Two silver cords are those she wears,

Fast by her side to hold

Her book of songs, her book of prayers,
As did the dames of old.

Fine lyric lore the first book reads,

Of woodland wanderings;

The other, ancient, holy deeds

And orisons of kings.

Mitres and crowns continually

Allure the chanting Thames;

The Avon lilts to any lea

For cowslip diadems.

The Thames, at Oxford turned the sage,
The Prince at Windsor grown,
Betakes himself in pilgrimage
To Lambeth's reverend throne.

But Avon, gentle Avon, goes
Far from such loud renown,
Beneath old Warwick's porticos
To quiet Stratford town.

And there

sweet home of high romance!

It loiters, giving praise

For him whose consecrating glance
Sought once its leafy ways.

Gold reveries, silken dreams, beside
Its marge their glamour blend,
Till, slipping to the Severn's tide,
It smiles an envied end.

While Thames and Avon onward sing,

Their music's spell shall fall,

The one's on warrior, priest and king,
The other's upon all.

ARTHUR UPSON

UPON ECKINGTON BRIDGE, RIVER AVON

O PASTORAL heart of England! like a psalm
Of green days telling with a quiet beat
O wave into the sunset flowing calm!

O tired lark descending on the wheat!
Lies it all peace beyond that western fold
Where now the lingering shepherd sees his star
Rise upon Malvern? Paints an Age of Gold
Yon cloud with prophecies of linked ease
Lulling this Land, with hills drawn up like knees,
To drowse beside her implements of war?

Man shall outlast his battles. They have swept
Avon from Naseby Field to Severn Ham;
And Evesham's dedicated stones have stepp'd
Down to the dust with Montfort's oriflame.
Nor the red tear nor the reflected tower

Abides; but yet these eloquent grooves remain, Worn in the sandstone parapet hour by hour

By labouring bargemen where they shifted ropes. E'en so shall man turn back from violent hopes To Adam's cheer, and toil with spade again.

Ay, and his mother Nature, to whose lap
Like a repentant child at length he hies,

Not in the whirlwind or the thunder-clap
Proclaims her more tremendous mysteries:
But when in winter's grave, bereft of light,
With still, small voice divinelier whispering
Lifting the green head of the aconite,
Feeding with sap of hope the hazel-shoot
She feels God's finger active at the root,
Turns in her sleep, and murmurs of the Spring.
ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH

THE MEMORY OF KENT

KENTISH hamlets grey and old,

The spring breeze calls you back to me;
Now I know, by weald and wold

Your primroses manifold

Glisten, and such delicate gold

As nowhere else men see,

Through the woodways soft and brown,

By the swollen streams,

By the cart-tracks rutted down,
Gleams.

Sussex with wild daffodils

Is not so dear to me:
All the cowslip-haunted hills,

All the bluebell-bordered rills,

And orchids round the high windmills
And down the marshy lea

One primrose from my Kentish home

Is worth all these to me.

EDMUND BLUNDEN

WHEN I SET OUT FOR LYONNESSE

WHEN I set out for Lyonnesse,
A hundred miles away,

The rime was on the spray,
And starlight lit my lonesomeness
When I set out for Lyonnesse
A hundred miles away.

What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there
No prophet durst declare,

Nor did the wisest wizard guess
What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there.

When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes,

All marked with mute surmise
My radiance rare and fathomless,
When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes!

THOMAS HARDY

SUNK LYONESSE

IN sea-cold Lyonesse,

When the Sabbath eve shafts down

On the roofs, walls, belfries

Of the foundered town,

The Nereids pluck their lyres

Where the green translucency beats,
And with motionless eyes at gaze
Make minstrelsy in the streets.

And the ocean water stirs

In salt-worn casemate and porch.
Plies the blunt-snouted fish
With fire in his skull for torch.
And the ringing wires resound;
And the unearthly lovely weep,
In lament of the music they make
In the sullen courts of sleep:

Whose marble flowers bloom for aye:
And-lapped by the moon-guiled tide-
Mock their carver with heart of stone,

Caged in his stone-ribbed side.

WALTER DE LA MARE

CORNISH WIND

THERE is a wind in Cornwall that I know
From any other wind, because it smells
Of the warm honey breath of heather-bells
And of the sea's salt; and these meet and flow
With such sweet savour in such sharpness met
That the astonished sense in ecstasy

Tastes the ripe earth and the unvintaged sea.
Wind out of Cornwall, wind, if I forget:

Not in the tunnelled streets where scarce men breathe
The air they live by, but whatever seas

Blossom in foam, wherever merchant bees

Volubly traffic upon any heath:

If I forget, shame me! or if I find

A wind in England like my Cornish wind.

ARTHUR SYMONS