| Abstract | I saw the children playing
Just as we used to play,
Tumbling down that grassy mound
Born of a bygone day;
And all the old awareness
Of meadow, brook, and tree,
Of yellow gorse and wild-rose,
Renewed itself to me.
There stand the May-white hawthorns
Unchanged in memory's view,
Poised above the old Spring Pond
Where water-cress once grew;
And there, I swear, the very same
Hand-scratching bramble clumps:
And there the stinging-nettles
Which covered knees in bumps.
Remember how the mighty Shires
Of plough or binder free,
Would gamble 'midst the buttercups
In child-like ecstasy;
And startled, skittish bullocks
Who not be be outdone,
With lifted tails and lashing legs
Would round the meadow run ?
But now no gambling of Shires,
No questing cattle graze;
And alien Poplars, row on row
Bestride once sunlit ways.
Grass upon tussocked grass
Where once a sledge ran true;
Encroaching Oaks, bird sown
Where once there was a view;
And overall the feeling
Of time remorseless flown,
Of a garden once well-tended
Now neglected and overgrown.
Yet when the dark is stealing
Across the Autumn sky,
And the lights glow in St. Peters [ Note 1 ]
With its steeple proud and high,
Ah, then be humbly grateful
That of such a loved domain,
So little has been altered,
So many joys remain.
Note 1 St Peters is now, alas, redundant, and its future in doutbt
The Bailey Meadow is north east of St. Peters Church, Birch. It takes its name from Birch Castle, the site of which was a little southwest of the Church. A brook runs along the northern side of the meadow and at the eastern end are some earthworks - the remains of a dam across the brook ? There is a steep slope along most of the meadow, and halfway down, there was what we thought had been a golf bunker. With snow in the winter, it was a good slope for sledging, the bunker adding a bit of excitement. If you went too far, you ended up in the pond at the bottom. It was a favourite spot for us in the 1950s. [ Tony Millatt ]
From St. Peter's Quartet
See also
Reflections in the Churchyard of St. Peter's, Birch
When Remembrance was new
Spring Wedding
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