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| WHO has not dreamed a world of bliss | |
| On a bright sunny noon like this, | |
| Couched by his native brook’s green maze, | |
| With comrade of his boyish days, | |
| While all around them seemed to be | 5 |
| Just as in joyous infancy? | |
| Who has not loved, at such an hour, | |
| Upon that heath, in birchen bower, | |
| Lulled in the poet’s dreamy mood, | |
| Its wild and sunny solitude? | 10 |
| While o’er the waste of purple ling | |
| You mark a sultry glimmering; | |
| Silence herself there seems to sleep, | |
| Wrapped in a slumber long and deep, | |
| Where slowly stray those lonely sheep | 15 |
| Through the tall foxglove’s crimson bloom, | |
| And gleaming of the scattered broom. | |
| Love you not, then, to list and hear | |
| The crackling of the gorse-flowers near, | |
| Pouring an orange-scented tide | 20 |
| Of fragrance o’er the desert wide? | |
| To hear the buzzard’s whimpering shrill, | |
| Hovering above you high and still? | |
| The twittering of the bird that dwells | |
| Among the heath’s delicious bells? | 25 |
| While round your bed, o’er fern and blade, | |
| Insects in green and gold arrayed, | |
| The sun’s gay tribes have lightly strayed; | |
| And sweeter sound their humming wings | |
| Than the proud minstrel’s echoing strings. | 30 |
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