The Lane

The Lane

Original Text
John Swinnerton Phillimore, Things New and Old (London: Humphrey Milford, 1918): 61. Widener Library, Harvard University
1The lane runs deep in rabbit-riddled banks.
2    How many hundred years of wheel and hoof
3    And plodding feet that good cowhide makes proof
4Have grooved this rut, which lurks and winds and thanks
6    Of maple and spindlewood for eaves of roof
7    So large they almost fend high noon aloof?
8Up in the hedge the wind may play his pranks;
9Here the dead-calms of the after-sunset hour
10    Hold every scent afloat, immobilised,
11        Along the leafy-margin'd air-lagoon.
12Briarbush and honeysuckle and elderflower --
13    Each in his turn, you capture, analysed
14        In such retort, the essential sweets of June.

Notes

5] lissom: limber. Back to Line
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2005
Form