SOUTH OXFORDSHIRE

It may not seem so, but it’s always been

A frontier land, these fifteen hundred years

Where Mercian Danes would stand and gaze asquint

At Saxon Wessex men across the Thames.

And Queen Matilda, sprung from Oxford jail

All cloaked in white against the snow, was rowed

Downriver to the keep at Wallingford.

Here also, in the English Civil War

The London Roundheads faced their Royalist foes

Across the Chiltern scarp, but taking time

To hold a Christmas truce.  Civil indeed.

Nowadays, it’s still a watershed

Henley being as far as most will drive,

To work in Town, or travel in by rail.

They hold regattas there, the shops are posh.

While on the northern face of these soft hills

The accents shift, from clipped to rustic burr.

The towns seem less well-heeled, and SUVs

Less clean. We hilltop dwellers can’t decide

If we’re commuters or we’re country folk.