Essex

“The vagrant visitor erstwhile,”

    My colour-plate book says to me,

“Could wend by hedgerow-side and stile,

    From Benfleet down to Leigh-on-Sea.”

And as I turn the colour-plates

    Edwardian Essex opens wide,

Mirrored in ponds and seen through gates,

    Sweet uneventful countryside.

Like streams the little by-roads run

    Through oats and barley round a hill

To where blue willows catch the sun

    By some white weather-boarded mill.

“A Summer Idyll Matching Tye”

    “At Havering-atte-Bower, the Stocks”

And cobbled pathways lead the eye

    To cottage doors and hollyhocks.

Far Essex,—fifty miles away

    The level wastes of sucking mud

Where distant barges high with hay

    Come sailing in upon the flood.

Near Essex of the River Lea

    And anglers out with hook and worm

And Epping Forest glades where we

    Had beanfeasts with my father’s firm.

At huge and convoluted pubs

    They used to set us down from brakes

In that half-land of football clubs

    Which London near the Forest makes.

The deepest Essex few explore

    Where steepest thatch is sunk in flowers

And out of elm and sycamore

    Rise flinty fifteenth-century towers.

I see the little branch line go

    By white farms roofed in red and brown,

The old Great Eastern winding slow

    To some forgotten country town.

Now yarrow chokes the railway track,

    Brambles obliterate the stile,

No motor coach can take me back

    To that Edwardian “erstwhile”.