Poetry

Winter-in-Gordano

' MorE.—Gordan is a valley Somerset lying between a lino of hills and the Severn Sea. All its villages have hyphenated namtt4, " Walton-in-Gordano," " Weston-in-Gordano," &c. Hence the title of the poem-by analogy.] I

I AM in love again with Gothic

This ruinous quarry A gash of amethyst in the down, a riven Architectural hazard has led me .

Above its broken abrupt and toppling niches To the steep path that climbs through winter's purple Woodland hanging Over the valley of Gordan.

II And now beneath my feet the chalk-pits Of the ancient camp Gape in the bracken And Cadbury looks on Tickenham And the bells

Of lichened churches. Ring out Christmas.

III

I am alone amid the ilex shade

Amid the silvers Of birch and wintry hazel Amid the bells Calling me down again All Saints, St. Mary's

Peal out your loudest, I would hear you when

The evening wheels around me and below The chancel'd villages begin to shine And I remember and am full of night. IV She played here as a child And this blown upland Fashioned her And wildness out of the sky Quickened her gaze She need but look upon me And day begins and closes and the year Counts up its seasons : she is memory And I her vigil, and my words a bell Rocked in her tower 0 winter-in-Gordano When midnight quenches the strong blaze of sound In guttering belfries, I shall ring alone And she will hear me, she is solitude.

V This night of all, this night Lit with the bright Venice as with stars And fabled (there's no night so fabulous) Shall lead me to her We shall hear the bells Together once again before the last Remembering how we broke the holly boughs From echo-rifted woods - Red-robin holly The sharp spines in our fingers 0 simple spell All that's most unbelievable be near We have taken myths for thought And live on them. VI Now over the high woods Orion Now the frost of stars Branches and spreads and lovelier than the rime On leaves in Brockley hangs above Gordan

I dazzled by such brightness to deceiving

Walk here with her And I would go and find The church alit. Requiem has its candles And they give sweetest light 0 childish winter

O simple familiar spell

eyes close, eyes close The stars are in my brain, and I renounce The outer darkness Here on the down's high crest A buried camp my witness and this dream Of clanging sound blown upward, I renounce—.

0 simple familiar spell, 0 Gothic winter—

I renounce the logic of cities l R. N. D. Wir-sow.