The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and main;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
– The other seeming to look on –
And stands anonymous again
Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps
Two dozen distances surficed
To fable them: faint afternoons
Of Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,
Whereby their names were artificed
To inlay faded, classic Junes –
Silks at the start: against the sky
Numbers and parasols: outside,
Squadrons of empty cars, and heat,
And littered grass : then the long cry
Hanging unhushed till it subside
To stop-press columns on the street.
Do memories plague their ears like flies?
They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.
Summer by summer all stole away,
The starting-gates, the crowd and cries –
All but the unmolesting meadows.
Almanacked, their names live; they
Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,
And not a fieldglass sees them home,
Or curious stop-watch prophesies:
Only the grooms, and the grooms boy,
With bridles in the evening come.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Низами Гянджеви – Ты видишь: я твой давний друг
- Огюст Барбье – Джин
- Алексей Плещеев – Цветок
- softly… in wingless dream by Steve Troyanovich
- The Gardener XIX: You Walked by Rabindranath Tagore
- Farewell To Italy poem – Alfred Austin
- At the Mid Hour of Night by Thomas Moore
- Шекспир – По совести скажи – Сонет 10
- Владимир Маяковский – Даешь тухлые яйца
- The Young British Soldier by Rudyard Kipling
- Владимир Высоцкий – Говорят, лезу прямо под нож
- Magic Markers by Rose Mary Boehm
- Everymaid by John Oxenham
- Memoriam A. H. H.: 67. When on my bed the moonlight fall poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- 1914 IV: The Dead by Rupert Brooke
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).

Philip Arthur Larkin (1922-1985), Commander of the Order of the British Empire, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Cavalier of the Order of the Companions of Honour, was an English poet, novelist, and librarian.