A short sweet poem from Thomas Hardy this week.
One that tells of different ways of looking at history, & how, crucially, we are all woven into its tapestry by personal experience & memory which, like the dab of white highlight on a cherry, makes the whole picture come alive.
As we were poignantly reminded on Wednesday by A History of the World Special on Radio 4, which told the story of a picture painted by a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz for a Welsh soldier who had been sent as a PoW to work in the machine shop there. The picture hangs on the wall of that soldier to this day.
The Roman Road
The Roman Road runs straight and bare
As the pale parting-line in hair
Across the heath. And thoughtful men
Contrast its days of Now and Then,
And delve, and measure, and compare;
Visioning on the vacant air
Helmeted legionnaires, who proudly rear
The Eagle, as they pace again
The Roman Road.
But no tall brass-helmeted legionnaire
Haunts it for me. Uprises there
A mother's form upon my ken,
Guiding my infant steps, as when
We walked that ancient thoroughfare,
The Roman Road.
