Page:Marlborough and other poems, Sorley, 1919.djvu/101

 Took shape and loomed and strengthened more

Greatly than they had guessed of yore.

And now the fight begins again,

The old war-joy, the old war-pain.

Sons of one school across the sea

We have no fear to fight—

And soon, O soon, I do not doubt it,

With the body or without it,

We shall all come tumbling down

To our old wrinkled red-capped town.

Perhaps the road up Ilsley way,

The old ridge-track, will be my way.

High up among the sheep and sky,

Look down on Wantage, passing by,

And see the smoke from Swindon town;

And then full left at Liddington,

Where the four winds of heaven meet

The earth-blest traveller to greet.

And then my face is toward the south,

There is a singing on my mouth:

Away to rightward I descry

My Barbury ensconced in sky,

Far underneath the Ogbourne twins,

And at my feet the thyme and whins,

The grasses with their little crowns

Of gold, the lovely Aldbourne downs,

And that old signpost (well I knew

That crazy signpost, arms askew, 83