The bells that rang for Agincourt were destroyed at Cripplegate
during the blitz. Armin was buried there. Shakespeare lived in
the neighbourhood and Philip Gawdy, the only officer survivor from
the Revenge, probably landed a short distance away, on his return from
captivity.

For Gerald Henderson.

My falcon of Cripplegate
where is he flown?
Where is his tower
of London stone?
I see the dust
but where is the dome,
the parapet and the bells?

He perched on a leaf
above the parish,
guarding the trees
in their emerald arras;
Gawdy saw him
coming home,
(strange to be on the quiet Thames
with a nightmare no one can understand,
begun in glory and rocked to sleep
where the sullen waves of the islands creep
over the sword that belonged to Grenville,
with a life before
and a life after,
dull and smooth as a Norfolk carrier.)
What do you lack,
why do you look at us,
each of us has his own experience.
And my falcon
stared below him into a garden,
set by Armin
into a knot of taffet-roses:
"Man can choose
but as he disposes,
towers rise,
the circle closes."

There is no eternity of moment,
(hear my falcon)
Yesterday noon the Watch cried
"all is well."
Yesterday night the bell
broke from the smouldering chains that could not hold it,
who will remember in this hawk-less fosse
that it had rung the archers back from France,
heard Shakespeare's voice perhaps and Armin's dance,
rich though each separate grain may be that forms it,
it is dust.

Oh, what the wind takes with it on its journey,
is always loss.