LITTLEHOLME

(To J.S. and A.W.S.)


In entering the town, where the bright river
Shrinks in its white stone bed, old thoughts return
Of how a quiet queen was nurtured here
In the pale, shadowed ruin on the height;
Of how, when the hoar town was new and clean
And had not grown a part of the gaunt fells
That peered down into it, the burghers wove
On their small, fireside looms green, famous webs
To cling on lissome, tower-dwelling ladies
Who rode the hills swaying like green saplings,
Or mask tall, hardy outlaws from pursuit
Down beechen caverns and green under-lights,
(The rude, vain looms are gone, their beams are broken;
Their webs are now not seen, but memory
Still tangles in their mesh the dews they swept
Like ruby sparks, the lights they took, the scents
They held, the movement of their shapes and shades);
Of how the Border burners in cold dawns
Of Summer hurried North up the high vales
Past smoking farmsteads that had lit the night
And surf of crowding cattle; and of how
A laughing prince of cursed, impossible hopes
Rode through the little streets Northward to battle
And to defeat, to be a fading thought,
Belated in dead mountains of romance.