ple.'
2. As the critic Christopher Ricks pointed out, Hill was born on 18.6.32 (June 18, 1932).
.
MERCIAN HYMNS / 272 7
September fattens on vines. Roses
flake from the wall. Th e smoke
of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.
This is plenty. This is more than enough.
From Mercian Hymns1 6
The princes of Mercia were badger and raven. Thrall to their freedom, I dug and hoarded. Orchards fruited above clefts. I drank from honeycombs of chill sandstone.
5 'A boy at odds in the house, lonely among brothers.' But I, who had none, fostered a strangeness; gave myself to unattainable toys.
Candles of gnarled resin, apple-branches, the tacky mistletoe. 'Look' they said and again 'look.' But 10 I ran slowly; the landscape flowed away, back to its source.
In the schoolyard, in the cloakrooms, the children boasted their scars of dried snot; wrists and knees garnished with impetigo.
7
Gasholders,2 russet among fields. Milldams, marlpools3 that lay unstirring. Eel-swarms. Coagulations of frogs: once, with branches and half-bricks, he battered a ditchful; then sidled away from the
5 stillness and silence.
Ceolred4 was his friend and remained so, even after the day of the lost fighter: a biplane, already obsolete and irreplaceable, two inches of heavy snub silver. Ceolred let it spin through a hole
10 in the classroom-floorboards, softly, into the rat- droppings and coins.
1. The historical Offa reigned over Mercia (and cation of such a timespan will, 1 trust, explain and the greater part of England south of the H umber) to some extent justify a number of anachronisms in the years 757?96 C.E. During early medieval [Hill's note]. times he was already becoming a creature of leg-2. Or gasometers, large metal receptacles for gas. end. The Offa who figures in this sequence might 3. Pools in deposits of crumbling clay and chalk. perhaps most usefully be regarded as the presiding 4. A 9th-century bishop of Leicester, but the genius of the West Midlands, his dominion endur-name is here used as a characteristic Anglo-Saxon ing from the middle of the 8th century until the Mercian name. middle of the 20th (and possibly beyond). The indi
.
272 8 / GEOFFREY HILL
After school he lured Ceolred, who was sniggering with fright, down to the old quarries, and flayed him. Then, leaving Ceolred, he journeyed for hours,
15 calm and alone, in his private derelict sandlorry named Albion
28
Processes of generation; deeds of settlement. Th e urge to marry well; wit to invest in the proper ties of healing-springs. Ou r children and our children's children, o my masters.
5 Tracks of ancient occupation. Frail ironworks rusting in the thorn-thicket. Hearthstones; charred lullabies. A solitary axe-blow that is the echo of a lost sound.
Tumul t recedes as though into the long rain. Groves 10 of legendary holly; silverdark the ridged gleam.
30
An d it seemed, while we waited, he began to walk towards us he vanished
he left behind coins, for his lodging, and traces of red mud.
1971
From An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England
the spiritual, Platonic old England . . . ?STC,1 Anima Poetae
'Your situation,' said Coningsby, looking up
the green and silent valley, 'is absolutely
poetic.'
'I try sometimes to fancy,' said Mr Millbank,
with a rather fierce smile, 'that I am in the
New World.'
?BENJAMIN DISRAELI,2 Coningsby
9. The Laurel Axe Autum n resumes the land, ruffles the woods
with smoky wings, entangles them. Trees shine
