Our Yellow-Rattled Meadow

By H.R. Pirie. From: ‘Odes to My Little Soldier’ {London: Grenville and Tupes, 1877}, p 64.

‘Our Yellow-Rattled Meadow’

Sunlight

Dapples our yellow-rattled meadow

With my friend and fellow

Eric Winsome by my side.

I am reminded of our shingle days

The lazy haze of summer tides

Now a distant, fitful dream

But evergreen in our history,

And ever bright

In the memory of the imprints

Of our bodies on the stones.

The foam

The spume of rolling seas

Is as the rolling meadow before us

As we soar like kites

In swirling flight

Blades of dew-dropped green

Tickling our fleet and skipping feet

Our aimless roaming

Until the gloaming raids the meadow

And all falls to inky, star-chipped night.