WHEN I was young, I was out of tune with the herd: My only love was for the hills and mountains. Unwitting I fell into the Web of the World's dust And was not free until my thirtieth year. The migrant bird longs for the old wood: The fish in the tank thinks of its native pool. I had rescued from wildness a patch of the Southern Moor And, still rustic, I returned to field and garden. My ground covers no more than ten acres: My thatched cottage has eight or nine rooms. Elms and willows cluster by the eaves: Peach trees and plum trees grow before the hall. Hazy, hazy the distant hamlets of men. Steady the smoke of the half-deserted village, A dog barks somewhere in the deep lanes, A cock crows at the top of the mulberry tree. At gate and courtyard -- no murmur of the World's dust: In the empty rooms -- leisure and deep stillness. Long I lived checked by the bars of a cage: Now I have turned again to Nature and Freedom. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...I'VE NEVER SEEN SUCH A REAL HARD TIME BEFORE' by HAYDEN CARRUTH TWILIGHT COMES by HAYDEN CARRUTH PURSUIT OF THE WORD by ROBERT FROST WE CAN'T WRITE OURSELVES INTO ETERNAL LIFE by DAVID IGNATOW DESPAIR by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON MA LADY'S LIPS AM LIKE DE HONEY (NEGRO LOVE SONG) by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON |