HEREFORDSHIRE-born Poet Laureate John Masefield was bestowed with the Freedom of Hereford back in 1930. Flashback recalls how the civic occasion turned into a demonstration of love for the county of his childhood.

WHEN the Poet Laureate John Masefield was presented with the Freedom of Hereford in 1930 he became the first non-resident of the city to be so honoured since Admiral Nelson way back in 1802.

But never could the Freedom have been conferred on more true a son of Herefordshire than Masefield.

When he received the honour on that autumn day 72 years ago he replied with an eloquence one would expect from a giant of English Literature. But there was more than sheer mastery of the mother tongue; here was passion and pride for his homeland.

He said he believed that life was the expression of a will or law which had a purpose in every one of its manifestations.

"I believe that this world is only a shadow of the real world and I think by brooding on what is brightest and most generous in this world the beauty and the bounty and the majesty of the real world shine in upon the soul," he declared.

And how he loved his Herefordshire. He was especially known for the salty realism of his poems on the sea, but that day his talents were concentrated on his landlocked county.

"I am linked to this county by ties deeper than I can explain. They are ties of beauty. Whenever I think of Paradise I think of parts of this county. Whenever I think of any perfect human sight I think of things which I have seen in this county and whenever I think of the beauty and the bounty of God I think of parts of this shire," said the Ledbury-born Laureate.

Dignitaries listened spellbound as he continued: "For I know no land more full of the beauty and bounty of God than these red ploughlands and these deep woodlands so full of yew trees, and these apple orchards and lovely rivers and running brooks.

"There is no more lovely county in this lovely land. I cannot be thankful enough that I passed my childhood days in a land in which nearly everybody lived on and by the land, singing when they brought the harvest home, and taking such pride in their great cattle and in their great horses, their apple orchards, their dovecotes and their little gardens."

Masefield expressed a heady hope for the future. "It will be a happy day for England when she realises again that the true wealth of a land is in these things, and in the men and women who care for these things, since the beauty and the bounty of earth must be the shadow of Paradise.

"When men lived much in the beauty and the bounty of the earth, they were very conscious of the reality of heaven beside them, and they built shrines so lovely that the proud spirits who inherit Heaven came down to earth and dwelt in those shrines and companioned men and women so that men and women conversed with the Divine up and down this shire, and so many other shires."

This was marvellous Masefield, the great man inspired by his roots which filled his every bone with home pride that special day between the wars.

"But perhaps in this county pre-eminently there are more of those lovely shrines scattered up and down, evidence that men and women have gone from this earth into Paradise and come back bringing news of how the people build there," he said.

And sharing rich reveries of his childhood, he went on: "When I was a little child I looked upon these signs and upon this beautiful landscape, the red earth and deep woodlands and running brooks and streams and I felt that they were the shadow of Paradise, and that just beyond there was Paradise.

"And then for many years I brooded upon these things, hoping that by some miracle of poetry I might get beyond into that reality of Heaven of which these things are only the shadows, and that, getting into Heaven, I might hear the words and come back to earth and tell men and women, so that they would know and be happy.

"I have not done that, of course. I have not even begun to do it. But in giving me this Freedom you recognise that I have tried."