And yet I know that far in that wood Are crumbling bones, And a mumble mumble of nothing that’s good, In heathen tones.
And I know that frail ghosts flutter and sigh In brambles there, And never a bird or beast to cry— Beware, beware,—
While threading the silent thickets go Mother and son, Where scrupulous berries never grow, And airs are none.
And her deep eyes peer at eventide Out of the wood, And her tall son waits by the dark woodside, For maidenhood.
And the little eyes peer, and peer, and peer; And a word is said. And some house knows, for many a year, But years of dread.
Now love, her mantle thrown, Goes naked by, Threading the woods alone, Her royal eye Happy because the primroses again Break on the winter continence of men.
I saw her pass to-day In Warwickshire, With the old imperial way, The old desire, Fresh as among those other flowers they went, More beautiful for Adon’s discontent.
Those other years she made Her festival When the blue eggs were laid And lambs were tall, By the Athenian rivers while the reeds Made love melodious for the Ganymedes.
And now through Cantlow brakes, By Wilmcote hill, To Avon-side, she makes Her garlands still, And I who watch her flashing limbs am one With youth whose days three thousand years are done.
Blue skies are over Cotswold And April snows go by, The lasses turn their ribbons For April’s in the sky, And April is the season When Sabbath girls are dressed, From Rodboro’ to Campden, In all their silken best.
An ankle is a marvel When first the buds are brown, And not a lass but knows it From Stow to Gloucester town. And not a girl goes walking Along the Cotswold lanes But knows men’s eyes in April Are quicker than their brains.
It’s little that it matters, So long as you’re alive, If you’re eighteen in April, Or rising sixty-five, When April comes to Amberley With skies of April blue, And Cotswold girls are briding With slyly tilted shoe.
Black in the summer night my Cotswold hill Aslant my window sleeps, beneath a sky Deep as the bedded violets that fill March woods with dusky passion. As I lie Abed between cool walls I watch the host Of the slow stars lit over Gloucester plain, And drowsily the habit of these most Beloved of English lands moves in my brain, While silence holds dominion of the dark, Save when the foxes from the spinneys bark.