THE LANE - Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Poems

 
 

Poems » wilfrid scawen blunt » the lane

THE LANE

The lane runs deep in rabbit-riddled banks.
    How many hundred years of wheel and hoof
    And plodding feet that good cowhide makes proof
Have grooved this rut, which lurks and winds and thanks
The burly stools of oak, the lissom ranks
    Of maple and spindlewood for eaves of roof
    So large they almost fend high noon aloof?
Up in the hedge the wind may play his pranks;

Here the dead-calms of the after-sunset hour
    Hold every scent afloat, immobilised,
        Along the leafy-margin'd air-lagoon.
Briarbush and honeysuckle and elderflower --
    Each in his turn, you capture, analysed
        In such retort, the essential sweets of June.