"Like All Unheeded Beautiful Things That Pass Under The Leaves Of Life, Just Touching The Grass"

F. W. Harvey (1888-1957) and Ivor Gurney were friends.  They grew up together in Gloucestershire and shared a love of its countryside.  They both served in the Gloucestershire Regiment during the First World War. Gurney composed musical settings for a few of Harvey's poems.

The following poem by Harvey is, I think, a good companion piece to Gurney's "Quiet Talk" (which appeared in my previous post):  the wind is the subject of both, and both poems have a summer-into-autumn feel.

                                  Hubert Lindsay Wellington (1879-1967)

           "Overhanging Tree, Frampton Mansell, Gloucestershire" (1915)

       Swift Beauty

Wind that is in orchards

     Playing with apple-trees

Soon will be leagues away

     In the old rookeries.

Vaguely it arises,

     Swiftly it hurries hence: --

Like sudden beauty

     Blown over sense:

Like all unheeded

     Beautiful things that pass

Under the leaves of life,

     Just touching the grass.

F. W. Harvey, September and Other Poems (1925).

Harvey's verse was, on the whole, fairly traditional and conventional. However, I sense a bit of influence from the more adventuresome Gurney in "Swift Beauty."  "Like sudden beauty/Blown over sense" has a Gurney feel to it, as does the final stanza.

       Hubert Lindsay Wellington, "Farm at Uley, Gloucestershire" (1932)