Severn’s most fair to-day! See what a tide of blue She pours, and flecked alway With gold, and what a crew Of seagulls snowy white Float round her to delight Villagers, travellers. A brown thick flood is hers In winter when the rains Wash down from Midland plains, Halting wayfarers, Low meadows flooding deep With torrents from the steep Mountains of Wales and small Hillocks of no degree-- Streams jostling to the sea; (Wrangling yet brotherly). Blue June has altered all-- The river makes its fall With murmurous still sound, Past Pridings faëry ground, And steep-down Newnham cliff.... O Boys in trenches, if You could see what any may (Escaping town for the day), Strong Severn all aglow, But tideless, running slow: Far Cotswolds all a-shimmer, Blue Bredon leagues away-- Huge Malverns, farther, dimmer ... Then you would feel the fire Of the First Days inspire You, when, despising all Save England’s, honour’s call, You dared the worst for her: Faced all things without fear, So she might stand alway A free Mother of men; High Queen as on this day. There would flood through you again The old faith, the old pride Wherein our fathers died, Whereby our land was builded and dignified. TOUSSAINTS (TO J. W. H.) Like softly clanging cymbals were Plane-trees, poplars Autumn had Arrayed in gloriously sad Garments of beauty wind-astir; It was the day of all the dead-- Toussaints. In sombre twos and threes Between those coloured pillars went Drab mourners. Full of presences The air seemed ... ever and anon rent By a slow bell’s solemnities. The past year’s gloriously dead Came, folk dear to that rich earth Had given them sustenance and birth, Breath and dreams and daily bread, Took labour-sweat, returned them mirth. Merville across the plain gleamed white, The thronged still air gave never a sound, Only, monotonous untoned The bell of grief and lost delight. Gay leaves slow fluttered to the ground. Sudden, that sense of peace and prayer Like vapour faded. Round the bend Swung lines of khaki without end.... Common was water, earth and air; Death seemed a hard thing not to mend. THE STONE-BREAKER (TO DOROTHY) The early dew was still untrodden, Flawless it lay on flower and blade, The last caress of night’s cold fragrance A freshness in the young day made. The velvet and the silver floor Of the orchard-close was gold inlaid With spears and streaks of early sunlight-- Such beauty makes men half afraid. An old man at his heap of stones Turned as I neared his clinking hammer, Part of the earth he seemed, the trees, The sky, the twelve-hour heat of summer.