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50
AN ENGLISH VILLAGE
(SNOWSHILL)
There lies a vale in Cotswold still as death
And empty as the sky, a grey cold dale,
That pours its labour forth at break of day,
And hears no sound nor beating at its heart
Till toil creeps back at sundown.
And empty as the sky, a grey cold dale,
That pours its labour forth at break of day,
And hears no sound nor beating at its heart
Till toil creeps back at sundown.
Walls of stone
Of immemorial age, yet unembossed
With lichen or with rue-wort, nurse its hearths
Of trembling embers. O'er its box-tree walks
The twinkling martins cut their subtle rings.
Of immemorial age, yet unembossed
With lichen or with rue-wort, nurse its hearths
Of trembling embers. O'er its box-tree walks
The twinkling martins cut their subtle rings.
Here yellow apples glow, like myriad lamps,
On strained and drooping branches, tier by tier,
Drawn up the wold in wasting orchards grey.
On strained and drooping branches, tier by tier,
Drawn up the wold in wasting orchards grey.
Nothing is here that was not here and thus
When Milton shook his long ambrosial curls
O'er Cromwell's rough state-papers, nothing here
The chanting Roundhead hath not seen and felt
Riding from Worcester to his woodland home
On Evenlode or Windrush.
When Milton shook his long ambrosial curls
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The chanting Roundhead hath not seen and felt
Riding from Worcester to his woodland home
On Evenlode or Windrush.
Here at least
Nature and Man have grown so like each other,
In close perennial concert, that the voice
Of one is as the other's.
Nature and Man have grown so like each other,
In close perennial concert, that the voice
Of one is as the other's.
Miles away
I hear faint bayings of the Broadway hounds:
The hunt is up,—it will not reach us here!
Here are no louder sounds than, drop by drop,
The patient trickling that a water-thread
Makes down the clouded well. No bird, no boy,
No whirring insect with a strident wing,
Transgresses the rich vow of tongueless peace.
Here even a hermit's heart might break at last;
All is too still; and Solitude herself
Would chafe against so cold a chain of stone.
I hear faint bayings of the Broadway hounds:
The hunt is up,—it will not reach us here!
Here are no louder sounds than, drop by drop,
The patient trickling that a water-thread
Makes down the clouded well. No bird, no boy,
No whirring insect with a strident wing,
Transgresses the rich vow of tongueless peace.
Here even a hermit's heart might break at last;
All is too still; and Solitude herself
Would chafe against so cold a chain of stone.
Even as I gaze, it grows intolerable!
October lingered in one last red rose,
But as the light breeze rises, at my feet
Lo! these last petals in a crimson shower
Lie fallen. Winter, like a felon ghost,
That with its viewless presence chills the blood,
Has slipped upon us from the hoary wold;
I fly, and leave the vale beneath his sway
As tranquil as a sea without a wave.
October lingered in one last red rose,
But as the light breeze rises, at my feet
Lo! these last petals in a crimson shower
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That with its viewless presence chills the blood,
Has slipped upon us from the hoary wold;
I fly, and leave the vale beneath his sway
As tranquil as a sea without a wave.
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