Some day, I think, there will be people enough

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…

Was the first smileWhen mist has been forgivenAnd the sun has stolen out,Peered, and resolved to shine at sevenOn dabbled lengthening grasses,Thick primroses and early leaves uneven,When earth’s breath, warm and humid, far surpassesThe richest oven’s, and loudly rings ‘cuckoo’And sharply the nightingale’s ‘tsoo, tsoo, tsoo, tsoo’:To say ‘God bless it’ was all that I…

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…

Under the catkins wagging in the hedge.But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun;Nor did I value that thin gilding beamMore than a pretty February thingTill I came down to the old Manor Farm,And church and yew-tree opposite, in ageIts equals and in size. The church and yewAnd farmhouse slept in a…

Of bees, and smell the drying grassAnd the sweet mint, because I had comeTo an end of forest, and becauseHere was both road and inn, the sumOf what’s not forest. But ’twas hereThey asked me if I did not passYesterday this way. ‘Not you? Queer.’‘Who then? and slept here?’ I felt fear.I learnt his road…

Of heat the express-train drew up thereUnwontedly. It was late June.The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.No one left and no one cameOn the bare platform. What I sawWas Adlestrop — only the nameAnd willows, willow-herb, and grass,And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,No whit less still and lonely fairThan the high cloudlets in the sky.And for…