The sky is clear,
The sun is bright;
The cows are red,
The sheep are white;
Trees in the meadows
Make happy shadows.
Birds in the hedge
Are perched and sing;
Swallows and larks
Are on the wing:
Two merry cuckoos
Are making echoes.
Bird and the beast
Have the dew yet;
My road shines dry,
Theirs bright and wet:
I have gone back in boyish wonderment
To things that I had foolishly put by....
Have found an alien and unknown content
In seeing how some bits of cloud-filled sky
Are framed in bracken pools; through chuckling hours
Have watched the antic frogs, or curiously
Have numbered all the unnamed, vagrant flowers,
That fleck the unkempt meadows, lavishly.
Or where a headlong toppling stream has stayed
Its racing, lulled to quiet by the song
Bursting from out the thickleaved oaken shade,
There I have lain while hours sauntered past--
I have found peacefulness somewhere at last,
Have found a quiet needed for so long.
I WENT out on an April morning
All alone, for my heart was high,
I was a child of the shining meadow,
I was a sister of the sky.
There in the windy flood of morning
Longing lifted its weight from me,
Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering,
Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.
Now the mountain top is won,
Behold the valley in the sun —
The gold and yellow farms that lie
Bare-bosomed to the courting sky;
The olive hills, the meadows green.
The towns that punctuate the scene;
The little spires that seem to cry
For leaves and blossoms to the sky.
So delicate, it seems the breeze
Must stir them like the willow trees.
Ah, happy vale, how sweet you are,
As I observe you from this car;
How pleasant here to sit and shirk
And know your dwellers are at work!
What! Roses growing in a meadow
Where all the cattle browse?
I’d think they’d fear the very shadow
Of daddy’s big rough cows.
LADY MEADOW,
Coquetting there with noon,
You balance and sway your rustling trees
Like crisp brocade hoop-skirts.
Over your curling gold of buttercups
You powder thick the daisy-petals,
And near the pond.
Iris-lashed, heaven-reflected —
Yet not too near —
You flaunt serenely,
One black cow.
Reclining;
Much as a Royal favorite wears
Her patch.
Beneath the smiling blue of her arch eye.
It was like floating in a blessed dream to roam
Across green meadows, far from home,
With only trees and quivering sky to hedge the sight,
Dazzling the eyes with strange delight.
Such wide, wide fields I had never seen, and never dreamed
Could be; and wonderful it seemed
To wander over green and under green and run
Unwatched even of the shining sun.
One tree there was that held a wrinkled creaking bough
Far over the grass, hanging low;
And a swing from it hanging drew us near and made
New brightness beneath that doming shade.
For there my sisters swung long hours delightedly,
And there delighted clambered I;
And all our voices shrilled as one when up we flung
And into the stinging sharp leaves swung.
To straight the back, how good; to see the slow
Dispersed cloud-flocks of Heaven wandering blind
Without a shepherd, feel caress the kind
Sweet August air, soft drifting to and fro
Meadow and arable.--Leaning on my hoe
I searched for any beauty eyes might find.
The tossing wood showed silver in the wind;
Green hills drowsed wakeful in the golden glow.
Yet all the air was loud with mutterings,
Rumours of trouble strange in that rich peace,
Where War’s dread birds must practise without cease
All that the stoutest pilot-heart might dare.
Death over dreaming life managed his wings,
Droning dull song in the sun-satiate air.
The dead land oppressed me;
I turned my thoughts away,
And went where hill and meadow
Are shadowless and gay.
Where Coopers stands by Cranham,
Where the hill-gashes white
Show golden in the sunshine,
Our sunshine--God’s delight.
Beauty my feet stayed at last
Where green was most cool,
Trees worthy of all worship
I worshipped ... then, O fool,
Let my thoughts slide unwitting
To other, dreadful trees, ...
And found me standing, staring
Sick of heart--at these!
Only the wanderer
Knows England’s graces,
Or can anew see clear
Familiar faces.
And who loves joy as he
That dwells in shadows?
Do not forget me quite,
O Severn meadows.
How tender-mad the little meadows lie!
The wobbling lambs are tasting milky weeds,
The tipsy trees
Are leaned like foam on green, wind-gullied seas;
The pale moth flutters where the pale moth leads,
And you, swimming the sky
Waist deep in surf of apple-blossoms — I,
Sweet to your thigh,
Take the new tingle of your froth of seeds.
Why must you sing of sorrow
When the world is so full of woe?
Why must you sing of the ugly?
For the ugly and sad I know.
Why will you sing of railways,
Of Iron and Steel and Coal,
And the din of the smoky cities?
For these will not feed my soul.
But sing to me songs of beauty
To gladden my tired eyes,--
The beauty of waving forest,
Of meadows and sunlit skies;
Sing me of childish laughter,
Of cradles and painted toys,
Of the sea and the brooks and the rivers,
And the shouting of bathing boys.