Sonett-Forum

Home Thoughts Once More

I

A week of nights and days once more brings round
The Sabbath tide; and once ,again. the heart
Sets yearningly to homewards. Do they part
At the church door to-day, as when the stound

Of disillusioned fancy last unbound
Memory's deep wound, and in the bitter smart
The vision vanished? Ah, the shadows start
To life again across the haunted ground;

The kindly farewells said, the sauntering walk
Homee, through the sun-baked streets, by twos and twos,
The friendly flow of pleasant secular talk,

And personalities and trivial news.
And the long winding prospect of the day,
The feast of children yet shall wile away.


II

'Tis July, and a sunny stillness broods
On our magnificent England. Misty skies
Break into blue, and ripening harvests rise
Over her bosom. Her majestic woods

Ripple and sway before the varying moods
Of the west wind. The roses sacrifice
In every garden to the sun. There lies
Deep peace o'er all: no sound profane intrudes.

Far in the north the solemn mountains keep
A sanctuary amongst the shades that dwell
In the deep gloom of haunted Highland glens,

Where silence awes, and where for ever sleep
In lochs unfathomed and inscrutable
The shadows of the everlasting Bens.


III

There is another England, that which feeds
Our sinews where the champing engines chide
Beneath the settled darkness that doth hide
Earth's stricken face from Rotherham to Leeds.

Deep in that gloom the blinding furnace bleeds
A molten treasure: England is supplied;
A million hammers roar along the Clyde;
The transport of a million men proceeds.

And all this horror of the work of man,
Effacing God, I magnify and bless-
The way that leads out leading also through,

While God goes round to compass His great plan,
And out of ashes and of hideousness
By curse of toil Creation blooms anew.