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Robert Laurence Binyon - Inheritance
Work rating: Low

I
 To a bare blue hill
 Wings an old thought roaming,
 At a random touch
 Of memory homing.

 The first of England
 These eyes to fill
 Was the lifted head
 Of that proud hill

 As lion--fronted
 Alone it warded
 The vale, and the far
 Bright West regarded.

 Who knows what wells
 Are a child`s unthinking
 Eyes? What skies
 Thro` the clear of them sinking

 Have for ever coloured
 A mind that springs
 From buried hope, dumb prayer,
 Prized small things

 Precious to dust that once
 Throbbed in hearts, now
 Crumbled, where ignorant
 Passes the plough?


II
 I have walked by streams
 In shadowy places
 Where wild--rose June
 With the moon embraces,

 And smelt the magic
 Of dew--drenched herbs
 In a hush that trances,
 Delights, disturbs.

 I have roamed in a frail mist`s
 Filtered gold
 The Downs, so cleanly
 And smooth and old.

 I know how the shower--light
 Touches gray spires
 In the slumbrous bosom
 Of the elmy shires;

 And lying on warm thyme
 Watched at the sheer
 Black cliff the grand wave
 Lunge and rear,

 When the whole Atlantic
 Amassed recoils
 And in indolent thunder
 Bursts and boils.

 I have followed the Romans`
 Wall that wound
 Over lone moors, leaving
 The Druid mound

 In the secret hills
 Where the lost race lies,
 Dreaming the dream
 That the world denies;

 A dream that the voices
 Of England have sung,
 That is born in the blood
 And the eyes of the young.


III
 O English earth
 `Mid the blown seas lying
 Green, green,
 When the birds come flying

 Out of the empty south
 To the old willow,
 Ash, thorn, chestnut--
 Boughs that they know--

 Sweet, sweet, sweet to be
 Back in May bowers
 When the grass grows tall
 Round the English flowers.

 O the light on tost clouds
 As you take to your breast
 Your stormy lover,
 The strong South--West,

 That breathes a wild whisper
 In youth`s thrilled ear,
 Of strange things, of far things,
 Of glory and fear!

 But the things that are dearest
 You have told them never;
 They are deep in our veins
 For ever and ever;

 They come over the mind
 When the world`s noise is still
 As to me comes the vision
 Of one blue hill,

 Beautiful, dark,
 And solitary,
 The first of England
 That spoke to me.
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