Lisbon Heat

It was the wrong time of year. Fields
were brown and burnt and flies were
in abundance. More serious
was the sun. For Tennyson
it blazed all day so that when
he was hailed as England’s
Poet Laureate in the dining hall
at the Braganza, he knew he would
never see the “Golden Age”
he had come for, would have to
let it go. Its white heat of inspiration
was a sun-shimmer out of
reach. Lyndhurst and the
New Forest seemed much
more like home.