English Poetry. Louise Imogen Guiney. Rooks in New College Gardens. Луиза Имоджен Гвини.

Louise Imogen Guiney (Луиза Имоджен Гвини)

Rooks in New College Gardens

Through rosy cloud, and over thorny towers,
Their wings with darkling autumn distance filled,
From Isis’ valley border, hundred-hilled,
The rooks are crowding home as evening lowers:
Not for men only, and their musing hours,
By battled walls did gracious Wykeham build
These dewy spaces early sown and stilled,
These dearest inland melancholy bowers.
Blest birds! A book held open on the knee
Below, is all they guess of Adam’s blight:
With surer art the while, and simpler rite,
They follow Truth in some monastic tree,
Where breathe against their docile breasts, by night,
The scholar’s star, the star of sanctity.

Louise Imogen Guiney’s other poems:

1. Undertones at Magdalen
2. Columba and the Stork
3. The Graham Tartan to a Graham
4. Writ in my Lord Clarendon’s “History of the Rebellion”
5. An Epitaph for William Hazlitt

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