Meadowsweet
Through grass, through amber'd cornfields, our slow Stream--
Fringed with its flags and reeds and rushes tall,
And Meadowsweet, the chosen of them all
By wandering children, yellow as the cream
Of those great cows--winds on as in a dream
By mill and footbridge, hamlet old and small
(Red roofs, gray tower), and sees the sunset gleam
On mullion'd windows of an ivied Hall.
There, once upon a time, the heavy King
Trod out its perfume from the Meadowsweet,
Strown like a woman's love beneath his feet,
In stately dance or jovial banqueting,
When all was new; and in its wayfaring
Our Streamlet curved, as now, through grass and wheat.
poem by William Allingham
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The King's Daughter
WE WERE ten maidens in the green corn,
Small red leaves in the mill-water:
Fairer maidens never were born,
Apples of gold for the king’s daughter.
We were ten maidens by a well-head,
Small white birds in the mill-water:
Sweeter maidens never were wed,
Rings of red for the king’s daughter.
The first to spin, the second to sing,
Seeds of wheat in the mill-water;
The third may was a goodly thing,
White bread and brown for the king’s daughter.
The fourth to sew and the fifth to play,
Fair green weed in the mill-water;
The sixth may was a goodly may,
White wine and red for the king’s daughter.
The seventh to woo, the eighth to wed,
Fair thin reeds in the mill-water;
The ninth had gold work on her head,
Honey in the comb for the king’s daughter.
The ninth had gold work round her hair,
Fallen flowers in the mill-water;
The tenth may was goodly and fair,
Golden gloves for the king’s daughter.
We were ten maidens in a field green,
Fallen fruit in the mill-water;
Fairer maidens never have been,
Golden sleeves for the king’s daughter.
By there comes the king’s young son,
A little wind in the mill-water;
“Out of ten maidens ye’ll grant me one,”
A crown of red for the king’s daughter.
“Out of ten mays ye’ll give me the best,”
A little rain in the mill-water;
A bed of yellow straw for all the rest,
A bed of gold for the king’s daughter.
He’s ta’en out the goodliest,
Rain that rains in the mill-water;
A comb of yellow shell for all the rest,
A comb of gold for the king’s daughter.
He’s made her bed to the goodliest,
Wind and hail in the mill-water;
A grass girdle for all the rest,
A girdle of arms for the king’s daughter.
He’s set his heart to the goodliest,
Snow that snows in the mill-water;
Nine little kisses for all the rest,
An hundredfold for the king’s daughter.
He’s ta’en his leave at the goodliest,
Broken boats in the mill-water;
Golden gifts for all the rest,
Sorrow of heart for the king’s daughter.
“Ye’ll make a grave for my fair body,”
Running rain in the mill-water;
“And ye’ll streek my brother at the side of me,”
The pains of hell for the king’s daughter.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Why?
Ever, ever
Stir and shiver
The reeds and rushes
By the river:
Ever, ever,
As if in dream,
The lone moon's silver
Sleeks the stream.
What old sorrow,
What lost love,
Moon, reeds, rushes,
Dream you of?
poem by Walter de la Mare
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Food In Heaven
Food In Heaven
Food In Heaven
He made the cows to want the rain to fall he made the grass that they use to eat to fill the want inside a cow he makes grass as bread for cows they just continue there to graze in some places in the desert spaces there is grass for cows to eat this is called heaven sweet to cows they drink water when they have it in a drink flavored pouch oh no see eh ewe caught me making lies no listen while eye smile and tell ewe this poem is so nice there is grass for all the cows there is grass on every hill and every cow can eat in heaven they still have grass for every cow there is food in heaven there is food there in a drink flavored pouch.
poem by Charles Hice
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Storm Windows
People are putting up storm windows now,
Or were, this morning, until the heavy rain
Drove them indoors. So, coming home at noon,
I saw storm windows lying on the ground,
Frame-full of rain; through the water and glass
I saw the crushed grass, how it seemed to stream
Away in lines like seaweed on the tide
Or blades of wheat leaning under the wind.
The ripple and splash of rain on the blurred glass
Seemed that it briefly said, as I walked by,
Something that I should have liked to say to you,
Something . . .the dry grass bent under the pane
Brimful of bouncing water . . . something of
A swaying clarity which blindly echoes
This lonely afternoon of memories
And missed desires, while the wintry rain
Unspeakable the distance in the mind!)
Runs on the standing windows and away.
poem by Howard Nemerov
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The House Of Dust: Part 01: 02: One, from his high bright window in a tower
One, from his high bright window in a tower,
Leans out, as evening falls,
And sees the advancing curtain of the shower
Splashing its silver on roofs and walls:
Sees how, swift as a shadow, it crosses the city,
And murmurs beyond far walls to the sea,
Leaving a glimmer of water in the dark canyons,
And silver falling from eave and tree.
One, from his high bright window, looking down,
Peers like a dreamer over the rain-bright town,
And thinks its towers are like a dream.
The western windows flame in the sun's last flare,
Pale roofs begin to gleam.
Looking down from a window high in a wall
He sees us all;
Lifting our pallid faces towards the rain,
Searching the sky, and going our ways again,
Standing in doorways, waiting under the trees . . .
There, in the high bright window he dreams, and sees
What we are blind to,—we who mass and crowd
From wall to wall in the darkening of a cloud.
The gulls drift slowly above the city of towers,
Over the roofs to the darkening sea they fly;
Night falls swiftly on an evening of rain.
The yellow lamps wink one by one again.
The towers reach higher and blacker against the sky.
poem by Conrad Potter Aiken
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The Tower
One, from his high bright window in a tower,
Leans out, as evening falls,
And sees the advancing curtain of the shower
Splashing its silver on roofs and walls:
Sees how, swift as a shadow, it crosses the city,
And murmurs beyond far walls to the sea,
Leaving a glimmer of water in the dark canyons,
And silver falling from eave and tree.
One, from his high bright window, looking down,
Peers like a dreamer over the rain-bright town,
And thinks its towers are like a dream.
The western windows flame in the sun's last flare,
Pale roofs begin to gleam.
Looking down from a window high in a wall
He sees us all;
Lifting our pallid faces towards the rain,
Searching the sky, and going our ways again,
Standing in doorways, waiting under the trees . . .
There, in the high bright window he dreams, and sees
What we are blind to,-we who mass and crowd
From wall to wall in the darkening of a cloud.
The gulls drift slowly above the city of towers,
Over the roofs to the darkening sea they fly;
Night falls swiftly on an evening of rain.
The yellow lamps wink one by one again.
The towers reach higher and blacker against the sky.
poem by Conrad Potter Aiken
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Intriguing Creations
Canvas sails of the windmill, secured to their whips,
Circle around on slow orbital trips.
No hurrying to speed the day’s hours away,
The winds hold them captive, they have to obey.
The blades catch the currents that travel along,
Turning continuously, powerful and strong.
Moving the mechanism of sprockets rotating,
Crushing the corn and then flour creating.
What a joy when you see one, they stand proud and tall.
A relic of times when the miller would haul
Jute sacks full of wheat, which he would then kibble,
In that dusty old place, where the mice came to nibble.
The Smock Mill, the Post Mill and the Tower Mill well knew,
The procedure of grinding the grain fine and true.
But these intriguing creations are now hard to find,
As the old time traditions are now left far behind.
poem by Ernestine Northover
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The Old Road
THE ROAD is left that once was trod
By man and heavy-laden beast;
And new ways opened, iron-shod,
That bind the land from west to east.
I asked of Him who all things knows
Why none who lived now passed that way:
Where rose the dust the grass now grows?
A still, low voice was heard to say,—
“Thou knowest not why I change the course
Of him who travels: learn to go,
Obey the Spirit’s gentle force,
Nor ask thou where the stream may flow.
“Man shall not walk in his own ways,
For he is blind and cannot see;
But let him trust, and lengthened days
Shall lead his feet to heaven and Me.
Then shall the grass the path grow o’er,
That his own wilfulness has trod;
And man nor beast shall pass it more,
But he shall walk with Me, his God.”
poem by Jones Very
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In The Meadow - What In The Meadow?
In the meadow - what in the meadow?
Bluebells, buttercups, meadowsweet,
And fairy rings for the children's feet
In the meadow.
In the garden - what in the garden?
Jacob's-ladder and Solomon's-seal,
And Love-lies-bleeding beside All-heal
In the garden.
poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti
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September Grass
Well, the suns not so hot in the sky today
And you know I can see summertime slipping on away
A few more geese are gone, a few more leaves turning red
But the grass is as soft as a feather in a featherbed
So Ill be king and youll be queen
Our kingdoms gonna be this little patch of green
Wont you lie down here right now
In this september grass
Wont you lie down with me now
September grass
Oh the memory is like the sweetest pain
Yeah, I kissed the girl at a football game
I can still smell the sweat and the grass stains
We walked home together. I was never the same.
But that was a long time ago
And where is she now? I dont know
Wont you lie down here right now
In this september grass
Wont you lie down with me now
September grass
Oh, september grass is the sweetest kind
It goes down easy like apple wine
Hope you dont mind if I pour you some
Made that much sweeter by the winter to come
Do you see those ants dancing on a blade of grass?
Do you know what I know? thats you and me, baby
Were so small and the worlds so vast
We found each other down in the grass
Wont you lie down with me right here
September grass
Wont you lie down with me now
In this september grass
Lie down
Lie down
Lie down
Lie down
(repeat)
Wont you lie down here right now
In this september grass
Wont you lie down here now
In this september grass
song performed by by James Taylor
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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England
Shoulders of upland brown laid dark to the sunset's bosom,
Living amber of wheat, and copper of new-ploughed loam,
Downs where the white sheep wander, little gardens in blossom,
Roads that wind through the twilight up to the lights of home.
Lanes that are white with hawthorn, dykes where the sedges shiver,
Hollows where caged winds slumber, moorlands where winds wake free,
Sowing and reaping and gleaning, spring and torrent and river,
Are they not more, by worlds, than the whole of the world can be?
Is there a corner of land, a furze-fringed rag of a by-way,
Coign of your foam-white cliffs or swirl of your grass-green waves,
Leaf of your peaceful copse, or dust of your strenuous highway,
But in our hearts is sacred, dear as our cradles, our graves?
Is not each bough in your orchards, each cloud in the skies above you,
Is not each byre or homestead, furrow or farm or fold,
Dear as the last dear drops of the blood in the hearts that love you,
Filling those hearts till the love is more than the heart can hold?
poem by Edith Nesbit
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Swallows
O LITTLE hearts, beat home, beat home,
Here is no place to rest.
Night darkens on the falling foam
And on the fading west.
O little wings, beat home, beat home.
Love may no longer roam.
O, Love has touched the fields of wheat
And Love has crowned the corn,
And we must follow Love's white feet
Through all the ways of morn.
Through all the silver roads of air
We pass and have no care.
The silver roads of Love are wide,
O winds that turn, O stars that guide.
Sweet are the ways that Love has trod
Through the clear skies that reach to God.
But in the cliff-grass Love builds deep
A place where wandering wings may sleep.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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The Bobolink
Daisies, clover, buttercup,
Redtop, trefoil, meadowsweet,
Ecstatic pinions, soaring up,
Then gliding down to grassy seat.
Sunshine, laughter, mad desires,
May day, June day, lucid skies,
All reckless moods that love inspires-
The gladdest bird that sings and flies.
Meadows, orchards, bending sprays,
Rushes, lilies, billowy wheat,
Song and frolic fill his days,
A feathered rondeau all complete.
Pink bloom, gold bloom, fleabane white,
Dewdrop, raindrop, cooling shade,
Bubbling throat and hovering flight,
And jocund heart as e'er was made.
poem by John Burroughs
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Open, Time
Open, Time, and let him pass
Shortly where his feet would be!
Like a leaf at Michaelmas
Swooning from the tree,
Ere its hour the manly mind
Trembles in a sure decrease,
Nor the body now can find
Any hold on peace.
Take him, weak and overworn;
Fold about his dying dream
Boyhood, and the April morn,
And the rolling stream:
Weather on a sunny ridge,
Showery weather, far from here;
Under some deep-ivied bridge,
Water rushing clear:
Water quick to cross and part,
(Golden light on silver sound),
Weather that was next his heart
All the world around!
Soon upon his vision break
These, in their remembered blue;
He shall toil no more, but wake
Young, in air he knew.
He has done with roofs and men.
Open, Time, and let him pass,
Vague and innocent again,
Into country grass.
poem by Louise Imogen Guiney
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To L. H. B. (1894-1915 )
Last night for the first time since you were dead
I walked with you, my brother, in a dream.
We were at home again beside the stream
Fringed with tall berry bushes, white and red.
"Don't touch them: they are poisonous," I said.
But your hand hovered, and I saw a beam
Of strange, bright laughter flying round your head
And as you stooped I saw the berries gleam.
"Don't you remember? We called them Dead Man's
Bread!"
I woke and heard the wind moan and the roar
Of the dark water tumbling on the shore.
Where--where is the path of my dream for my eager
feet?
By the remembered stream my brother stands
Waiting for me with berries in his hands...
"These are my body. Sister, take and eat."
poem by Katherine Mansfield
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Romance
MY Love dwelt in a Northern land.
A gray tower in a forest green
Was hers, and far on either hand
The long wash of the waves was seen,
And leagues on leagues of yellow sand,
The woven forest boughs between!
And through the silver Northern night
The sunset slowly died away,
And herds of strange deer, lily-white,
Stole forth among the branches gray;
About the coming of the light,
They fled like ghosts before the day!
I know not if the forest green
Still girdles round that castle gray;
I know not if the boughs between
The white deer vanish ere the day;
Above my Love the grass is green,
My heart is colder than the clay!
poem by Andrew Lang
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Dreamer, Say
Dreamer, say, will you dream for me
A wild sweet dream of a foreign land,
Whose border sips of a foaming sea
With lips of coral and silver sand;
Where warm winds loll on the shady deeps,
Or lave themselves in the tearful mist
The great wild wave of the breaker weeps
O'er crags of opal and amethyst?
Dreamer, say, will you dream a dream
Of tropic shades in the lands of shine,
Where the lily leans o'er an amber stream
That flows like a rill of wasted wine,--
Where the palm-trees, lifting their shields of green,
Parry the shafts of the Indian sun
Whose splintering vengeance falls between
The reeds below where the waters run?
Dreamer, say, will you dream of love
That lives in a land of sweet perfume,
Where the stars drip down from the skies above
In molten spatters of bud and bloom?
Where never the weary eyes are wet,
And never a sob in the balmy air,
And only the laugh of the paroquet
Breaks the sleep of the silence there?
poem by James Whitcomb Riley
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Trehill Well
There stood a low and ivied roof,
As gazing rustics tell,
In times of chivalry and song
'Yclept the holy well.
Above the ivies' branchlets gray
In glistening clusters shone;
While round the base the grass-blades bright
And spiry foxglove sprung.
The brambles clung in graceful bands,
Chequering the old gray stone
With shining leaflets, whose bright face
In autumn's tinting shone.
Around the fountain's eastern base
A babbling brooklet sped,
With sleepy murmur purling soft
Adown its gravelly bed.
Within the cell the filmy ferns
To woo the clear wave bent;
And cushioned mosses to the stone
Their quaint embroidery lent.
The fountain's face lay still as glass-
Save where the streamlet free
Across the basin's gnarled lip
Flowed ever silently.
Above the well a little nook
Once held, as rustics tell,
All garland-decked, an image of
The Lady of the Well.
They tell of tales of mystery,
Of darkling deeds of woe;
But no! such doings might not brook
The holy streamlet's flow.
Oh tell me not of bitter thoughts,
Of melancholy dreams,
By that fair fount whose sunny wall
Basks in the western beams.
When last I saw that little stream,
A form of light there stood,
That seemed like a precious gem,
Beneath that archway rude:
And as I gazed with love and awe
Upon that sylph-like thing,
Methought that airy form must be
The fairy of the spring.
Helston, 1835.
poem by Charles Kingsley
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King Solomon and the Ants
Out from Jerusalem
The king rode with his great
War chiefs and lords of state,
And Sheba's queen with them;
Comely, but black withal,
To whom, perchance, belongs
That wondrous Song of songs,
Sensuous and mystical,
Whereto devout souls turn
In fond, ecstatic dream,
And through its earth-born theme
The Love of loves discern.
Proud in the Syrian sun,
In gold and purple sheen,
The dusky Ethiop queen
Smiled on King Solomon.
Wisest of men, he knew
The languages of all
The creatures great or small
That trod the earth or flew.
Across an ant-hill led
The king's path, and he heard
Its small folk, and their word
He thus interpreted:
'Here comes the king men greet
As wise and good and just,
To crush us in the dust
Under his heedless feet.'
The great king bowed his head,
And saw the wide surprise
Of the Queen of Sheba's eyes
As he told her what they said.
'O king!' she whispered sweet,
'Too happy fate have they
Who perish in thy way
Beneath thy gracious feet!
'Thou of the God-lent crown,
Shall these vile creatures dare
Murmur against thee where
The knees of kings kneel down?'
'Nay,' Solomon replied,
'The wise and strong should seek
The welfare of the weak,'
And turned his horse aside.
His train, with quick alarm,
Curved with their leader round
The ant-hill's peopled mound,
And left it free from harm.
The jewelled head bent low;
'O king!' she said, 'henceforth
The secret of thy worth
And wisdom well I know.
'Happy must be the State
Whose ruler heedeth more
The murmurs of the poor
Than flatteries of the great.'
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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The Churchyard
HOW slowly creeps the hand of Time
On the old clock’s green-mantled face!
Yea, slowly as those ivies climb,
The hours roll round with patient pace;
The drowsy rooks caw on the tower,
The tame doves hover round and round;
Below, the slow grass hour by hour
Makes green God’s sleeping-ground.
All moves, but nothing here is swift;
The grass grows deep, the green boughs shoot;
From east to west the shadows drift;
The earth feels heavenward underfoot;
The slow stream through the bridge doth stray
With water-lilies on its marge,
And slowly, pil’d with scented hay,
Creeps by the silent barge.
All stirs, but nothing here is loud:
The cushat broods, the cuckoo cries;
Faint, far up, under a white cloud,
The lark trills soft to earth and skies;
And underneath the green graves rest;
And through the place, with slow footfalls,
With snowy cambric on his breast,
The old gray Vicar crawls.
And close at hand, to see him come,
Clustering at the playground gate,
The urchins of the schoolhouse, dumb
And bashful, hang the head and wait;
The little maidens curtsey deep,
The boys their forelocks touch meanwhile,
The Vicar sees them, half asleep,
And smiles a sleepy smile.
Slow as the hand on the clock’s face,
Slow as the white cloud in the sky,
He cometh now with tottering pace
To the old vicarage hard by:
Smother’d it stands in ivy leaves,
Laurels and yews make dark the ground;
The swifts that build beneath the eaves
Wheel in still circles round.
And from the portal, green and dark,
He glances at the church-clock old—
Gray soul! why seek his eyes to mark
The creeping of that finger cold?
He cannot see, but still as stone
He pauses, listening for the chime,
And hears from that green tower intone
The eternal voice of Time.
poem by William Cosmo Monkhouse
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