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...WINTER TREES by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS THE CHAPERON by HENRY CUYLER BUNNER ONE POET VISITS ANOTHER by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES A STORM IN THE DISTANCE (AMONG THE GEORGIAN HILLS) by PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE SOMETIME by MAY LOUISE RILEY SMITH ECCLESIASTICAL SONNETS: PART 2: 25. THE VIRGIN by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH |