The Flitting (penultimate)

I love the verse that, mild and bland,
Breathes of green fields and open sky,
I love the muse that in her hand
Bears flowers of native poesy;
Who walks nor skips the pasture brook
In scorn, but by the drinking horse
Leans o'er its little brig to look
How far the sallows lean across.

And feels a rapture in her breast
Upon their root-fringed grains to mark
A hermit moor-hen's sedgy nest
Just like a naiad's summer bark.
She counts the eggs she cannot reach,
Admires the spot and loves it well,
And yearns, so nature's lessons teach,
Amid such neighbourhoods to dwell.

I love the muse who sits her down
Upon the mole-hill's little lap,
Who feels no fear to stain her gown
And pauses by the hedgerow gap;
Not with that affectation, praise
Of song, to sing and never see
A field flower grow in all her days
Or e'en a forest's aged tree.

E'en here my simple feelings nurse
A love for every simple weed,
And e'en this little shepherd's purse
Grieves me to cut it up; indeed
I feel at times a love and joy
For every weed and every thing,
A feeling kindred from a boy,
A feeling brought with every spring.

(tbc)

The Flitting (V)

No, pasture mole-hills used to lie
And talk to me of sunny days,
And then the glad sheep resting by
All still in ruminating praise
Of summer and the pleasant place;
And every weed and blossom too
Was looking upward in my face
With friendship's welcome ‘How do ye do?’

All tenants of an ancient place
And heirs of noble heritage,
Coeval they with Adam's race
And blest with more substantial age.
For when the world first saw the sun
These little flowers beheld him too,
And when his love for earth begun
They were the first his smiles to woo.

There little lambtoe bunches springs
In red-tinged and begolden dye
For ever, and like China kings
They come but never seem to die.
There may-bloom with its little threads
Still comes upon the thorny bowers
And ne'er forgets those pinky heads
Like fairy pins amid the flowers.

And still they bloom as on the day
They first crowned wilderness and rock,
When Abel haply wreathed with may
The firstlings of his little flock,
And Eve might from the matted thorn
To deck her lone and lovely brow
Reach that same rose that heedless scorn
Misnames as the dog rosey now.

Give me no high-flown fangled things,
No haughty pomp in marching chime,
Where muses play on golden strings
And splendour passes for sublime,
Where cities stretch as far as fame
And fancy's straining eye can go,
And piled until the sky for shame
Is stooping far away below.

(tbc)

The Flitting (IV)

Strange scenes mere shadows are to me,
Vague impersonifying things;
I love with my old haunts to be
By quiet woods and gravel springs,
Where little pebbles wear as smooth
As hermits' beads by gentle floods,
Whose noises do my spirits soothe
And warm them into singing moods.

Here every tree is strange to me,
All foreign things where'er I go,
There's none where boyhood made a swee
Or clambered up to rob a crow.
No hollow tree or woodland bower
Well known when joy was beating high,
Where beauty ran to shun a shower
And love took pains to keep her dry.

And laid the sheaf upon the ground
To keep her from the dripping grass,
And ran for stooks and set them round
Till scarce a drop of rain could pass
Through; where the maidens they reclined
And sung sweet ballads now forgot,
Which brought sweet memories to the mind,
But here no memory knows them not.

There have I sat by many a tree
And leaned o'er many a rural stile,
And conned my thoughts as joys to me,
Naught heeding who might frown or smile.
'Twas nature's beauty that inspired
My heart with raptures not its own,
And she's a fame that never tires;
How could I feel myself alone?

(tbc)

The Flitting (III)

The hawthorns here were hung with may,
But still they seem in deader green,
The sun e'en seems to lose its way
Nor knows the quarter it is in.
I dwell on trifles like a child,
I feel as ill becomes a man,
And still my thoughts like weedlings wild
Grow up to blossom where they can.

They turn to places known so long
I feel that joy was dwelling there,
So home-fed pleasures fill the song
That has no present joys to heir.
I read in books for happiness,
But books are like the sea to joy;
They change—as well give age the glass
To hunt its visage when a boy.

For books they follow fashions new
And throw all old esteems away,
In crowded streets flowers never grew,
But many there hath died away.
Some sing the pomps of chivalry
As legends of the ancient time,
Where gold and pearls and mystery
Are shadows painted for sublime.

But passions of sublimity
Belong to plain and simpler things,
And David underneath a tree
Sought when a shepherd Salem's springs,
Where moss did into cushions spring,
Forming a seat of velvet hue,
A small unnoticed trifling thing
To all but heaven's hailing dew.

And David's crown hath passed away,
Yet poesy breathes his shepherd-skill,
His palace lost—and to this day
The little moss is blooming still.

(tbc)

The Flitting (II)

I walk adown the narrow lane,
The nightingale is singing now,
But like to me she seems at loss
For Royce Wood and its shielding bough.

I lean upon the window-sill,
The trees and summer happy seem;
Green, sunny green they shine, but still
My heart goes far away to dream
Of happiness, and thoughts arise
With home-bred pictures many a one,
Green lanes that shut out burning skies
And old crook'd stiles to rest upon.

Above them hangs the maple tree,
Below grass swells a velvet hill,
And little footpaths sweet to see
Go seeking sweeter places still,
With by and by a brook to cross
O'er which a little arch is thrown:
No brook is here, I feel the loss
From home and friends and all alone.

The stone pit with its shelvy sides
Seemed hanging rocks in my esteem;
I miss the prospect far and wide
From Langley Bush, and so I seem
Alone and in a stranger scene,
Far, far from spots my heart esteems,
The closen with their ancient green,
Heaths, woods, and pastures' sunny streams.

The Flitting (I)

I've left my own old home of homes,
Green fields and every pleasant place;
The summer like a stranger comes,
I pause and hardly know her face.
I miss the hazel's happy green,
The bluebell's quiet hanging blooms,
Where envy's sneer was never seen,
Where staring malice never comes.

I miss the heath, its yellow furze,
Mole-hills and rabbit tracks that lead
Through besom-ling, and teazle burrs
That spread a wilderness indeed;
The woodland oaks and all below
That their white-powdered branches shield,
The mossy paths: the very crow
Croaks music in my native field.

I sit me in my corner chair
That seems to feel itself from home,
And hear bird music here and there
From hawthorn hedge and orchard come;
I hear, but all is strange and new:
I sat on my old bench in June,
The sailing puddock's shrill ‘peelew’
On Royce Wood seemed a sweeter tune.

(tbc)

Native Scenes

O native scenes for ever, ever dear
So blest so happy where I long have been
So charmd with nature in each varied scene
To leave ye all is cutting & severe

Ye hanging bushes that from winds woud screen
Where oft I've shelterd from an april's shower
In youths past bliss in Childhoods happy hour
Ye Woods I've wanderd searching out the nest

Ye Meadows gay that reard me many a flower
Culling my cow slips I've been doubly blest
Huming gay fancies As I bound the prize
O Fate unkind beloved scenes adieu
Your vanishd pleasures crowd my swimming eyes
& makes this wounded heart to bleed anew