The poems of Owen Meredith (Honble Robert Lytton.) ::

As I walk to the Town,
Now the hedges are blown,
And the white-thorn is thick on the air,
And young butterflies hoist
Milk-white sails from the moist
Open-mouth'd buttercups here and there,

II

While the high-shoulder'd grig,
Whose great heart is too big
For his body this blue May morn,
Screams out of the spikes
Of the grass, as he strikes
At the stalks of the emerald corn,—

III

I say, as I walk
To the Town, and talk
To myself, with, now and then,
A good word as I go
To the flowers that I know,
And now to the women and men,

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IV

(For the waggoner plods
By his team, and nods,
And the girl tripping over the stile,
Laughing shy, turning back
On the lone meadow track,
Leaves the sweet air more sweet for her smile,)

V

How little I care,
While the weather holds fair,
What Europe may do with To-day!
If 'tis war be the chance,
Or the sphynx that's in France,
For once let the chance slip away.

VI

Let the merchants be stirr'd
By the ghost of a word
Dropt in Paris, and caught up elsewhere,
Or a manikin Duke
Laugh to scorn the rebuke
Of the Berlin grandees, . . . need I care?

VII

But how much shall I care
If some cloud unaware
(And the sky is not cloudless all)
Should ruin and stain
With one smear of blue rain
Those meads basking under the wall!

233

VIII

How much if, alas!
In the field yet to pass
The wind should blow round to the south,
And so blow away
The tost balm of the hay
From my forehead, and eyes, and mouth!

University of Virginia Library

WALKING TO THE TOWN.

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