| |
| A COPPER concave of a sky | |
| Hangs high above my head. | |
| Vague thunder sullenly goes by | |
| With dragging, muffled tread. | |
| |
| The hot air faints upon the grass, | 5 |
| And at its bitter breath, | |
| Ten thousand trembling flower-souls pass, | |
| With fragrant sighs, to death. | |
| |
| There comes no breeze. No breeze has sprung | |
| And sweetly blown for days. | 10 |
| Dead air in silent sheets has hung, | |
| Smooth wavering sheets of haze. | |
| |
| The very birds that erstwhile soared | |
| Hide hushed in haunts of trees. | |
| Nature no longer walks abroad, | 15 |
| But crouches on her knees. | |
| |
| Crouches and hides her withered face, | |
| Above her barren breast, | |
| And I forget her yester grace | |
| And the clustering mouths she blessed. | 20 |
| |
| ’Tis in no alien land I sit, | |
| Almost it is mine own. | |
| Its fibres to my fibres knit, | |
| Its bone into my bone. | |
| |
| These are no alien skies I know, | 25 |
| Yet something in my blood | |
| Calls sharp for breath of ice and snow | |
| Across the wide, salt flood. | |
| |
| Calls loud and will not be denied, | |
| Cries, with imperious tears, | 30 |
| And mem’ries that have never died | |
| Leap wildly o’er the years: | |
| |
| The thrill of England’s winter days, | |
| Of England’s frost-sharp air, | |
| The ice along her waterways, | 35 |
| Her snowfields stretching fair, | |
| |
| Her snowfields gleaming through the dark, | |
| Her bird with breast aglow, | |
| On the white land a crimson mark, | |
| —Ah England, England’s snow! | 40 |
| |
| Fair as a queen, this far south land, | |
| A wayward bride, half won, | |
| Her dowry careless flung like sand, | |
| Her royal flax unspun. | |
| |
| And if beneath her ardent glance | 45 |
| Her subjects faint and reel, | |
| Does she but melt, stoop to entrance, | |
| They kiss her hem and kneel. | |
| |
| And I—I kneel. For oft her hand | |
| Has gently touched my hair. | 50 |
| Then with a throb I rise and stand, | |
| —A Queen!—why should she spare! | |
| |
| Yet when the Christ-Child mem’ries steal, | |
| Some ebb-tide swells to flood. | |
| Ah, England—just once more to feel | 55 |
| Thy winter in my blood! | |
| |
