,

    Leathery skin from sun and wind,

Leathery breeches, spreading stables,

    Shining saddles left behind—

To the down the string of horses

    Moving out of sight and mind.

Feathery ash in leathery Lambourne

    Waves above the sarsen stone,

And Edwardian plantations

    So coniferously moan

As to make the swelling downland,

    Far-surrounding, seem their own.