Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/1171

 EDMUND BLUNDEN

From this church they led their brides, From this church themselves were led

Shoulder-high, on these waysides Sat to take their beer and bread.

Names are gone what men they were

These their cottages declare.

Names are vanish'd, save the few In the old brown Bible scrawPd;

These were men of pith and thew Whom the city never call'd;

Scarce could read or hold a quill,

Built the barn, the forge, the mill.

On the green they watch'd their sons

Playing till too dark to see, As their fathers watch'd them once,

As my father once watch'd me; While the bat and beetle flew On the warm air webb'd with dew.

Unrecorded, unrenown'd,

Men from whom my ways begin,

Here I know you by your ground But I know you not within

There is silence, there survives

Not a moment of your lives.

Like the bee that now is blown

Honey-heavy on my hand, From his toppling tansy-throne

In the green tempestuous land I'm in clover now, rior know Who made honey long ago.

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