The British Meadow
Hartwell House & a countryside cottage, Oxford
27th September, 2025
In that faraway age of sixteen,
amid boundless fields,
a girlās hair tangled with swaying shadows of trees,
streaked with bright orange-gold.
Laughter of classmates drifted from afar,
innocent, unclouded.
The England of reality was seldom fair and mild,
yet memory, willful and kind,
cast its own soft, misted filter,
weaving in secret, delicate threads.
In dreams she whispered farewell to a Tudor rose,
waking slow and unsure ā
half dream, half waking ā
only the heady scent beside her pillow reminded her,
slipping on the breeze, scattering through the roomās corners:
the Manolo Blahnik shoes studded with rosebuds;
the soft flaxen Ralph Lauren dress of white, scattered flowers;
or that Miu Miu Spring 2002 gown,
a quiet echo of Jane Austen.
Every corner bore her traces.
A playful wind brushed past,
lifting her diary,
letting it fall open on a page,
lines of graceful script crowding the paper,
spilling her ever-changing, vivid life ā
yet, stubbornly, at the end of every entry,
she wrote:
āSince we parted, I long to meet again.ā
Ahā¦ did you know my longing for you
has only grown, never waned?
In that faraway age of sixteen,
amid boundless fields,
a girlās hair tangled with swaying shadows of trees,
streaked with bright orange-gold.
Laughter of classmates drifted from afar,
innocent, unclouded.
The England of reality was seldom fair and mild,
yet memory, willful and kind,
cast its own soft, misted filter,
weaving in secret, delicate threads.
In dreams she whispered farewell to a Tudor rose,
waking slow and unsure ā
half dream, half waking ā
only the heady scent beside her pillow reminded her,
slipping on the breeze, scattering through the roomās corners:
the Manolo Blahnik shoes studded with rosebuds;
the soft flaxen Ralph Lauren dress of white, scattered flowers;
or that Miu Miu Spring 2002 gown,
a quiet echo of Jane Austen.
Every corner bore her traces.
A playful wind brushed past,
lifting her diary,
letting it fall open on a page,
lines of graceful script crowding the paper,
spilling her ever-changing, vivid life ā
yet, stubbornly, at the end of every entry,
she wrote:
āSince we parted, I long to meet again.ā
Ahā¦ did you know my longing for you
has only grown, never waned?