Up the ash tree climbs the ivy, <br />Up the ivy climbs the sun, <br />With a twenty-thousand pattering, <br />Has a valley breeze begun, <br />Feathery ash, neglected elder, <br />Shift the shade and make it run - <br /> <br />Shift the shade toward the nettles, <br />And the nettles set it free, <br />To streak the stained Carrara headstone, <br />Where, in nineteen-twenty-three, <br />He who trained a hundred winners, <br />Paid the Final Entrance Fee. <br /> <br />Leathery limbs of Upper Lambourne, <br />Leathery skin from sun and wind, <br />Leathery breeches, spreading stables, <br />Shining saddles left behind - <br />To the down the string of horses <br />Moving out of sight and mind. <br /> <br />Feathery ash in leathery Lambourne <br />Waves above the sarsen stone, <br />And Edwardian plantations <br />So coniferously moan <br />As to make the swelling downland, <br />Far surrounding, seem their own.<br /><br />John Betjeman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/upper-lambourne/
