Up And Down by Walter De La Mare • Simple Poetry

Puck's Song

See you the ferny ride that steals
Into the oak-woods far?
O that was whence they hewed the keels
That rolled to Trafalgar.

And mark you where the ivy clings
To Bayham's mouldering walls?
O there we cast the stout railings
That stand around St. Paul's.

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
Ever since Domesday Book.

See you our stilly woods of oak,
And the dread ditch beside?
O that was ...

Rudyard

After London

London Bridge is broken down;
    Green is the grass on Ludgate Hill;
I know a farmer in Camden Town
    Killed a brock by Pentonville.

I have heard my grandam tell
    How some thousand years ago
Houses stretched from Camberwell
    Right to Highbury and Bow.

Down by Shadwell's golden meads
    Tall ships' masts would stand as thick
As the pretty tufted reeds
    That the Wapping children pick.

All the kings from end to end
    Of all the world paid tribute then,
And meekly on their knees would bend
    To the King of the Englishmen.

Thinks I while I dig my plot,
    What if your grandam's tales be true?
Thinks I, be they true or not,
    What's the odds to a fool like you?

Thinks I, while I smoke my pipe

J. D. C. Fellow

Off The Ground

Three jolly Farmers
Once bet a pound
Each dance the others would
Off the ground.
Out of their coats
They slipped right soon,
And neat and nicesome,
Put each his shoon.
One - Two - Three! -
And away they go,
Not too fast,
And not too slow;
Out from the elm-tree's
Noonday shadow,
Into the sun
And across the meadow.
Past the schoolroom,
With knees well bent
Fingers a-flicking,
They dancing went.
Up sides and over,
And round and round,
They crossed click-clacking,
The Parish bound,
By Tupman's meadow
They did their mile,
Tee-t-tum
On a three-barred stile.
Then straight through Whipham,
Downhill to Week,
Footing it lightsome,
But not too quick,
Up fields to Watchet,
And on through ...

Walter De La Mare

Lines

    When London was a little town
    Lean by the river's marge,
    The poet paced it with a frown,
    He thought it very large.

    He loved bright ship and pointing steeple
    And bridge with houses loaded
    And priests and many-coloured people...
    But ah, they were not woaded!

    Not all the walls could shed the spell
    Of meres and marshes green,
    Nor any chaffering merchant tell
    The beauty that had been:

    The crying birds at fall of night,
    The fisher in his coracle,
    And, grim on Ludgate's windy height,
    An oak-tree and an oracle.

    Sick for the past his hair he rent
    And dropt a tear in season;
    If he had cause for his lament
    We have much better reason.

    For n...

John Collings Squire, Sir

Off The Ground

Three jolly Farmers
    Once bet a pound
Each dance the others would
    Off the ground.
Out of their coats
    They slipped right soon,
And neat and nicesome
    Put each his shoon.
One - Two - Three! -
    And away they go,
Not too fast,
    And not too slow;
Out from the elm-tree's
    Noonday shadow,
Into the sun
    And across the meadow.
Past the schoolroom,
    With knees well bent
Fingers a-flicking,
    They dancing went.
Up sides and over,
    And round and round,
They crossed click-clacking,
    The Parish bound,
By Tupman's meadow
    They did their mile,
Tee-to-tum
    On a three-barred stile.
Then straight through Whipham,
    Downhill to Week,
Footing it lightsome,
    Bu...

Walter De La Mare

Highgate

    Angel Inn,
    come off a sign
    blown sideways
    in the sugar and ices
    night.

    Old St. Joseph's
    Cathedral, bottom
    of the hill, here
    Andrew Marvell
    of "coy mistress"
    fame sports a plaque
    remembering "time's
    winged chariot" and
    farther (further!) up
    a quaint pub gives accolades
    (Kudos, too) to the fact, 1666
    nefariously was the plague year
    in London - Parliament Hill,
    a brief arm stretch away,
    posited strangled chickens
    and other assorted heirlooms
    in vain attempt for poesy
    to thwart poxy.

    A stone's throw
    off in Hampstead Heath
    guns (Big Berthas) could
    be heard from the Somme,
    German derigibles...

Paul Cameron Brown

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