Rise up, rise up, And, as the trumpet blowing Chases the dreams of men, As the dawn glowing The stars that left unlit The land and water, Rise up and scatter The dew that covers The print of last nigh...

The dim sea glints chill. The white sun is shy. And the skeleton weeds and the never-dry, Rough, long grasses keep white with frost At the hilltop by the finger-post; The smoke of the traveller’s-joy ...

It seems I have no tears left. They should have fallen⁠— Their ghosts, if tears have ghosts, did fall⁠—that day When twenty hounds streamed by me, not yet combed out But still all equals in their rage...

Under the after-sunset sky Two pewits sport and cry, More white than is the moon on high Riding the dark surge silently; More black than earth. Their cry Is the one sound under the sky. They alone mov...

The rock-like mud unfroze a little and rills Ran and sparkled down each side of the road Under the catkins wagging in the hedge. But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun; Nor did I value t...

Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved; Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof. Then at the inn I ...

They have taken the gable from the roof of clay On the long swede pile. They have let in the sun To the white and gold and purple of curled fronds Unsunned. It is a sight more tender-gorgeous At the w...

Will you come? Will you come? Will you ride So late At my side? O, will you come? Will you come? Will you come If the night Has a moon, Full and bright? O, will you come? Would you come? Would you com...

As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn The lovers disappeared into the wood. I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm That strewed an angle of the fallow, and Watched the plough narrowing a ...

Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed The speculating rooks at their nests cawed And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flower of grass, What we below could not see, Winter pass....

Gone the wild day: A wilder night Coming makes way For brief twilight. Where the firm soaked road Mounts and is lost In the high beech-wood It shines almost. The beeches keep A stormy rest, Breathing ...

Like the touch of rain she was On a man’s flesh and hair and eyes When the joy of walking thus Has taken him by surprise: With the love of the storm he burns, He sings, he laughs, well I know how, But...

Running along a bank, a parapet That saves from the precipitous wood below The level road, there is a path. It serves Children for looking down the long smooth steep, Between the legs of beech and yew...

The Combe was ever dark, ancient and dark. Its mouth is stopped with bramble, thorn, and briar; And no one scrambles over the sliding chalk By beech and yew and perishing juniper Down the half precipi...

If I should ever by chance grow rich I’ll buy Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch, Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater, And let them all to my elder daughter. The rent I shall ask of her will be only Each yea...

What shall I give my daughter the younger More than will keep her from cold and hunger? I shall not give her anything. If she shared South Weald and Havering, Their acres, the two brooks running betwe...

If I were to own this countryside As far as a man in a day could ride, And the Tyes were mine for giving or letting⁠— Wingle Tye and Margaretting Tye⁠—and Skreens, Gooshays, and Cockerells, Shellow, R...

And you, Helen, what should I give you? So many things I would give you Had I an infinite great store Offered me and I stood before To choose. I would give you youth, All kinds of loveliness and truth...

When first I came here I had hope, Hope for I knew not what. Fast beat My heart at sight of the tall slope Or grass and yews, as if my feet Only by scaling its steps of chalk Would see something no ot...

The downs will lose the sun, white alyssum Lose the bees’ hum; But head and bottle tilted back in the cart Will never part Till I am cold as midnight and all my hours Are beeless flowers. He neither s...

After you speak And what you meant Is plain, My eyes Meet yours that mean⁠— With your cheeks and hair⁠— Something more wise, More dark, And far different. Even so the lark Loves dust And nestles in it...

It was a perfect day For sowing; just As sweet and dry was the ground As tobacco-dust. I tasted deep the hour Between the far Owl’s chuckling first soft cry And the first star. A long stretched hour i...

When we two walked in Lent We imagined that happiness Was something different And this was something less. But happy were we to hide Our happiness, not as they were Who acted in their pride Juno and J...

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood This Eastertide call into mind the men, Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should Have gathered them and will do never again....

There they stand, on their ends, the fifty faggots That once were underwood of hazel and ash In Jenny Pinks’s Copse. Now, by the hedge Close packed, they make a thicket fancy alone Can creep through w...

Women he liked, did shovel-bearded Bob, Old Farmer Hayward of the Heath, but he Loved horses. He himself was like a cob, And leather-coloured. Also he loved a tree. For the life in them he loved most ...

Early one morning in May I set out, And nobody I knew was about. I’m bound away for ever, Away somewhere, away for ever. There was no wind to trouble the weathercocks. I had burnt my letters and darne...

The cherry trees bend over and are shedding On the old road where all that passed are dead, Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding This early May morn when there is none to wed....

It rains, and nothing stirs within the fence Anywhere through the orchard’s untrodden, dense Forest of parsley. The great diamonds Of rain on the grass-blades there is none to break, Or the fallen pet...

He has a hump like an ape on his back; He has of money a plentiful lack; And but for a gay coat of double his girth There is not a plainer thing on the earth This fine May morning. But the huckster ha...

“He has robbed two clubs. The judge at Salisbury Can’t give him more than he undoubtedly Deserves. The scoundrel! Look at his photograph! A lady-killer! Hanging’s too good by half For such as he.” So ...

I have come a long way to-day: On a strange bridge alone, Remembering friends, old friends, I rest, without smile or moan, As they remember me without smile or moan. All are behind, the kind And the u...

At hawthorn-time in Wiltshire travelling In search of something chance would never bring, An old man’s face, by life and weather cut And coloured⁠—rough, brown, sweet as any nut⁠— A land face, sea-blu...

Bright clouds of may Shade half the pond. Beyond, All but one bay Of emerald Tall reeds Like criss-cross bayonets Where a bird once called, Lies bright as the sun. No one heeds. The light wind frets A...

The clouds that are so light, Beautiful, swift and bright, Cast shadows on field and park Of the earth that is so dark, And even so now, light one! Beautiful, swift and bright one! You let fall on a h...

Some eyes condemn the earth they gaze upon: Some wait patiently till they know far more Than earth can tell them: some laugh at the whole As folly of another’s making: one I knew that laughed because ...

There never was a finer day, And never will be while May is May⁠— The third, and not the last of its kind; But though fair and clear the two behind Seemed pursued by tempests overpast; And the morrow ...

The glory of the beauty of the morning⁠— The cuckoo crying over the untouched dew; The blackbird that has found it, and the dove That tempts me on to something sweeter than love; White clouds ranged e...

The rain and wind, the rain and wind, raved endlessly. On me the Summer storm, and fever, and melancholy Wrought magic, so that if I feared the solitude Far more I feared all company: too sharp, too r...

Yes. I remember Adlestrop⁠— The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one c...

The green roads that end in the forest Are strewn with white goose feathers this June, Like marks left behind by some one gone to the forest To show his track. But he has never come back. Down each gr...

The sun blazed while the thunder yet Added a boom: A wagtail flickered bright over The mill-pond’s gloom: Less than the cooing in the alder Isles of the pool Sounded the thunder through that plunge Of...

It was upon a July evening. At a stile I stood, looking along a path Over the country by a second Spring Drenched perfect green again. “The lattermath Will be a fine one.” So the stranger said, A wand...

Tall nettles cover up, as they have done These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough Long worn out, and the roller made of stone: Only the elm butt tops the nettles now. This corner of the farmya...

After night’s thunder far away had rolled The fiery day had a kernel sweet of cold, And in the perfect blue the clouds uncurled, Like the first gods before they made the world And misery, swimming the...

How at once should I know, When stretched in the harvest blue I saw the swift’s black bow, That I would not have that view Another day Until next May Again it is due? The same year after year⁠— But wi...

Gone, gone again, May, June, July, And August gone, Again gone by, Not memorable Save that I saw them go, As past the empty quays The rivers flow. And now again, In the harvest rain, The Blenheim oran...

The sun used to shine while we two walked Slowly together, paused and started Again, and sometimes mused, sometimes talked As either pleased, and cheerfully parted Each night. We never disagreed Which...

The green elm with the one great bough of gold Lets leaves into the grass slip, one by one⁠— The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white, Harebell and scabious and tormentil, That blackberry ...

The long small room that showed willows in the west Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled, Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed What need or accident made them so build. Only the moon, ...

The last light has gone out of the world, except This moonlight lying on the grass like frost Beyond the brink of the tall elm’s shadow. It is as if everything else had slept Many an age, unforgotten ...

November’s days are thirty: November’s earth is dirty, Those thirty days, from first to last; And the prettiest things on ground are the paths With morning and evening hobnails dinted, With foot and w...

It stands alone Up in a land of stone All worn like ancient stairs, A land of rocks and trees Nourished on wind and stone. And all within Long delicate has been; By arts and kindliness Coloured, sweet...

There was a weasel lived in the sun With all his family, Till a keeper shot him with his gun And hung him up on a tree, Where he swings in the wind and rain, In the sun and in the snow, Without pleasu...

The summer nests uncovered by autumn wind. Some torn, others dislodged, all dark. Everyone sees them: low or high in tree, Or hedge, or single bush, they hang like a mark. Since there’s no need of eye...

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me Remembering again that I shall die And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks For washing me cleaner than I hav...

Fair was the morning, fair our tempers, and We had seen nothing fairer than that land, Though strange, and the untrodden snow that made Wild of the tame, casting out all that was Not wild and rustic a...

There’s nothing like the sun as the year dies, Kind as it can be, this world being made so, To stones and men and beasts and birds and flies, To all things that it touches except snow, Whether on moun...

When he should laugh the wise man knows full well: For he knows what is truly laughable. But wiser is the man who laughs also, Or holds his laughter, when the foolish do....

The sun set, the wind fell, the sea Was like a mirror shaking: The one small wave that clapped the land A mile-long snake of foam was making Where tide had smoothed and wind had dried The vacant sand....

The new moon hangs like an ivory bugle In the naked frosty blue; And the ghylls of the forest, already blackened By Winter, are blackened anew. The brooks that cut up and increase the forest, As if th...

I have come to the borders of sleep, The unfathomable deep Forest where all must lose Their way, however straight, Or winding, soon or late; They cannot choose. Many a road and track That, since the d...

Out of the wood of thoughts that grows by night To be cut down by the sharp axe of light⁠— Out of the night, two cocks together crow, Cleaving the darkness with a silver blow: And bright before my eye...

Out of us all That make rhymes, Will you choose Sometimes⁠— As the winds use A crack in a wall Or a drain, Their joy or their pain To whistle through⁠— Choose me, You English words? I know you: You ar...

“I could wring the old thing’s neck that put it there! A public-house! It may be public for birds, Squirrels and suchlike, ghosts of charcoal-burners And highwaymen.” The wild girl laughed. “But I Hat...

I never saw that land before, And now can never see it again; Yet, as if by acquaintance hoar Endeared, by gladness and by pain, Great was the affection that I bore To the valley and the river small, ...

Dark is the forest and deep, and overhead Hang stars like seeds of light In vain, though not since they were sown was bred Anything more bright. And evermore mighty multitudes ride About, nor enter in...

Thinking of her had saddened me at first, Until I saw the sun on the celandines lie Redoubled, and she stood up like a flame, A living thing, not what before I nursed, The shadow I was growing to love...

Half of the grove stood dead, and those that yet lived made Little more than the dead ones made of shade. If they led to a house, long before they had seen its fall: But they welcomed me; I was glad w...

Old Man, or Lad’s-love⁠—in the name there’s nothing To one that knows not Lad’s-love, or Old Man, The hoar-green feathery herb, almost a tree, Growing with rosemary and lavender. Even to one that know...

When Winter’s ahead, What can you read in November That you read in April When Winter’s dead? I hear the thrush, and I see Him alone at the end of the lane Near the bare poplar’s tip, Singing continuo...

I built myself a house of glass: It took me years to make it: And I was proud. But now, alas, Would God someone would break it. But it looks too magnificent. No neighbour casts a stone From where he d...

Men heard this roar of parleying starlings, saw, A thousand years ago even as now, Black rooks with white gulls following the plough So that the first are last until a caw Commands that last are first...

What matter makes my spade for tears or mirth, Letting down two clay pipes into the earth? The one I smoked, the other a soldier Of Blenheim, Ramillies, and Malplaquet Perhaps. The dead man’s immortal...

Between a sunny bank and the sun The farmhouse smiles On the riverside plat: No other one So pleasant to look at And remember, for many miles, So velvet-hushed and cool under the warm tiles. Not far f...

Only the sound remains Of the old mill; Gone is the wheel; On the prone roof and walls the nettle reigns. Water that toils no more Dangles white locks And, falling, mocks The music of the mill-wheel’s...

Over known fields with an old friend in dream I walked, but came sudden to a strange stream. Its dark waters were bursting out most bright From a great mountain’s heart into the light. They ran a shor...

This beauty made me dream there was a time Long past and irrecoverable, a clime Where any brook so radiant racing clear Through buttercup and kingcup bright as brass But gentle, nourishing the meadow ...

When these old woods were young The thrushes’ ancestors As sweetly sung In the old years. There was no garden here, Apples nor mistletoe; No children dear Ran to and fro. New then was this thatched co...

What will they do when I am gone? It is plain That they will do without me as the rain Can do without the flowers and the grass That profit by it and must perish without. I have but seen them in the l...

Harry, you know at night The larks in Castle Alley Sing from the attic’s height As if the electric light Were the true sun above a summer valley: Whistle, don’t knock, to-night. I shall come early, Ka...

She had a name among the children; But no one loved though someone owned Her, locked her out of doors at bedtime And had her kittens duly drowned. In Spring, nevertheless, this cat Ate blackbirds, thr...

She is most fair, And when they see her pass The poets’ ladies Look no more in the glass But after her. On a bleak moor Running under the moon She lures a poet, Once proud or happy, soon Far from his ...

At poet’s tears, Sweeter than any smiles but hers, She laughs; I sigh; And yet I could not live if she should die. And when in June Once more the cuckoo spoils his tune, She laughs at sighs; And yet s...

She dotes on what the wild birds say Or hint or mock at, night and day⁠— Thrush, blackbird, all that sing in May, And songless plover, Hawk, heron, owl, and woodpecker. They never say a word to her Ab...

An acre of land between the shore and the hills, Upon a ledge that shows my kingdoms three, The lovely visible earth and sky and sea, Where what the curlew needs not, the farmer tills: A house that sh...

Here again (she said) is March the third And twelve hours singing for the bird ’Twixt dawn and dusk, from half past six To half past six, never unheard. ’Tis Sunday, and the church-bells end When the ...

Now first, as I shut the door, I was alone In the new house; and the wind Began to moan. Old at once was the house, And I was old; My ears were teased with the dread Of what was foretold, Nights of st...

Now I know that Spring will come again, Perhaps to-morrow: however late I’ve patience After this night following on such a day. While still my temples ached from the cold burning Of hail and wind, and...

That’s the cuckoo, you say. I cannot hear it. When last I heard it I cannot recall; but I know Too well the year when first I failed to hear it⁠— It was drowned by my man groaning out to his sheep “Ho...

Often and often it came back again To mind, the day I passed the horizon ridge To a new country, the path I had to find By half-gaps that were stiles once in the hedge, The pack of scarlet clouds runn...

Often I had gone this way before: But now it seemed I never could be And never had been anywhere else; ’Twas home; one nationality We had, I and the birds that sang, One memory. They welcomed me. I ha...

Out in the sun the goldfinch flits Along the thistle-tops, flits and twits Above the hollow wood Where birds swim like fish⁠— Fish that laugh and shriek⁠— To and fro, far below In the pale hollow wood...

They met inside the gateway that gives the view, A hollow land as vast as heaven. “It is A pleasant day, sir.” “A very pleasant day.” “And what a view here. If you like angled fields Of grass and grai...

Three lovely notes he whistled, too soft to be heard If others sang; but others never sang In the great beech-wood all that May and June. No one saw him: I alone could hear him Though many listened. W...

To-day I want the sky, The tops of the high hills, Above the last man’s house, His hedges, and his cows, Where, if I will, I look Down even on sheep and rook, And of all things that move See buzzards ...

The rain of a night and a day and a night Stops at the light Of this pale choked day. The peering sun Sees what has been done. The road under the trees has a border new Of purple hue Inside the border...

To-day I think Only with scents⁠—scents dead leaves yield, And bracken, and wild carrot’s seed, And the square mustard field; Odours that rise When the spade wounds the root of tree, Rose, currant, ra...

But these things also are Spring’s⁠— On banks by the roadside the grass Long-dead that is greyer now Than all the Winter it was; The shell of a little snail bleached In the grass; chip of flint, and m...

The sweetest thing, I thought At one time, between earth and heaven Was the first smile When mist has been forgiven And the sun has stolen out, Peered, and resolved to shine at seven On dabbled length...

They should never have built a barn there, at all⁠— Drip, drip, drip!⁠—under that elm tree, Though then it was young. Now it is old But good, not like the barn and me. To-morrow they cut it down. They...

It stood in the sunset sky Like the straight-backed down, Many a time⁠—the barn At the edge of the town, So huge and dark that it seemed It was the hill Till the gable’s precipice proved It impossible...

Mother, the root of this little yellow flower Among the stones has the taste of quinine. Things are strange to-day on the cliff. The sun shines so bright, And the grasshopper works at his sewing-machi...

The skylarks are far behind that sang over the down; I can hear no more those suburb nightingales; Thrushes and blackbirds sing in the gardens of the town In vain: the noise of man, beast, and machine...

This moonlight makes The lovely lovelier Than ever before lakes And meadows were. And yet they are not, Though this their hour is, more Lovely than things that were not Lovely before. Nothing on earth...

Naught moves but clouds, and in the glassy lake Their doubles and the shadow of my boat. The boat itself stirs only when I break This drowse of heat and solitude afloat To prove if what I see be bird ...

There once the walls Of the ruined cottage stood. The periwinkle crawls With flowers in its hair into the wood. In flowerless hours Never will the bank fail, With everlasting flowers On fragments of b...

The Past is a strange land, most strange. Wind blows not there, nor does rain fall: If they do, they cannot hurt at all. Men of all kinds as equals range The soundless fields and streets of it. Pleasu...

The two men in the road were taken aback. The lovers came out shading their eyes from the sun, And never was white so white, or black so black, As her cheeks and hair. “There are more things than one ...

That girl’s clear eyes utterly concealed all Except that there was something to reveal. And what did mine say in the interval? No more: no less. They are but as a seal Not to be broken till after I am...

“He rolls in the orchard: he is stained with moss And with earth, the solitary old white horse. Where is his father and where is his mother Among all the brown horses? Has he a brother? I know the swa...

All day the air triumphs with its two voices Of wind and rain As loud as if in anger it rejoices, Drowning the sound of earth That gulps and gulps in choked endeavour vain To swallow the rain. Half th...

Chapel and gravestones, old and few, Are shrouded by a mountain fold From sound and view Of life. The loss of the brook’s voice Falls like a shadow. All they hear is The eternal noise Of wind whistlin...

I never had noticed it until ’Twas gone⁠—the narrow copse Where now the woodman lops The last of the willows with his bill. It was not more than a hedge overgrown. One meadow’s breadth away I passed i...

There are so many things I have forgot, That once were much to me, or that were not, All lost, as is a childless woman’s child And its child’s children, in the undefiled Abyss of what can never be aga...

These things that poets said Of love seemed true to me When I loved and I fed On love and poetry equally. But now I wish I knew If theirs were love indeed, Or if mine were the true And theirs some oth...

Not the end: but there’s nothing more. Sweet Summer and Winter rude I have loved, and friendship and love, The crowd and solitude: But I know them: I weary not; But all that they mean I know. I would ...

All day and night, save winter, every weather, Above the inn, the smithy, and the shop, The aspens at the cross-roads talk together Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top. Out of the black...

I was not apprenticed nor ever dwelt in famous Lincolnshire; I’ve served one master ill and well much more than seven year; And never took up to poaching as you shall quickly find; But ’tis my delight...

There was a time when this poor frame was whole And I had youth and never another care, Or none that should have troubled a strong soul. Yet, except sometimes in a frosty air When my heels hammered ou...

Unless it was that day I never knew Ambition. After a night of frost, before The March sun brightened and the South-west blew, Jackdaws began to shout and float and soar Already, and one was racing st...

“No one cares less than I, Nobody knows but God, Whether I am destined to lie Under a foreign clod,” Were the words I made to the bugle call in the morning. But laughing, storming, scorning, Only the ...

I love roads: The goddesses that dwell Far along invisible Are my favourite gods. Roads go on While we forget, and are Forgotten like a star That shoots and is gone. On this earth ’tis sure We men hav...

This is no case of petty right or wrong That politicians or philosophers Can judge. I hate not Germans, nor grow hot With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers. Beside my hate for one fat patriot M...

“Is this the road that climbs above and bends Round what was once a chalk-pit: now it is By accident an amphitheatre. Some ash-trees standing ankle-deep in brier And bramble act the parts, and neither...

Four miles at a leap, over the dark hollow land, To the frosted steep of the down and its junipers black, Travels my eye with equal ease and delight: And scarce could my body leap four yards. This is ...

What does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease, No man, woman, or child alive could please Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh Because I sit and frame an epitaph⁠— “Here lies all that no one love...

In the gloom of whiteness, In the great silence of snow, A child was sighing And bitterly saying: “Oh, They have killed a white bird up there on her nest, The down is fluttering from her breast.” And ...

He was the one man I met up in the woods That stormy New Year’s morning; and at first sight, Fifty yards off, I could not tell how much Of the strange tripod was a man. His body, Bowed horizontal, was...

Seated once by a brook, watching a child Chiefly that paddled, I was thus beguiled. Mellow the blackbird sang and sharp the thrush Not far off in the oak and hazel brush, Unseen. There was a scent lik...

The forest ended. Glad I was To feel the light, and hear the hum Of bees, and smell the drying grass And the sweet mint, because I had come To an end of forest, and because Here was both road and inn,...

One hour: as dim he and his house now look As a reflection in a rippling brook, While I remember him; but first, his house. Empty it sounded. It was dark with forest boughs That brushed the walls and ...

A fortnight before Christmas Gypsies were everywhere: Vans were drawn up on wastes, women trailed to the fair. “My gentleman,” said one, “you’ve got a lucky face.” “And you’ve a luckier,” I thought, “...

“ ’Twill take some getting.” “Sir, I think ’twill so.” The old man stared up at the mistletoe That hung too high in the poplar’s crest for plunder Of any climber, though not for kissing under: Then he...

This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors Many a frozen night, and merrily Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores: “At Mrs. Greenland’s Hawthorn Bush,” said he, “I slept.” None kne...

Out in the dark over the snow The fallow fawns invisible go With the fallow doe; And the winds blow Fast as the stars are slow. Stealthily the dark haunts round And, when a lamp goes, without sound At...

Some day, I think, there will be people enough In Froxfield to pick all the blackberries Out of the hedges of Green Lane, the straight Broad lane where now September hides herself In bracken and black...

By the Ford at the town’s edge Horse and carter rest: The carter smokes on the bridge Watching the water press in swathes about his horse’s chest. From the inn one watches, too, In the room for visito...

The author’s birthday. ↩...