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Unread 04-16-2018, 11:48 AM
Nigel Mace Nigel Mace is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: The Borders, Andalucia and Italy
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The ways of the Muses are strange indeed. Impressed by John's scary evocation of messianic partiality, mine remained mum... until May's ghastly televised 'statement' luxuriated in her experience of it being her "first time" that she had committed others to military action, from which she and her kind remain so comfortably remote, cosseted in the folds of the southern English countryside. Something snapped and I remembered the latest Spectator comp. .... and I remembered Adelstrop.

(Note to Jayne. I intend no breach of the rules but, having started this thread, it seems only fair to post the result here as well as in the Speccie comp thread.)

THE SECOND TIME

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire
The little traces that remain
Recall that superheated day
The Cotswolds flowed down to the plain.

That hour the Churn was vaporised,
When Ampney’s Crucis came to pass
And Aston Magna seemed misspelt,
There stayed no splendour on the grass;
But cornfields, now with May aflame,
Swept from Slaughter on to Slaughter
And toadstool vapours borne on winds
Sucked up sweet Avon’s bardic water.

No village Churchill could withstand
That black, bird-stunning bitter crop;
Five miles north-west, war’s poet paused.
Yes. I remember Adelstrop.
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