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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
And seen them in a Round:
Each Virgin, like a Spring,
With Hony-succles crowned.

But now, we see, none here,
Whose silverie feet did tread,

And with dishevelled Haire,
Adorned this smoother Mead.

Like Unthrifts, having spent,
Your stock, and needy grown,

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,
The North wind sings a doleful song;

233

Then hush again upon my breast;
All merry things are now at rest,
Save thee, my pretty love!

The kitten sleeps upon the hearth,
The crickets long have ceased their mirth;
There's nothing stirring in the house.
Save one wee, hungry, nibbling mouse,
Then why so busy thou?

Nay! start not at the sparkling light;
'Tis but the moon that shines so bright
On the window-pane

Bedropped with rain:

Then, little darling! sleep again,
And wake when it is day.

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH

TO AUTUMN

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless.

'With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

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
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

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?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river-sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
JOHN KEATS

THE SOLITARY REAPER

234

BEHOLD her, single in the field,

Yon solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!

Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:

A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the cuckoo bird.
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

For old, unhappy, far-off things,

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