Blogs and book

Where shaken water-wheels go creak and clack,
List while a lorn thrush calls and almost speaks;
See willow-wrens with elderberries black
Staining their slender beaks.
They know full well how squirrels spend the day;
They peeped when field-mice stole and stored the seed,
And voles along their under-water way
Donned collars of bright beads.
Still from the deep-cut road they love to mark
Where set, as in a frame, the nearer shapes
Rise out of hill and wood; then long downs dark
As purple bloom on grapes.
But farms whereon the tall wheat musters gold,
High barley whitening, creases in bare hills,
Reed-feathered, castle-like brown churches old,
Nor churning water-mills,
Shall make ought seem so fair as that beyond--
Beyond the down, which draws their fealty;
Blow high, blow low, some hearts do aye respond
The wind is from the sea.
Above the steep-cut steps as they did grow,
The children's cottage homes embowered are seen;
Were this a world unfallen, they scarce could show
More beauteous red and green.


Pages:
56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80