Black in the summer night my Cotswold hill Aslant my window sleeps, beneath a sky Deep as the bedded violets that fill March woods with dusky passion. As I lie Abed between cool walls I watch the host Of the slow stars lit over Gloucester plain, And drowsily the habit of these most Beloved of English lands moves in my brain, While silence holds dominion of the dark, Save when the foxes from the spinneys bark.
I see the valleys in their morning mist Wreathed under limpid hills in moving light, Happy with many a yeoman melodist: I see the little roads of twinkling white Busy with fieldward teams and market gear Of rosy men, cloth-gaitered, who can tell The many-minded changes of the year, Who know why crops and kine fare ill or well; I see the sun persuade the mist away, Till town and stead are shining to the day.
I see the wagons move along the rows Of ripe and summer-breathing clover-flower, I see the lissom husbandman who knows Deep in his heart the beauty of his power, As, lithely pitched, the full-heaped fork bids on The harvest home. I hear the rickyard fill With gossip as in generations gone, While wagon follows wagon from the hill. I think how, when our seasons all are sealed, Shall come the unchanging harvest from the field.
I see the barns and comely manors planned By men who somehow moved in comely thought, Who, with a simple shippon to their hand, As men upon some godlike business wrought; I see the little cottages that keep Their beauty still where since Plantaganet Have come the shepherds happily to sleep, Finding the loaves and cups of cider set; I see the twisted shepherds, brown and old, Driving at dusk their glimmering sheep to fold.
And now the valleys that upon the sun Broke from their opal veils, are veiled again, And the last light upon the wolds is done, And silence falls on flocks and fields and men; And black upon the night I watch my hill, And the stars shine, and there an owly wing Brushes the night, and all again is still, And, from this land of worship that I sing, I turn to sleep, content that from my sires I draw the blood of England’s midmost shires.
MAY GARDEN
A shower of green gems on my apple tree This first morning of May Has fallen out of the night, to be Herald of holiday — Bright gems of green that, fallen there, Seem fixed and glowing on the air.
Until a flutter of blackbird wings Shakes and makes the boughs alive, And the gems are now no frozen things, But apple-green buds to thrive On sap of my May garden, how well The green September globes will tell.
Also my pear tree has its buds, But they are silver yellow, Like autumn meadows when the floods Are silver under willow, And here shall long and shapely pears Be gathered while the autumn wears.
And there are sixty daffodils Beneath my wall… And jealousy it is that kills This world when all The spring’s behaviour here is spent To make the world magnificent.