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Verwood u3a History Group

Topic for 2022-23 - “English Pastoral: The Dawn of Everything”

Look, stranger, at this island now
The leaping light for your delight discovers,
Stand stable here
And silent be,
That through the channels of the ear
May wander like a river
The swaying sound of the sea.

Here at the small field’s ending pause
Where the chalk wall falls to the foam, and its tall ledges
Oppose the pluck
And knock of the tide,
And the shingle scrambles after the suck-
Ing surf, and the gull lodges
A moment on its sheer side.

Far off like floating seeds the ships
Diverge on urgent voluntary errands;
And the full view
Indeed may enter
And move in memory as now these clouds do,
That pass the harbour mirror
And all the summer through the water saunter.
W.H. Auden 1947 On This Island

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.
From W.H. Auden 1935 The Fall of Rome

This topic will explore the dawn of our history, in particular how our identity
emerged and evolved, what it meant to be offshore islanders living on the edge of
the world, becoming a Christian people, a chosen people, all the time caught up in
geopolitical forces, Roman, Irish, Germanic, Nordic, Frankish, Norman.