A Bay In Anglesey
The sleepy sound of a tea-time tide Slaps at the rocks the sun has dried, Too lazy, almost, to sink and lift Round low peninsulas pink with thrift. The water, enlarging shells and sand,
Death In Leamington
She died in the upstairs bedroom By the light of the ev’ning star That shone through the plate glass window From over Leamington Spa Beside her the lonely crochet Lay patiently and unstirred, But
Verses Turned
Across the wet November night The church is bright with candlelight And waiting Evensong. A single bell with plaintive strokes Pleads louder than the stirring oaks The leafless lanes along. It calls the hoirboys
Diary of a Church Mouse
Here among long-discarded cassocks, Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks, Here where the vicar never looks I nibble through old service books. Lean and alone I spend my days Behind this Church of England
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 –
Five O'Clock Shadow
This is the time of day when we in the Mens’s ward Think “one more surge of the pain and I give up the fight.” Whe he who strggles for breath can struggle less
Seaside Golf
How straight it flew, how long it flew, It clear’d the rutty track And soaring, disappeared from view Beyond the bunker’s back – A glorious, sailing, bounding drive That made me glad I was
Harrow-on-the-Hill
When melancholy Autumn comes to Wembley And electric trains are lighted after tea The poplars near the stadium are trembly With their tap and tap and whispering to me, Like the sound of little
Myfanwy
Kind o’er the kinderbank leans my Myfanwy, White o’er the playpen the sheen of her dress, Fresh from the bathroom and soft in the nursery Soap scented fingers I long to caress. Were you
Mortality
The first-class brains of a senior civil servant Shiver and shatter and fall As the steering column of his comfortable Humber Batters in the bony wall. All those delicate re-adjustments “On the one hand,
The Olympic Girl
The sort of girl I like to see Smiles down from her great height at me. She stands in strong, athletic pose And wrinkles her retroussй nose. Is it distaste that makes her frown,
The Irish Unionist's farewell to Greta Hellastrom in 1922
Golden haired and golden hearted I would ever have you be, As you were when last we parted Smiling slow and sad at me. Oh! the fighting down of passion! Oh! the century-seeming pain-
The Cottage Hospital
At the end of a long-walled garden in a red provincial town, A brick path led to a mulberry – scanty grass at its feet. I lay under blackening branches where the mulberry leaves
Senex
Oh would I could subdue the flesh Which sadly troubles me! And then perhaps could view the flesh As though I never knew the flesh And merry misery. To see the golden hiking girl
The Licorice Fields at Pontefract
In the licorice fields at Pontefract My love and I did meet And many a burdened licorice bush Was blooming round our feet; Red hair she had and golden skin, Her sulky lips were