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| WHOEVER lives true life, will love true love. | |
| I learnt to love that England. Very oft, | |
| Before the day was born, or otherwise | |
| Through secret windings of the afternoons, | |
| I threw my hunters off and plunged myself | 5 |
| Among the deep hills, as a hunted stag | |
| Will take the waters, shivering with the fear | |
| And passion of the course. And when at last | |
| Escaped, so many a green slope built on slope | |
| Betwixt me and the enemy’s house behind, | 10 |
| I dared to rest, or wander, in a rest | |
| Made sweeter for the step upon the grass, | |
| And view the ground’s most gentle dimplement, | |
| (As if God’s finger touched but did not press | |
| In making England) such an up and down | 15 |
| Of verdure,—nothing too much up or down, | |
| A ripple of land; such little hills, the sky | |
| Can stoop to tenderly and the wheatfields climb; | |
| Such nooks of valleys lined with orchisis, | |
| Fed full of noises by invisible streams; | 20 |
| And open pastures where you scarcely tell | |
| White daisies from white dew,—at intervals | |
| The mythic oaks and elm-trees standing out | |
| Self-poised upon their prodigy of shade,— | |
| I thought my father’s land was worthy too | 25 |
| Of being my Shakespeare’s…. | |
| … Ofter we walked only two | |
| If cousin Romney pleased to walk with me. | |
| We read, or talked, or quarrelled, as it chanced. | |
| We were not lovers, nor even friends well-matched: | 30 |
| Say rather, scholars upon different tracks, | |
| And thinkers disagreed, he, overfull | |
| Of what is, and I, haply, overbold | |
For what might be.
But then the thrushes sang, | |
| And shook my pulses and the elms’ new leaves; | 35 |
| At which I turned, and held my finger up, | |
| And bade him mark that, howsoe’er the world | |
| Went ill, as he related, certainly | |
| The thrushes still sing in it. At the word | |
| His brow would soften,—and he bore with me | 40 |
| In melancholy patience, not unkind, | |
| While breaking into voluble ecstasy | |
| I flattered all the beauteous country round, | |
| As poets use, the skies, the clouds, the fields. | |
| The happy violets hiding from the roads | 45 |
| The primroses run down to, carrying gold; | |
| The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push out | |
| Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths | |
| ’Twixt dripping ash-boughs,—hedgerows all alive | |
| With birds and gnats and large white butterflies | 50 |
| Which look as if the May-flower had caught life | |
| And palpitated forth upon the wind; | |
| Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist, | |
| Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills; | |
| And cattle grazing in the watered vales, | 55 |
| And cottage-chimneys smoking from the woods, | |
| And cottage-gardens smelling everywhere, | |
| Confused with smell of orchards. “See,” I said, | |
| “And see! is God not with us on the earth? | |
| And shall we put Him down by aught we do? | 60 |
| Who says there’s nothing for the poor and vile | |
| Save poverty and wickedness? behold!” | |
| And ankle-deep in English grass I leaped | |
| And clapped my hands, and called all very fair. | |
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