Louise Imogen Guiney (Луиза Имоджен Гвини)

To a Child

Dear Owain, when you are minded
To gather the perfect thing,
Over Abergavenny
Climb in the evening!—
I have seen where orchis dances
A saraband with the Spring;

Where samphire leans to ocean,
And shakes in the word he saith;
Or the brood of the peasant ragweed,
Innocent, sweet of breath,
Runs with a wild Welsh river
That never has heard of death;

Where thrift, with a foot shell-tinted,
On the dark coast-road delays;
And foxglove flames in a ruin;
And campion meekly lays
On a crag’s uneven shoulder
Her satiny cheek, for days.

Well: these in their mortal beauty,
And these in their youth, abound.
But over Abergavenny,
Past sunset-hour, I found
(O Holy Grail of a flower!)
The sun on the hilltop ground.

Louise Imogen Guiney’s other poems:

  1. Undertones at Magdalen
  2. Columba and the Stork
  3. Writ in my Lord Clarendon’s “History of the Rebellion”
  4. An Epitaph for William Hazlitt
  5. On Leaving Winchester

Poems of other poets with the same name (Стихотворения других поэтов с таким же названием):

  • Francis Thompson (Фрэнсис Томпсон) To a Child (“Whenas my life shall time with funeral tread”)
  • Edmund Gosse (Эдмунд Госс) To a Child (“Thou hast the colors of the spring”)
  • Henry Longfellow (Генри Лонгфелло) To a Child (“Dear child! how radiant on thy mother’s knee”)




    To the dedicated English version of this website