A Salutation
HIGH-HEARTED Surrey ! I do love your ways,
Venturous, frank, romantic, vehement,
All with inviolate honor sealed and blent
To the axe-edge that cleft your soldier-bays
Your ardent youth, your friendships, whims, and frays ;
Your strict, sweet verse, with its imperious bent,
Heard as in dreams from some old harper’s tent,
And stirring in the listener’s brain for days.
Good father-poet! If to-night there be
At Framlingham none but the north wind’s sighs,
No guard save moonlight’s crossed and trailing spears,
Smile yet upon the pilgrim named like me
Close at your gates, whose fond and weary eyes
Sought not one other down three hundred years !
Venturous, frank, romantic, vehement,
All with inviolate honor sealed and blent
To the axe-edge that cleft your soldier-bays
Your ardent youth, your friendships, whims, and frays ;
Your strict, sweet verse, with its imperious bent,
Heard as in dreams from some old harper’s tent,
And stirring in the listener’s brain for days.
Good father-poet! If to-night there be
At Framlingham none but the north wind’s sighs,
No guard save moonlight’s crossed and trailing spears,
Smile yet upon the pilgrim named like me
Close at your gates, whose fond and weary eyes
Sought not one other down three hundred years !
Louise Imogen Guiney.