The Touchstone – Watching Malvern Poem by Ivor Gurney

What Malvern is the day is,
and its touchstone –
Grey velvet, or moon-marked;
rich, or bare as bone;
One looks towards Malvern
and is made one with the whole;
The world swings round him
as the Bear to the Pole.

Men have crossed seas to know
how Paul’s tops Fleet,
That as music has rapt them
in the mere street,
While none or few care
how the curved giants stand,
(Those upheaved strengths!)
on the meadow and plough-land.