Poems That Make Grown Men Cry by Anthony and Ben Holden Page A
Authors: Anthony and Ben Holden
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Massachusetts.That doesn’t stop a certain yearning though: whenever
I see
The Last of the Summer Wine
, or hear the Queen at Christmas-time, I long for England, only to go back and find that what I longed for has all but vanished.
I left home in 1966, by chance the year they closed Adlestrop station, a quiet two-platform halt on the Oxford to Worcester main line. The old railway system then began its ownlong decline:
stations closed, lines torn up, engines sent for scrap. There was something infinitely special and terribly English about a half-deserted country railway station on a blissful summer’s day. I
listen to this deceptively slight poem, immediately smell creosote and gillyflowers, can hear the waiting-room clock, the clank of signal wires – but then have to blink my eyes, every time.This is the England that I loved; I weep for its passing.
Adlestrop
Yes. I remember Adlestrop –
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop– only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
(1914)
Once a geologist, Simon Winchester (b. 1944) spent almost thirty years as a foreign correspondent for
The Guardian
and other newspapers in various countries until the
handover of Hong Kong in 1997, when he became a full-time writer. He has written twenty-five nonfiction books, dealing with such topics as the Oxford English Dictionary, the origins of geology,
China, the Atlantic Ocean and,most recently, the uniting of the United States.
The Soldier
RUPERT BROOKE (1887–1915)
HUGH BONNEVILLE
Like many schoolchildren, I was introduced to this sonnet when studying the poets of the First World War. The graphic bitterness of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, we were
instructed, was to be contrasted with the naïve patriotism of Rupert Brooke.
Brooke’s view of death and his love ofcountry is that of a clear-eyed young man who, like the hundreds of thousands of others who rushed to join up, felt confident of purpose and of
victory within months, entirely innocent of what was to come. I won’t judge him for that.
Every time I watch the movie
Gladiator
this poem comes to mind. Like the recurring motif of Maximus’s hand brushing the wheat of his fields as he heads forhis waiting family,
‘The Soldier’, for me, is ultimately about belonging. It’s about coming home.
And it’s not the notion of death with honor or pride in motherland that moves me, it’s the simple phrase ‘laughter, learnt of friends’ that gets me every time. An image
of happiness shared, in a land at peace.
With the privilege of hindsight I find it is as pitiful as it is beautiful inits evocation of contentment.
The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body ofEngland’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts atpeace, under an English heaven.
(1914)
The actor Hugh Bonneville (b. 1963) is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Lord Grantham in television’s
Downton Abbey
, and for the Olympics mockumentary series
Twenty Twelve
. His feature films
I see
The Last of the Summer Wine
, or hear the Queen at Christmas-time, I long for England, only to go back and find that what I longed for has all but vanished.
I left home in 1966, by chance the year they closed Adlestrop station, a quiet two-platform halt on the Oxford to Worcester main line. The old railway system then began its ownlong decline:
stations closed, lines torn up, engines sent for scrap. There was something infinitely special and terribly English about a half-deserted country railway station on a blissful summer’s day. I
listen to this deceptively slight poem, immediately smell creosote and gillyflowers, can hear the waiting-room clock, the clank of signal wires – but then have to blink my eyes, every time.This is the England that I loved; I weep for its passing.
Adlestrop
Yes. I remember Adlestrop –
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop– only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
(1914)
Once a geologist, Simon Winchester (b. 1944) spent almost thirty years as a foreign correspondent for
The Guardian
and other newspapers in various countries until the
handover of Hong Kong in 1997, when he became a full-time writer. He has written twenty-five nonfiction books, dealing with such topics as the Oxford English Dictionary, the origins of geology,
China, the Atlantic Ocean and,most recently, the uniting of the United States.
The Soldier
RUPERT BROOKE (1887–1915)
HUGH BONNEVILLE
Like many schoolchildren, I was introduced to this sonnet when studying the poets of the First World War. The graphic bitterness of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, we were
instructed, was to be contrasted with the naïve patriotism of Rupert Brooke.
Brooke’s view of death and his love ofcountry is that of a clear-eyed young man who, like the hundreds of thousands of others who rushed to join up, felt confident of purpose and of
victory within months, entirely innocent of what was to come. I won’t judge him for that.
Every time I watch the movie
Gladiator
this poem comes to mind. Like the recurring motif of Maximus’s hand brushing the wheat of his fields as he heads forhis waiting family,
‘The Soldier’, for me, is ultimately about belonging. It’s about coming home.
And it’s not the notion of death with honor or pride in motherland that moves me, it’s the simple phrase ‘laughter, learnt of friends’ that gets me every time. An image
of happiness shared, in a land at peace.
With the privilege of hindsight I find it is as pitiful as it is beautiful inits evocation of contentment.
The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body ofEngland’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts atpeace, under an English heaven.
(1914)
The actor Hugh Bonneville (b. 1963) is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Lord Grantham in television’s
Downton Abbey
, and for the Olympics mockumentary series
Twenty Twelve
. His feature films
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