Grantchester Meadows
Through gentle pastures and straggling grasses
On a Sunday walk we came to the Cam
Limpid greens flecked the flicker of fishes
In restless reeds she softly ran
From a shadowed hedge the cricket square shone
Fringed with sycamore, willow and hornbeam
The stumps primed in sunlight at half past one
Two centuries rolled to old green
The players sit languid behind the line
They talk of nothings and squint in the sun
Then stroll on the field at the skipper’s sign
While the bowler’s boot marks his run
And sharp at the double chime of church bell
The umpire raises his arm and calls “Play”
Then just as their fathers, smack balls like shells
To be lost in the Cam’s deep clay
They walk on the soil their ancestors paced
Great-grandfathers fractured from pit or dray
Who laid down pens or turned from the mill race
To be lost in the Somme’s deep clay
To be lost in the Somme’s deep clay