Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A SONG OF STRATFORD, by DOROTHY GOLDSMITH HARTT


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A SONG OF STRATFORD, by                    
First Line: Where avon's slow and silver stream
Last Line: Remembered footsteps pass!
Subject(s): Avon (river), England; Rivers; Stratford-on-avon, England


Where Avon's slow and silver stream
Through lovely Warwick flows,
There blooms the golden English gorse,
The gallant Tudor rose!
And Stratford town is garlanded
With wreaths of poetry,
Entwined of sweet forget-me-nots
And fragrant rosemary.

An old bridge spans the gentle shore
Where sways the columbine,
And foxgloves grow, and violets,
And graceful eglantine;
The pansy lifts its thoughtful face,
Tall lilies scent the air,
All clustered fadeless through the years
For pilgrims ling'ring there.

O'er gardens gay the rainbow bends,
Like arching arbors where
The flowering lime and lilac fling
Their petaled perfume rare.
Broad fields are bright with daffodils,
And daisies shining white
Repeat the far celestial stars
That glorify the night!

In every copse and hawthorn hedge
The thrush divinely sings,
In azure flight the lark ascends
On music's soaring wings;
Though shower and shadow briefly dim
The smiling summer day,
The blackbird and the mavis pipe
A lyric roundelay.

A fig tree flaunts its purple fruit
Against a trellised wall;
From ruddy eaves the noisy rooks
Continuously call;
Quaint houses, timbered and demure,
The sylvan lanes define,
And cherished through time-mellowed years,
The Birthplace is a shrine!

The hills are periwinkle-blue
When dusk its incense spills,
And silence, muted as a dream,
The twilight hour distills.
A vesper bell from ivied tower
Intones its cadenced chime,
A sundial, lichened-gray, records
The measured tread of time.

The deathless quill of Stratford's son
A great Queen paused to praise
Ere riding on to Kenilworth
In royal Tudor days!
When candles glow at eventide
Through mullioned bottle glass,
Mysteriously through dark streets
Remembered footsteps pass!





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