Classic Poem

None but the mouse-brown wren
That runs and hides from men —
Though for a moment now
Clinging with fine claws to a bough
One watches me askance,
Who dimly sit where the loose sunbeams dance —
Trills in these trees today;
All other birds seem flown away,
Though when I scrambled up
Through the thick covert of the combe's wide cup
Shaking down the last dog-rose petals,
My hand kissed by the angry nettles
And clawed by the lean thistles,
Blackbird and thrush flew off with startled whistles.

I see the hillside crossed
By a black flying ghost,
Rook's passing shadow, and beyond
Like skaters cutting figures on a pond
High swifts that curve on tilted wings are drawing
Vanishing circles; but save for the rooks' cawing
And trill of the small wren
Lost in the green again
No birds are singing anywhere,
As though the hot midsummer air
Hanging like blue smoke through the holt
Had driven all birds to sit apart and moult.

Yet when I came up through the farm
Where the stacked hay smelt keen and warm
Heads of young martins, one or two,
Black and white-cheeked, were peeping through
The small holes of their houses;
There where all day the sunlight drowses
They looked out from the cool
Dark shade of eaves and saw the pool
Where white duck feathers raised a storm of foam,
The cock that stood with crimson comb
Among his scraping hens,
The short-legged bull behind the fence,
The line-hung sheets that cracked and curled,
All the sun-laden dusty world;
And nodding each to each
They kept up a small twittering speech,
As though they ready were
To launch out on the air
And from their nests of clay
Like disembodied spirits suddenly fly away.