Among the Millet and Other Poems | Page 7

mine eyes sometimes to gaze:
The burning sky-line blinds my
sight:
The woods far off are blue with haze;
The hills are drenched
in light.
And yet to me not this or that
Is always sharp or always sweet;
In
the sloped shadow of my hat
I lean at rest, and drain the heat;
Nay
more, I think some blessèd power
Hath brought me wandering idly
here:
In the full furnace of this hour
My thoughts grow keen and
clear.
AMONG THE TIMOTHY.
Long hours ago, while yet the morn was blithe,
Nor sharp athirst had
drunk the beaded dew,
A reaper came, and swung his cradled scythe

Around this stump, and, shearing slowly, drew
Far round among
the clover, ripe for hay,
A circle clean and grey;
And here among
the scented swathes that gleam,
Mixed with dead daisies, it is sweet
to lie
And watch the grass and the few-clouded sky,
Nor think but
only dream.
For when the noon was turning, and the heat
Fell down most heavily
on field and wood,
I too came hither, borne on restless feet,
Seeking
some comfort for an aching mood.
Ah, I was weary of the drifting
hours,
The echoing city towers,
The blind grey streets, the jingle of
the throng,
Weary of hope that like a shape of stone
Sat near at
hand without a smile or moan,
And weary most of song.
And those high moods of mine that sometime made
My heart a
heaven, opening like a flower,
A sweeter world where I in wonder

strayed,
Begirt with shapes of beauty and the power
Of dreams that
moved through that enchanted clime
With changing breaths of rhyme,

Were all gone lifeless now like those white leaves,
That hang all
winter, shivering dead and blind
Among the sinewy beeches in the
wind,
That vainly calls and grieves.
Ah! I will set no more mine overtaskèd brain
To barren search and
toil that beareth nought,
Forever following with sorefooted pain

The crossing pathways of unbournèd thought;
But let it go, as one
that hath no skill,
To take what shape it will,
An ant
slow-burrowing in the earthy gloom,
A spider bathing in the dew at
morn,
Or a brown bee in wayward fancy borne
From hidden bloom
to bloom.
Hither and thither o'er the rocking grass
The little breezes, blithe as
they are blind,
Teasing the slender blossoms pass and pass,

Soft-footed children of the gipsy wind,
To taste of every
purple-fringèd head
Before the bloom is dead;
And scarcely heed
the daisies that, endowed
With stems so short they cannot see,
up-bear
Their innocent sweet eyes distressed, and stare
Like
children in a crowd.
Not far to fieldward in the central heat,
Shadowing the clover, a pale
poplar stands
With glimmering leaves that, when the wind comes,
beat
Together like innumerable small hands,
And with the calm, as
in vague dreams astray,
Hang wan and silver-grey;
Like sleepy
mænads, who in pale surprise,
Half-wakened by a prowling beast,
have crept
Out of the hidden covert, where they slept,
At noon with
languid eyes.
The crickets creak, and through the noonday glow,
That crazy fiddler
of the hot mid-year,
The dry cicada plies his wiry bow
In long-spun
cadence, thin and dusty sere:

From the green grass the small
grasshoppers' din
Spreads soft and silvery thin:
And ever and anon

a murmur steals
Into mine ears of toil that moves alway,
The
crackling rustle of the pitch-forked hay
And lazy jerk of wheels.
As so I lie and feel the soft hours wane,
To wind and sun and
peaceful sound laid bare,
That aching dim discomfort of the brain

Fades off unseen, and shadowy-footed care
Into some hidden corner
creeps at last
To slumber deep and fast;
And gliding on, quite
fashioned to forget,
From dream to dream I bid my spirit pass
Out
into the pale green ever-swaying grass
To brood, but no more fret.
And hour by hour among all shapes that grow
Of purple mints and
daisies gemmed with gold
In sweet unrest my visions come and go;

I feel and hear and with quiet eyes behold;
And hour by hour, the
ever-journeying sun,
In gold and shadow spun,
Into mine eyes and
blood, and through the dim
Green glimmering forest of the grass
shines down,
Till flower and blade, and every cranny brown,
And I
are soaked with him.
FREEDOM.
Out of the heart of the city begotten
Of the labour of men and their
manifold hands,
Whose souls, that were sprung from the earth in her
morning, No longer regard or remember her warning,
Whose hearts
in the furnace of care have forgotten
Forever the scent and the hue of
her lands;
Out of the heat of the usurer's hold,
From the horrible crash of the
strong man's feet;
Out of the shadow where pity is dying;
Out of the
clamour where beauty is lying,
Dead in the depth of the struggle for
gold;
Out of the din and the glare of the street;
Into the arms of our mother we come,
Our broad strong mother, the
innocent earth,
Mother of all things beautiful, blameless,
Mother of
hopes that her strength makes tameless,
Where the voices of grief and

of battle are dumb,
And the whole world laughs with the light of her
mirth.
Over the fields, where the cool winds sweep,
Black with the mould and brown with the loam,
Where