HERE, beside my Paris fire, I sit alone and ponder All my life of long ago that lies so far asunder; "Here, how came I thence?" I say, and greater grows the wonder As I recall the farms and fields and placid hamlets yonder. ...See, the meadowsweet is white against the water-courses, Marshy lands are kingcup-gay and bright with streams and sources; Dew-bespangled shines the hill where half abloom the gorse is, And all the northern fallows steam beneath the ploughing horses. There's the red-brick-chimneyed house, the ivied haunt of swallows, All its garden up and down and full of hills and hollows; Past the lawn, the sunken fence whose brink the laurel follows, And then the knee-deep pasture where the herd for ever wallows! So they've cut the lilac bush; a thousand thousand pities! 'Twas the blue old-fashioned sort that never grows in cities. There we little children played and chaunted aimless ditties, While oft the old grandsire looked at us and smiled his Nunc Dimittis! Green, O green with ancient peace, and full of sap and sunny, Lusty fields of Warwickshire, O land of milk and honey, Might I live to pluck again a spike of agrimony, A silver tormentilla leaf or ladysmock upon ye! Patience, for I keep at heart your pure and perfect seeming, I can see you wide awake as clearly as in dreaming, Softer, with an inner light, and dearer, to my deeming, Than when beside your brooks at noon I watched the sallows gleaming! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ILKA BLADE O' GRASS KEPS ITS AIN DRAP O' DEW by JAMES BALLANTYNE THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL by WILLIAM BLAKE F. DE SAMARA TO A.G.A. by EMILY JANE BRONTE SONNET TO THE AUTUMNAL MOON by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE ERRING IN COMPANY by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF 27 B.C. by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS |