One comes across the strangest things in walks, <br />Fragment of Abbey tithe barns fixed in modern, <br />With Dutch-sort houses, where the water baulks <br />Weired up, and brick-kilns broken among fern. <br />Old troughs, great stone cisterns bishops might have blessed <br />And baptized from, most worthy mounting stones; <br />Black timber in red brick, surprisingly placed <br />Where hill stone was looked for, and a manor's bones <br />Spied in the frame of some wisteria'd house, <br />And mill-falls and sedge-pools, and Saxon faces <br />Stream sources happened upon in unlikely places <br />And Roman looking hills of small degree. <br />The surprise, the good in dignity of poplars <br />At a roads end, or the white Cotswold scars. <br />Sheets spread out spotless against the hazel tree. <br />But toothless old men, bubbling over with jokes <br />And deadly serious once the speaking finished. <br />Beauty is less after all than strange comical folks <br />And the wonder of them never and never can become diminished.<br /><br />Ivor Gurney<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/encounters-3/
