I wouldn’t say the hills exactly rang
Or that the valley sang. And if they did,
The sound was drowned by other clangs
And by the sharp staccato bangs
Of last-leg railway coaches’ slamming doors.
Besides, the valley floor completely hid

Itself beneath the tarmac of the streets
And all the dreary concrete of the town.
The hills had also lost their green.
There are no tunes in such a scene,
No cryptic themes which let themselves be known
And animate the ground the day one meets

A girl like you. The clouds did not rejoice.
They really had no choice except to weep
The way that they had wept for years
Their standard brand of dirty tears.
And - dull but true - there was no broom to keep
You sweet with sweeping of the sky. Your voice,

Like mine, would just have laughed at such a thought.
Romantics toil to thwart the rational heart,
And we were ridiculing these
And such pathetic fallacies,
And so affected, I suppose, the art
Of some superior courtship, not the sort

Which allocates to Nature’s helpful ways
The walk-on part of praising through her light,
Commiserating through her gloom
Like any sympathetic groom;
But more the sort which reckons to be right,
And needs no other bright endorsing rays.

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