25 AUGUST 1939, Page 13

PRIMROSE HILL

THEY cut the trees away I By day the lean guns leer Across their concrete walls; The evening falls

On four guns tucked in bed.

The top of the hill is bare, But the trees beneath it stretch Through Regent's Park and reach A rim of jewelled lights— The music of the fair.

And the wind gets up and blows The lamps between the trees And all the leaves are waves And the top of Primrose Hill A raft on stormy seas.

Some night the raft will lift Upon a larger swell, And the evil sirens call And the searchlights quest and shift, And out of the Milky Way The impartial bombs will fall.

LOUIS MACNEICE,