Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again.
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Four miles at a leap, over the dark hollow land,
Travels my eye with equal ease and delight:And scarce could my body leap four yards.This is the best and the worst of it –Never to know,Yet to imagine gloriously, pure health.To-day, had I suddenly health,I could not satisfy the desire of my heartUnless health abated it,So beautiful is the air in its softness and clearness,…
Thinking of her had saddened me at first,
Redoubled, and she stood up like a flame,A living thing, not what before I nursed,The shadow I was growing to love almost,The phantom, not the creature with bright eyeThat I had thought never to see, once lost.She found the celandines of FebruaryAlways before us all. Her nature and nameWere like those flowers, and now immediatelyFor…
That’s the cuckoo, you say. I cannot hear it.
Too well the year when first I failed to hear it –It was drowned by my man groaning out to his sheep ‘Ho! Ho!’Ten times with an angry voice he shouted‘Ho! Ho!’ but not in anger, for that was his way.He died that Summer, and that is how I rememberThe cuckoo calling, the children listening,…
An acre of land between the shore and the hills,
The lovely visible earth and sky and seaWhere what the curlew needs not, the farmer tills:A house that shall love me as I love it,Well-hedged, and honoured by a few ash treesThat linnets, greenfinches, and goldfinchesShall often visit and make love in and flit:A garden I need never go beyond,Broken but neat, whose sunflowers every…
Unless it was that day I never knew
The March sun brightened and the South-west blew,Jackdaws began to shout and float and soarAlready, and one was racing straight and highAlone, shouting like a black warriorChallenges and menaces to the wide sky.With loud long laughter then a woodpeckerRidiculed the sadness of the owl’s last cry.And through the valley where all the folk astirMade only…
IF I should ever by chance grow rich
Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater,And let them all to my eldest daughter.The rent I shall ask of her will be onlyEach year’s first violets, white and lonely,The first primroses and orchises–She must find them before I do, that is.But if she finds a blossom on furzeWithout rent they shall all forever be hers,Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch,Roses,…
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again.
Similar Posts
That’s the cuckoo, you say. I cannot hear it.
Too well the year when first I failed to hear it –It was drowned by my man groaning out to his sheep ‘Ho! Ho!’Ten times with an angry voice he shouted‘Ho! Ho!’ but not in anger, for that was his way.He died that Summer, and that is how I rememberThe cuckoo calling, the children listening,…
Gone the wild day:
Coming makes wayFor brief twilight.Where the firm soaked roadMounts and is lostIn the high beech-woodIt shines almost.The beeches keepA stormy rest,Breathing deepOf wind from the west.The wood is black,With a misty steam.Above, the cloud packBreaks for one gleam.But the woodman’s cotBy the ivied treesAwakens notTo light or breeze.It smokes aloftUnwavering:It hunches softUnder storm’s wing.It has…
The glory of the beauty of the morning, –
The blackbird that has found it, and the doveThat tempts me on to something sweeter than love;White clouds ranged even and fair as new-mown hay;The heat, the stir, the sublime vacancyOf sky and meadow and forest and my own heart: –The glory invites me, yet it leaves me scorningAll I can ever do, all I…
As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn
I sat among the boughs of the fallen elmThat strewed the angle of the fallow, andWatched the plough narrowing a yellow squareOf charlock. Every time the horses turnedInstead of treading me down, the ploughman leanedUpon the handles to say or ask a word,About the weather, next about the war.Scraping the share he faced towards the…
I never had noticed it until
Where now the woodman lopsThe last of the willows with his billIt was not more than a hedge overgrown.One meadow’s breadth awayI passed it day by day.Now the soil is bare as bone,And black betwixt two meadows green,Though fresh-cut fag got endsOf hazel made some amendsWith a gleam as if flowers they had been.Strange it…
They should never have built a barn there, at all –
Though when it was young. Now it is oldBut good, not like the barn and me.To-morrow they cut it down. They will leaveThe barn, as I shall be left, maybe.What holds it up? ‘Twould not pay to pull down.Well, this place has no other antiquity.No abbey or castle looks so oldAs this that Job Knight…