Stoke Charity - A Hampshire Placename

Of all the names of ford and town, Hamlet and bridge and furzy down. That makes sweet music to the ear By troutful Test and Itchen clear, The Clatfords and the Sombornes twain, Freefolk and Farley Chamberlayne, Shy Bransbury and St. Mary Bourne, The ford dead RUFUS passed forlorn, The Candovers, the Worthys three, The sweetest is Stoke Charity. 'Stoke Charity' The tall elms shade The grey old church the Normans made; The yew-tree lifts its noon-dark head By mounds where sleep the quiet dead; Through mellowed pains the sunlight passes To splash with gold the graven brasses Of knight and lady, son and daughter, Who went their ways as went the water That turned, years past, the vanished mill Whose mouldering wheel has long stood still. A kindly name - a kindly place, Where life still keeps its peaceful pace, Where nothing day by day is found But man's and nature's homely round, But joys and sorrows, hopes and fears And passing of unstoried years, Toil, rest and slumber - all the same As when old furious CORBETT came This way, with generous heart aflame, Drew rein and paused awhile to see How faired it with Stoke Charity. To-day, as then, the willows shiver All green and grey along the river Where in the pools Jack Heron fishes and through the weeds the moorhen swishes, And in the bank the bright-eyed vole Peers shy and watchful from his hole; The whole wide valley fills and glows With dawn-fires and with sunset rose; In meadows bare to wind and sun The mad march hares rejoicing run And gathering plovers flock and fly, Soar, turn and gleam with plaintive cry; Season by season brings again The farmer and the latter rain, And Spring’s first swallow oversea To England - and Stoke Charity.