the ivied terrace house

There's a poem I half-remember from my childhood, where we had to learn a poem a day. If you learned the poem successfully by lunch time, you won a house point, or was it three house points?

It was quite an unfair game, as only a few people would ever get the opportunity to try and recite it. Sometimes you would be allowed to write it, but that was hardly fair on the non-writers in the room. Also memorising to say and memorising to write were quite different things. Should you do one? Should you do neither, like a lot of my friends did?

It's left me with random shards of obscure poetry rammed every which way into my brain.



Consider this:

Beneath the richness of an autumn soaked sky
The pigeons idly flutter about the ivied grange
Years of dust and chaff hang in the dim within
Where [something] horse's breath once steamed

I can't find the poem, but there is far more poetry written than even google can contain. Screeds and scrolls of sentimental Victorian verse for children.



When I see a house like this one it's impossible not to think of such things. Somebody lives here; observe the recycling box, the bolted Cordyline. And yet the ivy, sprinting to cover the windows.



A garden half-way to a fairy tale.