England and Yesterday

<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</SPAN></span></p> <h2>A MEMORY OF A BRECONSHIRE VALLEY.</h2> <div class="poetry-container"> <div class="poetry"> <div class="verse">—“<i>Patulis ubi vallibus errans,</i></div> <div class="verse"><i>Subjacet aëriis montibus Isca pater.</i>”</div> <div class="sig"><i>Ad Posteros.</i></div> </div></div> <h3>I.</h3> <div class="poetry-container"> <div class="poetry"> <div class="verse">I followed thee, wild stream of Paradise,</div> <div class="verse">White Usk, forever showering the sunned bee</div> <div class="verse">In the pink chestnut and the hawthorn tree;</div> <div class="verse">And, all along, had magical surmise</div> <div class="verse">Of mountains fluctuant in those vesper skies,</div> <div class="verse">As unto mermen, caverned in mid-sea,</div> <div class="verse">Far up the vast green reaches, soundlessly</div> <div class="verse">The giant rollers form, and fall, and rise.</div> <div class="verse">Above thy poet’s dust, by yonder yew,</div> <div class="verse">Ere distance perished, ere a star began,</div> <div class="verse">His clear monastic measure, heard of few,</div> <div class="verse">Through lonelier glens of mine own being ran;</div> <div class="verse">And thou to me wert dear, because I knew</div> <div class="verse">The God who made thee gracious, and the man.</div> </div></div> <h3>II.</h3> <div class="poetry-container"> <div class="poetry"> <div class="verse"> If, by that second lover’s power controlled,</div> <div class="verse">In sweet symbolic rite thy breath o’erfills</div> <div class="verse">Fields of no war with vagrant daffodils,</div> <div class="verse">From distance unto distance trailing gold;</div> <div class="verse">If dazzling sands or thickets thee enfold,</div> <div class="verse">Transfigured Usk, where from their mossy sills</div> <div class="verse"><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</SPAN></span>Gray hamlets kiss thee, and by herded hills</div> <div class="verse">Diviner run thy shallows than of old;—</div> <div class="verse">If intellectual these, O name thy Vaughan</div> <div class="verse">Creator too: and close his memory keep,</div> <div class="verse">Who from thy fountain, kind to him, hath drawn</div> <div class="verse">Birth, energy, and joy; devotion deep;</div> <div class="verse">A play of thought more mystic than the dawn;</div> <div class="verse">And death at home; and centuried sylvan sleep.</div> </div></div> <hr> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />