A very West-of-Wessex girl,
As blithe as
blithe could be,
Was once
well-known to me,
And she would laud her native town,
And hope and
hope that we
Might sometime study up and down
Its charms in
company.
But never I squired my Wessex girl
In jaunts to Hoe
or street
When hearts were
high in beat,
Nor saw her in the marbled ways
Where
market-people meet
That in her bounding early days
Were friendly
with her feet.
Yet now my West-of-Wessex girl,
When midnight
hammers slow
From Andrew's,
blow by blow,
As phantom draws me by the hand
To the
place--Plymouth Hoe--
Where side by side in life, as planned,
We never were to
go!
Begun in Plymouth, March 1913.
