Two sister rivers
Watered that portion of the Southern county
I spent my boyhood in -- the Celtic Avon
And Anglo-Saxon Stour. Once I paused
Upon a bridge that crossed the Hampshire Avon
To listen to the singing of the sedge-warbler
Among the reeds -- a rapid song --
Sweet and harsh sounds jumbled all together,
It seemed as if an imitation
Of chattering waters as they tumbled onwards
Over smooth polished pebbles.

from 'Naming of Rivers'

John Heath-Stubbs's new book is more elegiac, but no less firm in its celebrations, than his last, Sweetapple Earth (1993). As he reflects in his poem 'The Ascent', 'The poems in my file are bleak enough,/Written in the knowledge one I loved,/My bright beautiful friend, had got to die--/And die before his time -- and now is dead.' Yet with his accustomed ear for birdsong, his fascination with the material world, and his instinct for transcendence, he goes on, even though 'there's nothing at the top/But the cold snow and the clear air --/Nothing between me and God except the darkness,/And the uncaring stars' predestined wheeling.'
    
No poet since Auden has had the technical resources Heath-Stubbs deploys in his wonderfully various work. He is a poet on a substantial scale, ranging over the literatures of Europe and the Mediterranean. Intimate with classical and biblical traditions, his tone is never earnest: he has a fine sense of humour and a wry way of commenting on modern life.