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b"Flecker read by Classic Poetry Aloud:\\nhttp://www.classicpoetryaloud.com/\\n\\nGiving voice to the poetry of the past.\\n\\n---------------------------------------------------\\n\\n Oxford Canal\\nby James Elroy Flecker (1884 \\u2013 1915)\\n\\nWhen you have wearied of the valiant spires of this County Town,\\nOf its wide white streets and glistening museums, and black monastic walls,\\nOf its red motors and lumbering trains, and self-sufficient people,\\nI will take you walking with me to a place you have not seen \\u2014\\nHalf town and half country\\u2014the land of the Canal.\\nIt is dearer to me than the antique town: I love it more than the rounded hills:\\nStraightest, sublimest of rivers is the long Canal.\\nI have observed great storms and trembled: I have wept for fear of the dark.\\nBut nothing makes me so afraid as the clear water of this idle canal on a summer's noon.\\nDo you see the great telegraph poles down in the water, how every wire is distinct?\\nIf a body fell into the canal it would rest entangled in those wires for ever, between earth and air.\\nFor the water is as deep as the stars are high.\\nOne day I was thinking how if a man fell from that lofty pole\\nHe would rush through the water toward me till his image was scattered by his splash,\\nWhen suddenly a train rushed by: the brazen dome of the engine flashed:\\nthe long white carriages roared;\\nThe sun veiled himself for a moment, and the signals loomed in fog;\\nA savage woman screamed at me from a barge: little children began to cry;\\nThe untidy landscape rose to life: a sawmill started;\\nA cart rattled down to the wharf, and workmen clanged over the iron footbridge;\\nA beautiful old man nodded from the first story window of a square red house,\\nAnd a pretty girl came out to hang up clothes in a small delightful garden.\\nO strange motion in the suburb of a county town: slow regular movement of the dance of death!\\nMen and not phantoms are these that move in light.\\n Forgotten they live, and forgotten die."