Along fields' listless bordering paths we trod,

Mother, Father, our padding dog,

And there above us, hovering high,

Hung shadowed a cross of silent wings.

.

And here, beneath my childish tripping feet,

Upon the rising heat from broken stones,

Did loft a haze of iridescent mites,

Their myriad glints my glee to glean.

.

But what came then, I can't quite say,

Time's mist too dense through which to spy,

Save to say: another magic day

In which my enchanted childhood played.

.

Of what now lasts into my present time,

Beneath the tarmac of this motorway,

Or underfoot of office and of retail park:

Little, I know, of part-remembered walk.

.

Not much, perhaps, a cherished memory,

But enough to know that here once lay

A corner of this hallowed fruitful land

That nurtured such as I, this Englishman.