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W. H. Davies
Now how could I, with gold to spare,
Who know the harlot's arms, and wine,
Sit in this green field all alone,
If Nature was not truly mine?
That Pleasure life wakes stale at morn,
From heavy sleep that no rest brings:
This life of quiet joy wakes fresh,
And claps its wings at morn, and sings.
So here sit I, alone till noon,
In one long dream of quiet bliss;
I hear the lark and share his joy,
With no more winedrops than were his.
Such, Nature, is thy charm and power--
Since I have made the Muse my wife--
To keep me from the harlot's arms,
And save me from a drunkard's life.
The silence of unlaboured fields
Lies like a judgment on the air:
A human voice is never heard:
The sighing grass is everywhere--
The sighing grass, the shadowed sky,
The cattle crying wearily!
Where are the lowland people gone?
Where are the sun-dark faces now?
The love that kept the quiet hearth,
The strength that held the speeding plough?
Grasslands and lowing herds are good,
But better human flesh and blood!
A LITTLE brown room in a sea of fields.
Fields pink as rose-mallows
Under a fading rose-mallow sky.
Four candles on a tall iron candlestick.
Clustered like altar lights.
Above, the models of four brown Chinese junks
Sailing round the brown walls.
Silent and motionless.
The quick cut of a vibrating string.
Another, and another.
Biting into the silence.
Notes pierce, sharper and sharper ;
They draw up in a freshness of sound.
Higher — higher, to the whiteness of intolerable beauty.
They are jagged and clear.
Like snow peaks against the sky ;
out on the water
rain is no making of a field
but a great kindness
when I die
who will offer any advice
what will be the question
much company in a little room
an old man sat boasting
how he had been in prison
and there was a field
with four horses
and the light of evening
fields receive me
though I understand
only a piece of the world
a well an idle heart
but I have been alone
here at the present
infinite spot
who was I being too free
in the city of desire
before having anything in my head
when my belly was it
like the raw ground in fields
wanton with sun and sleep
where am I to look for quiet
and not see a road
walking the fields till dark
I rage more than ever in the mist
we are not ourselves
in a field
but taken prisoner we find
a green page to retreat to
touching an abstract ground
like oaks engaged
with the night
who was not for the war
and the business of war
and whatever he pretends
means no hurt in it
a failed swan
coming home to a field
at the office I bound myself
to strict rules
old field
the land is tangier and out
of order there
a place never likely to thin
all gone off
and up
Easter is for the glorious
children of amours
bastard children that know
the best world going
children grown odd in the fields
watching the horses