Above, I quoted:
"And he finds he is standing in vain,
Where the promise of life first began.
Beating again on boyhood's doors
With the futile fists of a man."
It's been with my mind for many and many a year, but where does it come from?
An interywebby search yields it not!
Can anyone help?
Tone
I found this but no idea of the author.
Heading West In the surge and the scatter of days
Since the boy from the hump of the hill,
Reprieved from dropping potatoes,
Would skip across furrow and drill,
Straight for that single plank spanning
The dyke where the surly pike spawns,
For a glimpse, beyond sentinel reeds,
At the garrisoned camp of the swans,
Their frowning eyes fixed on the shore,
Where the full tackled townsman whips out
Hair wing, hackle and peacock herl,
Tinselled and tempting to trout,
Though the two-car economy reigns
Supreme behind bay-windowed glass,
Though drainage and nitrogen worship
Have bloated the Friesians with grass
And islands lie drowned in high levels
Which thigh-booted men rearranged
With a tourniquet over the outlet,
How little the lake has changed!
Silence sleeps vaulted in years
Where the glacier harrowed the stone;
Two wedded swans still scan the shore,
But the brown-kneed boy has gone;
And falling well short of a dream
Half dreamed in the wombgirt school,
He punches his days in nine to five,
On a time clock in Liverpool.
Yet, heading west once in a while,
The pallor of towns in his face,He crosses the hump of the hill
To reach the familiar place,
Straight for that single plank spanning
The dyke where the surely pike spawns
For a glimpse, beyond sentinel reeds
At the garrisoned camp of the swans,
He stands on a desolate shore
Where the magical journey began,
Beating again on boyhood’s door
With the futile fists of a man