If I did not already know what the Inspired Scriptures say, wouldn't I be looking now - trying to find the meaning in it all? And how do you cope if you don't know?
The streets were so empty back then - I was also watching a tramride through Sheffield in the 60s - when I was a young teenager. When I was out with Jean on the field service yesterday we were both talking about the traffic which, even in our sleepy little seaside town, seems worse than ever.
The rain the forecast promised for this morning has arrived on time, just before lunch. I wonder if Jean will cancel our visit to Maggie, as it will involve getting very wet.
I know I have put this poem in my blog before, but its so wonderful, plus I have been re-reading "Young Thomas Hardy" by Robert Gittings. And of course thinking of the old Sheffield makes me think of my young parents, as they were then. And going back further to when my mother was herself a young teenager during the war, and she and her school were evacuated to St.Leonards-on-Sea, just down the coast from us.
So, I give you:
THE MARBLE-
STREETED TOWN
by Thomas Hardy
I reach the marble-streeted town.
Whose "Sound" outbreathes its air
of sharp sea salts;
I see the movement up and down
As when she was there.
Ships of all countries come and go,
Bandsmen boom in the sun
A throbbing waltz;
The schoolgirls laugh along the Hoe
As when she was one.
I move away as the music rolls:
The place seems not to mind
That she - of old
The brightest of its native souls -
Left it behind!
Over this green aforedays she
On light treads went and came
Yea, times untold;
Yet none here knows her history -
Has heard her name.
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