PAX ROMANA

Posted by Admin on 28 June 2006, 12:00 am

Across the road, where once in meadowland
some eighty years ago I wandered, free
to gather mushrooms – seek the egg-filled nests –
for tadpoles scan and dredge a reed-framed pond –
in Autumn there to pick the ripened nodes –
there rises now a mass of concrete, steel,
and opaque glass, where Science has its day:
dull architecture where the lark in song
epitomised the mood of youth below.
Exulting bird, and happy boy – alas,
how long ago!
I turn about: the view presents a church,
Prince Albert’s own, in sloping fields that meet
Medina’s flow. My eyes, exploring, reach
the downs, beyond which Brading lies and keeps,
in tesserae, its relic of a cultured past.
Myself a relic, I just stand and dream,
and musing there salute the Second Legion.