Where I Have Gone Before

Where I have gone before, my life

has made you intricate, my wife;

and like an oak tree in the dark,

on Bodmin Moor, the home of larks,

you ripple soundlessly at night.

The grassland then invites the sight:

broom, heathered-ground, their singing heard

from a great height, the winging bird,

where I have gone before.

They sing above the common snipe,

the stonechat, and the meadow pip.

With only oak tree’s acorn starts

in hidden valleys, hollows’ marsh,

then like the Darley Oak you rise,

with poets flitting to the skies;

here people tread with browning cries,

where I have gone before.