231 TO MEADOWS YE have been fresh and green, Ye have been filled with flowers: And ye the Walks have been Where maids have spent their houres. Ye have beheld, how they With Wicker Arks did come To kisse, and beare away The richer Couslips home. Ye have heard them sweetly sing But now, we see, none here, And with dishevelled Haire, Like Unthrifts, having spent, Ye are left here to lament Your poore estates, alone. ROBERT HERRICK 232 THE COTTAGER TO HER INFANT THE days are cold, the nights are long, 233 Then hush again upon my breast; The kitten sleeps upon the hearth, Nay! start not at the sparkling light; Bedropped with rain: Then, little darling! sleep again, DOROTHY WORDSWORTH TO AUTUMN SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 'With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells And still more, later flowers for the bees, For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; THE SOLITARY REAPER 234 BEHOLD her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass! Reaping and singing by herself; Alone she cuts and binds the grain, No nightingale did ever chaunt A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard Will no one tell me what she sings? Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, |