from Ghent to Aix

Robert Browning

How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix

I SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
‘Good speed!’ cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
‘Speed!’ echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

It's the rhythm that's stuck in my mind since my months in the Mercers' School during the dying days of the nineteen thirties. I may not have remembered the name of the poet. I may have reversed the route of the riders - but the rhythm is still there. Especially the second line I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;

Not much of the poetry we went through at school remains in my mind. Something about the Lady of Shallot. Young Lochinvar coming out of the west. If I should die, think only this of me. It was as if The War was only just before my time. There were uncles who had dug trenches on the Western Front. Another who served at Gallipoli. When the resumption of War loomed in 1938, the spirit of Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori was still very tangibly surrounding us.

An aunt in the City of the Angels sent us the comic section of the Los Angeles Examiner every week. I was struck by the front page banner. "What fools these mortals be" - Puck.

francis cameron, oxford, 10 december 2010

Posted via email from franciscameron's posterous