You who loved twilight and the dusky night
Must perch transfixed, undazzled, in this room
Of smoke and fume and talk and garish light;
A rigid mummy in a glassy tomb,
Tawdry with paint and artificial grass,
With sand and moss, and boughs of cork and glue,
Until some spring a careless servant lass
Shatter your case and make an end of you;
Or moth within your case finding its way
Shall breed new life to work your last decay.
You knew this countryside; your still wings were
Part of its glamour forty years ago,
As in the twilight you came sweeping there
Round stack, and ivied barn, and old hedgerow -
From Stubbins Wood you'd beat to Assarts Farm
And then by Flixter Beck to Nickerbush -
Until one eve the cool sweet curfew calm
Was broken by a gun, and with a tumbling rush
To earth you came, wings whirling o'er and o'er,
And life's mysterious light informed your eyes no more.
Your race is reckoned wise and mine more so;
But ne'er a seer of us can cast a spell,
To shield our memories safe from overthrow,
That's one whit better than your fragile shell.
And gallant bipeds, many and many a one,
Who made much stir and flutter in their day,
From their familiar hunting fields have gone,
And not one relic of their flight does stay:
Old gunning Time has ta'en them altogether,
Nor left of their brave plumage one poor feather.
NOTE: The poem refers to a number of Nottingham locations - Stubbins Wood in Mansfield, Flixter Beck in Clipstone, Nickerbush Plantation in Newark and Assarts Farm in Nuthall. The Swan is in Mansfield, a famous coaching inn that dates back even before the current premises opened in 1586.