Weary of this town of peopled pain
I set my path towards the country plain
to wander there, to gaze, to think alone
to hear again the woodland's drone
Lost in meadow, field and glade
I sought the calm of dappled shade
Sometime, I crossed a log-made bridge
Or, viewed a valley from fir-toothed ridge
So still the air - I heard the bluebell's ******
and caught a hidden thrush's eye atwinkle
as from thorn hedged cover with a thrill
silence welcomed its quavering trill.
Half across an old wind-weathered stile
I paused to gaze upon the scene awhile:
"Who could have made this?" Was my thought.
"What breath breathed this? What hands this wrought?"
Before me stretched a wonderous natural land
un designed by humankind - some primordial hand
Who once this world's existence stipulated
then taking elements, atoms, molecules them manipulated.
Into myriad mists of time has humankind dissolved
bearing a triple question unresolved:
How did We come? Why? Where Goest We?
If I knew the answers - would few believe me?
Called by larks from thoughts of life's meaning
I saw a sparkling brook down a valley streaming
Silvery-voiced it beckoned - come and slake
your thirst, come quaff amid my bubbling wake.
I, deep in the babbling water's bottom spied
a bright round pebble washed and pied:
it invited - perchance you'll take me
to London in a place called Stepney.
In my boiling mouth it found a place
cooling the bulge it made upon my face.
Refreshed in spirit - I made my homeward way
pebble-tongued across the new mown hay.
Tobias.
I wrote this long poem attempting a Tennysonian tone and tempo similar to that he achieved in his poem _ The Brook - adding, I hoped, a Swinburnian swing. There is still another 20 completed stanza...