Beneath the couchant lion, grey and grim,
We lit upon the last of state romance,
The last of chivalrous circumstance;
The Champions-each his banneret over him,
Moth-eaten, fluttering in its faded rim-
Who gather’d on their ineffectual lance
Death’s dust and rust, their gallant utterance
Thinn’d, the coronations waxing dim
As are the memories of the long-dead kings,
As are the memories of the knight and squire,
Here where Time’s self sleeps stirless ‘neath the sky
In all this courtly, ghostly Scrivelsby,
And shadows are the only moving things
In all the quiet land of Lincolnshire.
Woodhall, August 1899.
(Archbishop William Alexander)
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