If England, her spirit lives anywhere <br />It is by Severn, by hawthorns and grand willows. <br />Earth heaves up twice a hundred feet in air <br />And ruddy clay falls scooped out to the weedy shallows. <br />There in the brakes of May Spring has her chambers, <br />Robing-rooms of hawthorn, cowslip, cuckoo flower — <br />Wonder complete changes for each square joy's hour, <br />Past thought miracles are there and beyond numbers. <br />If for the drab atmospheres and managed lighting <br />In London town, Oriana's playwrights had <br />Wainlode her theatre and then coppice clad <br />Hill for her ground of sauntering and idle waiting. <br />Why, then I think, our chiefest glory of pride <br />(The Elizabethans of Thames, South and Northern side) <br />Would nothing of its needing be denied, <br />And her sons praises from England's mouth again be outcried.<br /><br />Ivor Gurney<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/by-severn/
