May 8, 2008

• Grantchester
  
  The poem I am using for most of my text today was written by Rupert Brooke, who was described by W.B. Yeats as “the handsomest young man in England.” Brooke wrote his poem while in a cafe in Berlin in 1912. He was desperately homesick for just where I walked yesterday, Grantchester.
  
  

  
  

  
  

  Excerpts from The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
  
  (If you wish to read the whole thing, go HERE.  And, yes, these are all  original Sellers family photos taken Wednesday, except the tulips, which I took earlier.)
  

  
  
  
  

  Just now the lilac is in bloom,
  All before my little room;

  
  

  
  And in my flower-beds, I think,
  Smile the carnation and the pink;
  And down the borders, well I know,
  The poppy and the pansy blow . . .

  

  Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through,
  Beside the river make for you
  A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep
  Deeply above; and green and deep
  The stream mysterious glides beneath,
  Green as a dream and deep as death.

  

  — Oh, damn! I know it! and I know
  How the May fields all golden show,

  

  And when the day is young and sweet,
  Gild gloriously the bare feet
  That run to bathe . . .
                              ’Du lieber Gott!’

  Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot,
  And there the shadowed waters fresh
  Lean up to embrace the naked flesh.
  Temperamentvoll German Jews
  Drink beer around; — and THERE the dews
  Are soft beneath a morn of gold.
  Here tulips bloom as they are told;
  Unkempt about those hedges blows
  An English unofficial rose;

  

  And there the unregulated sun
  Slopes down to rest when day is done…

  ειθε γενοιμην . . . would I were
  In Grantchester, in Grantchester! —
  Some, it may be, can get in touch
  With Nature there, or Earth, or such.
  . . .
  I only know that you may lie
  Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,
  And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
  Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
  Until the centuries blend and blur
  In Grantchester, in Grantchester. . . .

  

  Still in the dawnlit waters cool
  His ghostly Lordship swims his pool,
  And tries the strokes, essays the tricks,
  Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx.
  Dan Chaucer hears his river still
  Chatter beneath a phantom mill.
  Tennyson notes, with studious eye,
  How Cambridge waters hurry by . . .

  
  

  . . .

  Grey heavens, the first bird’s drowsy calls,
  The falling house that never falls.

  

  God! I will pack, and take a train,
  And get me to England once again!
  For England’s the one land, I know,
  Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;
  And Cambridgeshire, of all England,
  The shire for Men who Understand;

  

  And of THAT district I prefer
  The lovely hamlet Grantchester.

  

  . . .
  But Grantchester! ah, Grantchester!
  There’s peace and holy quiet there,
  Great clouds along pacific skies,
  And men and women with straight eyes,
  Lithe children lovelier than a dream,
  A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream,
  And little kindly winds that creep
  Round twilight corners, half asleep.

  

  Ah God! to see the branches stir
  Across the moon at Grantchester!
  To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten
  Unforgettable, unforgotten
  River-smell, and hear the breeze
  Sobbing in the little trees.
  Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand
  Still guardians of that holy land?

  

  The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,
  The yet unacademic stream?
  Is dawn a secret shy and cold
  Anadyomene, silver-gold?

  

  And sunset still a golden sea
  From Haslingfield to Madingley?
  And after, ere the night is born,
  Do hares come out about the corn?
  Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
  Gentle and brown, above the pool?

  
  

  . . .
  Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
  And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
  Deep meadows yet, for to forget
  The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet
  Stands the Church clock at ten to three?

  

  And is there honey still for tea?

  
   
    

    
            
   

  • 11:22 am
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