It took six and a half hours to reach Machynlleth and the CAT, and part of this journey was through a gloriously autumnal landscape from Y Fenni to beyond Ludlow where Caer Caradoc slipped into the darkness. This is the England I'd live in were I not content in Wiltshire. As night came in, and the train eased its way through the Marches and into Wales, I read some Housman who, while not to everyone's taste, is to mine.
On forelands high in heaven,
'Tis many a year gone by,
Amidst the fall of even
Would stand my friends and I.
Before our foolish faces
Lay lands we did not see;
Our eyes were in the places
Where we should never be.
`Oh, the pearl seas are yonder,
The amber-sanded short;
Shires where the girls are fonder,
Towns where the pots hold more.
And here fret we and moulder
By grange and rick and shed
And every moon are older,
And soon we shall be dead.'
Heigho, 'twas true and pity;
But there we lads must stay.
Troy was a steepled city,
But Troy was far away.
And round we turned lamenting
To homes we longed to leave,
And silent hills indenting
The orange band of eve.
I see the air benighted
And all the dusking dales,
And lamps in England lighted,
And evening wrecked on Wales;
And starry darkness paces
The road from sea to sea,
And blots the foolish faces
Of my poor friends and me.
Respond