THE BEACH ROAD BY THE WOOD

I know a beach road, A road where I would go, It runs up northward From Cooden Bay to Hoe; And there, in the High Woods, Daffodils grow.

And whoever walks along there Stops short and sees, By the moist tree-roots In a clearing of the trees, Yellow great battalions of them, Blowing in the breeze.

While the spring sun brightens, And the dull sky clears, They blow their golden trumpets, Those golden trumpeteers! They blow their golden trumpets And they shake their glancing spears.

And all the rocking beech-trees Are bright with buds again, And the green and open spaces Are greener after rain, And far to southward one can hear The sullen, moaning rain.

Once before I die I will leave the town behind, The loud town, the dark town That cramps and chills the mind, And I'll stand again bareheaded there In the sunlight and the wind.

Yes, I shall stand Where as a boy I stood Above the dykes and levels In the beach road by the wood, And I'll smell again the sea breeze, Salt and harsh and good.

And there shall rise to me From that consecrated ground The old dreams, the lost dreams That years and cares have drowned; Welling up within me And above me and around The song that I could never sing And the face I never found.

Geoffrey Howard