What lovely vistas unfurl and pass me by
What miracles of creation, what wonders of life
What variety, what fantastic medley
What serene peace, what easeful tranquility
Sights and scenes that hold one’s breaths
Sounds and songs that chase the moody aches
A bird twittering on a tree, a squirrel jumping from branch to branch
A flower here, a flower there, on the hedge and over the bower
Flirting with dandy butterflies on iridescent wings
Bunches of blooms nestled in the foliage of silken green
The early sun golden and glowing, dispersing radiant rays
The cotton clouds spreading a woolly carpet on his way
The puff of air intoxicant with heady fragrance
And doused with the chill of early morning mist
Herds of cattle grazing on far away meads
Avian chatter blended with the music of leaping cataracts
Their echoes sent out by tall rocks and giant boulders
All that pleases the eye and ear in euphoric delight
Had I been a Raphael or Rembrandt
I would have transferred those scenes onto a canvas
Which one would never get tired of gazing at
And kept in the drawing room for everyone to see
Or a Wordsworth to have composed those immortal
Tintern Abbey lines, inspired by these ‘beauteous forms’
To be recalled and recited by men of all ages and climes
That they ever ring resonant in their private closets!