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
Rhyme
Form