Poem by Louise Imogen Guiney

To Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Young father-poet! much in you I praise
Adventure high, romantic, vehement,
All with inviolate honour sealed and blent,
To the axe-edge that cleft your soldier bays:
Your friendships too, your follies, whims, and frays;
And, most, your verse, with strict imperious bent,
Heard sweetly as from some old harper’s tent,
And surging in the listener’s brain for days.
At Framlingham to-night, if there should be
No guest, beyond a sea-born wind that sighs,
No guard, save moonlight’s crossed and trailing spears,
And I, your pilgrim, call you, O let me
In at the gate! and smile into the eyes
That sought you, Surrey, down three hundred years.

1. Of Joan’s Youth
2. When on the Marge of Evening
3. In a Perpendicular Church
4. York Stairs
5. Spring Nightfall

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