Henley 1941

High, incessant and insistent,
drone the fighters through the sky:
cows in lush elm-shadowed meadows
move restive with the thunder-fly.

Heavily the sickly summer
presses down and slowly fills
Henley and the Thames with sadness,
and the circling wooded hills.

Creamy chestnuts, purple lilacs,
bloom round the Leander Club;
faded bills extol the pleasures
of some forgotten river pub.

Dimmed the paint on white verandahs,
ageing in the sultry haze:
weeping ash and weeping willow
mourn the seventh Edward's days.

How you queened it, Royal Henley,
in that past you'll not regain!
Gone for ever are the glories
of the bluff peacemaker's reign.

Now in war and passée beauty,
grin with false life for a space
while the deathbed flush and spasm
colours up your withered face.

Royster with those young lieutenants,
freed from their suburban bonds,
seducing over gin and bitters
evacuated Jewish blondes.

Live while death is at your elbow,
forget what's gone and join the dance—
Here's an end and no beginning,
take your last and only chance.

1941

NOTES

• TS sheet, given to TDM 1968; no other copy of this poem found in his archive
• letter (in archive) to Peggy 1-vi-1941 about a trip 'on the river steamer' to Henley with [Charles] Phillips, whose old family home was at Henley-on-Thames. At this time SP was Gunner Piggott enlisted in the Royal Artillery, before his subsequent commission as Second Lieutenant Intelligence Corps 10-x-1941 (London Gazette). He was stationed at the time at Medmenham, nr Henley