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Best Famous Shires Poems

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Written by Derek Walcott | Create an image from this poem

The Star-Apple Kingdom

 There were still shards of an ancient pastoral 
in those shires of the island where the cattle drank 
their pools of shadow from an older sky, 
surviving from when the landscape copied such objects as 
"Herefords at Sunset in the valley of the Wye.
" The mountain water that fell white from the mill wheel sprinkling like petals from the star-apple trees, and all of the windmills and sugar mills moved by mules on the treadmill of Monday to Monday, would repeat in tongues of water and wind and fire, in tongues of Mission School pickaninnies, like rivers remembering their source, Parish Trelawny, Parish St David, Parish St Andrew, the names afflicting the pastures, the lime groves and fences of marl stone and the cattle with a docile longing, an epochal content.
And there were, like old wedding lace in an attic, among the boas and parasols and the tea-colored daguerreotypes, hints of an epochal happiness as ordered and infinite to the child as the great house road to the Great House down a perspective of casuarinas plunging green manes in time to the horses, an orderly life reduced by lorgnettes day and night, one disc the sun, the other the moon, reduced into a pier glass: nannies diminished to dolls, mahogany stairways no larger than those of an album in which the flash of cutlery yellows, as gamboge as the piled cakes of teatime on that latticed bougainvillea verandah that looked down toward a prospect of Cuyp-like Herefords under a sky lurid as a porcelain souvenir with these words: "Herefords at Sunset in the Valley of the Wye.
" Strange, that the rancor of hatred hid in that dream of slow rivers and lily-like parasols, in snaps of fine old colonial families, curled at the edge not from age of from fire or the chemicals, no, not at all, but because, off at its edges, innocently excluded stood the groom, the cattle boy, the housemaid, the gardeners, the tenants, the good ******* down in the village, their mouth in the locked jaw of a silent scream.
A scream which would open the doors to swing wildly all night, that was bringing in heavier clouds, more black smoke than cloud, frightening the cattle in whose bulging eyes the Great House diminished; a scorching wind of a scream that began to extinguish the fireflies, that dried the water mill creaking to a stop as it was about to pronounce Parish Trelawny all over, in the ancient pastoral voice, a wind that blew all without bending anything, neither the leaves of the album nor the lime groves; blew Nanny floating back in white from a feather to a chimerical, chemical pin speck that shrank the drinking Herefords to brown porcelain cows on a mantelpiece, Trelawny trembling with dusk, the scorched pastures of the old benign Custos; blew far the decent servants and the lifelong cook, and shriveled to a shard that ancient pastoral of dusk in a gilt-edged frame now catching the evening sun in Jamaica, making both epochs one.
He looked out from the Great House windows on clouds that still held the fragrance of fire, he saw the Botanical Gardens officially drown in a formal dusk, where governors had strolled and black gardeners had smiled over glinting shears at the lilies of parasols on the floating lawns, the flame trees obeyed his will and lowered their wicks, the flowers tightened their fists in the name of thrift, the porcelain lamps of ripe cocoa, the magnolia's jet dimmed on the one circuit with the ginger lilies and left a lonely bulb on the verandah, and, had his mandate extended to that ceiling of star-apple candelabra, he would have ordered the sky to sleep, saying, I'm tired, save the starlight for victories, we can't afford it, leave the moon on for one more hour,and that's it.
But though his power, the given mandate, extended from tangerine daybreaks to star-apple dusks, his hand could not dam that ceaseless torrent of dust that carried the shacks of the poor, to their root-rock music, down the gullies of Yallahs and August Town, to lodge them on thorns of maca, with their rags crucified by cactus, tins, old tires, cartons; from the black Warieka Hills the sky glowed fierce as the dials of a million radios, a throbbing sunset that glowed like a grid where the dread beat rose from the jukebox of Kingston.
He saw the fountains dried of quadrilles, the water-music of the country dancers, the fiddlers like fifes put aside.
He had to heal this malarial island in its bath of bay leaves, its forests tossing with fever, the dry cattle groaning like winches, the grass that kept shaking its head to remember its name.
No vowels left in the mill wheel, the river.
Rock stone.
Rock stone.
The mountains rolled like whales through phosphorous stars, as he swayed like a stone down fathoms into sleep, drawn by that magnet which pulls down half the world between a star and a star, by that black power that has the assassin dreaming of snow, that poleaxes the tyrant to a sleeping child.
The house is rocking at anchor, but as he falls his mind is a mill wheel in moonlight, and he hears, in the sleep of his moonlight, the drowned bell of Port Royal's cathedral, sees the copper pennies of bubbles rising from the empty eye-pockets of green buccaneers, the parrot fish floating from the frayed shoulders of pirates, sea horses drawing gowned ladies in their liquid promenade across the moss-green meadows of the sea; he heard the drowned choirs under Palisadoes, a hymn ascending to earth from a heaven inverted by water, a crab climbing the steeple, and he climbed from that submarine kingdom as the evening lights came on in the institute, the scholars lamplit in their own aquarium, he saw them mouthing like parrot fish, as he passed upward from that baptism, their history lessons, the bubbles like ideas which he could not break: Jamaica was captured by Penn and Venables, Port Royal perished in a cataclysmic earthquake.
Before the coruscating façades of cathedrals from Santiago to Caracas, where penitential archbishops washed the feet of paupers (a parenthetical moment that made the Caribbean a baptismal font, turned butterflies to stone, and whitened like doves the buzzards circling municipal garbage), the Caribbean was borne like an elliptical basin in the hands of acolytes, and a people were absolved of a history which they did not commit; the slave pardoned his whip, and the dispossessed said the rosary of islands for three hundred years, a hymn that resounded like the hum of the sea inside a sea cave, as their knees turned to stone, while the bodies of patriots were melting down walls still crusted with mute outcries of La Revolucion! "San Salvador, pray for us,St.
Thomas, San Domingo, ora pro nobis, intercede for us, Sancta Lucia of no eyes," and when the circular chaplet reached the last black bead of Sancta Trinidad they began again, their knees drilled into stone, where Colon had begun, with San Salvador's bead, beads of black colonies round the necks of Indians.
And while they prayed for an economic miracle, ulcers formed on the municipal portraits, the hotels went up, and the casinos and brothels, and the empires of tobacco, sugar, and bananas, until a black woman, shawled like a buzzard, climbed up the stairs and knocked at the door of his dream, whispering in the ear of the keyhole: "Let me in, I'm finished with praying, I'm the Revolution.
I am the darker, the older America.
" She was as beautiful as a stone in the sunrise, her voice had the gutturals of machine guns across khaki deserts where the cactus flower detonates like grenades, her sex was the slit throat of an Indian, her hair had the blue-black sheen of the crow.
She was a black umbrella blown inside out by the wind of revolution, La Madre Dolorosa, a black rose of sorrow, a black mine of silence, raped wife, empty mother, Aztec virgin transfixed by arrows from a thousand guitars, a stone full of silence, which, if it gave tongue to the tortures done in the name of the Father, would curdle the blood of the marauding wolf, the fountain of generals, poets, and cripples who danced without moving over their graves with each revolution; her Caesarean was stitched by the teeth of machine guns,and every sunset she carried the Caribbean's elliptical basin as she had once carried the penitential napkins to be the footbath of dictators, Trujillo, Machado, and those whose faces had yellowed like posters on municipal walls.
Now she stroked his hair until it turned white, but she would not understand that he wanted no other power but peace, that he wanted a revolution without any bloodshed, he wanted a history without any memory, streets without statues, and a geography without myth.
He wanted no armies but those regiments of bananas, thick lances of cane, and he sobbed,"I am powerless, except for love.
" She faded from him, because he could not kill; she shrunk to a bat that hung day and night in the back of his brain.
He rose in his dream.
(to be continued)


Written by G K Chesterton | Create an image from this poem

The Old Song

 A livid sky on London
And like the iron steeds that rear
A shock of engines halted
And I knew the end was near:
And something said that far away, over the hills and far away
There came a crawling thunder and the end of all things here.
For London Bridge is broken down, broken down, broken down, As digging lets the daylight on the suken streets of yore, The lightning looked on London town, the broken bridge of London town.
The ending of a broken road where men shall go no more.
I saw the kings of London town, The kings that buy and sell, That built it up with penny loaves And penny lies as well: And where the streets were paved with gold the shrivelled paper shone for gold, The scorching light of promises that pave the streets of hell.
For penny loaves will melt away, melt away, melt away, Mock the men that haggled in the grain they did not grow; With hungry faces in the gate, a hundred thousand in the gate, A thunder-flash on London and the finding of the foe.
I heard the hundred pin-makers Slow down their racking din, Till in the stillness men could hear The dropping of the pin: And somewhere men without the wall, beneath the wood, without the wall, Had found the place where London ends and England can begin.
For pins and needles bend and break, bend and break, bend and break, Faster than the breaking spears or the bending of the bow, Of pagents pale in thunder-light, 'twixt thunderload and thunderlight, The Hundreds marching on the hills in the wars of long ago.
I saw great Cobbett riding, The horseman of the shires; And his face was red with judgement And a light of Luddite fires: And south to Sussex and the sea the lights leapt up for liberty, The trumpet of the yeomanry, the hammer of the squires; For bars of iron rust away, rust away, rust away, Rend before the hammer and the horseman riding in, Crying that all men at the last, and at the worst and at the last, Have found the place where England ends and England can begin.
His horse-hoofs go before you Far beyond your bursting tyres; And time is bridged behind him And our sons are with our sires.
A trailing meteor on the Downs he rides above the rotting towns, The Horseman of Apocalypse, the Rider of the Shires.
For London Bridge is broken down, broken down, broken down; Blow the horn of Huntington from Scotland to the sea -- .
.
.
Only flash of thunder-light, a flying dream of thunder-light, Had shown under the shattered sky a people that were free.
Written by Robert Burns | Create an image from this poem

88. The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer

 YE Irish lords, ye knights an’ squires,
Wha represent our brughs an’ shires,
An’ doucely manage our affairs
 In parliament,
To you a simple poet’s pray’rs
 Are humbly sent.
Alas! my roupit Muse is hearse! Your Honours’ hearts wi’ grief ’twad pierce, To see her sittin on her **** Low i’ the dust, And scriechinh out prosaic verse, An like to brust! Tell them wha hae the chief direction, Scotland an’ me’s in great affliction, E’er sin’ they laid that curst restriction On aqua-vit&æ; An’ rouse them up to strong conviction, An’ move their pity.
Stand forth an’ tell yon Premier youth The honest, open, naked truth: Tell him o’ mine an’ Scotland’s drouth, His servants humble: The muckle deevil blaw you south If ye dissemble! Does ony great man glunch an’ gloom? Speak out, an’ never fash your thumb! Let posts an’ pensions sink or soom Wi’ them wha grant them; If honestly they canna come, Far better want them.
In gath’rin votes you were na slack; Now stand as tightly by your tack: Ne’er claw your lug, an’ fidge your back, An’ hum an’ haw; But raise your arm, an’ tell your crack Before them a’.
Paint Scotland greetin owre her thrissle; Her mutchkin stowp as toom’s a whissle; An’ d—mn’d excisemen in a bussle, Seizin a stell, Triumphant crushin’t like a mussel, Or limpet shell! Then, on the tither hand present her— A blackguard smuggler right behint her, An’ cheek-for-chow, a chuffie vintner Colleaguing join, Picking her pouch as bare as winter Of a’ kind coin.
Is there, that bears the name o’ Scot, But feels his heart’s bluid rising hot, To see his poor auld mither’s pot Thus dung in staves, An’ plunder’d o’ her hindmost groat By gallows knaves? Alas! I’m but a nameless wight, Trode i’ the mire out o’ sight? But could I like Montgomeries fight, Or gab like Boswell, 2 There’s some sark-necks I wad draw tight, An’ tie some hose well.
God bless your Honours! can ye see’t— The kind, auld cantie carlin greet, An’ no get warmly to your feet, An’ gar them hear it, An’ tell them wi’a patriot-heat Ye winna bear it? Some o’ you nicely ken the laws, To round the period an’ pause, An’ with rhetoric clause on clause To mak harangues; Then echo thro’ Saint Stephen’s wa’s Auld Scotland’s wrangs.
Dempster, 3 a true blue Scot I’se warran’; Thee, aith-detesting, chaste Kilkerran; 4 An’ that glib-gabbit Highland baron, The Laird o’ Graham; 5 An’ ane, a chap that’s damn’d aulfarran’, Dundas his name: 6 Erskine, a spunkie Norland billie; 7 True Campbells, Frederick and Ilay; 8 An’ Livistone, the bauld Sir Willie; 9 An’ mony ithers, Whom auld Demosthenes or Tully Might own for brithers.
See sodger Hugh, 10 my watchman stented, If poets e’er are represented; I ken if that your sword were wanted, Ye’d lend a hand; But when there’s ought to say anent it, Ye’re at a stand.
Arouse, my boys! exert your mettle, To get auld Scotland back her kettle; Or faith! I’ll wad my new pleugh-pettle, Ye’ll see’t or lang, She’ll teach you, wi’ a reekin whittle, Anither sang.
This while she’s been in crankous mood, Her lost Militia fir’d her bluid; (Deil na they never mair do guid, Play’d her that pliskie!) An’ now she’s like to rin red-wud About her whisky.
An’ Lord! if ance they pit her till’t, Her tartan petticoat she’ll kilt, An’durk an’ pistol at her belt, She’ll tak the streets, An’ rin her whittle to the hilt, I’ the first she meets! For God sake, sirs! then speak her fair, An’ straik her cannie wi’ the hair, An’ to the muckle house repair, Wi’ instant speed, An’ strive, wi’ a’ your wit an’ lear, To get remead.
Yon ill-tongu’d tinkler, Charlie Fox, May taunt you wi’ his jeers and mocks; But gie him’t het, my hearty cocks! E’en cowe the cadie! An’ send him to his dicing box An’ sportin’ lady.
Tell you guid bluid o’ auld Boconnock’s, 11 I’ll be his debt twa mashlum bonnocks, An’ drink his health in auld Nance Tinnock’s 12 Nine times a-week, If he some scheme, like tea an’ winnocks, Was kindly seek.
Could he some commutation broach, I’ll pledge my aith in guid braid Scotch, He needna fear their foul reproach Nor erudition, Yon mixtie-maxtie, ***** hotch-potch, The Coalition.
Auld Scotland has a raucle tongue; She’s just a devil wi’ a rung; An’ if she promise auld or young To tak their part, Tho’ by the neck she should be strung, She’ll no desert.
And now, ye chosen Five-and-Forty, May still you mither’s heart support ye; Then, tho’a minister grow dorty, An’ kick your place, Ye’ll snap your gingers, poor an’ hearty, Before his face.
God bless your Honours, a’ your days, Wi’ sowps o’ kail and brats o’ claise, In spite o’ a’ the thievish kaes, That haunt St.
Jamie’s! Your humble poet sings an’ prays, While Rab his name is.
POSTSCRIPTLET half-starv’d slaves in warmer skies See future wines, rich-clust’ring, rise; Their lot auld Scotland ne’re envies, But, blythe and frisky, She eyes her freeborn, martial boys Tak aff their whisky.
What tho’ their Phoebus kinder warms, While fragrance blooms and beauty charms, When wretches range, in famish’d swarms, The scented groves; Or, hounded forth, dishonour arms In hungry droves! Their gun’s a burden on their shouther; They downa bide the stink o’ powther; Their bauldest thought’s a hank’ring swither To stan’ or rin, Till skelp—a shot—they’re aff, a’throw’ther, To save their skin.
But bring a Scotchman frae his hill, Clap in his cheek a Highland gill, Say, such is royal George’s will, An’ there’s the foe! He has nae thought but how to kill Twa at a blow.
Nae cauld, faint-hearted doubtings tease him; Death comes, wi’ fearless eye he sees him; Wi’bluidy hand a welcome gies him; An’ when he fa’s, His latest draught o’ breathin lea’es him In faint huzzas.
Sages their solemn een may steek, An’ raise a philosophic reek, An’ physically causes seek, In clime an’ season; But tell me whisky’s name in Greek I’ll tell the reason.
Scotland, my auld, respected mither! Tho’ whiles ye moistify your leather, Till, whare ye sit on craps o’ heather, Ye tine your dam; Freedom an’ whisky gang thegither! Take aff your dram! Note 1.
This was written before the Act anent the Scotch distilleries, of session 1786, for which Scotland and the author return their most grateful thanks.
—R.
B.
[back] Note 2.
James Boswell of Auchinleck, the biographer of Johnson.
[back] Note 3.
George Dempster of Dunnichen.
[back] Note 4.
Sir Adam Ferguson of Kilkerran, Bart.
[back] Note 5.
The Marquis of Graham, eldest son of the Duke of Montrose.
[back] Note 6.
Right Hon.
Henry Dundas, M.
P.
[back] Note 7.
Probably Thomas, afterward Lord Erskine.
[back] Note 8.
Lord Frederick Campbell, second brother of the Duke of Argyll, and Ilay Campbell, Lord Advocate for Scotland, afterward President of the Court of Session.
[back] Note 9.
Sir Wm.
Augustus Cunningham, Baronet, of Livingstone.
[back] Note 10.
Col.
Hugh Montgomery, afterward Earl of Eglinton.
[back] Note 11.
Pitt, whose grandfather was of Boconnock in Cornwall.
[back] Note 12.
A worthy old hostess of the author’s in Mauchline, where he sometimes studies politics over a glass of gude auld Scotch Drink.
—R.
B.
[back]
Written by A E Housman | Create an image from this poem

Bredon Hill

 In summertime on Bredon
The bells they sound so clear;
Round both the shires they ring them
In steeples far and near,
A happy noise to hear.
Here of a Sunday morning My love and I would lie, And see the coloured counties, And hear the larks so high About us in the sky.
The bells would ring to call her In valleys miles away: 'Come all to church, good people; Good people, come and pray.
But here my love would stay.
And I would turn and answer Among the springing thyme, 'Oh, peal upon our wedding, And we will hear the chime, And come to church in time.
But when the snows at Christmas On Bredon top were strewn, My love rose up so early And stole out unbeknown And went to church alone.
They tolled the one bell only, Groom there was none to see, The mourners followed after, And so to church went she, And would not wait for me.
The bells they sound on Bredon, And still the steeples hum.
'Come all to church, good people,' - Oh, noisy bells, be dumb; I hear you, I will come.
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

Sussex

 God gave all men all earth to love,
 But, since our hearts are small
Ordained for each one spot should prove
 Beloved over all;
That, as He watched Creation's birth,
 So we, in godlike mood,
May of our love create our earth
 And see that it is good.
So one shall Baltic pines content, As one some Surrey glade, Or one the palm-grove's droned lament Before Levuka's Trade.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice The lot has fallen to me In a fair ground-in a fair ground -- Yea, Sussex by the sea! No tender-hearted garden crowns, No bosonied woods adorn Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs, But gnarled and writhen thorn -- Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim, And, through the gaps revealed, Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim, Blue goodness of the Weald.
Clean of officious fence or hedge, Half-wild and wholly tame, The wise turf cloaks the white cliff-edge As when the Romans came.
What sign of those that fought and died At shift of sword and sword? The barrow and the camp abide, The sunlight and the sward.
Here leaps ashore the full Sou'west All heavy-winged with brine, Here lies above the folded crest The Channel's leaden line, And here the sea-fogs lap and cling, And here, each warning each, The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring Along the hidden beach.
We have no waters to delight Our broad and brookless vales -- Only the dewpond on the height Unfed, that never fails -- Whereby no tattered herbage tells Which way the season flies -- Only our close-bit thyme that smells Like dawn in Paradise.
Here through the strong and shadeless days The tinkling silence thrills; Or little, lost, Down churches praise The Lord who made the hills: But here the Old Gods guard their round, And, in her secret heart, The heathen kingdom Wilfrid found Dreams, as she dwells, apart.
Though all the rest were all my share, With equal soul I'd see Her nine-and-thirty sisters fair, Yet none more fair than she.
Choose ye your need from Thames to Tweed, And I will choose instead Such lands as lie 'twixt Rake and Rye, Black Down and Beachy Head.
I will go out against the sun Where the rolled scarp retires, And the Long Man of Wilmington Looks naked toward the shires; And east till doubling Rother crawls To find the fickle tide, By dry and sea-forgotten walls, Our ports of stranded pride.
I will go north about the shaws And the deep ghylls that breed Huge oaks and old, the which we hold No more than Sussex weed; Or south where windy Piddinghoe's Begilded dolphin veers, And red beside wide-banked Ouse Lie down our Sussex steers.
So to the land our hearts we give Til the sure magic strike, And Memory, Use, and Love make live Us and our fields alike -- That deeper than our speech and thought, Beyond our reason's sway, Clay of the pit whence we were wrought Yearns to its fellow-clay.
God gives all men all earth to love, But, since man's heart is smal, Ordains for each one spot shal prove Beloved over all.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice The lot has fallen to me In a fair ground-in a fair ground -- Yea, Sussex by the sea!


Written by Wilfred Owen | Create an image from this poem

Anthem For Doomed Youth

 What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
 Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -- The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Written by A E Housman | Create an image from this poem

1887

 From Clee to heaven the beacon burns, 
The shires have seen it plain, 
From north and south the sign returns 
And beacons burn again.
Look left, look right, the hills are bright, The dales are light between, Because 'tis fifty years to-night That God has saved the Queen.
Now, when the flame they watch not towers About the soil they trod, Lads, we'll remember friends of ours Who shared the work with God.
To skies that knit their heartstrings right, To fields that bred them brave, The saviours come not home to-night: Themselves they could not save.
It dawns in Asia, tombstones show And Shropshire names are read; And the Nile spills his overflow Beside the Severn's dead.
We pledge in peace by farm and town The Queen they served in war, And fire the beacons up and down The land they perished for.
"God save the Queen" we living sing, From height to height 'tis heard; And with the rest your voices ring, Lads of the Fifty-third.
Oh, God will save her, fear you not: Be you the men you've been, Get you the sons your fathers got, And God will save the Queen.
Written by Rupert Brooke | Create an image from this poem

The Chilterns

 Your hands, my dear, adorable,
Your lips of tenderness
-- Oh, I've loved you faithfully and well,
Three years, or a bit less.
It wasn't a success.
Thank God, that's done! and I'll take the road, Quit of my youth and you, The Roman road to Wendover By Tring and Lilley Hoo, As a free man may do.
For youth goes over, the joys that fly, The tears that follow fast; And the dirtiest things we do must lie Forgotten at the last; Even Love goes past.
What's left behind I shall not find, The splendour and the pain; The splash of sun, the shouting wind, And the brave sting of rain, I may not meet again.
But the years, that take the best away, Give something in the end; And a better friend than love have they, For none to mar or mend, That have themselves to friend.
I shall desire and I shall find The best of my desires; The autumn road, the mellow wind That soothes the darkening shires.
And laughter, and inn-fires.
White mist about the black hedgerows, The slumbering Midland plain, The silence where the clover grows, And the dead leaves in the lane, Certainly, these remain.
And I shall find some girl perhaps, And a better one than you, With eyes as wise, but kindlier, And lips as soft, but true.
And I daresay she will do.
Written by Charles Kingsley | Create an image from this poem

Airly Beacon

 Airly Beacon, Airly Beacon; 
Oh, the pleasant sight to see 
Shires and towns from Airly Beacon, 
While my love climbed up to me! 

Airly Beacon, Airly Beacon; 
Oh, the happy hours we lay 
Deep in fern on Airly Beacon, 
Courting through the summer's day! 

Airly Beacon, Airly Beacon; 
Oh, the weary haunt for me, 
All alone on Airly Beacon, 
With his baby on my knee!

Book: Shattered Sighs