Buttered Toast and Trains

His dreams of buttered toast and trains became Beleaguered by town-planners and architectural sharks Who erected on his green and pleasant visions The blight of sunless tower blocks and concrete parks. Once bicycles and potting sheds held blissful sway In country lanes and gardens swarmed with bloom, Replaced by streams of motorised invaders, In place of lawns - hot tubs and decking loom. His chronicles of defiance ring like warning bells from Small quaint churches in his rhyming pages, Across the village greens and through the cobbled streets Down the passages of post colonial ages. The words of such gentility and slowly dying culture, Sandwiches of cucumber and egg and cress for tea, Earl Grey poured from china pots, sugar lumps in silver bowls, Croquet hoops and endless sun and sweet austerity. That world, though semi-fabled, seems ever more unreal, And images he drew upon are all that now remains, To teach us of a man who lived and then outlived his time With his marvelled dreams of buttered toast and trains.