Out with Marjorie the other week, pootling to the Post Office which is two miles away. On the way back, I spotted a notice pinned to a gate post and, as one does, stopped to investigate.
However, it wasn't a planning application for a new housing estate (although that is in the pipeline for this area). It was a Thomas Hardy poem. Rather random, but lovely.
The Walk
You
did not walk with me
Of
late to the hill-top tree
By
the gated ways,
As
in earlier days;
You
were weak and lame,
So
you never came,
And
I went alone, and I did not mind,
Not
thinking of you as left behind.
I
walked up there to-day
Just
in the former way;
Surveyed
around
The
familiar ground
By
myself again:
What
difference, then?
Only
that underlying sense
Of
the look of a room on returning thence.
Pondering this and wondering 'who, what why and when?', I cycled on. And came then stopped.
Another country poem, pinned to another gatepost, with the brooding Wrekin just showing in the background.
A sonnet, by John Clare.
A Spring Morning
THE Spring comes
in with all her hues and smells,
In freshness
breathing over hills and dells;
O’er woods where
May her gorgeous drapery flings,
And meads washed
fragrant by their laughing springs.
Fresh are new
opened flowers, untouched and free
From the bold
rifling of the amorous bee.
The happy time of
singing birds is come,
And Love’s lone
pilgrimage now finds a home;
Among the mossy
oaks now coos the dove,
And the hoarse
crow finds softer notes for love.
The foxes play
around their dens, and bark
In joy’s excess,
’mid woodland shadows dark.
The flowers join
lips below; the leaves above;
And every sound
that meets the ear is Love.
