Europas kind (Europe’s Child) or Child of Europe?
Each night I am come line to the walls of an unknown city,
that sinks so swiftly into the gathering night,
while around my feet flows the traffic of life.
The streets of Europe are my home,
the railroad my school, the trees my love;
and I alone by night will wander
when all the world is strangely still.
Such sights I see each day defy #the spoken word:
I am a child of the snow-white mountains,
I rise with the dawn and sing in her rays,
I play by the stream that hang from the hills,
I run with the clouds that stroke the sky,
I wash in the rills that cleanse the fields
and befriend the herds that graze in their droves.
But alone by night to a city I come,
and shelter must for chill blows the breeze;
and Europe's child must ever onward go,
to cities new and pleasures fresh.
The reference in the last line recalls Milton’s marvellous phrase that comes at the conclusion of his elegiac poem, Lycidas. I remember being moved by them in my early teens when I heard Dad declaiming them in a college production. After I had written an ‘Idyll,’ which James Horsfall kindly orchestrated for me, James took me by surprise by suggesting that I set it to one of Milton’s most celebrated poems: Lycidas. At which point it felt like a lovely touch to invite Dad, then 86, and in failing health, to resurrect his acting skills and to recite it! Because of the number of topical and classical allusions Milton liberally strews his text with, you will probably be grateful for the explanatory notes I have added. May each one of us remain eager to move on to discover and embrace all the things God still has in store for us!