Words by the Christian poet
T S Eliot have been going round in my mind in recent weeks. He says in his poem Four Quartets that he does not know much about gods, but he thinks that the river is a strong brown god.
He observes that rivers are “sullen, untamed and intractable”, but it is easy for us to ignore that and see them only as “a conveyor of commerce; then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges”.
But the river is still there: “implacable, keeping his seasons and rages … reminder of what men choose to forget”.
Well, we’ve been reminded of the river’s rage, and the terrifying power of nature. How far this particular aspect of climate change is due to our polluting of the planet is open to debate. What is beyond debate is that pollution has already done incalculable damage to the earth. The rages of nature continue to remind us of what we try to forget.
Despite the damage, however, the earth is still beautiful, and we must hope that the recent flooding will not deter holidaymakers from visiting this bit of it. As I’m still new to Worcestershire myself, I look forward to discovering much more of it this summer.
No one was a more passionate advocate of the beauty of Worcestershire in his own day than that enigmatic and often misjudged Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. In 1924 he made a speech about “the tinkle of the hammer on the anvil in the country smithy, the corncrake on a dewy morning and the sight of a plough team coming over the brow of the hill” as among the eternal sights of England.
The anvil and the plough haven’t survived, though I hope the corncrake has. Baldwin’s speech is dated – but he still rightly draws attention to the beauty of the countryside and the need to protect it.
Stanley Baldwin is buried in the nave of Worcester Cathedral. You can’t usually see his memorial because of the seating. But in August we clear the chairs out of the nave. It’s a marvellous sight, and even more so during this week’s Flower Festival. Even if you’re not bothered about Baldwin, do go and have a look.