Close and slow, summer is ending in Hampshire, Ebbing away down ramps of shaven lawn where close-clipped yew Insulates the lives of retired generals and admirals And the spyglasses hung in the hall and the prayerbooks ready in the pew And August going out to the tin trumpets of nasturtiums And the sunflowers' Salvation Army blare of brass And the spinster sitting in a deck-chair picking up stitches Not raising her eyes to the noise of the 'planes that pass Northward from Lee-on-Solent. Macrocarpa and cypress And roses on a rustic trellis and mulberry trees And bacon and eggs in a silver dish for breakfast And all the inherited assets of bodily ease And all the inherited worries, rheumatism and taxes And whether Stella will marry and what to do with Dick...
But the final cure is not in [the psychoanalyst's] past-dissecting fingers But in a future of action, the will and the fist Of those who abjure the luxury of self-pity, And prefer to risk a movement without being sure If movement would be better or worse in a hundred Years or a thousand when their heart is pure. None of our hearts are pure, we always have mixed motives, Are self deceivers, but the worst of all Deceits is to murmur "Lord, I am not worthy" And, lying easy, turn your face to the wall. But may I cure that habit, look up and outwards And may my feet follow my wider glance First no doubt to stumble, then to walk with the others And in the end -- with time and luck -- to dance.