OVERHEAD the leaf-song, on the upland slope; Over that the azure, clean from base to cope; Belle the mare beside me, drowsy from her lope. Goldy-green the wheat-field, like a fluted wall In the pleasant wind, with waves that rise and fall, "Moving all together," if it "move at all." Shakespeare in my pocket, lest I feel alone, Lest the brooding landscape take a sombre tone; Good to have a poet to fall back upon! But the vivid beauty makes the book absurd: What beside the real world is the written word? Keep the page till winter, when no thrush is heard! Why read Hamlet here? -- what's Hecuba to me? Let me read the grain-field; let me read the tree; Let me read mine own heart, deep as I can see. |