And winds go fanning up and downThe little strawy bents and nodding flowers,There the huge thistle, spurred with many thorns,The suncrackt upland’s russet swells adorns.Not undevoid of beauty there they come,Armed warriors, waiting neither suns nor showers,Guarding the little clover plots to bloomWhile sheep nor oxen dare not crop their flowersUnsheathing their own knobs of…
And much the weedling tempted meTo crop its tender flower;Exposed to wind and heavy rain,It’s head bow’d lowly on the plain;Hand silently it seem’d in painOf life’s endanger’d hour.And and wilt thou bid my bloom decay,And crop my flower, and me betray,And cast my injured sweets away?-Its silence seemly sigh’d‘A moment’s idol of thy mind!And…
Beneath the wildwood’s oak-tree boughAnd Nature said we loved.Winter’s blastThe _now_ since then has crept between,And left us both apart.Winters that withered all the greenHave froze the beating heart.Now is past._Now_ is past since last we metBeneath the hazel bough;Before the evening sun was setHer shadow stretched below.Autumn’s blastHas stained and blighted every bough;Wild strawberries…
And leave the crickets in the hearthFor green fields’ merry minstrelsy.I see thee now with little handCatch at each object passing bye,The happiest thing in all the landExcept the bee and butterfly.* * * * *And limpid brook that leaps along,Gilt with the summer’s burnished gleam,Will stop thy little tale or songTo gaze upon its…
And smiles at winter be it eer so keenWith all the leafy luxury of May.And O it is delicious, when the dayIn winter’s loaded garment keenly blowsAnd turns her back on sudden falling snows,To go where gravel pathways creep betweenArches of evergreen that scarce let throughA single feather of the driving storm;And in the bitterest…
The ploughman ran and gave a hearty shout,He found a weary fox and beat him out.The ploughman laughed and would have ploughed him inBut the old shepherd took him for the skin.He lay upon the furrow stretched for dead,The old dog lay and licked the wounds that bled,The ploughman beat him till his ribs would…
Its very praises hurt me moreThan een its coldness did before,Its hollow ways torment me nowAnd start a cold sweat on my brow,Its noise I cannot bear to hear,Its joy is trouble to my ear,Its ways I cannot bear to see,Its crowds are solitudes to me.O, how I long to be agenThat poor and independent…
Roaring as rivers breaking loose in floodsTo spread and foam and deluge all the plainThe cotter listens at his door againHalf doubting whether it be floods or windAnd through the thickening darkness looks affraidThinking of roads that travel has to findThrough night’s black depths in danger’s garb arrayedAnd the loud glabber round the flaze soon…
I hardly know her face again,Nature herself seems on the flitting.The fields grow old and common things,The grass, the sky, the winds a-blowing;And spots, where still a beauty clings,Are sighing ‘going! all a-going!’O Poesy is on the wane,I hardly know her face again.The bank with brambles overspread,And little molehills round about it,Was more to me…
Thou wert my joy in every spot,My theme in every song.And when I saw a stranger faceWhere beauty held the claim,I gave it like a secret graceThe being of thy name.And all the charms of face or voiceWhich I in others seeAre but the recollected choiceOf what I felt for thee.
