Part 1 (2/2)

See you the dimpled track that runs All hollow through the wheat?

O that was where they hauled the guns That smote King Philip's fleet.

Out of the Weald, the secret Weald, Men sent in ancient years, The horse-shoes red at Flodden Field, The arrows at Poitiers.

See you our little mill that clacks, So busy by the brook?

She has ground her corn and paid her tax Ever since Domesday Book.

See you our stilly woods of oak?

And the dread ditch beside?

O that was where the Saxons broke On the day that Harold died.

See you the windy levels spread About the gates of Rye?

O that was where the Northmen fled, When Alfred's s.h.i.+ps came by.

See you our pastures wide and lone, Where the red oxen browse?

O there was a City thronged and known.

Ere London boasted a house.

And see you, after rain, the trace Of mound and ditch and wall?

O that was a Legion's camping-place, When Caesar sailed from Gaul.

And see you marks that show and fade, Like shadows on the Downs?

O they are the lines the Flint Men made, To guard their wondrous towns.

Trackway and Camp and City lost, Salt Marsh where now is corn; Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease, And so was England born!

She is not any common Earth, Water or wood or air, But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye, Where you and I will fare.

THE WAY THROUGH THE WOODS

They shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago.

Weather and rain have undone it again, And now you would never know There was once a road through the woods Before they planted the trees.

It is underneath the coppice and heath, And the thin anemones.

Only the keeper sees That, where the ring-dove broods.

And the badgers roll at ease, There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods Of a summer evening late, When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools Where the otter whistles his mate.

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