The Excursion

The blue of summer morning begs

The country journey to be made,

The sun that gilds the breakfast eggs

Illuminates the marmalade.

A cheque is smiling on the desk.

Remembered smells upon the lane

Breed hunger for the picaresque

To blood the buried springs again.

Here is the pub and here the church

And there our thirty miles of sun,

The river and the rod and the perch,

The noonday drinking just begun.

Let beer beneath the neighbour trees

Swill all that afternoon away,

And onions, crisp to sullen cheese,

Yield the sharp succulence of today.

Today remembers breaking out

The fire that burned the hayfield black.

An army that was grey with drought

Shows to my stick its fossil track.

Returning evening rose on rose

Or pomegranate rouge and ripe;

The lamp upon the pavement throws

The ectoplasm of my pipe.