Poem by Hilaire Belloc

Stanzas Written on Battersea Bridge during a South-Westerly Gale

  The woods and downs have caught the mid-December,
    The noisy woods and high sea-downs of home;
  The wind has found me and I do remember
    The strong scent of the foam.

  Woods, darlings of my wandering feet, another
    Possesses you, another treads the Down;
  The South West Wind that was my elder brother
    Has come to me in town.

  The wind is shouting from the hills of morning,
    I do remember and I will not stay.
  I’ll take the Hampton road without a warning
    And get me clean away.

  The Channel is up, the little seas are leaping,
    The tide is making over Arun Bar;
  And there’s my boat, where all the rest are sleeping
    And my companions are.

  I’ll board her, and apparel her, and I’ll mount her,
    My boat, that was the strongest friend to me--
  That brought my boyhood to its first encounter
    And taught me the wide sea.

  Now shall I drive her, roaring hard a’ weather,
    Right for the salt and leave them all behind.
  We’ll quite forget the treacherous streets together
    And find--or shall we find?

  There is no Pilotry my soul relies on
    Whereby to catch beneath my bended hand,
  Faint and beloved along the extreme horizon
    That unforgotten land.

  We shall not round the granite piers and paven
    To lie to wharves we know with canvas furled.
  My little Boat, we shall not make the haven--
    It is not of the world.

  Somewhere of English forelands grandly guarded
    It stands, but not for exiles, marked and clean;
  Oh! not for us. A mist has risen and marred it:--
    My youth lies in between.

  So in this snare that holds me and appals me,
    Where honour hardly lives nor loves remain,
  The Sea compels me and my Country calls me,
    But stronger things restrain.

         *       *       *       *       *

  England, to me that never have malingered,
    Nor spoken falsely, nor your flattery used,
  Nor even in my rightful garden lingered:--
    What have you not refused?

1. Noël
2. To Dives
3. Ballade of Modest Confession
4. The Rebel
5. In a Boat

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