Brian Strand

That English man with an English tongue Abbreviating the world into song Nothing he wrote was ever long And yet to every piece the sense clung Making English days and place As close as home to us, the student Of form and letters, and art still argent Used words naked without the lace Of liquid emotions, he would tell In tones of heaven the truth of hell. He is my brother still beyond verse And sweet the days when we converse Of Byron, Keats, or Wordsworth And felt the rich embrace of earth. Always did I pray his pen write still And that his English fire never chill.