Classic Poem

A Market Song

Crooked, like bough the March wind bends wallward across the sleet,
Stands she at her blackened stall in the loud market street;
All about her in the sun, full-topped, exceeding sweet,
Lie bundles of gray lavender, a-shrivel in the heat.

What the Vision that is mine, coming over and o'er?
'T is the Dorset levels, aye, behind me and before;
Creeks that slip without a sound from flaggy shore to shore;
Orchards gnarled with spring-times and as gust-bound as of yore.

Oh, the panes at sunset burning rich-red as the rose!
Oh, colonial chimneys that the punctual swallow knows!
Land where like a memory the salt scent stays or goes;
Where wealthy is the reaper and right glad is he that sows!

Drips and drips the last June rain, but toward the evenfall
Copper gleam the little pools behind the pear-trees tall;
In a whirl of violet, and the fairest thing of all,
The lavender, the lavender sways by the sagging wall!

*****

Fade the levels, the sea-scent, the sheltered garden space;
Town roars all about me, and its roofs are here apace;
Country-sick, with heavy step my homeward road I trace,
Bearing the keen stuff I bought in the loud market-place.

Oh, my heart, why should you break at any thoughts like these?
So sooth are they of the old time that they should bring you ease;
Of Hester in the lavender and out among the bees,
Clipping the long stalks one by one under the Dorset trees.