Edith Scovell, also known as E.J. Scovell, was an English poet and translator whose collections include Shadows of Chrysanthemums and The Midsummer Meadow.
Edith Scovell
Bank Holiday: Primrose Hill
From Collected Poems. Carcanet, 1988.
On this, the first Bank Holiday,
Of the laborious year
Such gentleness is manifest
In human shapes, in rainy air,
Darkening - to make all clear
Man and woman need not speak.
But children's voices on the hill
Searching, answering, swing out far.
One, over space uncreated,
Hangs in the evening like a star,
Star-like rocket ripe for breaking -
Quenched now, swooping in what air?
Evening on Primrose Hill
From Collected Poems. Carcanet, 1988.
Late, the evening's light diffused
Whitens planes and facets of
This tossed sea-surface of the grass.
Where lovers have left one form
And where feet have ploughed and harrowed;
Where the sun lay slack like water;
The millions of the grass
Loosen and breathe invisibly. The evening
Whitens their sides with dust of silver sand...