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Title: Of England
Author: John Presland [
More Titles by Presland]
White is for purity, blue for heaven's grace,
Purple is for Emperors, sitting in their place,
Yellow is for happiness, rose for Love's embrace,
But green--oh green, the green of England--that's for Paradise!
From seashore to seashore races the green tide;
With the pricking green of hedges by the wet roadside
--Or ever March triumphant comes with great, glad stride--
There is green, there's green in England, and a tale of Paradise.
Then the hawthorns flush and tremble in their early wondrous green,
And the willows are resplendent in a green-and-golden sheen,
Like the golden tents of princes, Babylonish, Damascene,
Or enchanted silent fountains of a Persian Paradise.
There are beech and birch and elm-tree--evening-still or morning-tossed--
And the splendid generous chestnuts with their flame-like blooms embossed,
There are oak and ash and elder, till the very sun is lost
In the green, delicious gloaming that's the light of Paradise.
Deeper, wider, steadier this beauty ever grows,
And from field-side up to tree-top the endless colour flows,
Till road and house and wayside, in the first days of the rose,
Are fathoms deep in waves of green, submerged in Paradise.
Oh dim and lovely hollows of all the woods that be;
Oh sunlight on the uplands, like a calm, great sea;
I think indeed the souls of those from circumstance set free
Look down, look down on England, saying: "Ah, dear Paradise!"
[The end]
John Presland's poem: Of England
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