Above the hollow wood
Where birds swim like fish –
Fish that laugh and shriek –
To and fro, far below
In the pale hollow wood.
Lichen, ivy, and moss
Keep evergreen the trees
That stand half-flayed and dying,
And the dead trees on their knees
In dog’s-mercury and moss:
And the bright twit of the goldfinch drops
Down there as he flits on thistle-tops.
Similar Posts
Mother, the root of this little yellow flower
Things are strange to-day on the cliff. The sun shines so bright,And the grasshopper works at his sewing machineSo hard. Here’s one on my hand, mother, look;I lie so still. There’s one on your book.But I have something to tell more strange. So leaveYour book to the grasshopper, mother dear, –Like a green knight in…
The dim sea glints chill. The white sun is shy,
Rough, long grasses keep white with frostAt the hill-top by the finger-post;The smoke of the traveller’s-joy is puffedOver hawthorn berry and hazel tuft.I read the sign. Which way shall I go?A voice says: ‘You would not have doubted soAt twenty.’ Another voice gentle with scornSays: ‘At twenty you wished you had never been born.’One hazel…
I never saw that land before,
Yet, as if by acquaintance hoarEndeared, by gladness and by pain,Great was the affection that I boreTo the valley and the river small,The cattle, the grass, the bare ash trees,The chickens from the farmsteads, allElm-hidden, and the tributariesDescending at equal interval;The blackthorns down along the brookWith wounds yellow as crocusesWhere yesterday the labourer’s hookHad sliced…
What matter makes my spade for tears or mirth,
The one I smoked, the other a soldierOf Blenheim, Ramillies, and MalplaquetPerhaps. The dead man’s immortalityLies represented lightly with my own,A yard or two nearer the living airThan bones of ancients who, amazed to seeAlmighty God erect the mastodon,Once laughed, or wept, in this same light of day.
WHEN first I came here I had hope,
My heart at the sight of the tall slopeOr grass and yews, as if my feetOnly by scaling its steps of chalkWould see something no other hillEver disclosed. And now I walkDown it the last time. Never willMy heart beat so again at sightOf any hill although as fairAnd loftier. For infiniteThe change, late unperceived,…
And you, Helen, what should I give you?
Had I an infinite great storeOffered me and I stood beforeTo choose. I would give you youth,All kinds of loveliness and truth,A clear eye as good as mine,Lands, waters, flowers, wine,As many children as your heartMight wish for, a far better artThan mine can be, all you have lostUpon the travelling waters tossed,Or given to…