19 DECEMBER 1952, Page 17

The Painting

The house lives there yet in its summer haze, Red sandstone in thick-rooted ivy it is very old, A drive leads to the house through lawns of baize Past the three tall sycamores there that were famous so I have been told ; And a man and a woman stand there stiffly on the drive, And a child is kneeling in the attitude of a child, Patting a spaniel dog, and all three of them too are alive As in that eighteen-forty time, for so their clothes are styled ; And they are my forbears of that long-dead summer's day, And with them timeless, intruding, another figure stands In phantom communion bidding them stay On whom the earth was long years ago heaped by long-dead hands.

BASIL GODFREY ASHTON.